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Hi-Line Living: A first step to healing

After 150 years, victims of smallpox epidemic finally laid to rest

As puffs of smoke drifted high into the air from a ceremonial fire, hundreds of Native Americans from Gros Ventre, or Aaniiih; Assiniboine, or Nakoda; Crow; Northern Arapaho, and other tribes gathered together outside of Dodson Saturday to hold a ceremony, held to help put to rest the spirits of those who died in a smallpox outbreak 150 years ago.

"I feel really good," organizer and Gros Ventre tribal member "Snuffy" Main said. "There has been a lot of community members who were excited this was taking place."

He added the Fort Belknap Indian Community is struggling with a variety of issues, such as drug and alcohol abuse and a rash of suicides in the past year. He said that in Native American culture, when a person dies and their body is not properly put to rest, similar to many other cultures, the spirit cannot cross over into the afterlife. The ceremony Saturday was held to help put these spirits to rest and provide healing for people.

"It was an honor to have these people show up," Main said.

The healing ceremony for the Aaniiih and Nakoda citizens was organized by the Gros Ventre Treaty Committee of the Fort Belknap Indian Community and included events and ceremonies outside of Dodson and at Fort Belknap Agency and Hays.

What does the ceremony mean?

Warren Matte, a Gros Ventre tribal member, said that a number of atrocities have happened to Native people, more than 500 years of genocide. 

"But we survived," he said.

He added that, during that time, Native Americans have adopted genocidal behaviors themselves, in order to survive, but that behavior is not who they are. Native people are strong, spiritual people, with a deep connection to the earth.

He added that the Native American people are just starting to heal, putting away the genocidal behaviors they learned, and rebuilding themselves, their culture and their connection to each other.

"Our survival now is our spiritual and cultural ways," he said, adding that the ceremony is a part of it.

"We are finally coming to a point where we are starting to heal, and being proud of who we are," Matte said. "Remembering, sitting there, looking around, envisioning our people and what happened there."

The ceremony was, in his opinion, the greatest event in the past century for the Fort Belknap Reservation, he said. It is reconnecting the Aaniiih and Nakoda peoples with their cultures, bringing them together and starting the healing process.

Gros Ventre tribe member Leon Bird Tail, Native name Eagle Tail, said it was great seeing so many people all gathered together, working together for the common good. He added that one thing that was particularly beautiful for him was to see members of the reservation who do not normally participate in their spiritual ways come out and join them in the ceremony.

"Our ways are not dead," he said. "They are being awakened." He added that healing is not just something for Native people, but all people. All people are related, tribal, non-tribal, everyone is related in some way.

Matte made similar comments about humanity.

"Whether if you believe in creation or evolution, either we are really blessed or we are the cream of the crop," he said.

Ryan Gambler Sr. of the Northern Arapaho Tribe, from Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, said the event, in his opinion, was going very well. Gambler was one of the tribal members of the Northern Arapaho who helped organize the event and get the spiritual leaders from the Northern Arapaho to Fort Belknap.

"When these men pray, they pray for good things," he said, adding that the spirituals leaders from the Northern Arapaho tribe live and breath their spirituality. 

Every tribe has a different ceremony, but ceremonies always result in good things, good health, good life.

"They all come together as one, as brother and sister," Gambler said. "No jealousy, bad things come out of that, only good things come out of this."

He added that it was an honor to be welcomed to Fort Belknap Indian Reservation. The Aaniiih and Nakota people are their relatives and part of their culture.

"All of these tribes are, all across the United States, they are all related in some way or another," he said.

It is good to have these lost souls, the people who died in the smallpox epidemic, no longer wandering around, he said.

"It was important for the people up here to have this ceremony, to put the souls at rest or at home to the big powwow in the sky," he said.

"All of us who traveled this distance to be here, we want good things to come out of this," he added.

Crow and Northern Cheyenne member Marjean Eagle Tail said one of the reasons she came to the event was because she was excited about the healing of the Gros Ventre people and interested to see the connection between the people.

She added that it is important Native people are not held back by tragedy and they have amazing potential, talent and gifts to offer.

"There is so much untapped talent that most people don't even know," she said. "... They are right to be who they are and make them proud."

She said tragedy tends to follow people and their children for generations in other religions, such as Christianity, as well.

"We want it to stop now," Eagle Tail said. "We want our people to live healthy and happy, to heal up from the past. We don't want to live in historical trauma, we want to be thriving and living at the top of our game."

