November 13, 2023 • 32 mins
Mourning Dove was an activist, ethnographer and novelist, and one of the first, if not the first, Indigenous women in the U.S. to publish a novel. Part one covers the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and her early career.
Research:
- American Folklore Society. “Mourning Dove (Hum-ishu-ma / Christine Quintasket).” https://notablefolkloristsofcolor.org/portfolio/mourning-dove-hum-ishu-ma-christine-quintasket/
- Arnold, Laurie. “More than Mourning Dove: Christine Quintasket—Activist, Leader, Public Intellectual.” Montana The Magazine of Western History, Spring 2017, Vol. 67, No. 1. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26322854
- Brown, Alanna Kathleen. “Mourning Dove's Voice in ‘Cogewea.’” Wicazo Sa Review , Autumn, 1988, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Autumn, 1988). https://www.jstor.org/stable/1409273
- Brown, Alanna Kathleen. “The Evolution of Mourning Dove’s Coyote Stories.” Studies in American Indian Literatures , Summer/Fall 1992, Series 2, Vol. 4. Via JSTOR. http://www.jstor.com/stable/20736610
- Brown, Alanna Kathleen. “The Evolution of Mourning Dove’s Coyote Stories.” Studies in American Indian Literatures , Summer/Fall 1992, Series 2, Vol. 4. Via JSTOR. http://www.jstor.com/stable/20736610
- Brown, Anna Kathleen. “Reviewed Work(s): Coyote Stories by Mourning Dove and Jay Miller; Mourning Dove: A Salishan Autobiography by Jay Miller.” Studies in American Indian Literatures, Series 2, Vol. 3, No. 2. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20736517
- Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest. “Texts by and about Natives: Commentary. 9. Christine Quintasket (Mourning Dove or Humishuma).” University of Washington. https://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/Classroom%20Materials/Reading%20the%20Region/Texts%20by%20and%20about%20Natives/Commentary/9.html
- Johnson-Roehr, S.N. “Christine Quintasket.” JSTOR Daily. 10/10/2022. https://daily.jstor.org/christine-quintasket/
- Karell, Linda K. “’This Story I Am Telling You Is True’: Collaboration and Literary Authority in Mourning Dove's ‘Cogewea.’” American Indian Quarterly , Autumn, 1995, Vol. 19, No. 4. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1185559
- Kennedy, Kara and Sarah Werner. “Cogewea’s Blog: An Analysis of One of North America’s First Novels Written by a Female Indigenous Author.” 7/31/2010. https://cogewea.wordpress.com/
- Lamont, Victoria. “Native American Oral Practice and the Popular Novel; Or, Why Mourning Dove Wrote a Western.” Source: Western American Literature , Winter 2005, Vol. 39, No. 4. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43022337
- Miller, Jay. “Mourning Dove: Editing in All Directions to "Get Real".” Studies in American Indian Literatures , Summer 1995, Series 2, Vol. 7, No. 2. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20736849
- Montana Outdoor Hall of Fame. “Michael Pablo 1844-1914, Charles A. Allard 1852-1896.” https://mtoutdoorhalloffame.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Charles-Allard.pdf
- Mourning Dove. “Coyote Stories.” Edited and illustrated by Hester Dean Guie, with notes by L.V. McWhorter (Old Wolf) and a foreword by Chief Standing Bear.” University of Nebraska Press. 1934 (Reprinted 1990).
- Mourning Dove. “Mourning Dove: A Salishan Autobiography.” Edited by Jay Miller. University of Nebraska Press. 1990.
- Nisbet, Jack and Claire. “Mourning Dove (Christine Quintasket) (ca. 1884-1936).” HistoryLink.org. 8/7/2010. https://www.historylink.org/File/9512
- Spokane Spokesman-Review. “Colville Indian Girl Blazes Trail to New Conception of Redmen in Her Novel, ‘Cogewea,’ Soon to be Published.” 4/9/1916. https://www.newspapers.com/image/566560963/
- Strong, Robert. “5 – The Uncooperative Primary Source: Literary Recovery versus Historical Fact in the Strange Production of Cogewea”. Keshen, Jeff, and Sylvie Perrier. Building New Bridges - Bâtir de nouveaux ponts: Sources, Methods and Interdi
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. Years ago, I took a little
day trip with some friends to a place called the
Book Barn in Niantic, Connecticut, and one of the things
I came home with was a book called Mourning Dove,
a salition autobiography, And that book has been sitting on
(00:32):
my desk as a potential episode inspiration since then. If
not directly on the desk, like adjacent to the desk,
it has been next to me, and according to the receipt,
still stuck in that book. That trip happened in twenty sixteen,
so that gives an indication of how long it can
take to go from like a potential podcast idea to
(00:53):
a podcast episode. Mourning Dove was an activist, an ethnographer,
and a novelist, and one of the first, if not
the first, indigenous women in the United States to publish
a novel. She was known by a lot of names.
One was Christine Quintasket, and at various points she also
signed letters as Crystal, Christina, and Catherine. She was married twice,
(01:16):
and during those marriages she also used each of her
husband's surnames. As an adult, she usually used the last
name Quintasket at home among the Confederated tribes of the
Carville Reservation, but she usually used one of her husband's
surnames with outsiders, whichever marriage was in existence at that point.
She wrote under the name Mourning Dove, which was sometimes
(01:41):
printed along with the name Humushuma, which is sort of
an approximated English spelling of the Insulction word for mourning dove.
That is the Salish language that she grew up speaking,
and then she was also given other names in that
language at different points in her life. And these were
really names that she used within her community and not
with the wider public. And really there's not one right
(02:04):
name for her. She was raised in a culture in
which people have and use different names in different contexts
and for different times in their lives. We will mostly
call her Christine Quintasket or Mourning Dove, since that's what
was on her published work. Christine Quintasket gave the year
of her birth as eighteen eighty eight, although there are
(02:25):
other years from the mid to late eighteen eighties noted
as various government and school records. She was the oldest
of seven children born to Joseph Quintasket, who is Okanagan,
and Lucy Stuchan, who was Calville. These are two of
the twelve bands that are part of the Confederated Tribes
of the Callville Reservation, which is federally recognized as one
(02:46):
tribe today. The name comes from Fort Calville, which was
named after Hudson's Bay Company Governor Andrew Calville, and members
of the tribe voted to keep this name in twenty eighteen.
