Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson
Speaker 2: and I'm Holly Frye. This is part two of our
Speaker 2: episode on Morning Dove, who is also known as Christine Quintasket.
Speaker 2: But I'm going to say it's a surprise two parter,
Speaker 2: both in that when I started writing it, I didn't
Speaker 2: expect it to be two parts, and also in that
Speaker 2: at the beginning of part one, I don't think I
Speaker 2: said that it was going to be a two parter.
Speaker 1: But it is. Surprises abound.
Speaker 2: Yes. So she was a novelist, an ethnographer, and an activist.
Speaker 2: And in part one we talked about some context involving
Speaker 2: the Confederated tribes of the Callville Reservation and that context
Speaker 2: had just a huge impact on her family and the
Speaker 2: indigenous nation they were part of. And then we also
Speaker 2: talked about her early life and her introduction to a
Speaker 2: man named Lucullas Virgil McWhorter, who was sort of her editor,
Speaker 2: literary agent and friend. Where we left off, she had
Speaker 2: written a book and they thought that book was going
Speaker 2: to come out soon, but it was not published yet.
Speaker 2: She did a newspaper interview in nineteen sixteen that described
Speaker 2: the book as soon to be published that publications turned
Speaker 2: out still to be years away, but we are picking
Speaker 2: up where we left off in nineteen sixteen. In part one,
Speaker 2: we talked about how Mourning Dove often earned a living
Speaker 2: by doing agricultural work, and at times she also supported
Speaker 2: herself through domestic work. In nineteen sixteen, while working as
Speaker 2: a housekeeper in Pulse, in Montana, she developed a serious illness.
Speaker 2: It was described as influenza and inflammatory rheumatism. She was
Speaker 2: sick for weeks and she thought she was going to die,
Speaker 2: but eventually an aunt came to look after her and,
Speaker 2: in her words, quote doctored me up with Indian medicines.
Speaker 2: She wasn't well enough to go back to the kind
Speaker 2: of physical labor involved with agricultural or domestic work, so
Speaker 2: she got a job working as a teacher at a
Speaker 2: school for indigenous children in all of our British Columbia.
Speaker 2: She had a sister who lived nearby, and she was
Speaker 2: able to live with her sister. Eventually she used some
Speaker 2: of her pay to buy her own typewriter. After a while,
Speaker 2: she also built a small shack adjacent to her sister's house.
Speaker 2: It's kind of her writing shack. She contracted the flu
Speaker 2: again during the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic and was hospitalized
Speaker 2: for two weeks. In nineteen nineteen, she got married to
Speaker 2: Fred Galler, who was an enrolled member of the Callville
Speaker 2: tribe and also had Winnatchi and white ancestry. This relationship
Speaker 2: seems to have been less tumultuous than her first marriage,
Speaker 2: but at times it could still be a struggle. They
Speaker 2: often worked together as migrant farm laborers, which was exhausting
Speaker 2: and sometimes very painful work for very little money. It
Speaker 2: also seems like he didn't get the way of her
Speaker 2: aspirations as a writer, but he didn't really support them either,
Speaker 2: and they had their own internal conflicts in the relationship.
Speaker 2: She especially did not like.
Speaker 1: It when he drank.
Speaker 2: By this point, she had known Luke Ellis mcwarter for
Speaker 2: almost five years and their working relationship had evolved into
Speaker 2: one of mutual trust and support. She described him as
Speaker 2: having an Indian heart and he was really her biggest
Speaker 2: source of encouragement as a writer. Often he was the
Speaker 2: person she turned to in order to keep herself focused
Speaker 2: and working on her writing.
Speaker 1: There were still some challenges, though. We mentioned in Part
Speaker 1: one how mcworder was much older than she was, and
Speaker 1: as a white man, he had a much different type
Speaker 1: of power and access to different connections than she did.
Speaker 1: Beyond that, while they were both focused on Indigenous stories
Speaker 1: and on her novel, which was focused on Indigenous characters,
Speaker 1: they were coming at it from very different perspectives. Aside
Speaker 1: from the obvious difference in their ethnicities and their life experience,
Speaker 1: mcwarter was really approaching things as an ethnographer while Mourningdove
Speaker 1: was a storyteller. They also had some huge differences of
Speaker 1: opinion regarding language. McWorter wanted Mourning Dove's English to be
Speaker 1: as polished as possible so that her work might dispel
Speaker 1: stereotypes of Indigenous peoples as ignorant and uneducated, but sometimes
Speaker 1: she would kind of look at his edits or material
Speaker 1: that he had written on her behalf and basically say
Speaker 1: she could not understand it without a dictionary.