She added that many people struggle with drug or alcohol addiction. For a period of time she worked in a detoxification center, Eagle Tail said, and she was amazed by the amount of talent patients had.

"We are our worst enemies," she said. "We need to build each other up rather than tearing each other down."

Eagle Tail's daughter Desja Eagle Tail, who has won a number of Native American Music Awards, performed later that day at Hays, singing traditional songs.

What was behind the scenes?

Organizer "Snuffy" Main said that the Gros Ventre Treaty Committee first started planning the event about a year ago, knowing they needed to do something for the 150-year anniversary of the smallpox outbreak which killed many Aaniiih and members of other tribes. He added that after the suicide outbreak on Fort Belknap and, this year, the Sundance being flooded out, it was more important than ever to have the ceremony. 

Main said that he was taking care of his wife, Diana Longknife Main, in Phoenix, Arizona, after she had a liver transplant when he started to have bad dreams, haunted by people who had died, such as his father. He said that a lot of his dreams involved his father telling him that he needed to do something for the reservation.

He added that he remembered talking to his father before he died, and his father told him he would do anything he could do to help him from the other side.

"To me, that was a sign I needed to do something," he said.

Main later told his wife he wanted to go back to Fort Belknap to help organize a healing ceremony. She told him she would be fine without him and encouraged him to go and help organize the event, he said.

"I want people to leave with a good feeling, really think about the words they heard today," he said, adding that the fighting between tribes and between themselves is not doing anyone any good.

The History

Main said his father was the one who had originally told him the story of the smallpox outbreak, setting him on a path to gather more information. 

He said that 150 years ago, in 1869, a few miles from where Dodson later was established, a large number of Native Americans, including Gros Ventre, Assiniboine, River Crow and Northern Arapaho gathered and were preparing for a bison hunt. He said that, at the time, the nearby U.S. troops stationed at Fort Browning near People's Creek felt threatened because of the hostility which still existed between the U.S. government and Native American people. The other tribes had come to join the Gros Ventre tribe to prepare for the winter, although the U.S. troops interpreted it as hostile.

Two men from the fort approached the tribes and offered them a mysterious gift, which they told the tribe was a gift from the east he said he had found. It was a sealed box which the men told tribal members not to open for two days. After two days, numerous tribal people gathered to open the box. He added his research says that once they opened the box, a mist was released and the only things inside were rags. But some of the tribal members were curious and took the rags. The mist and the rags contained the smallpox virus, he said.

A few days after opening the gift, people started dying, he said. The first few who died were given a proper burial amongst the trees, although people started dying off so quickly they were unable to bury them. 

"The ground was littered with bodies, some were still in their teepees," he said.

But it wasn't smallpox that was killing most of them. Instead many were taking their own lives rather than dying from the disease, he said.

Once the outbreak started, the troops from Fort Browning quarantined the area and once the quarantine was removed only 300 Gros Ventre tribal members were left, he said. Main added that the tribal elders at the time believed the Man Above had forsaken them or their pipes were mad at them and they were somehow being punished. The tribe, because of its small size, then broke off into smaller groups, finding places where they would be safe from larger tribes or U.S. troops.

When Fort Belknap Indian Reservation was established in 1888 the groups reunited and moved onto the reservation, Main said. But at that time, the missionaries started moving into the area. He added that the elders met again and decided to abandon their traditional ways and send the youths to the mission, believing education would be the only way to survive in the new society which built up around them.

"Some of the people didn't agree with that," he said. "They didn't want to do that so they went down to stay with the Arapaho, who had hung on to their ways throughout the years."

He said because of that, the Arapaho were invited for the ceremony Saturday, because they still know the traditional ceremonies and how they need to be conducted.

Mark Pankratz, a non-tribal member who owns the property where the ceremony took place, said that his wife, Sarese, is a Gros Ventre descendant who's great-grandmother had lost two children at the smallpox epidemic 150 years ago. He added that he was happy to open his land to the tribe for the ceremony.

He said that he has also done extensive research on the smallpox epidemic, finding in the U.S. Army statistics more than 871 Gros Ventre tribal members died. He added that many more people from other tribes died but were not counted.

Pankratz said that he never witnessed anything like the ceremony before and thought that it was a very powerful experience. He added that the reservations face so many issues and, hopefully, the ceremony is able to help.

 

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