When I finally got out of coastal Washington and the
beautiful North Cascades National Park, I made a soft
landing in cowboys-and-Indians, bears-and-buffalo country.
This was the West of popular imagination, and the real
thing is just as colorful as—and much more interesting
than—the Hollywood version. It felt good to be
back.
In northeastern Washington, I traversed the Colville
Indian Reservation, home to the Nez Perce. These rolling
hills and mountains were not their traditional homeland,
but rather a bitter consolation prize. Today, the arid
rez is dotted with small ranches and trailer homes.
The drive across the rez was peaceful and mostly uneventful,
except for one little thing. At one point I stopped
at a shady wide spot to refill my tea glass; as I got
out of the car, I heard a crackle in the woods and looked
but couldn’t see anything. However, as I opened
the cooler, I heard another crackle and turned to see
a large, shaggy, black rump not 20 feet away from me.
Although I was happy to see the bear’s rump moving
away from me rather than his snout heading toward me
(and knew he could already have had me for lunch had
he so chosen), I wasn’t taking any chances. I
quickly closed the cooler and hopped into the car, then
pulled over again at a sunny, bare spot.
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The Ferry Two-step
Before I knew it, I was waiting for the Inchelium ferry
that would take me across the Columbia River. I only
had to wait 15 minutes or so; the small, open ferry
ran on the half-hour. There were three lanes, and Uli
was the second car in the middle, or main, lane. As
I took a look at the map, I heard someone call out that
the road ended back there. It turned out to be the driver
on my right, who was slightly behind me. He—let’s
call him Husband—was a jovial character who was
curious about this lone white woman from Washington,
DC. I would have enjoyed chatting with him had not the
woman sitting beside him—we’ll call her
Wife—looked as if she could kill us both. He,
however, seemed not to care, and urged me to come to
a big pow-wow that was going on in Spokane. We wrapped
up the conversation with another joke about river and
road.
To discourage Husband and mollify Wife, I stuck my
head into my book as the ferry started moving. I picked
up Caroline Leighton’s story as she and her husband
attempted to move up a flood-swollen, angry stream.
They were told that no one but the most experienced
Indians were capable of conveying them safely, so they
engaged a fellow called Shorty.
Now, you should know that Caroline had a great deal
of fondness and respect for most of the Native Americans
she met and observed; she often noted that they and
their settlements were of a superior quality. But even
though she appreciated Shorty and his assistant, as
night fell she began to fear their equanimity. “The
safety of their passengers is no burden whatever on
the minds of the Indians,” she wrote. “Their
spirits seem to rise with danger. They know that they
could very well save themselves in an emergency, and
I believe they prefer that white people should be drowned.”
I sneaked a quick glance at Wife, who still looked grim.
The irony was positively delicious.
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Warning: Buffalo Crossing
I crossed Idaho’s panhandle and headed southeast
on Montana Route 200. Near its southern end, I turned
off to visit the National Bison Range, an island of
federal land in the Flathead Indian Reservation. The
U.S. Fish and Wildlife brochure explained that buffalo
came to the Flathead Valley in 1873, when Walking Coyote,
of the Pend d’ Oreille tribe, returned from Blackfeet
Country on the plains with five orphaned buffalo calves.
When their number increased to 13, he sold them all
to ranchers Michael Pablo and Charles Allard.
The Pablo/Allard herd—at one time the largest
in existence—played a key role in the preservation
of the species, since the white man’s slaughter
had reduced the total population from an estimated 30-70
million to fewer than 1,000. After a series of actual
or proposed changes in ownership, these animals became
the core of the National Bison Range’s stock.
Created in 1908, the Range was one of three reserves
set aside between 1907 and 1909 to stop the species’
slide to extinction. Today there are more than 140,000
bison in North America.
There are usually between 350 and 500 of them on the
Range, which is comprised of 185,000 acres of diverse
habitats. Bison are not true buffalo at all, but the
name stuck; bulls weigh about 2,000 pounds and run up
to 30 MPH. They are unpredictable and dangerous, and
signs and brochures urge visitors to keep a respectful
distance. In addition to bison, I saw mountain goats,
antelope, deer, and elk, as well as ruffed grouse and
a variety of other birds. I didn’t spot any bighorn
sheep, bears, coyotes, mountain lions, or bobcats, but
they’re there.
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Bitter History
I continued south through the Bitterroot Valley, the
population density of which would astound Lewis and
Clark, who first entered it on September 4, 1805. Neither
of the two southbound roads that go through the valley
are true blue highways anymore; the Eastside Highway
may be two lanes, but it’s quite heavily traveled,
and the four-lane 93 is maddeningly busy. It was a relief
to reach the bottom of the valley and get into the Bitterroot
Mountains, despite the fact that the temperature plummeted
and hail began to fall.