Speaker 2: At the same time, the two of them did really
Speaker 2: learn a lot from one another over the course of
Speaker 2: their work together. As they worked through Indigenous stories and
Speaker 2: Mourning Dove's fiction, he learned more about Salish languages In
Speaker 2: the community's worldview, and she learned from him about how
Speaker 2: to communicate with English speakers in English. In nineteen twenty one,
Speaker 2: while visiting a museum in Spokane, Washington, Morningdove saw a
Speaker 2: mounted specimen of the the American Mourning Dove, the bird
Speaker 2: you might remember from part one. She had originally been
Speaker 2: spelling her pen name Mourning MLR and ing. In a
Speaker 2: letter to mcwarter, she said she had made a sad
Speaker 2: mistake with that spelling, and from that point on she
Speaker 2: spelled her name with the U.
Speaker 1: In Mourning Mourning Dove's novel Coogawea the Half Blood, a
Speaker 1: depiction of the Great Montana cattle range, was published by
Speaker 1: the Four Seas Company in Boston in nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 1: It had taken so long to get the book published,
Speaker 1: and four Seas was concerned that it would not turn
Speaker 1: a profit, so it required Mourning Dove and McWhorter to
Speaker 1: provide part of the funding for its printing. For his part,
Speaker 1: McWorter was ultimately not very impressed with this publisher, and
Speaker 1: he would refer to them as four pubbles. Kogiea is
Speaker 1: very very approximately the word for chipmunk in the Incialchen language.
Speaker 1: The first syllable in that language especially, is a little
Speaker 1: different in a way, I have trouble replicated as somebody
Speaker 1: who doesn't speak that language. And the plot of this
Speaker 1: novel was inspired in part by a story called Chipmunk
Speaker 1: and Owl Woman. The story would also be part of
Speaker 1: Mourning Dove's book Coyote Stories, which will be talking about
Speaker 1: more in a bit. This story is a Western romance,
Speaker 1: and in a lot of ways it's about identity. Parts
Speaker 1: of it were inspired by Mourning Dove's own life and experiences.
Speaker 1: The main character, Kogawea, had both white and indigenous ancestry.
Speaker 1: It lives both between and in both of these worlds.
Speaker 1: The book explores the differences between her life and experiences
Speaker 1: and that of her sisters, one of whom marries a
Speaker 1: white man and lives mostly in a white man's world,
Speaker 1: and another who is raised in indigenous traditions by a grandmother. Overall,
Speaker 1: the novel's indigenous central characters are the most fully realized.
Speaker 1: Many of the white characters are more one dimensionally good
Speaker 1: or bad, and there are also stereotyped cowboys who mostly
Speaker 1: provide comic relief. Those differences between Mourning Dove's and McCarter's
Speaker 1: approaches played a huge part in this book, and a
Speaker 1: lot of that happened after the last time Mourning Dove
Speaker 1: saw it. Before it went to print, she had really
Speaker 1: been focused on writing a romance one that she thought
Speaker 1: would humanize Indigenous people to white readers when they read it.
Speaker 1: But McWorter really wanted the book to be an ethnographically
Speaker 1: accurate portrayal of her culture and to include more history
Speaker 1: and ethnography, so he added in notes on ethnography and
Speaker 1: other material, including a section on Indigenous music that was
Speaker 1: apparently plagiarized from another author named Anna Hurst. A lot
Speaker 1: of the literary discussion around Kogaweya has focused on mcworter's
Speaker 1: involvement with it and his influence on it. Even at
Speaker 1: the time, there were people who claimed that Mourning Dove
Speaker 1: had simply put her name on a white man's work,
Speaker 1: and McWorter did make meaningful changes to her work. A
Speaker 1: lot of articles about this book and about their relationship.
Speaker 1: Quote one passage from a letter that she wrote to
Speaker 1: him in nineteen twenty eight, after she had read the
Speaker 1: published book, she said quote, I felt like it was
Speaker 1: someone else's book and not mine at all. In fact,
Speaker 1: the finishing touches are put there by you, and I
Speaker 1: have never seen it, so that sounds terrible.