Although twelve bands composed the Confederated Tribes of the Callville
Reservation today, historically there were more than fifty living in
(03:07):
this part of North America. The area includes land that's
now described as Canada's Interior Plateau and the Columbia Plateau,
and the United States. These people spoke a number of
different languages and dialects, most of them in the Interior
Salish language group, and while many of these are still
living languages and are spoken and taught today, the entire
(03:30):
Salish language group is considered to be critically endangered. As
we just said, this plateau is in both the US
and Canada, so the establishment of these two nations created
an international border through this ancestral homeland. Unlike many of
the other reservations that we've talked about on the show before,
the Callville Reservation on the US side of the border
(03:53):
was not established through a treaty between these indigenous peoples
and the United States. It was established by executive order
by President Ulysses S. Grant on April ninth, eighteen seventy two.
F A. Walker, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, had written a
letter the day before outlining the need for a reservation
(04:13):
for eight named tribes as well as quote scattering bands
who were not party to a treaty with the United States.
Acting Secretary of the Interior B. R. Coen forwarded this
to Grant, and the executive order simply read quote. It
is hereby ordered that the tract of country referred to
in the within letter of the Acting Secretary of the
(04:35):
Interior and designated upon the accompanying map, be set apart
for the bands of Indians in Washington Territory named in
communication of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs dated the eighth instant,
and for other such Indians, as the Department of the
Interior may see fit to locate thereon. But less than
(04:56):
two months later, on July second, Grant issued another ord
restoring that land to the public domain and designating different
land for the reservation instead. This new piece of land
was described as quote the country bounded on the east
and south by the Columbia River, on the west by
the Okanagan River, and on the north by the British possessions.
(05:18):
The British possessions, of course, being Canada. This new reservation
was a lot smaller than the previous one had been.
It was about two point eight million acres of land,
and for comparison, these tribes territories had historically covered about
thirty nine million acres of land, and then from there
the reservation got progressively smaller. In eighteen eighty seven, Congress
(05:41):
passed the Dawes Act, also known as the General Allotment Act. Previously,
reservation land had been held by tribes collectively, and there
are some nuances about who was legally considered to be
holding the land, but the overall idea was that it
belonged to the tribe as a group. That laws act
allowed for that land to instead be divided up and
(06:04):
allotted to individual members of the tribe. This was ostensibly
to protect indigenous people's land rights, but in practice it
did the opposite. People who were allotted land were expected
to assimilate with white culture and to do things with
it like farm it using European methods, but in many
cases the land itself really wasn't conducive to being used
(06:26):
in this way, and even if it was, people were
expected to give up their traditional culture and practices in
order to receive it. The law also called for supposedly
extra land that was not allotted to anyone to be
sold to non indigenous people, and a lot of the
indigenous people who were allotted land wound up losing it
for all kinds of reasons. This was devastating and destructive
(06:50):
to Indigenous peoples and their communities. Starting in the eighteen eighties,
mining companies also started trying to get access to the
mineral rich northern part of call the reservation. A federal
delegation was dispatched to the reservation to negotiate an agreement
with the tribes, and that was signed on May ninth,
eighteen ninety one. The tribes agreed to seed roughly one
(07:14):
point five million acres of land to the federal government
in exchange for one point five million dollars. The tribes
also successfully negotiated to keep the right to hunt, fish,
and gather on the land that was being seated. However,
while Congress passed an act removing everything from Township thirty
(07:36):
four north to the Canadian border from the reservation in
eighteen ninety two, Congress did not start passing legislation to
actually pay the one point five million dollars until nineteen
oh seven, and then that nineteen oh seven legislation did
not appropriate the entire amount. Congress appropriated three hundred thousand
(07:56):
dollars a year for five years until nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Indigenous people also faced hostility and legal action for hunting
and fishing on what had been the North half, in
spite of having retained those rights in the negotiations. This
led to the US Supreme Court case Antwine versus Washington
in nineteen seventy five, in which an Indigenous couple had
been convicted of violating Washington hunting law on land that
(08:22):
had been part of the north half of the reservation.
In that case, the court upheld the Indigenous nations hunting
and fishing rights. This loss of land and the emphasis
on farming were both devastating to the bands and tribes
who are part of this community. Traditionally, these peoples had
moved according to the season, so fishing for salmon and
(08:44):
hunting gathering things like roots and berries from the forests,
in a pattern that is sometimes described as the seasonal round.
To be clear, there is not just one seasonal round.
The specifics really vary even within the same region and
from one community to another. Farming was a totally different
way of life from this, and again, a lot of
(09:07):
the land that was part of the Calvill Reservation wasn't
really usable as farmland, and the loss of the north
half affected Mourning Dove's family directly. People who had been
allotted land on the north half lost those allotments, and
the Quintaskets family's land allotments had been there. We will
get some Mourning Doves life after a sponsor break, as
(09:38):
we said before. Christine Quintasket or Mourning Dove, was born
around eighteen eighty eight and was the first of her parents'
seven children.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
In her own story about her birth, her family was
traveling with a group in what's now northern Idaho and
they didn't want to stop, even as her mother, Lucy
went into labor, so Christine was born in a canoe
as they crossed the Cuteney River and was wrapped in
the shirt of one of the men who was paddling
the canoe and then her family later attributed kind of
(10:07):
a tomboyish streak to the fact that her first piece
of clothing had been a man's shirt.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
She and her siblings grew up primarily near Kettlefalls, Washington,
but also experienced some of the seasonal hunting and gathering
that we talked about before the break. Christine first learned
to read from a white orphan named Jimmy Ryan who
was adopted into the family, and she learned a lot
of her cultural and traditional heritage from a woman named
Tea Cault. Teaclt had also been welcomed into the family
(10:36):
after Christine had found her alone and disoriented, saying that
she was going to walk until she died. Mourning Dove
described Teacult as another grandmother. Christine's mother wanted her to
have this indigenous education and to learn the traditions of
her people's really important to her, and at the same time,
Lucy Quintasket was devoutly Catholic. She thought Her daughter, Risin
(11:01):
also needed to get a formal Western style education and
Catholic religious training to help her survive in a world
that was increasingly dominated by white people and the US government.
So in eighteen ninety four, Christine was sent to the
Sacred Hearts School at Goodwin Catholic Mission in Ward, Washington, not.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Far from Kettle Falls. Christine was already familiar with this
mission before going to school there. It was where the
family went to church when services weren't being held at
the mission that was closer to their home. Even though
the school really wasn't far away from where her family lived,
she was a boarding student there. We have talked about
schools like this in a few previous episodes of the show.
(11:43):
Christian missionaries and other religious organizations were establishing schools to
Christianize Indigenous children as early as the seventeenth century. Congress
passed the Civilization Fund Act in eighteen nineteen, which provided
government funding for these schools. Later in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, boarding schools were established to physically remove
(12:05):
indigenous students from their families, languages, and cultures. Schools like
Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania and Fort Shaw Indian
School in Montana, both of which we have talked about
in prior episodes.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
This grew to a whole system of institutions that included
more than four hundred federal boarding schools and more than
one thousand federal and non federal institutions, including day schools, sanitariums,
and orphanages. The boarding schools and day schools had the
same basic purpose to civilize in quotation marks indigenous children
(12:42):
and force them to assimilate with white Christian culture. These
schools were built near the end of centuries of active
warfare between the United States and Indigenous nations, but they
were another way to try to eliminate the indigenous population.