The storm took a break, so I stopped at Big Hole National
Battlefield, one of the bloodiest grounds of the Nez
Perce War of 1877. The ancestors of the people I met
on the Colville rez had lived west of the Bitterroots
in Idaho, southeastern Washington, and northeastern
Oregon. But Manifest Destiny led settlers, miners, and
stockmen to encroach on their lands, and by 1863 a government
treaty had reduced their reservation to one-tenth of
its original size. Even this came under assault, and
they lost their lands altogether.
By 1877, the Nez Perce were on the run. On an open
meadow next to the Big Hole River, U.S. troops intercepted
bands fleeing other troops in pursuit from the west;
at dawn on August 9, Colonel John Gibbon launched a
surprise attack on the unsuspecting Nez Perce. Technically
speaking, the Native Americans won: They pinned Gibbons’
men down on the hill from which the soldiers had attacked
and only broke off the engagement when their people
were safely away. Of the 163 Army regulars and 35 volunteers,
33 soldiers—including 14 of the 17 officers—were
dead and 38 were wounded.
But the Nez Perce sustained high casualties, too; they
lost between 60 and 90 women, children, and warriors.
They resolved to follow Sitting Bull to sanctuary in
Canada, but were stopped just 30 miles short of the
border. Exhausted from their long flight, they still
managed to hold off the Army; but after a two-day siege,
Chief Joseph surrendered for the sake of his starving
women and children. There, in the Bear Paw Mountains,
was where he famously proclaimed: “I am tired;
my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands,
I will fight no more forever.” He died in 1904
in exile on the Colville Reservation.
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Not What I Had In Mind
As I browsed in the Big Hole Visitors’ Center,
the hail started up again, harder than before. Since
the day started warm, I wore shorts and sandals; at
least I had grabbed my windbreaker. I tried to wait
it out but lost patience and made a run for it. Large
chunks of hail covered the ground like snow and stung
my legs and feet; in the few moments it took me to run
the 30 feet to Uli, I got soaked and shivery. But his
superb heater and defroster soon got us going, and we
slowly crunched our way back to the blue highway. At
6:00 PM, the temperature stood at 45 degrees F.; in
the distance I saw lightning. I had intended to camp
in Wisdom or Wise River (hoping a little might rub off),
but the thought lost all appeal, so I ended up in yet
another motel room.
I traveled down the beautiful Madison Valley—which
was mobbed by sport fishermen—and entered Yellowstone
from the west. I hadn’t been to Yellowstone since
I was a teenager, and I was anxious to see how it was
recovering from the disastrous fires that burned nearly
a third of it in 1988. Although it still looked quite
bare, it was doing nicely: Lodgepole pines were recolonizing
the forests, aspen trees were flourishing, and the first
seedlings of Engelmann spruce, subalpine fir, Douglas
fir, and whitebark pine had emerged. But the staff was
brusque, the traffic and crowds were unbelievable, and
I couldn’t wait to get out. So instead of camping
there over the holiday weekend as I had hoped to, I
resigned myself to finding another haven.
It was dark when I thought I had found it; night couldn’t
hide the beauty of the Shoshone National Forest’s
Newton Creek Campground. My hopes quickly were dashed,
however, when I read two prominent signs—hand-written
on neon paper—announcing that, as of August 23rd,
the campground was open to hard-sided camping only,
“due to excessive grizzly bear activity.”
No tents or soft-sided trailers were allowed. I drove
through just to torture myself, and had a nice chat
with the camp host. She told me bears had been marauding
only a few hours ago.
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The
Rodeo and the Bullfighter
So I gave up and pushed on into Cody, Wyoming, where
I found an expensive cheap motel and holed up for awhile.
(Although my non-schedule usually doesn’t present
a problem, it does on holiday weekends—without
reservations, it would take more luck and patience than
I possess to find an acceptable place to lay my head
every night.) But I got a lot of work done and I got
to go to the rodeo again, so it wasn’t a total
loss.
There I found that the War on Terrorism had invaded
more than Cajun jokes: At the start of the Calf Scramble,
in which little kids try to catch up with a justifiably
frightened calf and pull a scarf from its tail, the
hammy announcer said that the calf must feel like Osama
bin Laden did when our troops started landing. And when
I talked to a tall, polite, young rodeo clown after
the show ended, I learned that in December he had been
commissioned a lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force and
was stationed in Cheyenne. He loved the rodeo and had
been participating in it since he was a kid; now, though,
he could only get to about 10 a year, one-tenth of what
he was used to. He was a smart, well-spoken college
grad who hoped to make a first career out of the Air
Force. He wasn’t spoiling for war and didn’t
expect to see action anytime soon, but also seemed quite
clear about what we faced and committed to seeing it
through. “America’s fixin’ to fight
a war that’s everybody’s war,” he
said. “I mean, every country’s involved
in some way, whether they like it or not.” The
Air Force still didn’t own him completely, though—when
I asked him for contact information, he wrote down,
“Jeremy A. Sparks, Professional Bullfighter.”
I’m off to the Medicine Wheel and the Black Hills.
Stay tuned for next week’s installment. . . .
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