Speaker 2: But the lines before those sentences put it in a
Speaker 2: kind of different light.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: I have just got through going over the book Kochieeah
Speaker 2: and am surprised at the changes that you made. I
Speaker 2: think they are fine, and you made a tasty dressing
Speaker 2: like a cook would do with a fine meal. I
Speaker 2: sure was interested in the book, and Hubby read it over,
Speaker 2: and all the rest of the family neglected their housework
Speaker 2: till they read it cover to cover. Later on, in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty three, she wrote him another letter, Uh, this
Speaker 2: has some interesting typos in it, so we're going to
Speaker 2: read it as written.
Speaker 1: Quote. I frequently think how fortunate that I met you.
Speaker 1: My book of Kogaweyah would never had been anything but
Speaker 1: the cheap, full skep paper that was written on if
Speaker 1: you had not helped me get it in shape. I
Speaker 1: can never repay you back. I am sure, while we
Speaker 1: are here in this old planet too poor.
Speaker 2: That you can tell from that particular excerpt the kinds
Speaker 2: of things that she still struggled with a little bit
Speaker 2: in English, even at this point in her life. A
Speaker 2: lot of things that you read that quote from letters
Speaker 2: sort of edit all of that out, and so it's
Speaker 2: harder to get a sense.
Speaker 1: Of like how she actually wrote.
Speaker 2: We will talk about her other work and her continuing
Speaker 2: relationship with McWhorter after a sponsor break. Morning Dove's novel
Speaker 2: was not the financial success that she and Lucaalas mcwarter
Speaker 2: had hoped that it would be, and then after it
Speaker 2: was published, most of her income continued from doing agricultural
Speaker 2: and domestic labor a lot of the time, with her
Speaker 2: and her husband working together harvesting things like apples and hops.
Speaker 2: To be clear, she had critics in both white and
Speaker 2: Indigenous communities, but publishing this book was also something that
Speaker 2: a lot of people saw as an accomplishment and something
Speaker 2: to be respected. After it came out, she became an
Speaker 2: honorary member of the Eastern Washington State Historical Society and
Speaker 2: a lifetime member of the Washington State Historical Society. White
Speaker 2: newspapers noted that she was the first Indigenous woman to
Speaker 2: publish a novel and cited her as an authority on
Speaker 2: indigenous subjects. For example, a nineteen twenty eight article that
Speaker 2: was reprinted in a lot of newspapers was about the
Speaker 2: history of smoking and whether the plant known as kinikinik
Speaker 2: was the same as tobacco. It described her as resenting
Speaker 2: the idea that indigenous people had migrated to North America
Speaker 2: from China or Japan, saying, quote, neither of these people
Speaker 2: nor any other smoked until they learned it directly from us.
Speaker 2: It went on to paraphrase her as saying that quote,
Speaker 2: the finding of pipes and burial mounds are no proof
Speaker 2: to her that another race occupied this country before her own.
Speaker 2: The newspaper also quoted from Kogawea and its descriptions of
Speaker 2: Indigenous smoking practices and uses for pipes. This idea of
Speaker 2: prehistoric migration to the Americas from Asia is going to
Speaker 2: come up again in a moment, and it's an idea
Speaker 2: that is still contentious or even offensive among indigenous communities
Speaker 2: whose oral histories placed them on these continents since time immemorial.
Speaker 2: This also actually ties into recent archaeological research into fossilized
Speaker 2: footprints that date back to before migrations from Asia are
Speaker 2: believed to have happened. In the case of footprints found
Speaker 2: in White Sand's New Mexico, research suggests that they are
Speaker 2: at least ten thousand years earlier, before migration and from
Speaker 2: Asia is believed to have happened. Mourning Dove also started
Speaker 2: doing a lot of work as an activist, advocating for
Speaker 2: other Indigenous people and for people who made their living
Speaker 2: doing agricultural labor. The Wild Sunflower Indian Women's Club in Omak, Washington,
Speaker 2: promoted Indigenous arts and crafts, and Mourning Dove served as
Speaker 2: its president for three years. In nineteen twenty eight, she
Speaker 2: was one of nine founders of the Eagle Feather Club,
Speaker 2: which was focused on the social welfare and equitable treatment
Speaker 2: of Indigenous peoples. She was also continuing her work trying
Speaker 2: to preserve Indigenous stories and traditions, which she called folklores
Speaker 2: with an es on it, which I kind of love
Speaker 2: as her term for this. And this work had some complexities.
