mckinleymontana.com

by Lance Foster

Here’s the photo that accompanied the WPA interview of Edgar Takes-the-Pipe. Click on it to see a larger version.

by Lance Foster

SOURCE: Greenway County Historical Society, WPA Files: Morris 1937). 3/23/1937 Interview of Edgar Takes-the-Pipe, age approx. 78, resident at the Sorenson Ranch and Piegan survivor of the Baker Massacre on the Bear River (Marias River) (1870); Lucy Morris of McKinley, Montana, interviewer.
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Overview

Between 1935 and 1942, the field workers for the Montana Writer’s Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), conducted oral history interviews and researched folklore for a Montana folklore publication. Unfortunately, the United States entered into World War II, and the WPA dissolved before Montana’s efforts on folklore could be published. In Greenway County, one of the writer-researchers was Lucy Morris, a teacher of English at McKinley High School and local history buff. Over several years, Mrs. Morris interviewed a number of Greenway Co. residents for the WPA project who had lived through the frontier period. One of these interviewees was an elderly Blackfeet man, Edgar Takes-the-Pipe, born in about 1859 on the Sun River, and who had resided in the Medicine Crane area and on the Sorenson Ranch. He was approximately 78 at the time of the interview in 1937. He passed away at the approximate age of 84 in 1943.

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DATE OF INTERVIEW: March 23, 1937
DATES OF EVENTS DISCUSSED: APPROX. 1860-1871; subjects include Baker Massacre on the Marias River in 1870, and the Greenway gold-rush of 1871

LM: Lucy Morris
ETP: Edgar Takes-the-Pipe

LM: “This is Lucy Morris and this is an interview of Mr. Edgar Takes-the-Pipe at his home on the Sorenson Ranch, in Greenway County, Montana on March 23, 1937. Mr. Takes-the-Pipe is a member of the Blackfeet tribe, also known in Montana as the Piegan tribe. Mr. Takes-the-Pipe, though a native speaker of Blackfeet, has lived in white communities for many decades doing ranch work, much of it at the Sorenson Ranch, and so has a good command of the English language. Unlike some others of his generation, he likes to talk with strangers and visitors, and he is something of a local character. This interview was transcribed verbatim to the best of my ability using my shorthand notes.”

LM: “Mr. Takes-the-Pipe, before we start, I would like to ask you a little about yourself — will you tell me when and where you were born? And how did you come to speak English so well?”

ETP: “Yes ma’am. I am a fullblood Blackfeet Indian, what we call Pikuni, or Piegan. I was born on the Medicine River, what white folks call the Sun River, near as I can tell about 1859 or 1860, in the fall. I am about 78 years old. My earliest memories are of the buffalo times, and of the things I heard about the white man’s war against each other, in the warm country far away. As a boy, I thought this country would always be ours.”

LM: “You speak English surprisingly well, especially for an Indian man of your generation!”

ETP: “Well thank you ma’am. I always had a knack at languages. I learned quite a bit while I tended horses and cattle for the Fort Shaw Indian School starting in about 1893. I always was interested in languages. I had Gros Ventre relatives who liked to trade, who taught me some words of Gros Ventre, French and English for fun as a small boy. (Laughs) They joked me, called me Goes-along-talking as a nickname.”

LM: “So if you remember, you agreed that our interview today was going to be about what you remember about the fight on the Marias River? I know this is hard, because it was a terrible event in Blackfeet history that not many know about, and especially for you, as one of the survivors.”

ETP: “I am ready to talk about it.”

LM: “So how did that day start?”

ETP: “It was very cold. It seemed like Coldmaker was making war on the country. Cold enough your spit cracks before it hits the ground. The Medicine River was frozen so hard it made funny sounds, like dry moans and cracks. I had been sick and was sleeping next to my Grandfather in my mother’s lodge to keep each other warm. He was so old and sick he couldn’t move well, but we talked to each other all the time. I guess I was about ten or eleven. My mother was visiting my aunt in her lodge, where my uncle was sick with smallpox, and my father was hunting buffalo off north with the men. All of a sudden I hear a gunshot and then so many gunshots it was like a hailstorm. Bullets came through the lodge cover. I rolled over and peered between the cover and the ground. I saw Chief Heavy Runner on the ground, soldiers on horses, people running and screaming. Getting shot and run down by the soldier’s horses. We didn’t think it could happen, because Heavy Runner was the white man’s friend.”

LM: “And then…?”

ETP: “After the soldiers had killed Heavy Runner they kept on killing like they went crazy. That happens to men sometimes when they kill, especially when they drink. The leader soldier acted drunk, and some of the other soldiers did too. Most of our men were away hunting the buffalo to the north. They were not worried leaving the camp alone because Heavy Runner was known to be a good friend to the white man, and he had the government papers to prove it. (Here ETP sips his coffee and says it is good.) Heavy Runner had tried to show the papers to the whites when they approached the village but it did not matter. Later I saw that the soldiers went to Heavy Runner’s body and read those government papers. Then they quickly dug a hole and pushed Heavy Runner’s body into it, and covered it up.”

