Isaac and I keep our heads down. The librarian likes to jokes that she’s Switzerland, maintaining a neutral state. We’re with her. I have my own thoughts, but I can sympathize with both sides. All the vitriol makes me sad, though.
Thank you very much for the check you sent. It will actually do a lot to help. There’s still a part of me that feels like I should encourage you to give the journals and documents to a larger museum, but a greedy side of me doesn’t want to give them up. I am in the process of applying for a grant to see if we can get some more money to add to the pot?—?I’d love to be able to create an exhibit using the artifacts you have. In the meantime, I’m going to continue to transcribe the journals and scan the images. At the very least we can preserve them and make them available online to researchers or anyone else who might be interested.
And Walt, I’ve enjoyed your letters a great deal too.
With warm regards,
Josh
Lieut. Col. Allen Forrester
May 17, 1885
Our sleeping arrangements are comfortable enough but unlike anything I have experienced before. The dwellings are dug into the earth, their frames of spruce poles covered with bark. Where there are cracks, the Indians have used moss to keep out the cold.
We are given privileged sleeping quarters in the tyone’s larger, more sheltered home. The interior is sparse. There is a fire in the center, with a large hole in the roof directly above to allow sunlight in, smoke out. Along the inside of the walls are benches made of spruce poles lashed with rawhide. These are several feet wide, near to four feet high, on which are spread animal furs. We have been allotted space to sleep on top of them. Indian men, sometimes joined by their wives, sleep along the other walls. An astonishing number of women, children, & dogs then sleep beneath these benches, which are small shelters unto themselves with animal skins providing a curtain about them. Throughout the nights I wake to sounds beneath me?—?a dog growling in its sleep or a mother softly whispering to her child.
Often before we are allowed to retreat to our sleeping benches each night, however, the Indians gather in the hut to tell stories. Though we understand little, it is evident that the Indians know them well. As one tells a story, the others shout out comments, laugh, contradict. Children at times reenact the scenes, yet they are not allowed to interrupt or become too unruly. Myself, I am grateful for the children’s acting, for it allows me to generally follow along. There are battles & hunts, lessons taught. The characters are often both human & animal.
This night I followed enough to understand the first was about a mouse or similarly small creature that shares its food with a starving man. The other was a more gruesome tale from what I could tell, of a woman who betrays her husband by secretly taking a wild beast for a lover. When the husband discovers the treachery, he slays the lover, cooks him in a pot for supper, then sends his bones washing down the Wolverine River.
I wish now that Samuelson had come with us to the village. Communication is hampered. Before supper, the tyone & I tried again with hand gestures, drawing in the dirt, Tillman’s few words. In as many ways as I can invent, I ask him if he will guide us over the mountains. He does not seem to understand. He has his own questions, which I cannot grasp. We all are frustrated.
May 18
This afternoon I mend clothes & packs, ordered the men to do likewise. I have also obtained hides to sew Indian moccasins?—?our leather boots are beyond repair.
I ready us to leave within three days.
Once again I approached the tyone in hopes of communicating with him. We make no headway. It is possible he comprehends my request but is either unable or unwilling to aide us. When I point to the northern mountains, draw a map in the dirt, he studies me with much seriousness. He nods curtly, walks away. I would think him dimwitted if I did not observe him with his own people. He is confident in his dealings with them. Though he does little labor himself, it is evident that he runs all the affairs.
The village seems to be about something, as there is much activity throughout the day. Their tools are of the most basic?—?beat-copper blades, bone needles. Yet they are skilled in their work. The men gather spruce poles & willow saplings. The women scrape raw moose hides, stitch the large skins together, then soak them in the river.
We, on the other hand, are in danger of settling into doldrums. Pruitt remains mostly abed doing nothing. He insists he is too ill to travel, though I see nothing physically ailing him.
It aggravates me to no end how he fails to take celestial readings or work on refining his maps or repair his clothes. I have found it does no good to lose my temper with him, so I spent some time this morning trying to draw him out. I suspect his illness is partly in spirit.