Speaker 2: The stories that she was collecting are part of a
Speaker 2: sacred body of cultural knowledge, and there are protocols around
Speaker 2: how and when they should be shared and who they
Speaker 2: should be shared with. Different indigenous nations all have their
Speaker 2: own protocols preferences around these things, and it seems like
Speaker 2: there were people who had no concerns at all about
Speaker 2: sharing their stories with Mourning Dove. Like her, a lot
Speaker 2: of them were afraid that this knowledge was going to
Speaker 2: be lost otherwise, but other people seem to have been
Speaker 2: more reluctant, and some of Morningdove's letters suggest that she
Speaker 2: thought people wouldn't be willing to talk to her if
Speaker 2: they knew their stories were going to wind up in
Speaker 2: a book. Mourning Dove definitely wasn't the only person trying
Speaker 2: to preserve and record indigenous cultural knowledge and heritage in
Speaker 2: this part of North America at this point. Another was
Speaker 2: James Alexander Tate. Tate had been born in the Shetland Islands,
Speaker 2: and after immigrating to Canada, he had married a Lake
Speaker 2: of Pomaic woman named Lucy Artco. He became immersed in
Speaker 2: Lake of Pomac knowledge and traditions, both as a spouse
Speaker 2: and as an anthropologist and ethnographer. Anthropologist Franz Boas also
Speaker 2: hired Tate as part of the American Museum of Natural
Speaker 2: History's Jesup Expedition, which ran from eighteen ninety seven to
Speaker 2: nineteen oh two and involved teams in both the Pacific
Speaker 2: Northwest and Siberia recording languages and cultural practices on both
Speaker 2: sides of the Bearing Straight. The stated purpose of this
Speaker 2: expedition was to gather evidence that indigenous peoples had migrated
Speaker 2: to the Americas from Asia across a land bridge, but
Speaker 2: for Boas, the priority was documenting these cultures as they
Speaker 2: were increasingly threatened by the kinds of assimilationist and destructive
Speaker 2: government policies and other actions that we have been talking about.
Speaker 2: Mourning Dove became immensely frustrated when she learned that Tate
Speaker 2: was paying people in the area five dollars for their stories.
Speaker 2: From her perspective, he was an outsider, and she also
Speaker 2: could not afford to do the same, so she was
Speaker 2: frustrated about the fact that he was paying people for
Speaker 2: their stories and that he was doing this work at all.
Speaker 2: But eventually she found more common ground with Tate. Like McWhorter,
Speaker 2: who she'd been working with a really long time at
Speaker 2: this point, he had to this part of North America
Speaker 2: from somewhere else, and he wasn't indigenous, but he did
Speaker 2: have a sincere interest in preserving indigenous cultures and in
Speaker 2: advocating for indigenous peoples, including advocating for indigenous land rights.
Speaker 2: In August of nineteen twenty nine, mccorter's wife Anne died.
Speaker 2: They had been married for almost thirty five years, and
Speaker 2: he was understandably devastated. His working relationship with Mourning Dove
Speaker 2: had developed into a mutually supportive friendship over the years,
Speaker 2: and she was worried about him after his wife's death.
Speaker 2: Within a few months, though, they were hard at work
Speaker 2: on the collection that would be published as the book
Speaker 2: Coyote Stories in nineteen thirty three. By that point, McCord
Speaker 2: had introduced Mourning Dove to his friend, Heister Dean Gooey
Speaker 2: known as Dean, who was initially brought on to work
Speaker 2: as a proofreader. Dean became more deeply involved with the
Speaker 2: book over time, though, along with his wife, Geraldine, who
Speaker 2: was one of the first people to graduate from the
Speaker 2: University of Washington's anthropology program.
Speaker 1: While they were all.
Speaker 2: Working on this book, Mourning Dove was also continuing her advocacy.
Speaker 2: In nineteen thirty she was one of the founders of
Speaker 2: the Calville Indian Association, which worked to get money for
Speaker 2: land claims that had never been paid for. In nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty three, Congress passed the Emergency Conservation Work Act as
Speaker 2: part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, trying to address
Speaker 2: the economic hardships of the Great Depression. This established the
Speaker 2: work relief program known as the Civilian Conservation Corps, and
Speaker 2: then legislation was passed establishing an Indigenous division of the
Speaker 2: Civilian Conservation Corps not long afterward, But initially most of
Speaker 2: the foreman and supervisors who were hired for this division
Speaker 2: were not Indigenous. Mourning Dove and the Calville Indian Association
Speaker 2: fought for these positions to be filled with Indigenous workers
Speaker 2: as well, with Mourningdove saying that she would take the
Speaker 2: matter to the Bureau of Indian Affairs if it wasn't resolved.