General Richard Henry, that, superintendent of Carlisle Indian Industrial Schools,
(13:03):
summed it up as quote, killed the Indian in him
and save the man. Got boarding schools and day schools.
Indigenous children weren't allowed to speak their own language or
wear their own style of dress. They were forced to
speak English and wear European style clothing. There were people
involved in these schools who were motivated by a charitable
(13:23):
or humanitarian impulse. They thought that they were helping these children,
but this whole mindset was racist and genocidal, and there
were also people involved with running these schools who were
not altruistic at all. Children faced widespread abuse and deprivation,
and it is likely that thousands or even tens of
thousands of children died at these schools. And this was
(13:46):
also interconnected with federal policies meant to break up reservations,
abolish tribal governments, and take over indigenous lands. It was
all part of the attempt to eliminate the indigenous population
of the United States. Yeah, when we say it's likely
that thousands or tens of thousands of children died, there
is no question about the fact that many, many children died,
(14:09):
like the possibility there is that the actual concrete number
is not known. The US made attendance at these schools
compulsory in eighteen ninety one, with the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs empowered to enforce this law. Federal policy toward indigenous
nations had been so destabilizing and violent that there were
(14:31):
children who basically had nowhere else to go. There were
also cases in which federal officials used children as hostages,
especially the children of indigenous leaders, so placing children in
schools far from their families to try to keep their
parents compliant. At the same time, there were also families
like Christine's who believed that going to one of these
(14:52):
schools would help their children survive in a rapidly changing world.
She described Father Derouge, a Jesuit priest who told her
mother that she should be sent to school, as somebody
that the people of the Calville Reservation respected. When Christine
Quintasquets started at Goodwin Catholic Mission School, she only spoke
(15:13):
the Interior Salish language of Insirichen or Calville, Okanagan, and
she was punished for not speaking English. In his introduction
to a reprinting of one of her books, editor Jay
Milner points out an added layer to all of this.
She was being punished for not speaking English by nuns
whose first language was French. Eventually, she became too ill
(15:35):
to finish the school year.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Christine returned to school in eighteen ninety seven, and she
described her experience that time as less traumatic than her
first period at the school had been. When the school
closed down in eighteen ninety nine, she went to the
government boarding school on the Fort Spokane Agency. She stayed
there for about a year, and then her mother died
in nineteen oh two when she was about fourteen. After
(16:01):
her mother's death, she stayed home and she helped take
care of her younger siblings until her father remarried in
nineteen oh four to a woman named Cecilia. At that point,
Christine went to Fort Shaw Indian School in Montana, where
she stayed for three years and worked as a teacher's aid.
She was able to come and go from the school
at least to an extent, and visit a grandmother who
(16:23):
lived nearby. We have a lot more about Fort Shaw
Indian School in our two parter on the Fort Shaw
Indian School Girls basketball team that came out in twenty seventeen,
and it also has more detail about the boarding schools system.
In nineteen oh eight, while in Montana, Christine saw the
roundup of some of the last free ranging bison in
(16:45):
the United States. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, there
had been an estimated thirty million bison also called buffalo
in North America. Today, bisoner associated primarily with the Great
Plains and the West, but they live on much of
the continent. But by the early nineteenth century their population
(17:05):
was in sharp decline. The word over hunting does not
go nearly far enough to describe why this was an
intentional slaughter carried out by both federal troops and private hunters,
meant to deprive indigenous peoples of a critical source of food.
By the late eighteen eighties, bison were nearly extinct in
(17:27):
North America, aside from a few small herds that were
mostly on private ranches. One free ranging herd that remained
had been developed largely by two men, Charles A. Allard
and Michelle Pablo, who bought some orphaned bison calves from
an indigenous hunter known as Sam Walking Coyote. Allard and
Pablo each had an Indigenous mother and had grazing rates
(17:50):
on the Flathead Indian Reservation, which is home to the
Confederated Salish and Coutiney tribes. By the time Alard died
after a fall from a horse in eighteen ninety, the
herd had grown to about three hundred, and by nineteen
oh six there were seven hundred. By that point, Pablo
was concerned about the safety of the herd because more
(18:10):
and more homesteaders were moving into the area where they ranged.
He initially tried to sell the herd to the US government,
which refused to buy them, so he sold them to
Canada instead. He shipped about five hundred bison to Alberta's
Buffalo Park between nineteen oh eight and nineteen ten, so
the roundup that Christine saw was part of the process
(18:32):
of gathering up the bison to send them to Canada.
Seeing this had a huge impact on Christine Quintasket. Buffalo
had played such a key part in the cultures and
life ways of indigenous peoples all over North America and
had been intentionally hunted nearly to extinction as an active genocide.
(18:52):
Now she was seeing some of the few that remained
on the range terrified and struggling as they were rounded
up to be taken somewhere far away. This would also
become one of the inspirations for her novel, which we
will get to after a sponsor break. In nineteen oh nine,
(19:17):
Christine Quintasket started working on a novel. That same year,
she married Hector MacLeod, who she had met at Fort
Shaw Indian School. This marriage seems to have been turbulent.
McLeod could be violent and spent a lot of time
around bootleggers, one of whom reportedly shot off one of
his hands. They also struggled financially. We mentioned earlier that
(19:39):
the land that had been allotted from the Callville Reservation
often wasn't good for farming, so rather than farming their
own land, a lot of Indigenous people in the region
wound up as wage laborers doing agricultural work for other
people on other land that was more farmable. This included
Christine in her husband, who worked as migrant agricultural laborers
(20:03):
around the Pacific Northwest. There are accounts of her life
that make this sound almost like the romanticized life of
a struggling artist, that she would work in the fields
and orchards during the day and write in a tent
at night. But the reality was that this work was
exhausting and it took most of the daylight hours. She
mostly wrote when she wasn't doing agricultural work. By nineteen twelve,
(20:27):
she was estranged from her husband and living in Portland, Oregon.
She started using the name morning Dove on her work
at that point, spelled mornng like the coming of the day.
