May 1977: Animals and Food

Almost every family in Hays has a pet or pets. Every family has a dog. Most of the dogs run loose. Only a couple are ever chained, ours and Allan Murphy's at the store. His dog is let loose in the store at night to protect it. The dogs tend to stay close to their owners’ homes, but they run around in an area which may be extended if food is scarce. If a female is in heat, there are packs of dogs following her everywhere, and periodically having their way with her. Dogs that run in packs usually fight dogs from other areas if they cross over into other territory.

Most people have more than one dog. Only small dogs are indoor pets. Edith has a Chihuahua. It was attacked by an eagle, and they spent $90.00 to have a pin placed in its leg. Gordon didn't back that decision. He thought about putting it to sleep. Beatrice has two small dogs that stay in her house. Most of the dogs though are large and stay outside.

People seem to have a preference for German Shepherds. They call them police dogs. Most of the dogs are mutts and they are called pot-lickers. There also seemed to be a lot of Huskies and Saint Bernards. It sure appeared to me that a lot of these dogs were finding food for themselves.

The lifespan of a dog is not very old. Many get shot if they bother cows or horses. JJ is notorious for shooting dogs that go near his cows, especially during calving season. He shot his own dog because it was bothering his calves. Some dogs are shot just for the hell of it. Mary said that they had a dog that they really liked, but one night it didn't come home. She found it two months later. Someone had shot it. I asked her why they did it and she answered that they were drunk and shot it just because it was there. Quite a few dogs are hit by cars. Dogs chase the cars on the road, and some get hit that way. Mary said that she hit two dogs backing out of her and her mother's driveway. Gahanab was hit by a truck.

Most of the dogs are considered as pets and they serve no useful purpose. There are a few dogs that are used for hunting. A few people have used them for hunting coyotes. Tom Jones had a couple greyhounds that would chase down the coyotes and kill them. One man had a cage on the back of his pickup. It was rigged so that the doors of the cage would be tripped open when the doors of the cab were open. People consider some of these dogs watch dogs.

While dogs are considered pets, people consider the treatment of our dog very peculiar. We have the only dog that rides in the cab of our truck. They think that is odd. Most dogs run behind the truck, some for miles. When we were sledding, the dogs ran six to seven miles behind us. Or they ride in the back of the truck. Some people, mostly old and the most traditional, still eat puppy. This is eaten only on very special occasions such as Thanksgiving, Christmas or for a special occasion like a hand game.

The Tribal council just passed a dog ordinance. The ordinance requires dogs to receive rabies vaccinations at $5 for the 1st and $10 for each additional dog. Gordon has four dogs, and he said he couldn't afford this and said that he may have to get rid of one or two of his dogs. The dogs must also be chained up and are responsible for any damage done to someone’s property. They must also be registered on the reservation. The ordinance hasn't changed the way things are in Hays. There are a large number of dogs in Hays, and they still run wild.  

There are a lot of cats on the reservation and, as with dogs, they are considered pets. Most of the cats are both indoor and outdoor pets, but cats are most often kept indoors. Most people treat their cats very kindly. Irma's cat is like a member of their family. She keeps a litter box in the hallway, and the cat is also fed cat food. Most people seem to feed their cats. Irma's cat just had kittens, and it had two on Thursday and then one more on Friday. And she really got a kick out of that. Irma is very protective of her cats. She said that she would give the kittens away, but not just to anyone. If a kid came in and wanted one, she wouldn't give it to them. She said she would only give kittens to someone who would give them a good home. She gave her last kittens to Mary and Beatrice because she knew they would take good care of them.  

Female dogs are not necessarily avoided because of the inconvenience of the puppies. In fact, the older and more traditional people may in fact like females to produce puppies for the feasts at the various occasions. Female cats, on the other hand, are not as preferred because they produce an abundance of kittens as some of them run free. Cats serve no special purpose beyond being pets. With the great numbers produced, some people get rid of the kittens. One man told me that he once shot his kittens with a pistol.

