8
NOVEMBER 1, 2005
Smoke Signals
NOVEMBER 1, 2005
Smoke Signals
Part 3
Tiriba! Huninidunig
HUNTING & FISHING
continued from front page
roamed, and much Grand Ronde
history still lives.
It is a tribute to the U.S. For
est Service that they have taken
the time to look into the real his
tory, and to reinvigorate Grand
i : ' y
: ; LZ
' Traditional Tribal Language Specialist and Tribal
member Bobby Merrier looks at historic Native artifacts
while Tribal Veteran Steve Rife tries to capture the moment
on film at the Museum of Natural History.
Ronde people with the richness
of it all.
Since the Europeans came and
conquered, this rich history of
hunting and gathering, of fishing
and drying and sharing has
named the Indian lifestyle. And
without seeking ownership, that
is all they have sought to retain
or regain from the dominant so
ciety that trumpets justice and
freedom above all.
Like so much of the promised
land that many in other societies
still hope to find, for Indians
across this country, it is the land
all once shared with plant and
animal life, that was lost with
the onslaught of Europeans and
the signing of one-sided treaties
that still were never honored.
The stories of Indian life, of
hunting and
fishing, have
made great
memories for ev
ery generation
of the Grand
Ronde peoples.
Focused on the
life and death
matter of killing
enough food to
eat, the Grand
Ronde people
often lived out
side the law just
to survive.
It was a
smaller deal to
be arrested than
to lose the
truckload of fish
coming back for
the people at
home. It was a
smaller deal to
complete a beau
tiful basket that
today is sought
by museums for
its rarity and
workmanship
than it was to
trade that bas
ket for school
clothes for the children.
And you look at the world
through the eyes of an Indian
hunter, and it was not a race for
the best scope on the market. It
was putting together whatever
guns were on hand or whatever
you could borrow, to bring
home dinner.
The "Sourcebook on the Indi
ans of the Willamette Valley"
called The Kalapuyans, de
scribed hunting before the Euro
pean onslaught, "with a bow ar
row & spear or trap for deer."
The book was written by Harold
Mackey, Ph.D. and recently re
published and updated by the
Tribe's Culture Department in
cooperation with the Mission
Mill Museum in Salem.
"Trap consisted of rope placed
where deer would jump over log
or hill. One end of rope tied to a
bent pole which was left bent by
means of another rope. As soon
Orville Leno, who has passed
on, "said he didn't see a lot of
change after termination, from
1954-60. They didn't go out and
purchase hunting licenses, they
just did it like they'd always
done it.
"The biggest change was in
the rifles, from open sights, j
then along came scopes
where you could aim out 2-300 j
yards. When you went with
a dog, it was a small area and
Wfc (ititmv ttmrt attetw &vnm mw
as deer was caught, the rope hold
ing the pole broke, the tree shot
up and tied the deer's neck fast.
The rope ended in a loop and was
hanging suspended, so as to catch
the deer's neck.
Drawing: The Kalapuyans
-o
"Other traps: A thick stick
sharpened on one end placed so
as to pierce the body of a jumping
animal." (See drawing above.)
For fishing, "With spear & trap.
Water dammed; trap of vertical
sticks interlaced with bark.
Round. Spear 8-10 foot long
pole. Tip made of hard-wood or
bone. Speared also at night with
torchlight."
We don't have the step-by-step
timeline about how tools and
weapons changed, but we do
have enough information to
guess that changes were practi
cal in nature, and that the idea
of culture came from practice
rather than the reverse.
"It's always been about going
out and killing a deer to eat it,"
said long time long time hunter
and Tribal Council member Reyn
Leno. "That was the culture."
Leno's father, Tribal Elder
the dog went in and you
had a deer coming out
there." He pointed across
the atrium of Gover
nance Building. "It was
close in."
Scopes came on as
Tribal members became
more prosperous. Like
wise, when the bow and
arrow came oacK into
vogue for some Indi
ans, they piqued the
interest of a more
prosperous Indian.