She wanted to write in English, Specifically, she wanted to
write about her own culture and people for an English
(20:48):
speaking audience. The novel that she was working on was
a Western romance, and it was one that she thought
would humanize indigenous people for white readers. She was also
collecting indigenoust but since she grew up speaking a Salish
language and her English classes had been kind of spread
across eight years at three different boarding schools, she still
(21:10):
struggled with various aspects of English. So from nineteen thirteen
to nineteen fifteen she moved to Calgary, Alberta to attend
Calgary College Business School. She studied things like typing, shorthand,
and bookkeeping while also working on her English. In nineteen fifteen,
she attended the Frontier Days Festival in Walla Walla, Washington,
(21:31):
where she met Lucullis Virgil mcward. Mcward had been born
in Virginia eighteen sixty and had become a rancher after
moving west in nineteen oh three. He had also become
an advocate for the rights of indigenous people and communities,
and had been adopted into the Yakama Nation after helping
them fight for their land and water rights. He had
(21:52):
been given Indigenous names that translated to old Wolf and Bigfoot.
A mutual friend named j. W. Langdon and later encouraged
Mourning Dove to reach out to McCord for some help
with her writing. Morningdove had almost finished a draft of
the novel that would eventually be published under the name Kogiwa,
(22:13):
but at first she and McCord talked about the notes
that she had collected on twenty two indigenous stories and legends.
They had both seen the effects of the federal government's
destructive policies on Indigenous communities, and they both thought that
if these stories were not intentionally preserved in writing, they
(22:35):
would be lost. McCord thought that Mourning Dove was an
ideal person to do this, so he encouraged her, maybe
even pressured her to record the knowledge and culture of
her people. He started out acting essentially as her editor
and literary agent, but over time they developed a working
relationship and a friendship that lasted for the rest of
(22:57):
Morningdove's life. This relation was complex. Mcwerdour was more than
twenty years older than Mourning Dove, and he was a man,
and he was white, so there were some clear power
disparities involved. He made additions and changes to her novel
that we're going to talk about more in Part two.
Sometimes without talking to her about those changes, and once
(23:19):
the two of them did start to talk about working
on a novel, he started arranging interviews and a speaking
tour for her. Mourning Dove would eventually become known for
her speaking, but initially she found this prospect terrifying. She
was really worried about her ability to speak English well
in front of an audience and what their response to
her would be. She eventually got sick and the tour
(23:43):
was indefinitely postponed. By nineteen sixteen, they were ready to
find a publisher, and Mourning Dove wrote a letter to
their mutual friend JP MacLean about the finished draft of
the book, saying, quote, we both worked hard on it,
and we sometimes almost went on the warpath, but we
always patched up a piece and continued friends. He helped
(24:04):
me with Kogie wea, but next time I am going
to let him make the plot and I will help him.
In nineteen sixteen, she did an interview with a Spokane
newspaper about what McWhorter thought was her soon to be
published novel. This ran in The Spokesman Review on April ninth,
and it was reprinted two days later when it was
picked up by other newspapers all over the country, including
(24:26):
the Washington Post. This article covered about the top third
of a page, and it featured a full length picture
of her in indigenous dress and a smaller one with quote,
her hair done up on her head and wearing garments
of her white sisters. This article illustrates so much about
Mourning Dove and about the presumably white writer's attitudes about
(24:48):
her and about Indigenous people. It describes her as quote
as Indian wealth goes wealthy because she had leased some
land she had been allotted to white farmers. She definitely
was not wealthy in any way that involved money, though,
as we said earlier, she was often working as an
agricultural laborer to try to make ends meet. The writer's
(25:11):
description of her is both flattering and infantilizing, like she's
described as a quote, stout hearted Indian girl, but if
she was born in eighteen eighty eight, she would have
been twenty eight when this article came out. It also
describes her as speaking faultless English quote, as is usually
the case with those to whom the tongue did not
(25:31):
come naturally but who have been diligent students. A later
part of the article also describes the color of her
skin and eyes, as well as her weight.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Much of the article is ostensibly in Mourning Dove's own words,
beginning quote, the white man does not know the Indian.
He thinks the Indian cold, emotionless, pitiless. He is not
you think. The Indian does not cry, does not love,
does not kiss before you. I might not cry or
show my emotion. I would never faint, but alone, if
(26:05):
my heart was sad, I would weep, and like a
white woman, find comfort and relief in tears. She was
pushing back on the stereotype that Indigenous people were stoic,
and the idea of using her writing to dispel stereotypes
about Indigenous people would be an ongoing theme in her work,
and in this article.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
She also talked about how hard it was to spend
so much time indoors at a typewriter. It just was
not what she was used to. She also described missing
her community's sweat lodge and went on to describe what
that was, comparing it to a Turkish bath that a
white person would pay to use. This was one of
several times that she sort of tried to build a
(26:46):
bridge between her own culture and that of white readers
and to use ideas that she thought those readers would understand.
In this article, Mourning Dove also described civilization as bringing
both good and bad to her people, with one example
being an increase in divorce, which had previously been almost
unheard of, and she described her tribe as continuing to change.
(27:10):
For example, her stepmother would speak to her children in
her language and they would understand but answer in English.
She also said that her stepmother had given land from
her allotment to build a school, one that was now
attended by her children, with all the rest of the
pupils being white. This article ends with a passage about
Mourning Dove's experience at the Buffalo roundup that we mentioned earlier,
(27:33):
although this reporter places it as at five years previously,
which would have been in nineteen eleven. She again returned
to the idea of the depth of feeling of indigenous people,
contrary to this stereotype of their being stoic and emotionless.
Quote one magnificent fellow fought like a lion as they
tried to crowd his wonderful shaggy head into a box car.
(27:58):
In some way, he broke through the bear on the
opposite door of the car, fell down between the trains
and broke his neck. Cry. I saw some old, wrinkled,
dried up Indians sob like babies. It is wrong this
saying that Indians do not feel as deeply as whites.
We do feel, and by and by some of us
(28:18):
are going to be able to make our feelings appreciated,
and then will the true Indian character be revealed. As
we said earlier, this article was meant as publicity for
her book. The headline describes that book as soon to
be published, but its publication was not soon at all.
Eleven years would pass between this article and Cogaweya coming
(28:40):
into print, and we'll get to that next time. Yeah.
I think usually when we do two part episodes, I
say at the beginning that it's gonna be two parts,
and I don't think I said this this time, so surprise, surprise,
it's a two parter because you know, in addition to
her life being really fascinating to me, there's a lot
of context we want to make sure we want to
(29:02):
include with this one. I have listener mail fantastic before
we close out. This is from Lauren. Lauren wrote after
our unearthed installment recently saying Hello, Holly and Tracy. I've
listened to the podcast since shortly after becoming a stay
(29:23):
at home parent in twenty twelve. I've wanted to write
to you, and the perfect opportunity presented while listening to
Unearthed in Autumn twenty twenty three, Part one when you
mentioned the study about the adaladdle as an equalizer in
spear throwing skill.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
My ears perked up.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
The friday before the episode was released, my two kiddos,
husband and I had paid a visit to my alma mater,
Kent State University to visit the Anthropology department. My son
has an interest in toolmaking, and the director of the
anthropology department just happens to study karate at the same
dojo as my kids. I mentioned this interest to her
(30:00):
and she arranged a visit to the Experimental Anthropology Lab
at KSU. Doctor Beber and her colleague, doctor Aaron showed
us around the lab, did a stone tool making demonstration,
explained doctor Beber's research, and we even got to use
adladdles to throw spears. Needless to say, it was amazing.