A lot but not all families have horses. Traditionally, horses were considered a symbol of wealth, and some of this value system has been carried into the present. It is still considered to some degree a good thing to have horses. Most of the people that own horses also have land either owned or leased and the horses graze on this land. But not all families have a great deal of land. For example, one man in Hays has about 10 horses and he only has land for his house which is 2 acres. That is not enough land for the horses to graze. This causes big problems and bitterness because he often lets his horses loose on other people's land. They graze on other people's land. Sometimes his kids steal food, particularly hay from a ranch south of the reservation. Sometimes they run their horses into the canyon. Today he ran the horses over the mountains and up into BLM land just off the reservation to the south. A lot of people resent this behavior. Gordon, who has four horses, is always complaining about it. He leases about 7 acres for a minimum fee from the tribe, and he's always having trouble getting food for them, especially in the winter. He always says that this guy never gets caught. “But if I let my horses loose and cut fences like that, I'd get caught the first time.” Many other people in Hays feel the same way. Problems like this finally led the tribal council to take some action against the widespread irresponsibility of some people who run horses. The tribe decided to hire brand inspectors to confiscate horses that were on someone else's property. A lot of people applied for the job. They hired four brand inspectors. The brand inspectors go around the reservation and check to make sure that horses are on their owner’s land and they also go out and answer complaints about horses being off their owner’s property. They pick up the horses and they take them to the rodeo arena near the Agency. The Tribe is responsible for the horses while they have them, and they must also feed the horses. Once horses have been taken, the owners must pay $25 a head to get them back and also prove that they have land to graze on. If they can't prove the land is theirs to graze on, the horses are supposed to be auctioned off. I haven't heard that this has happened, and this ordinance has been in effect for the past several months. There have been a lot of horses picked up under this ordinance and the fines in some cases have been very high. The rodeo arena always has horses in it.

The horses are allowed to run freely in the fields to graze and there is very little control over the breeding. As a result, there have been some very unusual and scrawny looking horses around. Some of the ranches have nice horses, but most of the non-ranchers have some very mediocre horses. The family causing issues has several ponies and an albino horse. Because the horses are all over, it takes a very long time to catch them. If someone decides to ride a horse, they have to spend hours finding and catching the horses. In some cases, horses are considered a pet, especially those horses some call ‘kid’s horses’. But they aren't pets like dogs and cats. They are a major source of recreation and a basic part of the workday for many families. As a source of recreation, horses are used in hunting, for rodeo and for enjoyment.

The kids in Hays don’t ride bicycles. Only the main road through Hays is paved with black top. Most other roads are gravel. It’s just not a friendly place for a bike. If the kids don’t want to walk, they ride. All the kids ride, and they often just ride around Hays and in the canyon. Sometimes they use saddles and sometimes they ride bare back. Some kids hunt from horseback in the mountains. Rodeo is extremely popular on the reservation. Both boys and girls, men and women participate in and are spectators at rodeos. The kids train and enjoy practicing for the different events in rodeo.

The horses used to be so much more important as a work animal and as a source of transportation before people could afford to buy cars and trucks on the reservation. Horse and wagon were the major transportation not that long ago. The horse is most important in ranching and is also used to drag timber out of the mountains. The ranchers use the horses all year round and the rancher, and all the kids for that matter, are excellent riders.

One of the more interesting functions of the horse is that it is an easy and rapid source of money. Whenever someone needs some money for whatever reason, it is easy to sell a horse. This happens often.

Gordon has had two unusual pets. He had a male and female eagle for about one year. He had them until they grew quite big, and they left. They started outside and they stayed around the house. He also had a deer they caught as a fawn. It died in captivity. Some people have chickens. Beatrice has chickens. Many of them have died. Kelly Thomas raises pigs. Neither are pets. They are raised for food and for money.

5-6-77  

Edith, Gordon, Dion and Venetia and I were looking at their new puppies. Edith bent down and started counting which ones were male and female. She said that there were two males and four females. She said, “So, we have at least four of them for dinner sometime. We’ll wait until they’re six weeks old. As soon as they start weaning. That’s the best time to do it. Then we’ll fix a big meal for you guys and Mike.” Venetia said that she didn’t want to have any and Edith told her that she didn’t have to.