Speaker 2: Over the span of a year, the number of Indigenous
Speaker 2: managers in the Corps rose from a little over forty
Speaker 2: percent to about sixty percent. She was also doing a
Speaker 2: lot of public speaking for schools, colleges, community organizations, and
Speaker 2: the like, often sharing her culture, traditions and stories with
Speaker 2: a mostly white audience. She typically spoke wearing her traditional
Speaker 2: Callville clothing, including a beaded buckskin dress and moccasins. We
Speaker 2: have talked in the past about Indigenous writers and speakers
Speaker 2: who adopted a costume as part of their stage presence,
Speaker 2: in part because that seemed to be a way to
Speaker 2: get the interest of white audiences, but this was not
Speaker 2: a costume for Mourning Dove. These were her clothes, and
Speaker 2: she wanted to normalize what she wore and show that
Speaker 2: it was an everyday part of life and not something
Speaker 2: that should be exoticized or discouraged. Mourning Dove's book Coyote
Speaker 2: Stories was published in nineteen thirty three, so named because
Speaker 2: the figure of coyote was central to most of the
Speaker 2: stories in the book. The title page read Coyote Stories
Speaker 2: by Mourning Dove Humishuma, edited and illustrated by heisterdine Gui,
Speaker 2: with notes by L. V. McWhorter, Old Wolf, and a
Speaker 2: forward by Chief Standing Bear Oglala Sue. This book sold
Speaker 2: really well and it was reprinted within a year. It
Speaker 2: would have been impossible for one book to capture a
Speaker 2: fully authentic recording of these stories. Although the figure of
Speaker 2: coyote is present in the stories and traditions of many
Speaker 2: indigenous peoples, especially across the western part of North America,
Speaker 2: the stories themselves have nuances among different tribes, nations, and bands,
Speaker 2: even down to the level of versions that have been
Speaker 2: passed down within individual families. They are stories to have
Speaker 2: a long history of being told aloud for specific reasons,
Speaker 2: at particular times of year or for specific events. It's
Speaker 2: just not something that a book can fully encompass. But
Speaker 2: beyond that, this book was a lot different from what
Speaker 2: Mourning Dove and had envisioned when they first met one
Speaker 2: another eighteen years before. Rather than a straightforward recording of
Speaker 2: Indigenous cultural knowledge, under Guy's direction, it had evolved into
Speaker 2: a work that was meant more as bedtime stories for children.
Speaker 2: This was not what McWhorter had originally had in mind
Speaker 2: at all. In addition to wanting to preserve the stories themselves,
Speaker 2: he was worried that presenting Indigenous cultural knowledge as children's
Speaker 2: stories would reinforce the damaging stereotypes that Indigenous people were childlike.
Speaker 2: Mourning Dove had also removed parts of the stories that
Speaker 2: she described as ugly. At the same time, though working
Speaker 2: on this book was an act of cultural preservation in
Speaker 2: a different way, Mourning Dove and her collaborators had lengthy
Speaker 2: and wide ranging discussions about language, down to find nuances
Speaker 2: about how different words were used in different contexts. They
Speaker 2: had extensive conversations about the best ways to render and
Speaker 2: oral tradition spoken in Salish language into English print. Along
Speaker 2: the way, they essentially created a dictionary that included pronunciations, definitions,
Speaker 2: and notations about usage, and this work went on to
Speaker 2: influence McCord's own work as an anthropologist and an ethnographer.
Speaker 2: Traveling around the plateau to collect these stories had also
Speaker 2: given Mourning Dove the opportunity to interact with a lot
Speaker 2: of people, to build connections with them and find out
Speaker 2: what their concerns were, and this connected to work that
Speaker 2: she did on behalf of John Collier, Commissioner of the
Speaker 2: Bureau of Indian Affairs, which we will talk about after
Speaker 2: a sponsor break. To briefly recap something we talked about
Speaker 2: in Part one. Over the latter half of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 2: much of the US federal government's policy toward Indigenous peoples
Speaker 2: involved forcibly removing people from their ancestral homelands to reservations.