Doctor Beber's wonderful and does amazing research. I was starstruck
(30:22):
having had a once in a lifetime opportunity to hang
out with two leading scientists in the experimental anthropology field.
Then imagine my excitement as I heard doctor Beber's research
mentioned on the podcast. It was the coolest thing ever.
I know they've been featured on History Channel shows, etc.
But hearing you talk about research I had just personally
had explained by the researcher was the most exciting thing ever.
(30:45):
Thanks Amelian for putting so much time and effort into
the podcast. It's truly wonderful. In a highlight of my day.
Best Lauren ps. I've attached picks of my two standard colleagues.
Matilda Tilly is the fluffy girl and Clementine clem is
the smooth coated girl. Let's look at these collies.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
They're so pretty.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Collies are so beautiful. When I was a child, family
that we knew had a miniature Collie and I wanted one.
So even though from the moment I could say the
word cat, I have been a cat person for whatever reason,
Collie I was like, yes, that of course was a
(31:28):
slightly different Collie than these adorable collies because that was
a miniature collie and these are standard colleagues. But thank
you so much, Lauren for this email and for these pictures.
If you'd like to write to us about this or
any other podcast, or at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
We are also all over social media at miss and History,
(31:50):
where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram. I said Twitter,
and it's not called that anymore.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
I still call it Twitter. Yeah, I think a lot
of people do. If you'd like to subscribe to our
show and you haven't yet, we're on the iHeartRadio app
and wherever else you'd like to get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. Years ago, I took a little
day trip with some friends to a place called the
Book Barn in Niantic, Connecticut, and one of the things
I came home with was a book called Mourning Dove,
a salition autobiography, And that book has been sitting on
(00:32):
my desk as a potential episode inspiration since then. If
not directly on the desk, like adjacent to the desk,
it has been next to me, and according to the receipt,
still stuck in that book. That trip happened in twenty sixteen,
so that gives an indication of how long it can
take to go from like a potential podcast idea to
(00:53):
a podcast episode. Mourning Dove was an activist, an ethnographer,
and a novelist, and one of the first, if not
the first, indigenous women in the United States to publish
a novel. She was known by a lot of names.
One was Christine Quintasket, and at various points she also
signed letters as Crystal, Christina, and Catherine. She was married twice,
(01:16):
and during those marriages she also used each of her
husband's surnames. As an adult, she usually used the last
name Quintasket at home among the Confederated tribes of the
Carville Reservation, but she usually used one of her husband's
surnames with outsiders, whichever marriage was in existence at that point.
She wrote under the name Mourning Dove, which was sometimes
(01:41):
printed along with the name Humushuma, which is sort of
an approximated English spelling of the Insulction word for mourning dove.
That is the Salish language that she grew up speaking,
and then she was also given other names in that
language at different points in her life. And these were
really names that she used within her community and not
with the wider public. And really there's not one right
(02:04):
name for her. She was raised in a culture in
which people have and use different names in different contexts
and for different times in their lives. We will mostly
call her Christine Quintasket or Mourning Dove, since that's what
was on her published work. Christine Quintasket gave the year
of her birth as eighteen eighty eight, although there are
(02:25):
other years from the mid to late eighteen eighties noted
as various government and school records. She was the oldest
of seven children born to Joseph Quintasket, who is Okanagan,
and Lucy Stuchan, who was Calville. These are two of
the twelve bands that are part of the Confederated Tribes
of the Callville Reservation, which is federally recognized as one
(02:46):
tribe today. The name comes from Fort Calville, which was
named after Hudson's Bay Company Governor Andrew Calville, and members
of the tribe voted to keep this name in twenty eighteen.
Although twelve bands composed the Confederated Tribes of the Callville
Reservation today, historically there were more than fifty living in
(03:07):
this part of North America. The area includes land that's
now described as Canada's Interior Plateau and the Columbia Plateau,
and the United States. These people spoke a number of
different languages and dialects, most of them in the Interior
Salish language group, and while many of these are still
living languages and are spoken and taught today, the entire
(03:30):
Salish language group is considered to be critically endangered. As
we just said, this plateau is in both the US
and Canada, so the establishment of these two nations created
an international border through this ancestral homeland. Unlike many of
the other reservations that we've talked about on the show before,
the Callville Reservation on the US side of the border
(03:53):
was not established through a treaty between these indigenous peoples
and the United States. It was established by executive order
by President Ulysses S. Grant on April ninth, eighteen seventy two.
F A. Walker, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, had written a
letter the day before outlining the need for a reservation
(04:13):
for eight named tribes as well as quote scattering bands
who were not party to a treaty with the United States.
Acting Secretary of the Interior B. R. Coen forwarded this
to Grant, and the executive order simply read quote. It
is hereby ordered that the tract of country referred to
in the within letter of the Acting Secretary of the
(04:35):
Interior and designated upon the accompanying map, be set apart
for the bands of Indians in Washington Territory named in
communication of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs dated the eighth instant,
and for other such Indians, as the Department of the
Interior may see fit to locate thereon. But less than
(04:56):
two months later, on July second, Grant issued another ord
restoring that land to the public domain and designating different
land for the reservation instead. This new piece of land
was described as quote the country bounded on the east
and south by the Columbia River, on the west by
the Okanagan River, and on the north by the British possessions.
(05:18):
The British possessions, of course, being Canada. This new reservation
was a lot smaller than the previous one had been.