I’ve written about this before – only the most traditional people ate puppy, and it was only for special occasions. The number of plants and animals that can be consumed safely and for nutrition is enormous. How each society decides from this vast array of possibilities, what is considered food or what is considered a delicacy is an amazing proposition. There must have been a process of trial and error to discover what plants and animals were safe to eat. Deciding what had a good taste and what plants or animals did not taste good is a very subjective process. If it is available, if it provides nutrition and it is safe to eat, it could be considered a possible food source.

Because of the way we learn our own culture, we are very prone to being ethnocentric. We learn our own way of life believing that our beliefs and behavior are natural and right. The corollary is that those who believe and behave differently are ‘not right.’ And this can be observed very easily when it comes to food. The Athabascan peoples called their neighbors Eskimo. This is an Athabascan word that means, “the raw meat eaters.” It is a derogatory term describing how the Innuits eat meat. Innuit means the real people – and it is the term used by the tribe to refer to themselves.

I could compile a list of foods that I grew up with in Ashkenazic (Eastern European) Jewish culture that many outside of my group would find disgusting. This is the case with all groups. In some cultures, eating beef is not permitted and is considered a violation of religious practice. All these perspectives about food are very subjective. Some groups eat insects. Other groups would consider eating an insect as disgusting.

My Lebanese wife, Pauline, used to eat kibbeh. She loved it. It is a Middle Eastern dish made with a mixture of bulgur wheat, minced onions, and finely ground lean meat, typically lamb or beef. It is often served raw. It is considered a national dish of both Lebanon and Syria. As with sushi (the raw variety), I had no interest in it whatsoever. I chose not to eat it because it wasn’t appealing to me, but I didn’t make any judgements about what kind of human being Pauline was because she enjoyed eating raw meat. I work really hard at not being a jackass.  

Such is life. When it comes to people who eat a puppy, I would highly recommend that you keep your opinions to yourself. Please try not to be a jackass. Honestly, it’s not that hard. Thank you.

I’ve written about ethnocentrism twice in the context of the puppy eating thing. I would really like not to have to repeat this explanation every time I refer to the cultural differences in defining food. So, please try to remember these paragraphs and repeat them over to yourself when I describe and show photographs from our puppy dinner.

Gordon and I were looking out the window this morning – north. He said that he was going to have to buy some food for his horses, because they had almost finished off all the grass in the field they were in. He said that he used to lease a field out there (he pointed to a field between JJ’s and the homes in that group – the east boundary was near the mission.) “I leased that field from the tribe, all 45 acres. But I gave it up this year because the neighbors weren’t mending their fences, and their horses and cattle were going back and forth across into my fields.”  

5-7-77  

I went over to Edith’s this morning to see their new colt. They had their mare mated to Tom’s horse (a bay stud). Tom charged them $25 for the stud service, but Gordon said that they couldn’t pay him until the colt was born. Tom came and asked for the money twice, but Gordon kept telling him he’s paying him after the colt was born. “We’ve been waiting for the colt to be born since the middle of April.” I went to the coral behind the house, and the mare was standing with the colt. Dion, Dory, Gordon, Edith and Venetia were admiring the colt. The mare was standing over the colt laying down on the ground and they were keeping Dion away from the colt. Edith said that the horse was born at 7:00 this morning behind Marvin Flying’s house. Margaret watched it and told us about it. Dory and Junior went out this morning to bring the colt and mare into the coral. They led them back very easily. "We had a mare before and with her third colt she really kicked up when we tried to move them into the coral. She really protected it. This mare is letting us go near the colt and touch it. This is her first one. That’s probably why." Dory kept feeling the hooves and saying how soft they were. Edith said it was a female and said she hoped it was going to be a male. "The males are sure better to ride, and we don’t want more horses. The ones we have now are enough to feed." The horses were in the coral. It was dirt and there was no food. Gordon was going to have to find food. Dory kept saying that the colt was all legs and ribs. Then he looked at the umbilical cord and he said, “boy she sure cut the cord good and short.”

