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Editor’s Note: This is continued from last week’s Part 1... I found myself at the center tree now, in Nolan Yellow Kidney’s Sun Dance lodge. I was there wondering why they’d asked me, the newcomer white guy, to help tie up the prayer cloths and leave the tobacco offerings at the base of the tree. With all the people watching I was nervous as I carefully wrapped the many-colored cloths around the aspen trunk. Then, while trying not to cover the photo of a woman’s face that someone had put up, a voice behind me quietly said, “It’s okay, you can c...
Lime green lichen grew between the hooves, shreds of faded hair and rawhide still clung to them and gnaw marks from mice and grizzlies had long ago turned gray against the white bone. I was surprised that the elk hoof bundle was still there. Time had changed the forest, and through the falling snow, I had taken a while to find the tree in which it hung. The old No. 9 lookout phone wire had held tight though and there it was. I remembered back to the day I’d hung it up, was it really almost 40 years ago? The bull had known I was on his trail. I...
Back in 1898, near the headwaters of the Missouri River in what is now Glacier National Park, my great grandfather found and drilled the first oil wells in Montana. He also found the school teacher in Altyn (who was 33 years younger) and on their windy mining claims on Swiftcurrent Creek, they raised 17 children. It was a hard life, but as my grandfather (#13) used to say, “It was a good place to get the stink blowed off ya.” Now fast forward 120 years and go down the Missouri River 1000 miles to Standing Rock, N.D. Last winter my daughter Jess...
