Early Days in the Forest Service Volume 4

CHIEF PAUL CHARLO - 4 ELK AND 12 DEER
By I.V. Anderson

On January 1, 1940, I was assigned as Assistant Regional Forester in charge of Wildlife Management under Regional Forester Evan Kelley. One of the wildlife problems of that time was excess population of deer and elk. This resulted in overuse of the land and caused range depreciation and winter die-off.

The Flathead elk herd was estimated at approximately 5,000 head. The herd was very much under-utilized. The range, particularly on the South Fork of the Flathead and on the White River, was badly overused. This, of course, was due to the remoteness of the country, the terrain and the abundance of escape cover. The Thompson River and Fisher River deer herds, located on the old Cabinet and Kootenai Forests, respectively, were very much under-utilized, so the range suffered serious degradation.

These problems are serious in some areas today, and will continue to plague public wild land managers because the multiple-use management of wild land is not and never will be an exact science. Dude ranchers and dude hunting had not developed sufficiently to take care of the surplus from the herds.

The future looked dim. So, why not give the nearby Flathead Indians special dispensation to take a specified number of elk and deer from these areas of overuse on a permit basis in order to get the game herd in balance with the range? I thought we owed it to them after the way we had shoved them around, in violation of the Treaty of 1855.

I discussed the matter with Regional Forester Kelley. He endorsed the idea, said we hadn't done much in the way of relieving the overuse of game ranges and that this was worth a try. I then told my story to Joe Severy, who was then a member of the Montana Fish and Game Commission. Joe was chairman of the botany department of the University of Montana. His paramount personal interest was in the general field of wildlife.

We rolled the idea around a while and agreed that I should make the contact with the Indians. Joe was to discuss the matter with the Fish and Game Department and with the other commissioners.

My contact with the Indians was Aeneas Granjo, Chief of the Flathead Tribal Council at that time. I had met Aeneas several years previously in Arlee when I was looking for someone to make me a pair of Indian moccasins. I had accumulated several deer hides and had told Aeneas I would give him the hides for a good pair of Indian moccasins that would fit me. "Yes," said Aeneas, "we make you a good moccasin. My woman best moccasin maker of the Flathead. My moccasins were a long time in coming, but when I got them they were a gem of Indian art. I still have them. From then on, whenever I found an extra deer hide I dropped it off at Granjo's place in Arlee.

We had many discussions about the Indians hunting the Thompson River and Flathead country. Over the years Aeneas had taken many parties over the old Indian trail into the South Fork of the Flathead via Pyramid Pass. Granjo endorsed my proposal with as much enthusiasm as the average Indian displays to the white man. He agreed to bring Chief Charlo and others who were interested into Missoula to see me.

Several weeks passed by, and I thought he had forgotten. One day as I opened my office door to enter, I was greeted by the strong, smoky buckskin smell of an Indian tepee. There to my left, sitting in a row of chairs reserved for callers, were Chief Charlo, Aeneas Granjo and Ninepipes.

Neither Charlo nor Ninepipes would speak in English. Granjo acted as their interpreter. I spent the next 2 hours in the most interesting powwow of my life. It took us about an hour before I had gained the confidence of Charlo and Ninepipes to the extent that they were willing to open up and tell me exactly how they felt.

Charlo started out on the exodus of his tribe from the Bitterroot in 1891. Next, from his shirt pocket he pulled the original parchment copy of the Treaty of 1855 made with the Indians at Council Grove, near Missoula. Once again I heard the story of the earth being the mother of the Indian, that it produced their clothing, their cover and their food. He pointed to that part of the treaty that said "...as long as the grass grows, as long as the river flows...," etc. He told me the tribe had dwindled to not more than 35 or 40 full-blood families that still clung to the tribal custom of the annual hunt. He told me that each of these families needed at least 4 elk and 12 deer per year to furnish their needs for meat and clothing. Granjo in his turn pointed out that if these Indians were granted a special limited license, it would mean a drain of only 160 elk and 480 deer out of the over-populated area of the Flathead and the Fischer, Thompson River country.

This meeting gave me something to go on. I reported back to Joe Severy. He told me that his discussions with the other commissioners favored further investigation of the proposal. To further acquaint the public with my proposal, I arranged for Chief Charlo and Granjo to appear on the program at one of the annual Western Montana Fish and Game Association banquets, held at the Elks Club. Charlo appeared in all the regal splendor of an Indian chief—eagle feathers, bonnet and all. Charlo repeated the speech made previously to me in my office, while Granjo interpreted. It really made a big hit as entertainment, but I could read in the faces of my fellow sportsmen that there were many skeptics. Not many of my fellow Americans were yet ready, even partially, to right the wrongs that had been inflicted on the Flathead Indians after the Treaty of 1855.