Then we went over to see the puppies. Venetia kept putting the mother back with the pups every time she tried to walk out. When we went into the house, Junior said to Venetia, “I hope you’re as good a mother as you want that dog to be.”

5-9-77  

Most of the ranchers on the reservation have been branding and castrating their calves this past week and weekend. JJ was branding his calves on Sunday and today. Socksy was talking about the branding at lunch. She said that Clifford was out branding and castrating the calves this weekend. He got a lot of help from his brothers, cousins and nephews. He had 37 calves. Margaret June said that this was the time for rocky mountain oysters. She said that some people eat them right there. They just take a wire and coil it – they take the oysters and push them into the coils and roast them over the fire. Socksy said she couldn’t eat them. Margaret June said she was once with Henry, and he forced her to try one. She said she didn’t like it and hasn’t had one since. Some people really like them.

5-10-77  

Brian said that there was a man in Hays who had a lot of horses and some of them are good horses. But he runs about 200 horses on a small piece of land. He had an appaloosa stud that was running loose all the time. He was bothering other people’s mares and people were getting mad about it. So, one night after it was dark, some kids went out and roped down the appaloosa, and they castrated it. That was the end of his appaloosa stud.

5-16-77  

At the Catholic Indian Congress meeting, Bernice told me that they lost 18 cows in the past month or so. “We lost a lot of cows during the blizzard. They got caught in the snow and couldn’t eat and got pneumonia. Then last Sunday night one of our cows was killed when it was struck by lightning. We have three calves without mothers and we’re feeding them with a bottle. They’re doing ok.” 

5-18-77  

Gordon said that the new colt would start eating solid food at three weeks old. He moved the colt into the barn to get it out of the rain and cold wind. “As soon as he starts eating food, I’m going to put her on oats. She’ll grow really good and big that way.”

Susie was wearing a chi around her neck today. Mary asked Susie why she was wearing a dog around her neck. I told her that it was Hebrew, and it meant life. Beatrice and Mary really laughed. Mary said, I thought it was a dog, since you guys like your dog so much. I said it was really Gros Ventre, and it means dog. Beatrice really laughed. From our treatment of Gahanab, people really thought we were nuts. There’s that ethnocentric thing.

5-23-77  

At 11:00 this morning, two of the stock inspectors came up to the mission. Six horses got into the mission hay fields and Mike called them. They came right out. They said that we could call them any time we wanted horses or cattle picked up. “If I see horses or cattle trespassing on private land, I can’t do anything about it on my own. Even if I see it, I have to wait for you to contact us before we can do anything about it. We go out and tell people to move out their animals. We give them three days’ notice and then we take them up to the Agency. We know that people cut fences, and we can’t follow them around to see who is doing it. But we have a good idea, and we’ll pick up the horses if we think the fence was cut. People came to the mission to get their horses. The inspector must have given them notice.

5-24-77  

Ray said he was building a horse and cattle coral up at the house. He said he wants to get 30 horses. I’m getting a barn to put them in and I’m going to put stalls inside. Then I’m going to let cattle calve in there – that’s the best way. I’ll put fiberglass into the walls to let in some light. That will keep them warm in the winter. He bought Eddy’s old red building.

5-26-77

Johnny came up to the mission to use the telephone and when he was done, Mike and I talked to him on the steps. He said he had some fencing to do pretty soon. I asked him if he could get some help from SPEDY. He said he could, but they didn’t put in a very long day. “They go home for lunch and by the time they get back, a lot of the day is gone. When we first fenced, we put in five miles of fence and used pitch pine. It doesn’t have to be treated and it doesn’t rot. We used to pay about half of what you pay for a spool of barbed wire, too. You can’t get it cheap. That Japanese stuff is $19 a spool, but it isn’t any good.” I asked him when they started fencing and stopped the open range. He said that the government came in to survey the reservation in 1914 and they started fencing after that. “You know that song, ‘don’t fence me in.’ Well, that guy isn’t talking about me. It’s the only way to make a living. Those cows will roam a long way. Some guys would loose about twenty head a year and they couldn’t find them.” He was going to buy twenty cows about 2 to 3 years old. “I had about twenty cows that didn’t calve, and some of them were dry.”