Speaker 2: This was a violent, destructive, and genocidal process, and it
Speaker 2: often followed active warfare. So treaties signed between the US
Speaker 2: and indigenous nations formally ended a conflict, with the indigenous
Speaker 2: nations ceding land to the United States in exchanged for
Speaker 2: an end to the fighting and then reservation land somewhere
Speaker 2: else on the continent. The General Allotment Act of eighteen
Speaker 2: eighty seven, also called the DAWs Act, shifted the United
Speaker 2: States approach from one establishing reservations and removing people to them,
Speaker 2: to one of allotment and assimilation. Reservation land was broken
Speaker 2: up and allotted to people individually, with purportedly excess land
Speaker 2: allowed to be sold to non indigenous people. This was
Speaker 2: again deeply destructive, with indigenous peoples losing a lot of
Speaker 2: what had been reservation land. It was also paired with
Speaker 2: things like the boarding school system for indigen and his
Speaker 2: students that was meant to force children to abandon their
Speaker 2: languages and cultures and assimilate with white society. There's more
Speaker 2: about both of these periods of history in our two
Speaker 2: part episode on the Occupation of Alcatraz that came out
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen. In nineteen thirty four, the federal approach
Speaker 2: shifted again with the Indian Reorganization Act, also called the
Speaker 2: Wheeler Howard Act, which was part of a collection of
Speaker 2: efforts known as the Indian New Deal. This legislation followed
Speaker 2: the Miriam Report, also called the Problem of Indian Administration,
Speaker 2: which had come out in nineteen twenty eight. There is
Speaker 2: some debate about whether the Miriam Report directly led to
Speaker 2: the Indian Reorganization Act, but this was a scathing report
Speaker 2: on conditions across reservations in twenty six states, detailing serious
Speaker 2: problems involving poverty, inadequate health care, and an overall lack
Speaker 2: of funding. The report characterized decades of federal policy toward
Speaker 2: Indigenous peoples, including that policy of allotment, as at the
Speaker 2: root of these issues, and it called for massive reforms.
Speaker 2: The US government slowed down on issuing land allotments soon
Speaker 2: after this report was published, and the Indian Reorganization Act
Speaker 2: followed a little more than five years later. This legislation
Speaker 2: certainly was not perfect. Among other things, it didn't apply
Speaker 2: in the territories of Alaska and Hawaii, and it was
Speaker 2: focused on the idea that tribes would be governed by
Speaker 2: tribal councils that would be accountable to the US Bureau
Speaker 2: of Indian Affairs. And it could not undo the centuries
Speaker 2: of history that had already passed. But it did start
Speaker 2: to move the US government toward a policy that focused
Speaker 2: on self governance and self determination for Indigenous peoples.
Speaker 1: It also shifted the focus from one of assimilation with
Speaker 1: white culture toward one of preserving indigenous cultures and traditions.
Speaker 1: John Collier had been named Commissioner of the Bureau of
Speaker 1: Indian Afas the year before the Indian Reorganization Act was passed.
Speaker 1: He was one of the people who helped get the
Speaker 1: Act through Congress. This act abolished the allotment program that
Speaker 1: had been set up in the Dawes Act, and it
Speaker 1: provided funding to Indigenous nations to purchase land that had
Speaker 1: been taken from them. Because part of the focus here
Speaker 1: was indigenous nation's own self determination, tribal members had the
Speaker 1: right to vote on whether to accept the terms of
Speaker 1: the Act, and John Collier, possibly having heard about Mourning
Speaker 1: Dove through her publication of Coyote Stories, contacted her to
Speaker 1: ask for help and outreach to the people of the
Speaker 1: Callville Reservation. Mourning Dove was in favor of the Indian
Speaker 1: Reorganization Act. She thought that it would help protect tribal
Speaker 1: lands and might even lead to the restoration of the
Speaker 1: north half of the Callville Reservation, which had been returned
Speaker 1: to the public domain in the late nineteenth century. The
Speaker 1: law also included provisions for additional funding and support, all
Speaker 1: of which she thought would benefit her people, among other things.
Speaker 1: She spoke at a conference in Oregon that brought together
Speaker 1: representatives from eight reservations, saying, quote, I fought for twenty
Speaker 1: five years for the cause of Indian people. The reason
Speaker 1: I have fought for my people is this, I owe
Speaker 1: it to them, old men and women of the Callville Indians.
