Subject: Re: MtMan-List: Just tossing out an idea, ,would like some feedb
The subject of Rendezvous at Bent's Old fort is quite a subject. I would
like to add to Don and Phyllis message: The second Rendezvous held at the
recreated Bent's Fort was held in the winter of 1977-78. I was there along
with Many Hats from Iowa, and a now defunct buckskinning club from Denver.
The temperature that New Years weekend was down around 10 below. The Denver
club started a fire in the fort council room and burned the mantle piece on
the front of the fireplace. Then there were summer Rendezvous held there up
through the middle 80s. We got to do things in the fort in those days that
we would never be allowed to do today. I have slept in several rooms
throughout the fort it is truly a religious experience. I believe that St
Vrain's room is haunted. By 1989, the fort had had several problems with
excessive use of alcohol by participants, fighting, and one man chased his
girl friend with a loaded pistol. One drunk fool fell off the ramparts one
night into the plaza. etc. The gunpowder ban came about after the loaded
pistol occurence. Gun powder is still used at other NPS sites?. Living
history was slowly taking over from the buckskinning view as the direction
for the fort to go. Winter Christmas celebrations were held there and my
wife and I participated once. I portrayed Wm Bent and my wife got to play
her Great Great Great Grandmother Owl Woman. It was great. Now-a-days I
believe a buckskinners Rendezvous would not be allowed as the view of the
NPS folks is that they want the participants to be as authentic as possible.
They also don't want the liability problems associated with drunken
buckskinners roaming the fort at night. As to the family Reunion? We held a
Bent Family reunion at the fort in the summer of 1987, Most of the Bent
family Native American descendants were there, close to 3000 people. A few
of the white family descendants were also present. I was there because of my
wife's connection to the family. Craig Moore was the person in charge of the
Bent Family Reunion. It was a grand affair. We have great memories. We also
got to see the location of Bent's New Fort farther east. It is in ruins but
it would be worth rebuilding if the money could ever be obtained. I hope
that helps some.
Michael Branson
- -----Original Message-----
From: Phyllis and Don Keas <pdkeas@market1.com>
To: hist_text <hist_text@lists.xmission.com>
Date: Wednesday, May 27, 1998 9:06 AM
Subject: Re: MtMan-List: Just tossing out an idea, ,would like some feedb
>Yes, they used to have a voo in September at Bent's. Then they did some
>changes and one of them wqas no shooting. Thios from the big boys in DC.
>After the changes which were hard to swallow by most, the rendezvous was
>dropped. Now it is just living history events.
>
>DON AND PHYLLIS KEAS --- PROPRIETORS OF THE NADA TRADING COMPANY
>
>LODGEPOLE wrote:
>>In a message dated 98-05-26 20:16:56 EDT, you write:
>>
>><< > Was at Bent's Fort a couple years ago and had a discussion about
>>whether or
>> > not they had any rendezvous there.
>>
>> That is strange...I remember some big events in the early fall at Bents
>Fort.
>> What ever happened to those. They started around 1980.
>>
>> Linda Holley >>
>>
>>
>> Dunno Linda, just know what they told me when I was there.
>>
>> Longshot
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>RFC822 header
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------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 08:44:16 -0700
From: "P. Amschler" <buckskinner@mailcity.com>
Subject: MtMan-List: Men of The Cloth
I have seen a lot of differnt posts on everything from teflon patches to Indian sign. Now I have a question that may or may not draw the ere of a few people but it is one that I hope will cause some good lively posts. AND this has everything to do with the list. ok here we go
Knowing that the church of Rome sent many missionaries to the Indians and in towns it was common to find at least one church, has any one ever seen a accounts of pastors (maybe as we know them today) going into the mountians to preach at vous?
I know that once the white man moved into indian lands they gave the missionaries free run of the place to see if they could turn the savage to God hence to the white ways hence the destruction of the native life style and the tribes. But in studing the topic I have onle seen one time where preachers went to the Mountian Men. That being in 1800 on the French trading post.
Paul Amschler
- ---
amschlers@mailcity.com
Get your FREE, private e-mail
account at http://www.mailcity.com
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 09:21:55 -0700
From: Roger Lahti <lahtirog@gte.net>
Subject: Re: MtMan-List: Indian Sign Language
Gary;
I'm surprised you are not aware of the Powell Valley Long Rifles muzzle loading
club in your area. They a meeting on tuesday evenings to practice ISL and the two
main movers and pushers are Margret and George Pusant,(sic). Contact the Club at
PVLR, PO Box 187, Fairview, OR. 97024. I can't give you a phone #, sorry. Georg and
Margret are also active in the Columbia R. Party, NW Brigade, AMM. I'm sure they
can be of help.