5-30-77

Mike and I drove up to Davey’s to lend him back his camera that he let us use. Davey was working on his truck when we got there. We stayed in the truck because his dogs were out and not looking friendly. We talked to him the whole time from the truck. Davey started telling us about his dogs. I once had a husky, pure bred. Someone brought him here from Billings. He had no collar on and no tags. They said that they found it in Billings. A lot of dogs get onto the reservation this way. It was a pure breed. It had a tattoo number under his fur on his leg. That’s how you can tell.

Food

Hunting and gathering remained an important source of food for the people who lived on the reservation. The gathering part of the equation was primarily focused on berry picking.

Almost all the families hunted. It was an important form of recreation, but a more important source of meat for the families. Everyone owned more than one rifle. Children learned to hunt at an early age. Mike and I both taught hunting safety through the Montana Fish and Game Department. I’ll save those stories for when they appear in my fieldnotes. Children were able to hunt off the reservation at the age of 16. Tribal members were able to hunt on the reservation any time. Hunting off the reservation was only permitted during the state’s hunting season. People often drove down to the Missouri Breaks to hunt. Families would camp down in the breaks and go out as hunting parties. All ages were involved and both men and women. The most common animals hunted for food were deer and antelope. Elk were less commonly found in our area.

Tom with his antelope (on the reservation boundary) ... hummmm

For many on the reservation, hunting provided the only source of fresh meat. Most of the deer relied on sage as a primary food source. Consequently, deer meat tended to have a very pungent taste of sage.

5-2-77

We were visiting with Gordon and Edith. Venetia came in pulling a big red wagon. Judy Gray’s kids came into the house, too. The wagon was filled with commodity food, canned vegetables, canned chicken and beef, powdered milk, rice, macaroni and canned plums. Edith said that Judy gets commodity food. “We don’t get it because you don’t get so much variety. She had a lot of extra stuff that she couldn’t use so she gave it to us. We get food stamps because you get as much of a variety of food as you want. I like the food stamps more than commodity food. I don’t know why some people get food stamps and some get commodity food. I’m not sure what the difference is or who is eligible for what programs.”

5-6-77  

I went over to Gordon and Edith’s for dinner. I went at 7:00. Edith was making dinner and Gordon was sitting at the kitchen table. I was talking to Edith while she was cooking. She said that she really doesn’t like to cook, and she’s tired of it. I asked her if she ever gets compliments from anyone of her family on her food. She said rarely. The kids were in and out of the house while she was cooking. Venetia sat at the table, and we sat down at 7:30. Edith asked me to say a prayer, and I did. We had steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, fry bread and a fruit salad of fruit cocktail and dream whip together. Gordon, Edith, Dion, Venetia and I were the only ones at the table. The other kids weren’t home. Dion ate only the mashed potatoes and the salad which he called soft. He was eating a plate of plain dream whip when I walked into the house. I asked Edith when Dory was going to eat. She said that Dory doesn’t eat anymore. But he says he eats lunch at school. He wants to get his weight down to look like Glen. We finished dinner and Venetia cleared the table and did the dishes. Then Ryan came in and took dinner. He had mashed potatoes, gravy, fry bread and salad. Edith told him to take meat, but he said he didn’t want any. Edith said, “You won’t ever eat steak. I’ll remember that.” I asked Edith how often they ate like they did tonight. Gordon said that it wasn’t very often lately. He said that when he was working, and bringing home over $300 every two weeks, they would have steak every night. “But you start to get tired of it. When we lived in the log house, we had a freezer, and we used to buy a half of beef. We also used to be able to buy a whole elk. You can’t do that anymore. They also used to like to sell buffalo meat to us, but we don’t get that anymore either. No one likes the commodity chicken. The beef isn’t so bad. We used to get this meat that was in a roll. We called it ‘reservation red.’ You could eat it cold or hot, baked or fried. We used to like that stuff, but we don’t get it anymore." Later, Junior came in and ate dinner. Then Dion started to ask for soft again and he started to cry for it. Gordon gave it to him.

