The Red and the White: A Family Saga of the American West (44 page)

100
    Assessment records from the period show that Clarke was one of the most successful livestock owners in the area, running 125 cattle with an aggregate value of $1,500. See, e.g., Chouteau County Assessment records, 1878, Montana State University, Merrill G. Burlingame Special Collections, WPA Records, collection 2336, box 68, folder 2. Horace and Margaret did not have their union solemnized until 24 April 1883. See marriage license [photocopy] of Horace J. Clarke and Margaretta [
sic
], MTHS, Malcolm Clarke, vertical file.

101
    Plassmann, notes taken in an interview with Horace Clarke [n.d.], MTHS, HCR, SC 540.

102
    See Margaret Spanish obituary,
Great Falls Tribune,
29 Sept. 1940.

103
    Statement of Joe Kipp, 8 Feb. 1913, MTHS, HRR, MF 53.

104
    Letter from Arthur McFatridge to commissioner of Indian affairs, 8 Feb. 1913, MTHS, HRR, MF 53. Regarding the agent’s motivations, given his corruption (which led to his removal in 1915), it is possible that he hoped to receive a share of any settlement himself.

105
    Letters from Arthur McFatridge to commissioner of Indian affairs, 14 Jan. and 17 March 1914, MTHS, HRR, MF 53.

106
    Letter from assistant secretary of the interior to secretary of war, 7 April 1914, MTHS, HRR, MF 53.

107
    Statement of Bear Head, 18 Jan. 1915, MTHS, HRR, MF 53.

108
    Statement of Mrs. Frank Monroe, 18 Jan. 1915, MTHS, HRR, MF 53.

109
    Statement of Joe Kipp, 16 Jan. 1915, MTHS, HRR, MF 53.

110
    For more on Lane, who was a strong advocate for Indian rights and a withering critic of government policy toward its indigenous peoples, see Robert D. Johnston,
The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2003), 29–45.

111
    Letter from first assistant secretary of the interior to Henry F. Ashurst, 20 Feb. 1915, MTHS, HRR, MF 53.

112
    See statement of Good Bear Woman, 15 Jan. 1916, and statement of Buffalo Trail Woman, 16 Jan. 1916, MTHS, HRR, MF 53.

113
    Letter from Dick Kipp to Senator H. L. Myers, 1 Dec. 1916, National Archives and Records Administration, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75, central classified files, 1907–39, PI-163, E-121, Blackfeet, box 93, file 18498-1913-260.

114
    Statement of Horace J. Clarke, 9 Nov. 1920, MTHS, HRR, MF 53.

115
    See letter from Charles H. Burke to Scott Leavitt, 30 Jan. 1926, MTHS, HRR, MF 53.

116
    David Hilger, “An Historical Foot-Race,” 4 Dec. 1923, MTHS, David Hilger Papers, SC 854, folder 5.

117
    It is worth noting that after Malcolm’s murder, James Fergus (Andrew’s father) bought the Clarke ranch from Horace and lived there for ten years with his family.

118
    Letter from David Hilger to Horace Clarke, 4 Sept. 1924, MTHS, Helen P. Clarke Papers, SC 1153, folder 2.

119
    David Hilger, interview with Horace Clarke, 27 Sept. 1924, MTHS, HCR, SC 540.

120
    
Great Falls Tribune,
23 Jan. 2007. For a more extended description of a Blackfeet visit to the Big Bend, see Stan Gibson, “Visit to the Baker Massacre Site,” [n.d.], GAI, SGF. See also author interview with Lea Whitford, June 2007.

Chapter 4: The Bird That Comes Home

1
    For more on the movie and its reception, see Angela Aleiss,
Making the White Man’s Indian: Native Americans and Hollywood Movies
(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2005), 19–21. For DeMille’s involvement with the film, see Robert S. Birchard,
Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood
(Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2004), 1–13. See also Scott Eyman,
Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010).

2
    Letter from Helen P. Clarke to Edwin M. Royle, 15 Feb. 1911, Montana Historical Society (cited hereafter as MTHS), Helen P. Clarke Papers (cited hereafter as HPC), SC 1153, folder 2.

3
    Letter from Edwin M. Royle to Helen P. Clarke, 22 Feb. 1911, MTHS, HPC, SC 1153, folder 2. The book suggested by Royle was Jean Finot,
Race Prejudice
(London: Archibald Constable, 1906).