It was about two point eight million acres of land,
and for comparison, these tribes territories had historically covered about
thirty nine million acres of land, and then from there
the reservation got progressively smaller. In eighteen eighty seven, Congress
(05:41):
passed the Dawes Act, also known as the General Allotment Act. Previously,
reservation land had been held by tribes collectively, and there
are some nuances about who was legally considered to be
holding the land, but the overall idea was that it
belonged to the tribe as a group. That laws act
allowed for that land to instead be divided up and
(06:04):
allotted to individual members of the tribe. This was ostensibly
to protect indigenous people's land rights, but in practice it
did the opposite. People who were allotted land were expected
to assimilate with white culture and to do things with
it like farm it using European methods, but in many
cases the land itself really wasn't conducive to being used
(06:26):
in this way, and even if it was, people were
expected to give up their traditional culture and practices in
order to receive it. The law also called for supposedly
extra land that was not allotted to anyone to be
sold to non indigenous people, and a lot of the
indigenous people who were allotted land wound up losing it
for all kinds of reasons. This was devastating and destructive
(06:50):
to Indigenous peoples and their communities. Starting in the eighteen eighties,
mining companies also started trying to get access to the
mineral rich northern part of call the reservation. A federal
delegation was dispatched to the reservation to negotiate an agreement
with the tribes, and that was signed on May ninth,
eighteen ninety one. The tribes agreed to seed roughly one
(07:14):
point five million acres of land to the federal government
in exchange for one point five million dollars. The tribes
also successfully negotiated to keep the right to hunt, fish,
and gather on the land that was being seated. However,
while Congress passed an act removing everything from Township thirty
(07:36):
four north to the Canadian border from the reservation in
eighteen ninety two, Congress did not start passing legislation to
actually pay the one point five million dollars until nineteen
oh seven, and then that nineteen oh seven legislation did
not appropriate the entire amount. Congress appropriated three hundred thousand
(07:56):
dollars a year for five years until nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Indigenous people also faced hostility and legal action for hunting
and fishing on what had been the North half, in
spite of having retained those rights in the negotiations. This
led to the US Supreme Court case Antwine versus Washington
in nineteen seventy five, in which an Indigenous couple had
been convicted of violating Washington hunting law on land that
(08:22):
had been part of the north half of the reservation.
In that case, the court upheld the Indigenous nations hunting
and fishing rights. This loss of land and the emphasis
on farming were both devastating to the bands and tribes
who are part of this community. Traditionally, these peoples had
moved according to the season, so fishing for salmon and
(08:44):
hunting gathering things like roots and berries from the forests,
in a pattern that is sometimes described as the seasonal round.
To be clear, there is not just one seasonal round.
The specifics really vary even within the same region and
from one community to another. Farming was a totally different
way of life from this, and again, a lot of
(09:07):
the land that was part of the Calvill Reservation wasn't
really usable as farmland, and the loss of the north
half affected Mourning Dove's family directly. People who had been
allotted land on the north half lost those allotments, and
the Quintaskets family's land allotments had been there. We will
get some Mourning Doves life after a sponsor break, as
(09:38):
we said before. Christine Quintasket or Mourning Dove, was born
around eighteen eighty eight and was the first of her parents'
seven children.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
In her own story about her birth, her family was
traveling with a group in what's now northern Idaho and
they didn't want to stop, even as her mother, Lucy
went into labor, so Christine was born in a canoe
as they crossed the Cuteney River and was wrapped in
the shirt of one of the men who was paddling
the canoe and then her family later attributed kind of
(10:07):
a tomboyish streak to the fact that her first piece
of clothing had been a man's shirt.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
She and her siblings grew up primarily near Kettlefalls, Washington,
but also experienced some of the seasonal hunting and gathering
that we talked about before the break. Christine first learned
to read from a white orphan named Jimmy Ryan who
was adopted into the family, and she learned a lot
of her cultural and traditional heritage from a woman named
Tea Cault. Teaclt had also been welcomed into the family
(10:36):
after Christine had found her alone and disoriented, saying that
she was going to walk until she died. Mourning Dove
described Teacult as another grandmother. Christine's mother wanted her to
have this indigenous education and to learn the traditions of
her people's really important to her, and at the same time,
Lucy Quintasket was devoutly Catholic. She thought Her daughter, Risin
(11:01):
also needed to get a formal Western style education and
Catholic religious training to help her survive in a world
that was increasingly dominated by white people and the US government.
So in eighteen ninety four, Christine was sent to the
Sacred Hearts School at Goodwin Catholic Mission in Ward, Washington, not.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Far from Kettle Falls. Christine was already familiar with this
mission before going to school there. It was where the
family went to church when services weren't being held at
the mission that was closer to their home. Even though
the school really wasn't far away from where her family lived,
she was a boarding student there. We have talked about
schools like this in a few previous episodes of the show.
(11:43):
Christian missionaries and other religious organizations were establishing schools to
Christianize Indigenous children as early as the seventeenth century. Congress
passed the Civilization Fund Act in eighteen nineteen, which provided
government funding for these schools. Later in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, boarding schools were established to physically remove
(12:05):
indigenous students from their families, languages, and cultures. Schools like
Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania and Fort Shaw Indian
School in Montana, both of which we have talked about
in prior episodes.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
This grew to a whole system of institutions that included
more than four hundred federal boarding schools and more than
one thousand federal and non federal institutions, including day schools, sanitariums,
and orphanages. The boarding schools and day schools had the
same basic purpose to civilize in quotation marks indigenous children
(12:42):
and force them to assimilate with white Christian culture. These
schools were built near the end of centuries of active
warfare between the United States and Indigenous nations, but they
were another way to try to eliminate the indigenous population.
General Richard Henry, that, superintendent of Carlisle Indian Industrial Schools,
(13:03):
summed it up as quote, killed the Indian in him
and save the man. Got boarding schools and day schools.
Indigenous children weren't allowed to speak their own language or
wear their own style of dress. They were forced to
speak English and wear European style clothing. There were people
involved in these schools who were motivated by a charitable
(13:23):
or humanitarian impulse. They thought that they were helping these children,
but this whole mindset was racist and genocidal, and there
were also people involved with running these schools who were
not altruistic at all. Children faced widespread abuse and deprivation,
and it is likely that thousands or even tens of
thousands of children died at these schools. And this was
(13:46):
also interconnected with federal policies meant to break up reservations,
abolish tribal governments, and take over indigenous lands. It was
all part of the attempt to eliminate the indigenous population
of the United States. Yeah, when we say it's likely
that thousands or tens of thousands of children died, there
is no question about the fact that many, many children died,
(14:09):
like the possibility there is that the actual concrete number
is not known. The US made attendance at these schools
compulsory in eighteen ninety one, with the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs empowered to enforce this law. Federal policy toward indigenous
nations had been so destabilizing and violent that there were
(14:31):
children who basically had nowhere else to go. There were
also cases in which federal officials used children as hostages,
especially the children of indigenous leaders, so placing children in
schools far from their families to try to keep their
parents compliant. At the same time, there were also families
like Christine's who believed that going to one of these
(14:52):
schools would help their children survive in a rapidly changing world.