Tribal Elder Marvin
Kimsey said he never
used a bow because it was
hard enough to get a deer
with a rifle, but in recent
years, Tribal member
Bryan Langley went for the
bow, in part, because a bow
dealer opened up nearby.
Tribal member Shonn
Leno hunts with a rifle,
bow and arrow and even a
muzzle loader. He turned
to the muzzle loader, he
said, "mainly just to pro
long my hunting season."
Ironically, though many
more weapon options are
available today, Indian
hunting on the over run
Trask unit makes the pros
pects more limited than
ever. Of course, today, In-
4
.' j i r . r". :.v 3 o,fit'?i. - . vt 2
lit. --v. v-r- , if, I
ho ' ( - f
- J -1
A deer grazes in the grass outside the Tribe's Governance Center.
Back In The Day Hunters (1 to r) Roger Aaron, Lonnie Leno, Dustin Leno,
Shonn Leno, Reyn Leno and the late Orville Leno pose with their elk in the late 1 980s.
Pi
r
i
T 4,
dian hunters can use
their Indian tags in the
Trask and then if Oregon
tags are available, they
can hunt the rest of the
state, like any other
-s, hunter, but as always, the
laws have been designed to
drive the Indian commu
nity apart rather than en
courage the sense of
community
that has
held it to
gether for so
long.
The Trask
unit is not
even set
aside for In
dians. It is
also available
to all hunters
and is one of
the close in
areas for much
of Portland and Salem, the
state's big population centers.
In addition, with all of the
Tribe's 300-plus available tags
assigned to the Trask unit,
over-hunting the area is al
most guaranteed. And even
the 300-plus tags available to
the Tribe are a drop in the
bucket for the group that has
tripled in size since the origi
nal allotment of tags was made
in 1986.
A simpler life is described
by almost every Elder.
Community Elder LaVerne
Hosford recalls hunting with her
late husband, Tribal member
Fremond Bean, and another
couple. Vernon "Barney"
Reibach and his wife, Minnie.
"We'd put Barney on a stand
(with a rifle) and Minnie and I
would stay by watching, and
item djlramv mmml wtfit mlto it
W . w ' . -M W XV . 1
1 I 1 . J.. I ; 1 .
r.'Vi; ys PM:
Fremond would get the deer
coming up that way," . said
Hosford. "It would go toward
Barney. We'd shoo it and holler
at it to go toward him."
A lot of times, said Hosford, "it
was just Fremond and I. We used
to ride horses and we'd go a lot
of times, we'd go back out Cosper
Creek and come out on the For
est service road, and camp at a
place called, "Thorpes Cabin,' and
hunt from there. Or we'd go on
horseback going toward Little
Hebo by the Cole Ranch there
was no road up that way then, and
you had to go by horseback.
When Hosford talks about the
parts of the old days that she
misses now, it was the camping.
Talking with Elders, it seems
like everything caught or killed
in those days was put on the table
after being fried in shortening.
Tribal Elder Nora Kimsey, now
96, the oldest
living Elder,
raised her fam
ily on such fried
foods, said
Marvin Kimsey,
her son, and to
day, she still
can't get used to
the Tribal Com
munity Center's
offerings,
though they look
good and are
planned as
healthy meals.
So much of the Grand Ronde
Indian history takes place be
yond the scope of the law. Cus
toms and traditions have grown
around the difficulty of being
hunters and fishers under a gov
ernment that had assigned them
to be farmers; of living in a com
munity where each family
watched out for another, while
the government set up program
after program to push Indians,
each separately, off the reserva
tion and into the mainstream.
The whole battle for survival
was a fight against a government
that aimed to wipe Indians out as
a culture. The failure of these ill
conceived plans has been almost
universal with only a legal trail
remaining, a legal trail without
a touchstone in Indian life. B
IBM 4
I
Tribal Council member Jack Giffen,
Jr. in 2004 at the Musuem on Natu
ral History in New York City.