Good luck,
YMOS
Capt. Lahti
Clerk, Wilson Price Hunt Party.
Gary Bell wrote:
> Longtrail,
>
> I live in the Portland OR area and would LOVE to find a sign language group to
> learn and practice with!
> I suspect that this topic will interest others on the list, and have replied
> there instead of offline. I have a bunch of Boy Scouts that would also be
> interested in learning of such an opportunity. If you would like to reply
> offline catch me at: micropt@gte.net otherwise, perhaps you might agree with
> me that there are some possibilities for other list subscribers to connect with
> this opportunity and you would be willing to post a means of connecting with
> this group online.
>
> On a related but separate topic I find myself wondering about list contributors
> who might be my neighbors, or who might be in some place I am going to visit;
> and I certainly recall reading a lot of traffic about who lives where. My
> question / challenge: Is there any way we can post our locations and means of
> contacting us on the list or the website, without violating the individual's
> needs to be private and safe from SPAM and other email varmints? This appeals
> to me as a new thread on our list, or perhaps Dean might already have solved
> the issue and I simply didn't figure it out yet!
>
> Night Heron (formerly Gary Bell, NoName and various other Mountain and put-down
> names)
>
> Longtrail wrote:
>
> > >Ted A Hart asked if anyone still used American Indian Sign Language.
> > >
> > >A Lakota medicine man who attended one of the Fritztown Free Trappers
> > >rendezvous said he and the Lakota use some ISL in some of their
> > >ceremonies.
> > >
> > >Iron Burner
> >
> > Concerning Native American Sign Language. There is a group of people in
> > the Portland area who, weekly, hold a meeting, and have for 10 + years, to
> > learn the Native American Sign language. Some of the people are AMM while
> > I believe, others are not. To attend a rendezvous with them is like being
> > from another country as they often communicate via sigh language. NOT that
> > they are conceided in their knowletdge. If you've taken time to learn then
> > you will know what theyare saying, if not then, you might feel"left out"..
> > I heard them discussing a time when some of them were visiting a location
> > where there were many Native Americans, as my friends used the traditional
> > sign language, the "elders" recognised what they were saying and were
> > amazed to see the "old ways" used. Especially by Whites. So there are
> > people who take the time and effort to learn the Native American sign
> > language and use it at rendezvous as it would have been used during the Fur
> > Trade Era by Native Americans. Longtrail
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 10:44:46 -0600
From: agottfre@telusplanet.net (Angela Gottfred)
Subject: Re: MtMan-List: Indian Sign Language
My husband and I tried to learn Indian Sign Language when we first began
reenacting a few years ago. Quite frankly, I wasn't too keen on it, and we
gave up after finding a number of problems in expressing ourselves. Then,
this March, we participated in a reenactment at Fort Edmonton Park of the
bicentennial of the first trading between the HBC and the Ktunaxa (Kootenay)
people, which led to the establishment of Rocky Mountain House the following
year, and David Thompson's crossing of the Rockies several years later.
A number of Ktunaxa people had come from British Columbia to participate in
the reenactment. We had time for a long chat together before the reenactment
began, and found that we shared some common problems. For example, we agreed
that most people don't appreciate/understand their history, too many folks
think their ancestors were not very smart, &c &c. Then we all got our kit
together & we reenacted the trading ceremony. To our surprise, the Ktunaxa
portraying the Interpreter didn't speak Ktunaxa ; instead, he and the
"Kootenay Chief" (unfortunately, the names of the historic Ktunaxa people
were not recorded in William Tomison's journal) conversed in Indian Sign
Language, which the Interpreter translated to English.
This reignited our interest in ISL, and Jeff & I started studying it again.
Now we're having lots of fun. The main problem was that the first time, we
didn't know what to say! There was no modern vocabulary in the book we were
using, for words like 'phone' and 'drive', and we encountered some major
problems with tenses... Now we don't even try discussing modern things;
instead, we talk about historic events, try to tell each other historic
stories in sign, and we've figured out how to convey tenses (at least to
each other!) After looking (very briefly!) at whether we should use the
grammar of Native languages (Cree, Blackfoot, & Sarcee all seem to have a
different sentence order from the subject-verb-object that we use in
English), we decided we'd have to stick with English--because we already
knew it!