Nevertheless, we went ahead with further discussions with the Flathead tribe prior to presenting the matter to the Montana Fish and Game Commission. Granjo arranged a meeting for us with the tribe at the Moiese Council house. This was a memorable meeting. The council chamber was about 30 x 50 feet. After the necessary formalities, Severy and I stated our proposals. We were seated at a table with chairs in the middle of the room, alone with the members of the tribal council, the Flathead Indian Agent, the interpreter and a few others. There were a few chairs on one side of the hall for those who wished to sit on them and a section bare of anything for those who wished to sit on the floor. The floor by the east wall was occupied by blanket squaws who sat like graven images, never uttering a word to one another, but listening intently to all that was said. An Indian interpreter stood beside each Indian speaker.

Aeneas Granjo, chief of the tribal council, opened the meeting with a brief introduction, saying he hoped it would result in more and better hunting for older Indians on the reservation. In typical Indian English, Granjo eloquently outlined to the long-hairs on the blankets the prospects of a better hunting ground. This was interpreted in Salish.

One Indian speech was most noteworthy. It was given by a long-haired, moccasined, blind Indian whom I recall as Moses Chouteh. Like all American Indians, as well as those of us who profess Christianity, he began with the creation. These may not be his exact words, but I am sure they express his message accurately:

"Many, many, many snows ago, when the Great Spirit made the earth, so long ago only Mother Earth knows. From the ground there sprang the first Salish people. The earth is my mother, and from her comes all the things her children need: food, shelter, clothing, and all the other essentials of life ...

As he proceeded, the interpreter began to leave the monotone he was using and entered into the oratory of the speech. He had heard this speech many times before. The speaker went on to say, "The Flathead Indians lived in peace with other tribes for so many snows that the older chiefs could not remember when they had been on the war path. Then the white man came. Some Indians became sick and died from new diseases the medicine men had never seen. Other tribes of Indians went on the warpath. All Indians were troubled. The Great Spirit had forsaken them; no longer could they hunt the buffalo; other tribes went on the warpath with them because there wasn't enough for all. The white men made wire fences, turned the earth upside down. No longer could it produce the feed for our ponies and grass for the buffalo. Our mother earth was being destroyed, and the Great Spirit would rise some day and strike the white man dead if he continued this desecration. So the white man's great father in Washington sent the pony soldiers out and they signed the treaty at Council Grove, near Missoula. It say as long as the grass grows, as long as the water flows my tribe can hunt all the lands from the Yellowstone to the big bend of the Columbia River. Now we no longer hunt that far. Indian tries to be white man; so now not Indians nor white.

White man turns ground upside down and raise potatoes, cabbage, corn, carrots, many other things Indians never like." (And when he got to carrots, I thought both he and the interpreter were going to throw up; the facial grimace and guttural, throaty sounds sounded like it.) He continued... "old people of our tribe still must hunt to live, so maybe white man let us take 4 elk and 12 deer at times when white man not hunt."

And so the meeting went. After it adjourned, the Indian women filed out quietly, while the men stayed to powwow. While I was talking to Severy, one of the long-hairs who had made a long but eloquent speech in Salish through the interpreter, came over and bent close to my ear and said softly in English, "You think we get to hunt over in South Fork of Flathead?" It was Nick Lassaw, a graduate of Carlisle and football teammate of Jim Thorpe.

When the idea of having the Indians harvest the surplus of elk and deer had been proposed, I was quite aware of the attitude of the average western Montana sportsman toward the Indians would be the same as it had been for 200 years ... mostly negative. Nevertheless, I was bitterly disappointed when Joe Severy advised me that the Montana Fish and Game Commission had unanimously turned down my proposal.

Actually, I never knew exactly what had motivated me to make the proposal in the first place. Perhaps it was to assuage that corner of my conscience that would not forget the time when as a Cub Ranger I had backed up Bill Hill, Montana District Game Warden, with a Winchester carbine while he searched the two Indian tepees on the ancestral hunting grounds of the Salish Indians on the Thompson River: His instructions to me had been, "Shoot the damn squaws if they get the drop on me!"

About 20 years after the Moiese meeting, while I was crossing Higgins Avenue in Missoula, I saw an old longhaired, moccasined Indian. He was coming out of the Oxford Bar. His shoulders were rounded; he was quite stooped; his gait was slow. But it had to be Aeneas Granjo.

He returned my salutation and I said, "Have you hunted the South Fork of the Flathead lately?" "No," he replied. "The trail is too long for an old Indian. Sometime soon, though, I go over there. Nobody use the old Flathead hunting trail through Pyramid Pass any more; beside, not many elk left. White man now hunts all over the South Fork of the Flathead. No room for the Indian."

Then he looked off at the distant mountains, up toward the old Indian trail at the head of the Rattlesnake, and continued, "Once there was a boy named Anderson who tried to get back hunting right for the Indians. He find white man not care about Treaty of 1855. He was a good boy."

There was nothing I could say except "So long" I walked down the street. About a block away, when I reached the old Smith Drug Store, I turned around. There was Aeneas, still standing in front of the Oxford, looking my way. Aeneas had long since gone to the happy hunting ground. I'm sure he has found good hunting. I'm glad that he thought Anderson was a good boy. And I think the old fox knew me even if he didn't let on.