4
    Quoted in Eleanor Ruggles,
Prince of Players: Edwin Booth
(New York: Norton, 1953), 211. Nora Titone explores the rivalry between the brothers in
My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth That Led to an American Tragedy
(New York: Free Press, 2011).

5
    For the richest description of Booth’s Theatre, see William Winter,
Life and Art of Edwin Booth
(New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), 82–90. It is worth noting that the cost of the theater bankrupted Booth, who had to go on tour in order to pay off his debts, a circumstance that kept him working feverishly even into his declining years. Thanks to Tice Miller for drawing my attention to this information.

6
    John Frick, “A Changing Theatre: New York and Beyond,” in
The Cambridge History of American Theatre,
ed. Don B. Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby, vol. 2 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999), 206–10. For a broader perspective on the U.S. theater scene of the period, see Tice L. Miller,
Entertaining the Nation: American Drama in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 2007).

7
    The house (at 603 Fifth St., SE) still stands and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

8
    The fire (likely caused by faulty wiring) destroyed the East Glacier home formerly occupied by Horace and Helen. At the time of the conflagration the house had passed to Horace’s granddaughter Joyce Clarke Turvey and her husband, Irv.
Great Falls Tribune,
29 April 1962.

9
    
Great Falls Tribune,
15 May 1932; undated reminiscence by Bessie C. Wells, MTHS, HPC, SC 1153, folder 1.

10
    Thomas F. Meagher, “A Journey to Benton,”
Montana: The Magazine of Western History
1, no. 4 (Oct. 1951): 49. Meagher had served as acting governor of Montana Territory for less than two years when on 1 July 1867 (under mysterious circumstances) he fell into the Missouri River from a steamboat docked at Fort Benton. His body was never recovered.

11
    Undated reminiscence by Bessie C. Wells, MTHS, HPC, SC 1153, folder 1.

12
    Quoted in Claire Lamont, “Meg the Gipsy in Scott and Keats,”
English
36, no. 155 (Summer 1987): 139–40.

13
    Journal of James Upson Sanders, entry for 17 June 1885, MTHS, James Upson Sanders Papers (cited hereafter as JUS), MC 66, box 2, folder 4.

14
    Undated reminiscence by Bessie C. Wells, MTHS, HPC, SC 1153, folder 1.

15
    Robert Gottlieb, “The Drama of Sarah Bernhardt,”
New York Review of Books,
10 May 2007, p. 10. The article contains an excellent bibliography of important books about the actress. See also Gottlieb’s recent biography,
Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt
(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2010).

16
    
Great Falls Tribune,
15 May 1932. Lesley Wischmann offers another explanation for the endemic financial problems that plagued former traders and their families; she writes of Alexander Culbertson that “he had become accustomed to the Indian tradition in which a gift given today is reciprocated at some future date. However, in white society, gifts given were often accepted with no sense of future obligation. In all likelihood, Culbertson was deeply in debt before he even realized a problem existed.” See
Frontier Diplomats: Alexander Culbertson and Natoyist-Siksina’ among the Blackfeet
(2000; Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 312.

17
    Joyce Clarke Turvey, “Helen Piotopowaka Clarke,” in
History of Glacier County, Montana,
ed. Joy MacCarter (Cut Bank, Mont.: Glacier County Historical Society, 1984), 87.

18
    For Sanders’s role in the trial and its bloody aftermath, see Frederick Allen,
A Decent, Orderly Lynching: The Montana Vigilantes
(Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 185–97.

19
    A. C. McClure, “Wilbur Fisk Sanders,”
Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana
(1917; Boston: J. S. Canner, 1966), 8:25–35. The murder trial involved a Blood Indian named Spopee, or Turtle, who—despite the best efforts of Sanders and his co-counsel, Judge William Chumasero—was convicted of the murder of a white man named Charles Wamesley. Spopee languished in a federal asylum for more than thirty years before he was discovered in 1914 by a Blackfeet delegation visiting Washington, D.C., who then helped him secure a presidential pardon from Woodrow Wilson. Spopee returned to the Blackfeet Reservation, where he died less than a year after his release. For his remarkable story see William E. Farr,
Blackfeet Redemption: A Blood Indian’s Story of Murder, Confinement, and Imperfect Justice
(Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2012).