One of the things that I'm finding helpful is to remember certain fur trade
expressions, which seem to be literal translations of Native expressions.
For example, journals show that Natives measured distances not in miles, but
in how long it took to cross them--how many nights were slept in journeying
between, say, Edmonton House and Rocky Mountain House. So we didn't even
bother to look up the sign for 'miles' (and there probably isn't one anyway).
My impression (and I'm just a beginner) is that ISL was/is a sort of
well-developed pidgin language : it doesn't enable people to converse as
well as they would in their mother tongue, but it does enable two people who
don't speak the same language to communicate very effectively.
How do other folks use ISL? How have you solved some of the problems? For
example, since we couldn't find signs for "he", "she", "they", or "it", we
just keep repeating the names of the people or thing that we're talking about.
Your humble & obedient servant,
Angela Gottfred
agottfre@telusplanet.net
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 12:25:21 -0700
From: Roger Lahti <lahtirog@gte.net>
Subject: Re: MtMan-List: Indian Sign Language
Dear Angela;
Oh how I wish I could put you in touch with Margret and George, (re:my previous
post to Gary) and how I wish I were closer to them myself. They rattle off ISL to
each other like it is their first language. I attended one of theor classes at our
Brigade Territorials last spring and just barely got started but they have a
unique way of teaching and make it surprisingly easy to learn. I'm sure you would
gain some great insight into how to make practical use of ISL with their help.
We also have members of the NW Brigade that are quit fluent in Chinook Jargon, the
trade language of the Pacific NW and particularly the Columbia R. country from the
mouth to who knows how far up stream. I have only periodical exposure to either
language but would also like to learn to be more fluent in ISL. I think the only
way I will get fluent is to inlist my wife as you both have done and as George and
Margret do.
I asume that you have and use Willeam Tomkins' Book "Indian Sign Language". That
is the reference that I have at my disposal. I notice that there are signs for
'he','she', and, 'they' but not for it. I remember Margret saying last spring in
her class that ISL is a living dinamic language and based on pantomine so when
there is no sign for what you want to say, it is generally accepted in thier
circle to make up a sign that is recognized as visually discribing what you want
to convey.
Again, my appologies for not being of more help but I must thank you for getting
me jacked up to get started again. My strong recomendation is that you contact
Margret and George through the PVLR club at the address I gave Gary.
Let me know if I can be of further service to you.
YMOS
Capt. Lahti
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 15:20:59 -0600 (CST)
From: mxhbc@TTACS.TTU.EDU (Henry B. Crawford)
Subject: MtMan-List: Horsehair dye
I'm looking for a good way to dye horsehair, Native and/or modern. Any
suggestions?
TIA,
HBC
*****************************************
Henry B. Crawford Curator of History
mxhbc@ttacs.ttu.edu Museum of Texas Tech University
806/742-2442 Box 43191
FAX 742-1136 Lubbock, TX 79409-3191
WEBSITE: http://www.ttu.edu/~museum
****** Living History . . . Because it's there! *******
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 15:51:21 -0500
From: Glenn Darilek <llsi@texas.net>
Subject: Re: MtMan-List: Men of The Cloth
P. Amschler wrote:
>
> Knowing that the church of Rome sent many missionaries to the Indians and in towns it was common to find at least one church, has any one ever seen a accounts of pastors (maybe as we know them today) going into the mountians to preach at vous?
As far as Catholics, Father deSmet (sp?) was in the Horse Creek
rendezvous area of the Green River, but I don't think it was at a
rendezvous. Someone correct me untill I can get home to my meager
library.
As far as Protestants, of course we have Henry Spalding, Gray, Whitman,
and Narcissa Whitman, who I believe was a preacher in her own right.
They were at the 1836 rendezvous, and maybe some other. Check Dean
Rudy's on line AMM library for some diaries of I think Spalding and
Whitman.
Joe Meek reported a humorous anecdote for one rendezvous. One of the
preachers above was giving a Sabbath sermon at a rendezvous. The
service was well-attended by mountain men until a small group of buffalo
appeared in the distance. At the sight of the buffalo, the mountain men
bolted, favoring the hunt for meat over the quest for salvation.