She described Father Derouge, a Jesuit priest who told her
mother that she should be sent to school, as somebody
that the people of the Calville Reservation respected. When Christine
Quintasquets started at Goodwin Catholic Mission School, she only spoke
(15:13):
the Interior Salish language of Insirichen or Calville, Okanagan, and
she was punished for not speaking English. In his introduction
to a reprinting of one of her books, editor Jay
Milner points out an added layer to all of this.
She was being punished for not speaking English by nuns
whose first language was French. Eventually, she became too ill
(15:35):
to finish the school year.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Christine returned to school in eighteen ninety seven, and she
described her experience that time as less traumatic than her
first period at the school had been. When the school
closed down in eighteen ninety nine, she went to the
government boarding school on the Fort Spokane Agency. She stayed
there for about a year, and then her mother died
in nineteen oh two when she was about fourteen. After
(16:01):
her mother's death, she stayed home and she helped take
care of her younger siblings until her father remarried in
nineteen oh four to a woman named Cecilia. At that point,
Christine went to Fort Shaw Indian School in Montana, where
she stayed for three years and worked as a teacher's aid.
She was able to come and go from the school
at least to an extent, and visit a grandmother who
(16:23):
lived nearby. We have a lot more about Fort Shaw
Indian School in our two parter on the Fort Shaw
Indian School Girls basketball team that came out in twenty seventeen,
and it also has more detail about the boarding schools system.
In nineteen oh eight, while in Montana, Christine saw the
roundup of some of the last free ranging bison in
(16:45):
the United States. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, there
had been an estimated thirty million bison also called buffalo
in North America. Today, bisoner associated primarily with the Great
Plains and the West, but they live on much of
the continent. But by the early nineteenth century their population
(17:05):
was in sharp decline. The word over hunting does not
go nearly far enough to describe why this was an
intentional slaughter carried out by both federal troops and private hunters,
meant to deprive indigenous peoples of a critical source of food.
By the late eighteen eighties, bison were nearly extinct in
(17:27):
North America, aside from a few small herds that were
mostly on private ranches. One free ranging herd that remained
had been developed largely by two men, Charles A. Allard
and Michelle Pablo, who bought some orphaned bison calves from
an indigenous hunter known as Sam Walking Coyote. Allard and
Pablo each had an Indigenous mother and had grazing rates
(17:50):
on the Flathead Indian Reservation, which is home to the
Confederated Salish and Coutiney tribes. By the time Alard died
after a fall from a horse in eighteen ninety, the
herd had grown to about three hundred, and by nineteen
oh six there were seven hundred. By that point, Pablo
was concerned about the safety of the herd because more
(18:10):
and more homesteaders were moving into the area where they ranged.
He initially tried to sell the herd to the US government,
which refused to buy them, so he sold them to
Canada instead. He shipped about five hundred bison to Alberta's
Buffalo Park between nineteen oh eight and nineteen ten, so
the roundup that Christine saw was part of the process
(18:32):
of gathering up the bison to send them to Canada.
Seeing this had a huge impact on Christine Quintasket. Buffalo
had played such a key part in the cultures and
life ways of indigenous peoples all over North America and
had been intentionally hunted nearly to extinction as an active genocide.
(18:52):
Now she was seeing some of the few that remained
on the range terrified and struggling as they were rounded
up to be taken somewhere far away. This would also
become one of the inspirations for her novel, which we
will get to after a sponsor break. In nineteen oh nine,
(19:17):
Christine Quintasket started working on a novel. That same year,
she married Hector MacLeod, who she had met at Fort
Shaw Indian School. This marriage seems to have been turbulent.
McLeod could be violent and spent a lot of time
around bootleggers, one of whom reportedly shot off one of
his hands. They also struggled financially. We mentioned earlier that
(19:39):
the land that had been allotted from the Callville Reservation
often wasn't good for farming, so rather than farming their
own land, a lot of Indigenous people in the region
wound up as wage laborers doing agricultural work for other
people on other land that was more farmable. This included
Christine in her husband, who worked as migrant agricultural laborers
(20:03):
around the Pacific Northwest. There are accounts of her life
that make this sound almost like the romanticized life of
a struggling artist, that she would work in the fields
and orchards during the day and write in a tent
at night. But the reality was that this work was
exhausting and it took most of the daylight hours. She
mostly wrote when she wasn't doing agricultural work. By nineteen twelve,
(20:27):
she was estranged from her husband and living in Portland, Oregon.
She started using the name morning Dove on her work
at that point, spelled mornng like the coming of the day.
She wanted to write in English, Specifically, she wanted to
write about her own culture and people for an English
(20:48):
speaking audience. The novel that she was working on was
a Western romance, and it was one that she thought
would humanize indigenous people for white readers. She was also
collecting indigenoust but since she grew up speaking a Salish
language and her English classes had been kind of spread
across eight years at three different boarding schools, she still
(21:10):
struggled with various aspects of English. So from nineteen thirteen
to nineteen fifteen she moved to Calgary, Alberta to attend
Calgary College Business School. She studied things like typing, shorthand,
and bookkeeping while also working on her English. In nineteen fifteen,
she attended the Frontier Days Festival in Walla Walla, Washington,
(21:31):
where she met Lucullis Virgil mcward. Mcward had been born
in Virginia eighteen sixty and had become a rancher after
moving west in nineteen oh three. He had also become
an advocate for the rights of indigenous people and communities,
and had been adopted into the Yakama Nation after helping
them fight for their land and water rights. He had
(21:52):
been given Indigenous names that translated to old Wolf and Bigfoot.
A mutual friend named j. W. Langdon and later encouraged
Mourning Dove to reach out to McCord for some help
with her writing. Morningdove had almost finished a draft of
the novel that would eventually be published under the name Kogiwa,
(22:13):
but at first she and McCord talked about the notes
that she had collected on twenty two indigenous stories and legends.
They had both seen the effects of the federal government's
destructive policies on Indigenous communities, and they both thought that
if these stories were not intentionally preserved in writing, they
(22:35):
would be lost. McCord thought that Mourning Dove was an
ideal person to do this, so he encouraged her, maybe
even pressured her to record the knowledge and culture of
her people. He started out acting essentially as her editor
and literary agent, but over time they developed a working
relationship and a friendship that lasted for the rest of
(22:57):
Morningdove's life. This relation was complex. Mcwerdour was more than
twenty years older than Mourning Dove, and he was a man,
and he was white, so there were some clear power
disparities involved. He made additions and changes to her novel
that we're going to talk about more in Part two.