20
    Letter from Wilbur Fisk Sanders to Helen P. Clarke, 28 March 1876, MTHS, HPC, SC 1153, folder 2.

21
    See Jurgen Herbst,
Women Pioneers of Public Education: How Culture Came to the Wild West
(New York: Palgrave, 2008); and Andrea G. Radke-Moss, “Learning in the West: Western Women and the Culture of Education,” in
The World of the American West,
ed. Gordon Morris Bakken (New York: Rout-ledge, 2011), 387–417. For instance, in 1886 in Lewis and Clark County, the largest in Montana, male teachers made $100 annually while women earned only $60. See
Eighth Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, of the Territory of Montana, for the Year 1886
(Helena: Fisk Brothers, 1887), 28.

22
    For Clarke’s various residential addresses during this period, see the holdings of the
Helena City Directory
at the MTHS. For her visits to the Sanders home, see journal of James Upson Sanders, JUS, MC 66, box 2, folders 1–5.

23
    Martha E. Plassmann, “A Double Heritage,” MTHS, Martha E. Plassmann Papers, MC 78, box 4, folder 18.

24
    Letter from Henry [last name unknown] to Helen P. Clarke, 11 Jan. 1884, MTHS, HPC, SC 1153, folder 2.

25
    A careful consideration of Clarke’s Piegan name, including its spelling, pronunciation, and meaning, is in Jack Holterman, “The Homing Bird: The Story of Helen Clarke,” unpublished manuscript in author’s possession. Another variation offered by the Blackfoot scholar Marvin Weatherwax is “Comes Walking from a Distance.” Author interview with Marvin Weatherwax, Oct. 2006.

26
    This explanation appears in multiple sources, the earliest of which is an undated obituary (presumably from 1923, the year of Clarke’s death) in
The Grass Range Review, which can be found in MTHS, Helen P. Clarke, vertical file
(cited hereafter as HPCVF). See also letter from David Hilger to Mrs. Lou Stocking Stewart, 28 March 1934, HPC, SC 1153, folder 1.

27
    For the report of Nathan’s death, see letter from George Heldt to Francis [should be Helen?] Clarke, 18 Sept. 1872, MTHS, HPC, SC 1153, folder 2. See also clipping from Isabell Lewis Tabor,
Great Falls Yesterday, Comprising a Collection of Biographies and Reminiscences of Early Settlers
(Helena: Montana Historical Society Library, 1939), found in MTHS, Malcolm Clarke, vertical file; and
Helena Weekly Herald,
26 Sept. 1872. More than 125 years later, Joyce Clarke Turvey, Nathan’s grand-niece, located his grave near the town of Ulm, Mont., and erected a memorial on the site. See
Glacier Reporter,
17 Dec. 1998.

28
    Rex C. Myers,
Lizzie: The Letters of Elizabeth Chester Fisk, 1864–1893
(Missoula, Mont.: Mountain Press, 1989), 107. Helen’s devout Catholicism may also have concerned Lizzie Fisk.

29
    Geoffrey C. Ward,
The West: An Illustrated History
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1996), 302. For a recent retelling of the engagement, see Nathaniel Philbrick,
Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn
(New York: Viking, 2010).

30
    See Elliott West,
The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009).

31
    Letter from L. W. Cooke to commissioner of Indian affairs, 7 March 1895, National Archives and Records Administration (cited hereafter as NARA), Bureau of Indian Affairs (cited hereafter as BIA), Record Group (cited hereafter as RG) 75, letters received, box 1183, file 13968.

32
    See Ariela J. Gross,
What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America
(Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2009), 223–30; and Peggy Pascoe,
What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009), 7–8. As Gross explains, some scholars of the day disagreed with this assessment, most notably the pioneering anthropologist Franz Boas, who argued in his 1894 study
The Half-Blood Indian
that hybridization actually produced stronger—not weaker—offspring. For more on the emergence of scientific racism as it applied to Indian peoples in particular, see Brian W. Dippie,
The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy
(Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 1982).

33
    
Great Falls Daily Tribune,
5 July 1914.

34
    For Sanders’s derisive nickname, see Clark C. Spence, “The Territorial Officers of Montana, 1864–1889,”
Pacific Historical Review
30, no. 2 (May 1961), 125. Sanders did achieve his own political success when in 1890 he was appointed to serve as one of Montana’s first two senators (though he lost his bid for reelection in 1892).