5-8-77  

Cyndee came over and invited me to come over to eat lunch at their house. Ruth called the mission later and had Brian run the message for me to come over to eat lunch. I went over and we had lunch at 1:00. Cyndee and Ruth had fixed lunch; roasted deer steak, gravy, potatoes, corn, bread and homemade biscuits, juneberry soup, coffee and Kool aid. Cyndee said that they call them june berries because the berries bloom in June and the berries come out sometime in August.

5-9-77  

Bruce came up to the rectory. He thanked Bill for lending him the seed. He came up to the mission this afternoon and borrowed a package of corn seed from Bill. He and Ida were planting their garden, and they ran out of seed. “We put in 17 rows of corn and they’re each about 50 feet long. We put in a garden every year. It’s in the yard in front of the house. Around here you can’t plant a garden too far from your house. The kids would destroy and vandalize it. This year we could have planted our garden in April. It was such a mild winter and spring. It was the same way last year. These last couple of years there has been a much longer growing season. You could have planted your garden around March. It snows but it doesn’t hurt the plants any. The frost is really light, and it isn’t so bad. The March snow is usually warm. It’s cold up in the clouds to make snow but it’s warmer down on the ground.”

“We used to have a lot more gardens in Hays, but now people don’t put in gardens as much as they used to. People have let the frost scare them off. You plant your garden and if the frost destroys your plants, then you just start all over again.” Bill said that they’re coming back. That he’s seen more and more gardens around Hays.

Bill's greenhouse was a work of art. Bill was an architect and was amazingly creative and skilled in construction. With the shorter growing season in Montana, Bill's greenhouse made it possible for us to grow vegetables that required protection from frost and a longer growing season, such as tomatoes. He installed a heater to ensure that the greenhouse remained warm enough during freezing weather.

5-17-77  

I told Beatrice that we were going to be having commodity beef and chicken for lunch at the Catholic Indian Congress. She said that she wouldn’t be eating lunch then, because she can’t stand that stuff. She told me that when the government started to give it to them, they got ten cans of it. All the money Jim earned was going for bills. So that’s all they had to eat. She swore she would never eat it again. She said that she tries to make it taste good for the kids at school, but she doesn’t like it at all. They used to get turkey too.

Frank was visiting Susie and I at the trailer. He said that his mother still thinks she’s cooking for all the kids. “She sure makes a lot of food for dinner. She’ll cook up a turkey, ham and other meat because we get a lot of company. She loves company. She says, well, if they don’t like this, they can have something else. I don’t argue with her. But if no one comes, we have all that food to eat.”

5-18-77  

Edith came up to the trailer at 11:00 and invited Susie and I down to their place for lunch. She said she knew we had to be back to school, and that it was almost done. She had a cup of coffee with us before she left. We told her before that we didn’t like commodity chicken, and she told us that she had a good recipe for it. She made a chicken casserole and told us she wanted us to try it. So, we went down to the house.

The table was set for five places. Gordon, Edith, Susie, me and Dion. We had the chicken casserole, peas and macaroni salad (mayo, eggs and relish). Before we sat down, Gordon told Susie that we were eating gopher – Susie told him she already knew it was chicken. He said to me, “one day I’m really going to initiate that wife of yours and I’m going to feed her gopher and puppy and not tell her what it is until after she eats it.”

I asked them if they always had lunch like this and Edith answered an emphatic NO. Gordon said that they usually didn’t eat lunch. We sat down at the table and Edith asked me to say grace. I told her that I said it last time and that it was her turn. Edith said that she and Gordon would say their kind of prayer. I said it was fine. So, she and Gordon crossed themselves and said, ‘in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit.’ Then she said a regular grace over the food and ended the prayer the same way. Edith is very sensitive to Susie and I being Jewish and tries hard not to do anything to offend us. She also believes that we are just as religious as any Catholic and as she puts it – we just have a different faith.