LM: “Oh my. So there weren’t any men around? The soldiers were just shooting women and children?”

ETP: “There were a couple of men of fighting age there, about three, I think, left in camp because they were sick with smallpox. One of them was Weasel-Robe my uncle, husband to my mother’s sister. He shot one of the soldiers who was going from lodge to lodge, opening the flaps and shooting any Indian he saw inside, it didn’t matter if it was a woman or a child. When that soldier looked in at my uncle, my uncle who was sick in his robes surprised that soldier and shot him from his sleeping place. Of course they quickly killed my uncle, but I was proud anyway that my uncle had died well, as a warrior rather than from the sickness. They killed all the men they could find, no matter the age. Some of the women, old people, and babies were killed by accident and some on purpose.”

LM: “What happened after the shooting stopped?”

ETP: “I was taken with some of the surviving women and children into one of the two lodges they had kept for prisoners, while the soldiers burned the rest of the camp, and almost all of our goods, including the robes. They drove away the horses. I was still a boy of about ten remember, and I was lucky enough to hide with my old grandfather under his robes during the shooting, until the soldiers made the search from lodge to lodge. They motioned me out and then shot my grandfather. It was very cold. After a while, the soldiers told us we were free, but if we made any trouble or talked about what had happened, they would find us and kill us. Of course we already knew that. And it was so cold, without lodges, robes or horses, we thought would soon be dead anyway. Then the soldiers rode away, driving our horses.”

LM: “What happened to the women and children?”

ETP: “Many of the women and children who were left, died from their wounds or the cold. Some tried to find other Indians to help them, others tried to make it to Fort Benton. I traveled a while with an aunt toward Fort Benton. We brought a baby we had found in the snow. The baby died from the cold. My aunt died from a wound in her back. I took her shawl and kept going. I found part of an old dugout some trapper had built into a cutbank, and I stayed there for the night. I think that was the longest and hardest night of my life. I kept awake and warm by dancing all night long in the dugout, with the wind whipping up along the bank above. I danced for my mother, my sister, my uncle and my grandfather. I danced all night to stay alive. I made a vow to the Sun against the white soldiers. I think I went a little crazy. That was a long bad night. The next morning I was almost dead, but I heard a noise against the dugout and saw one of Heavy Runner’s buffalo runners there trying to find shelter against the wind. I climbed on that horse and rode away from that place. I think my grandfather must have sent that horse to me. I did not remember much of what followed, but some Gros Ventres found me when that horse took me to their camp along the Medicine River, and took care of me. I got better, but that is how I lost these two fingers and part of my left toes.” (Here ETP raised his hand and smiled).

LM: “So then did you go back to your tribe?”

ETP: “For some reason I felt shy and did not want to go back to my Blackfeet people. Nothing made sense. I stayed with the Gros Ventres in their little camp on the Medicine River throughout that winter. They took care of me. They doctored me so I did not lose any more toes or fingers. They were good people. I gave them Heavy Runner’s good buffalo horse. I thought about my vow and about what I would do when the Thunderers came and the grass turned green. I did not want to live anymore. There was no home to go to. Almost all the people I ever knew were dead from that attack on Heavy Runner’s camp. So I just stayed with the Gros Ventres for several years after they found me. And when summer came, some of us boys from the camp decided to go off and live on our own. We were pretty mad at what he saw happening to our country, all these strangers coming in and taking over everything, and we wanted to do something about it.”

LM: “So you decided to get this group of friends together and run away from home?”

ETP: “Well I wanted to do something big against the white people for my family, and for the vow I had made to the Sun. There were some other young men like me among the Gros Ventre who also wanted to do something. It seemed like most of the people had given up after those soldiers attacked Heavy Runner’s camp on the Bear River (the Marias River). But we young men had heard our enemies the Sioux were still fighting the white men to the east. This made us feel good. We thought about joining the Sioux, even though we were enemies, but decided that we Gros Ventre and Blackfeet should go alone, since the Sioux would probably try to kill us anyway. I was twelve, and I wanted to fight the enemy.”

LM: “I did not know that the Indian boys fought so young.”