Sometimes without talking to her about those changes, and once
(23:19):
the two of them did start to talk about working
on a novel, he started arranging interviews and a speaking
tour for her. Mourning Dove would eventually become known for
her speaking, but initially she found this prospect terrifying. She
was really worried about her ability to speak English well
in front of an audience and what their response to
her would be. She eventually got sick and the tour
(23:43):
was indefinitely postponed. By nineteen sixteen, they were ready to
find a publisher, and Mourning Dove wrote a letter to
their mutual friend JP MacLean about the finished draft of
the book, saying, quote, we both worked hard on it,
and we sometimes almost went on the warpath, but we
always patched up a piece and continued friends. He helped
(24:04):
me with Kogie wea, but next time I am going
to let him make the plot and I will help him.
In nineteen sixteen, she did an interview with a Spokane
newspaper about what McWhorter thought was her soon to be
published novel. This ran in The Spokesman Review on April ninth,
and it was reprinted two days later when it was
picked up by other newspapers all over the country, including
(24:26):
the Washington Post. This article covered about the top third
of a page, and it featured a full length picture
of her in indigenous dress and a smaller one with quote,
her hair done up on her head and wearing garments
of her white sisters. This article illustrates so much about
Mourning Dove and about the presumably white writer's attitudes about
(24:48):
her and about Indigenous people. It describes her as quote
as Indian wealth goes wealthy because she had leased some
land she had been allotted to white farmers. She definitely
was not wealthy in any way that involved money, though,
as we said earlier, she was often working as an
agricultural laborer to try to make ends meet. The writer's
(25:11):
description of her is both flattering and infantilizing, like she's
described as a quote, stout hearted Indian girl, but if
she was born in eighteen eighty eight, she would have
been twenty eight when this article came out. It also
describes her as speaking faultless English quote, as is usually
the case with those to whom the tongue did not
(25:31):
come naturally but who have been diligent students. A later
part of the article also describes the color of her
skin and eyes, as well as her weight.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Much of the article is ostensibly in Mourning Dove's own words,
beginning quote, the white man does not know the Indian.
He thinks the Indian cold, emotionless, pitiless. He is not
you think. The Indian does not cry, does not love,
does not kiss before you. I might not cry or
show my emotion. I would never faint, but alone, if
(26:05):
my heart was sad, I would weep, and like a
white woman, find comfort and relief in tears. She was
pushing back on the stereotype that Indigenous people were stoic,
and the idea of using her writing to dispel stereotypes
about Indigenous people would be an ongoing theme in her work,
and in this article.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
She also talked about how hard it was to spend
so much time indoors at a typewriter. It just was
not what she was used to. She also described missing
her community's sweat lodge and went on to describe what
that was, comparing it to a Turkish bath that a
white person would pay to use. This was one of
several times that she sort of tried to build a
(26:46):
bridge between her own culture and that of white readers
and to use ideas that she thought those readers would understand.
In this article, Mourning Dove also described civilization as bringing
both good and bad to her people, with one example
being an increase in divorce, which had previously been almost
unheard of, and she described her tribe as continuing to change.
(27:10):
For example, her stepmother would speak to her children in
her language and they would understand but answer in English.
She also said that her stepmother had given land from
her allotment to build a school, one that was now
attended by her children, with all the rest of the
pupils being white. This article ends with a passage about
Mourning Dove's experience at the Buffalo roundup that we mentioned earlier,
(27:33):
although this reporter places it as at five years previously,
which would have been in nineteen eleven. She again returned
to the idea of the depth of feeling of indigenous people,
contrary to this stereotype of their being stoic and emotionless.
Quote one magnificent fellow fought like a lion as they
tried to crowd his wonderful shaggy head into a box car.
(27:58):
In some way, he broke through the bear on the
opposite door of the car, fell down between the trains
and broke his neck. Cry. I saw some old, wrinkled,
dried up Indians sob like babies. It is wrong this
saying that Indians do not feel as deeply as whites.
We do feel, and by and by some of us
(28:18):
are going to be able to make our feelings appreciated,
and then will the true Indian character be revealed. As
we said earlier, this article was meant as publicity for
her book. The headline describes that book as soon to
be published, but its publication was not soon at all.
Eleven years would pass between this article and Cogaweya coming
(28:40):
into print, and we'll get to that next time. Yeah.
I think usually when we do two part episodes, I
say at the beginning that it's gonna be two parts,
and I don't think I said this this time, so surprise, surprise,
it's a two parter because you know, in addition to
her life being really fascinating to me, there's a lot
of context we want to make sure we want to
(29:02):
include with this one. I have listener mail fantastic before
we close out. This is from Lauren. Lauren wrote after
our unearthed installment recently saying Hello, Holly and Tracy. I've
listened to the podcast since shortly after becoming a stay
(29:23):
at home parent in twenty twelve. I've wanted to write
to you, and the perfect opportunity presented while listening to
Unearthed in Autumn twenty twenty three, Part one when you
mentioned the study about the adaladdle as an equalizer in
spear throwing skill.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
My ears perked up.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
The friday before the episode was released, my two kiddos,
husband and I had paid a visit to my alma mater,
Kent State University to visit the Anthropology department. My son
has an interest in toolmaking, and the director of the
anthropology department just happens to study karate at the same
dojo as my kids. I mentioned this interest to her
(30:00):
and she arranged a visit to the Experimental Anthropology Lab
at KSU. Doctor Beber and her colleague, doctor Aaron showed
us around the lab, did a stone tool making demonstration,
explained doctor Beber's research, and we even got to use
adladdles to throw spears. Needless to say, it was amazing.
Doctor Beber's wonderful and does amazing research. I was starstruck
(30:22):
having had a once in a lifetime opportunity to hang
out with two leading scientists in the experimental anthropology field.
Then imagine my excitement as I heard doctor Beber's research
mentioned on the podcast. It was the coolest thing ever.
I know they've been featured on History Channel shows, etc.
But hearing you talk about research I had just personally
had explained by the researcher was the most exciting thing ever.
(30:45):
Thanks Amelian for putting so much time and effort into
the podcast. It's truly wonderful. In a highlight of my day.
Best Lauren ps. I've attached picks of my two standard colleagues.
Matilda Tilly is the fluffy girl and Clementine clem is
the smooth coated girl. Let's look at these collies.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
They're so pretty.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Collies are so beautiful. When I was a child, family
that we knew had a miniature Collie and I wanted one.
So even though from the moment I could say the
word cat, I have been a cat person for whatever reason,
Collie I was like, yes, that of course was a
(31:28):
slightly different Collie than these adorable collies because that was
a miniature collie and these are standard colleagues. But thank
you so much, Lauren for this email and for these pictures.
If you'd like to write to us about this or
any other podcast, or at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
We are also all over social media at miss and History,
(31:50):
where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram. I said Twitter,
and it's not called that anymore.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
I still call it Twitter. Yeah, I think a lot
of people do. If you'd like to subscribe to our
show and you haven't yet, we're on the iHeartRadio app
and wherever else you'd like to get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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