She was open to having Susie and I sponsor her kids at confirmation, and it was only Sister Bart that stopped it.

The chicken was good, and we asked for the recipe so we could also disguise the chicken. She gave us the recipe and said to give it right back because she needed it. It was from the Camp Crier, April 1970. We copied it.

Edith and Susie made plans to pick june berries and choke cherries this summer. She said that the june berries will come ripe this June; toward the end of June. Gordon said that they would need our truck to get to where they wanted to go. “I know a place where the berries are this big” – he pointed to the last joint on his little finger. “We won’t freeze them this year either. That freezer gets shut off” – the electricity in Hays goes out a lot. “The berries get ruined. We’re going to dry them this year. We’ll pick them and put them in paper boxes, so they don’t get crushed and then make patties and dry them. Edith said that they didn’t know how to can. Susie told them that she would teach them. Edith said that we could make june berry syrup together.

5-25-77  

During the wake, Mike asked Camie if there was any more juneberry soup. There wasn’t any. Camie told Mike that she would make him some. Mike said, “I’ll make you a frame for your picture in exchange for some juneberry soup.” Camie said, “that’s a deal.” When Wade died, Clarence painted a large picture and gave it to Camie. She asked Mike to make a frame for it. Camie said she didn’t pick her own juneberries. “Boys around here go up into the mountains and pick berries and then sell them to make money. I put them into baggies and freeze them. I only fill up small bags halfway because I have a small family. Then I can take them out when I need them. I have three shopping bags filled with berries every year.”

Yellowstone Buffalo

The buffalo was sacred to the A’aniiih people. The buffalo was sacred to all the equestrian hunters of the great plains. Every square inch of the buffalo was used for food, clothing, tools, and shelter. For these people, the buffalo was their very survival. Which makes the purposeful, strategic action of the federal government to kill off these creatures such a diabolical and evil act. And we are complicit because this killing was done on our behalf … to force these tribes onto small reservations and to vacate the land that we would all soon occupy. It is one of the most shameful acts committed by the United States of America, and there are so many to choose from.

As the buffalo disappeared and the A’aniiih were forced onto Ft. Belknap, some of the people took up ranching. Beef cattle have taken over the buffalo as a source of food. For the older and more traditional members of the A’aniiih, they considered every square inch of a cow a source of food in the same way they used the buffalo. If you go back to the photographs I took at Ray and Irma’s house when a small group of people were slaughtering and gutting a cow, you might remember Gordon pulling out the entire inners onto a cardboard box that had been flattened out. My remarks about that photograph in my blog referred to ‘a future dinner for the elders.’ All these organs were considered delicacies for the traditional seniors in the community.

Most middle-aged and young people who were far more acculturated were less inclined to eat (or even try) all this organ meat. Gordon and Edith were definitely outliers in this regard. Gordon and the Gone family were more traditional than most middle-aged Gros Ventre. They still considered the organ meat a delicacy. If their children are any indication of the future, younger people would lose their taste for these traditional meals.

Someone once gave us a cow heart. Edith was at the trailer with me, and I was frying the heart meat on the stove to give to Gahanab. First, it only reinforced for Edith (and everyone else in the community) that we had confused this dog with being our child. As previously noted, people had pets, but our treatment of Gahanab was well beyond what most people would consider normal treatment of a pet. Second, Edith was somewhat aghast that I would feed a perfectly delicious meal meant for a human being to our dog.

Because we were so close to Gordon and Edith, we had opportunities to share meals with them that were more traditional. Sometimes Gordon would feed me without disclosing what it really was. For instance, on one occasion, he told me that what was on my plate was fish when it was really stomach or punch. I was a good sport about all this behavior because that is what anthropologists do. Go with the flow is a significant part of the participation in the whole participant observer thing.

Camie was another person who still enjoyed more traditional foods. I previously talked about her bringing me a large plate of marrow guts while Susie was away. And so as to avoid any confusion, marrow guts is pretty much marrow and guts.

