Smoke Signals
10
7
Dun
rowing up
rand Ronde
By Brent Merrill
W:
hen she was a little girl,
Grand Ronde was a very
different place than it is now.
So much has changed.
As the Tribe gets set to enter the
new frontiers of the year 2000, Grand
Ronde tribal Elder lla Dowd is ready,
too.
lla, 90, has seen the world change
from horse drawn buggies and gath
ering around the radio to supersonic
transport and Web TV.
"I can remember the first automo
bile I saw," said lla. She said a man
used to come by her parent's farm and
buy beef from her father, lla said he
had a truck and that was the first car
she had ever seen.
"Once in a while a car would go
through Grand Ronde," she said.
"Where we lived we didn't see cars
very often and we traveled in a wagon.
I can remember there used to be a
store at Kissing Rock and we did our
shopping there at the Butler Store. My
sister would drive the buggy and if we
were good she would take us shop
ping with her. I would get to go every
once in a while.
"It overwhelms me to watch TV," said
lla of technology today. "It has
changed so much during the time that
I first started watching. I remember
we always had a phonograph (record
player). We always had records.
"I had Velma to thank for that be
cause she borrowed the record player
from my aunt and uncle," said lla.
"She (Velma) always had a lot of
gumption to do things like that."
lla said her sister Velma would also
borrow her aunt and uncle's ice cream
maker and they would make home
made ice cream.
Always so polite and courteous, lla
has been an example of how wisdom
can be passed down from generation
to generation and family to family.
"My mother went to a (Catholic)
sister's school that was out here," re
membered lla. "All the kids her age
went to the sister's school. My father
went to that school, too."
Next came a government school and
her two older sisters (Gertrude and
Pearl) went there for an education.
"They (her sisters) were 12 and 14
and they went to the government
school and it was a boarding school
also," said lla. lla said her sisters were
very close to home even though they
attended the boarding school. They
wondered why they couldn't just come
home because it was so close.
"They (Gertrude and Pearl) used to
get to come home once a month," said
lla. "After that school was abolished,
then we had a public school."
lla began going to school at the pub
lic school and never had to go to the
boarding school. She said she felt
lucky to get to go to public school.
"We got to be at home," said lla of
her school memories. "I think we lived
like children do today. We had chores
to do because we lived on a farm. I
can remember we did a lot of playing.
We had a lot of non-Indian neighbors
and we had a lot of fun with them."
lla said she and her sisters realized
they were Indian when they were
young, but she said it didn't seem to
matter neighbors were neighborly
and friends were friendly.
"We had parties together when we
were growing up and we went to the
same church."
When she was a little girl, lla said
her mother always dressed her in nice
clothes.
"She wanted us to look like all the
other little girls. We would dress just
the way our neighbors dressed."
She said there were more Indian kids
in school than non-Indian kids when
she first started going to school.
lla remembers playing a game she
called "fruit basket upset." She said
the children would play in their big front
living room with other kids in the neigh
borhood. lla said one of the ways to tell the
generations apart is to look at what
younger people eat today.
"I remember my mom telling us the
different food they had to eat. lean
remember my dad telling us about eat
ing acorn bread. They would crush it
up and make a kind of bread.
"If my dad killed a squirrel, my mother
would take ashes from the wood stove
and cook it over the wood stove," said
lla. "Then, she (lla's mother Hattie)
would pull all the hair off of it and pre
pare it for a meal."
lla said her sister Eula (Petite) used
to love to eat the squirrel supper, lla
didn't get as excited about squirrel as
Eula did.
lla is one of 14 children born to John
and Hattie (Sands) Hudson and, she
said', like all families, she fought with
her sisters growing up.
"We had to defend ourselves," she
said of the days when she and her sis
ters were children. Smiling like a mis
chievous child, lla said she thinks she
was pretty good at standing up for her
self against her older siblings.
"Mom had 14 children and 7 of us
lived," said lla of her family.
lla said her older brother Manuel
used to practice sweat lodge when she
was a little girl.
"I remember when we moved down
to what used to be called New Grand
Ronde. He (Manuel) built himself a
little sweat lodge down by the river. We
had cousins that lived nearby and they
would go and sweat."
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FOUR HUDSON SISTERS. Clockwise, from top: Eula Petite, lla, Velma
Mercier, and Martha Mercier in a photo taken in the mid-1980s.
lla said she was about 1 5 years old "My mother always said if you do one
when her brother built the sweat thing for a man they won't forget it and
lodge, so that would have been in the they will want you to do it all the time
early 1920s, and Manuel was a for them," she said of her parents,
schoolteacher in Grand Ronde for The Hudson sisters got pretty good
many years. at milking cows and they watched the
Her sister Gertrude was one of her buckets to see who was the best at
favorite people and helped to raise miiking.
her brother and sisters. "We judged by the foam," said lla.
"Gertrude never lived anywhere but "Eula was good, she was a milker. She
here (in the Grand Ronde area) all of always had a thick foam on top of her
her life," remembered lla. Gertrude bucket."
did live in Otis for a while when her lla said her sister Martha was her
husband delivered the mail in Otis, favorite sister.
'Then, we would only see her once in "She was always kind of strong; a
a while, maybe once a year. She little spitfire," lla said of Martha. "We
(Gertrude) was a fun person. She was really got along pretty good because
always like a mother to us." I realized it would be easier to just get
lla said her sister Pearl was always along with her. I remember my brother
close to her heart, but never lived very used to say, 'lla if you can wrestle with
close by. lla said Pearl lived in Martha and throw her down I'll take
Oceanlake (now known as Lincoln you to a show,'" said lla with a smile
City) and they used to go and visit her that made you realize she was enjoy-
for dances and different events like ing the memory,
that, lla said when traveling by horse lla said Manuel would watch, as she
and buggy, Oceanlake was a long way would wrestle Martha to the ground,
away at that time. lla said she only got Martha down be-
"We always stayed at her place cause she was bigger,
when we went to the coast," said lla. And she said the victory was in get-
"Then, later she (Pearl) moved to ting to go to the nearest movie the-
Rose Lodge and eventually back to ater in Sheridan with her brother.
Grand Ronde. She was always good "To me, looking over our lives, Velma
to me." wasn't a fighter she was more the
lla remembers that her sister Velma kind who would give you a tongue
was known as the family cook, lla said lashing. I think we quarreled more
cooking was never her thing, but she than we fought really. Eula was big
said she got good at doing the dishes ger than Martha was and I think Martha
because everybody did their part. realized she would have to keep Eula
"I became the dish washer and I still in her place. So they did their fight
to this day don't mind washing the ing. It was a lot of fun anyway."
dishes," said lla. "I never did learn to There was a moment of sadness in
cook very well. I learned to milk the the interview when lla talked of being
cows because we lived on a farm, the only living sibling of her family.
Velma couldn't milk the cows so she "Each time when you lose them you
became the cook." hurt, you know," said lla.
lla said her father thought he had it lla's father, John, worked as a farmer
made because "his girls" knew how and for the railroad, and the family did
to milk the cows. continued on next page