Iron Burner
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 18:26:16 EDT
From: <ITWHEELER@aol.com>
Subject: Re: MtMan-List: Indian Sign Language
In a message dated 98-05-27 15:57:52 EDT, you write:
<< lahtirog@gte.net (Roger Lahti) >>
i would like to know the sign for iron tounge. or where i could get it. as
there a man in the hood that is deaf mute and i cant converse with him maby i
should not bother him but my nature is to explore new ground all the time
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 18:40:57 EDT
From: <ITWHEELER@aol.com>
Subject: Re: MtMan-List: Indian Sign Language
In a message dated 98-05-27 13:51:50 EDT, you write:
<< agottfre@telusplanet.net >>
ive ben fired up about this isl for a long time as there is a man in my n-h
thats is deaf mute . i would like to tell him my name is iron tounge that
walks. again ag as if said to all of my friends in list if i have ofended you
withmy crass coments please for give me . im getting more adept at this
computer being self tought and com -ileterat spelling and dangerous to a fault
whit which button to push im getting better. im also dislecsicic spelling .
didnot know tel a few years what was rong with me. i still have problems with
geting the letter in the right order. se you later iron tounge that walks ---
jerry wheeler
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 16:03:05 -0700
From: Dale Nelson <dnelson@wizzards.net>
Subject: Re: MtMan-List: Men of The Cloth
P. Amschler wrote:
has any one ever seen any accounts of pastors (maybe as we know them
today) going into the mountians to preach at vous?
Paul,
Protestant missionaries include Dr. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, the
Reverand and Mrs. Henry Spaulding, and William Gray whom I believe was a
lay preacher. They were at the Green River Rendezvous of 1836, and were
on there way to establish missions with the Nez Perce, and they held
church services at the rendezvous. I don't know of any in 1837, but in
1838 there was Elkanah Walker, Cushing Eells, and Asa Smith and their
wives. In 1839 there were three more missionaries, Reverend and Mrs.
John Griffith and Mr. and Mrs. Asahel Munger. I don't know the name of
the third. Then in 1840 there were three more protestant's, the
Reverends Harvey Clark, P. B. Littlejohn, Alvin Smith and their wives.
All of the above held services at the rendezvous, and they were
traveling on to Oregon to settle and establish missions. In 1840 there
was also a Catholic Father, Pierre Jean de Smet. He went on to
establish a mission with the Flatheads in what is now Montana. Gowans
in "Rocky Mountain Rendezvous" is where I got this information. Gowans
quotes from a letter DeSmet wrote. "On Sunday, the 5th of July, I had
the consolation of celebrating the holy sacrifice of mass sub dio."
This took place at the rendezvous. I've also read somewhere that he was
very disappointed with the French for letting their religion go, and he
held confession at the Vous. I'll bet he got his ear full at that one.
I would have to agree with you that missionaries probably had something
to do with some Indians changing their life style, but before you paint
them with new age ideas and politically correct BS I wonder which had
the most effect destroying their culture, Christianity or whiskey and
disease and crooked traders helped by a crooked US government. DN
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 18:35:25 -0500
From: Jeff Powers <kestrel@ticon.net>
Subject: Re: MtMan-List: Bow and Arrows
On 1998-05-24 hist_text@lists.xmission.com said to kestrel@ticon.net
>X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; U)
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>Sender: owner-hist_text@lists.xmission.com
>Precedence: bulk
>Status:
>Does anyone know how far back the bow and arrow goes here in North
>America? It would seems from the archaeological record of
>arrowheads that they must go back quite a ways but I don't recall
>ever seeing any dated info on bows that have been found in ancient
>burials. Would the points on atlatl (sp) darts be any different
>that those used on bow launched arrows?
>Dennis
ATLatl points are the same as arrow points as far as I've seen.
Net-Tamer V 1.08.1 - Test Drive
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 19:36:28 EDT
From: tedhart@juno.com (Ted A Hart)
Subject: Re: MtMan-List: Indian Sign Language
I, for one, would like to meet another people of like mind in learning
ISL as I already know American Sign Language (my native language). I
once watched a foreign deaf movie in which a deaf man who knew 30 deaf
sign languages (from countries he had visited across the world) and he
said that an average deaf person can learn the basics of the other sign
language in less than 3 days and about a week more then that person would
be able to chat completely in that language. Interesting because hearing
people have a harder time learning speech probably becuase of the
difficulty in "teaching" one's tongue how to speak it.