ETP: “Sometimes we had to. Life doesn’t always give you a choice. Children have been warriors when they had to. After we stole the horses and killed that cow for meat, the white people were really looking for us. We hid up in the rocks and the trees, in our wolf skins, and watched the soldiers looking for us. Our group of young men, some of us boys really, about ten of us, followed the Medicine River (Sun River) and then hid in the mountains up along the Medicine Crane River (Greenway River). We came out to steal a horse or a cow when we could. We would ride around some of the settlers’ cabins at night for fun, shooting arrows into the cabin’s door for effect, or into their dogs that barked at us. We thought we were doing something big and talked like it, but we did not kill anyone, except for that sheepherder we found that summer in the high meadows above the Medicine Crane River. I guess no one ever found him or even cared that he was gone. But we ate his sheep for weeks, until they wandered away, the coyotes ate them, or they just died because they were too stupid to live.”

LM: “So you never really attacked anyone and fulfilled your vow?”

ETP: “Well, I had told the others about my vow, and they agreed that I should take the sheepherder’s scalp and give it up as an offering. I did so. It was kind of bald, but I took it anyway. I took his scalp and put it up on a cliff above the Medicine Crane River, facing east, where the rising Sun could see I had fulfilled my duty. We felt very good, like the warrior people of old. We then decided to do something very bold. We would find some white people and attack them and keep going, until our names became very big. Then white men would be too afraid to come into the Medicine Crane country, just like the old days when the Blackfeet kept out the beaver men. But over the period of a year, from the date of the fight on the Bear River (the Marias Massacre of 1870), our numbers dropped from ten to four. One by one, the boys got tired of the adventure, and went home. After a while, there were only four of us, the hard cases, orphans and boys who didn’t like things at home. Teenagers, Three Gros Ventres and myself: Buffalo Back, Gopher Snake, Strikes-the-Post, and myself, the lone Blackfeet, Takes-the-Pipe. We weren’t going to give up. Worse, now there were white men coming into the hills, looking for gold, you know. We killed one man who was alone, with a strange hat, who foolishly had left his gun against a tree. We killed him with our arrows, and we threw him into the hole he had dug. But the gun was no good, it didn’t shoot right, and we threw it into the river. We were angry that now, even the mountains were being invaded. But there were usually three or four in groups, and we were only boys, armed only with arrows and no guns.”

LM: “So what did you decide to do?”

ETP: “We needed new clothes, new robes, and we had to have guns to drive off these new white men from our Medicine Crane country. We wanted fresh horses, food, and whatever we could get. We had no more to lose, and more white men were coming all the time, deeper into our country, in groups too big for us. So we went from the mountains out into the open plains below. Us four warrior-brothers, to the end. We followed the ravines and coulees, keeping out of site. We knew where the trail was from Fort Benton and we thought maybe we could find a wagon with only a few people coming to join the other white men. We could ambush them at the right place, maybe scare them away, and take their goods. We knew of a place above the trail, with a lookout. We could wait. We had time. What else could we do? They would take the Medicine Crane country from us, and dig holes all over it, and we would be slaves in the end just like the rest of our people, who had their hearts torn out and thrown on the ground at the Bear River fight. We would not give up and be slaves, the way bears sometimes steal women and make them slaves, too. If it didn’t work out, maybe we would ride over to the Sioux and Cheyenne country, and take our chances, see if they would let us join them against the white men.”

LM: “How did it work out?”

ETP: “Well… We waited for two days, eating the rest of our dried meat, and then we saw some shapes coming slowly along the trail. It turned out to be five wagons full of goods, strange things, guns, food, more things than we had ever seen before. But there were four white men, with guns, and a white woman too. All we had were bows and arrows. We would have to be quick and quiet, and hope things would go well. We thought if we shot and killed the white man who looked like the leader, then the rest would run and leave the wagons to us. But the white man saw us before we could get close enough for a good shot with our arrows, and he shot at us with his gun. We tried to dart in a couple of times for a better chance at an arrow shot, but one of the white man’s bullets hit Gopher Snake in the side. All we hit was a large wooden box they had in the wagon. The white woman was screaming bad things at us like a witch. We thought maybe that large wooden box was her medicine bundle, the way she screamed. We decided it was hopeless, and we needed to take care of Gopher Snake, who was bleeding badly. We couldn’t lose one of us four. There were only four of us, and we were closer than brothers. So we rode away over the ridge and down through the ravines again, with the man still shooting at us. We returned to the mountains, to get the plants to doctor Gopher Snake, and decide what to do next, how we should go find and join the Sioux.”

LM: “Well you look a little tired, Mr. Takes-the-Pipe, so maybe we should be finished for today.”

ETP: “Yes, ma’am, thank you for understanding. I am an old man and getting older all the time. I am too tired to talk any more today. We will talk more again soon, and I will tell you about our ride to join the Sioux, and how we warrior-brothers returned to the Medicine Crane country. I will tell you the story of how I came to live with the Sorenson’s.”

LM: “Thank you, Mr. Takes-the-Pipe, I look forward to meeting with you again.”

END OF INTERVIEW