What will come in a later blog is the puppy meal we had with Gordon, Edith and Edith’s brother who was there for a visit. That’s a whole other story that I will save for when that comes up in the fieldnotes with photographs included.

The contemporary diet was composed of foods that one found in the grocery store. If you have been paying attention to the foods that I mention that are being served at regular meals, parties and other celebrations, they indicate a very western, American diet. Some people shopped at grocery stores at the Agency, in Harlem and in Havre, which was the metropolis in the area with about 9,000 people. Some people received food stamps. Others were receiving commodity food. The mission was receiving commodity food, so Susie and I were very familiar with all those options.

The commodity foods were excellent quality. The following is my understanding of this program. The US Department of Agriculture purchases food from farmers as a part of its price support program. In a strict market-based system, if the supply is considerably greater than demand, the price of this food should come down. We need farms and farmers. This kind of fluctuation of prices would put many farms out of business because they wouldn’t be able to survive all these ups and downs in their incomes. Farming is a very expensive proposition. To keep farms and our long-term food supply as stable as possible, the government comes in and purchases these crops to keep prices stable as an artificial type of demand. And then this food gets processed and put into non-descript packaging. A can of corn comes in a non-descript can with the word “corn” on it. At the time we were eating these commodity foods, the meats available were beef and chicken, shredded and in cans. I remember the vegetables were corn, beans and peas. I also remember powdered eggs, rice and macaroni that came in bags. While the quality of food was excellent, I also remember that it was loaded with fat and carbohydrates. We got a block of cheese. We didn’t get any fresh fruit or vegetables.

Another important food program on the reservation was the WIC program – Women, Infants and Children. Pregnant women and children up to the age of five were eligible to receive coupons to “purchase” certain foods that were paid for by the federal government. These foods included such things as milk, eggs, breakfast cereal and juice. Many families on the reservation received WIC benefits. After Susie became pregnant during our second year in Hays, she became a WIC recipient. I think that’s the participant part of participant observation.

And as a totally unpaid political announcement … for all of you who are addicted to the notions of self-reliance, independence, pull yourself up by the bootstraps bullshit and who consider the word socialism a swear word, the United States of America has never been a purely capitalist economy. Price supports are socialism. It is a great program that keeps family farms alive, and we want them to thrive. For so many reasons we do not want one gigantic industrial farm producing our food. But socialism is just that. So, we ALL need to accept that if it is okay to support one class of people in America with this kind of support, it is okay to support other classes of people who need our help. Amen.

There were contemporary foods eaten in the community that I would consider distinctly “Indian.” June berry and choke cherry soup was likely eaten in similar form in the traditional A’aniiih culture. Lots of women went berry picking in the spring and summer and the berries were used to make soup. We also made syrup with berries with Gordon and Edith. Some of the older women would dry meat to make pemican. Often times this ground and dried meat would be mixed with dried berries. I also heard about pemican, and dried berries being mixed with some kind of fat or Indian shmaltz.

Beef soup was also widely served during feeds at pow wows and other special occasions. For the Catholic Indian Congress, we had a ten-gallon tub that was filled with water. We boiled the meat from an entire cow (minus the organs) in that ten-gallon tub. As was the custom, we added Veg-all, macaroni, tomatoes and onions to the soup. The different cuts of meat aren’t sorted out of the mix – everything goes into the tub from the choicest cuts to the most undesirable parts. Both the soup and the boiled meat are served.

A community favorite was “Indian tacos.” The base of an Indian taco is fry bread. The easiest way to describe fry bread is that it is yeast bread made with white flour and fried like a donut. And it is scrumptious. An Indian taco is fry bread on a plate with beef, tomatoes, lettuce, onions (optional) and beans piled on top.

Edith taught Susie how to make fry bread. We invited Gordon and Edith to our place for Indian tacos. We put everything together, but we didn’t have beans. When we served the taco to Gordon, he looked at us as though we had purposely thrown the Torah to the ground and watched it bounce. We really got an earful from Gordon about serving an Indian taco without beans. As noted, I don’t remember much, but I sure do remember this scolding.