Speaker 1: Let us hope that this new form of government will
Speaker 1: not be imposing on our old people. That you younger
Speaker 1: men and women will have a voice in the government
Speaker 1: of the US. Let us try a new deal. This
Speaker 1: vote was contentious for many of the tribes and bands
Speaker 1: that lived in and around the Callville Reservation and other
Speaker 1: places as well. Some who opposed it wanted full autonomy instead,
Speaker 1: not to be governed by a council that essentially reported
Speaker 1: to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Some in the interior
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest wanted a return to the social structure of
Speaker 1: small autonomous bands, not the collection of bands that had
Speaker 1: been unilaterally grouped into one reservation and recognized as one
Speaker 1: tribe under an executive order in eighteen seventy two. The
Speaker 1: Indian Reorganization Act also incorporated the idea of blood quantum
Speaker 1: into its definition of who was or was not indigenous.
Speaker 1: The idea that you had to have a certain amount
Speaker 1: of quote native blood to be indigenous was really foreign
Speaker 1: to many Indigenous peoples, and it was totally contrary to
Speaker 1: long standing cultural practices of intermarriage and adoption. So opponents
Speaker 1: to this law included people who objected to the use
Speaker 1: of blood quantum for a range of reasons. When the
Speaker 1: Callville Tribe voted, there were four hundred and twenty one
Speaker 1: votes in favor of the Indian Reorganization Act and five
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty two votes against it, but more than
Speaker 1: seven hundred people who were eligible did not cast a vote.
Speaker 1: The initial wording of the Act had been that fifty
Speaker 1: one percent of eligible voters had to vote again against
Speaker 1: the act in order for a tribe to reject it,
Speaker 1: and Carville Superintendent Harvey K. Meyer and the Office of
Speaker 1: Indian Affairs had told tribal members that votes that were
Speaker 1: not cast would be counted in favor of the act.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen thirty five, the Act was amended to
Speaker 1: require a majority of votes cast in favor in order
Speaker 1: to pass the act, and this standard is what was
Speaker 1: applied to the vote of the Confederated Tribes of the
Speaker 1: Callville Reservation. Mourning Dove and other supporters of the Indian
Speaker 1: Reorganization Act argued that the earlier standard had to have
Speaker 1: influenced whether people had decided to vote or not, and
Speaker 1: that changing the criteria after the fact meant that there
Speaker 1: needed to be a new vote. The tribe drafted a
Speaker 1: new constitution, which was passed in February of nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 1: but because of that vote, Congress did not accept it
Speaker 1: as having been created under the Indian Reorganization Act's terms,
Speaker 1: and the terms of the Indian Reorganization Act, including its
Speaker 1: land protections, consequently did not apply to the Callville Reservation.
Speaker 1: Mourning Dove was deeply upset by this outcome and was
Speaker 1: one of the people who thought the way the vote
Speaker 1: had been handled was unfair. She continued to advocate for
Speaker 1: another vote that the federal government would recognize. She was
Speaker 1: also elected to the Council of the Confederated Callville Tribes
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty five, but in late July of nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, she became ill and severely disoriented. Family members
Speaker 1: took her to Medical Lake State Hospital, which was a
Speaker 1: psychiatric hospital and she died there on August eighth, at
Speaker 1: the age of about forty eight. Her cause of death
Speaker 1: was given as exhaustion from manic depressive psychosis, But this
Speaker 1: was really kind of a catch all diagnosis that was
Speaker 1: used for a lot of people who died while in
Speaker 1: the hospital's care. Like it.
Speaker 2: My read of this is that she was ill, and
Speaker 2: that her illness was caught causing psychiatric symptoms, and then
Speaker 2: she was given this cause of death that did not
Speaker 2: actually shed any light onto what was really going on.
Speaker 2: According to obituaries, she was survived by her husband, her father,
Speaker 2: four brothers, and three sisters.
Speaker 1: In the years before her death, Mourning Dove had been
Speaker 1: working on an autobiography, mainly about her life until roughly
Speaker 1: the year nineteen hundred. She wrote a lot about her family,
Speaker 1: how they lived in traditions and practices, involving things like
Speaker 1: her first menstrual period, or preparing for marriage and caring
Speaker 1: for children. She described gathering berries, fishing for salmon, hunting,
Speaker 1: and winters full of singing, dancing, and storytelling. She also
Speaker 1: wrote about an incredibly difficult winter she survived in eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety two and eighteen ninety three due to both blizzards
Speaker 1: and flooding, and she wrote about her people's history.
Speaker 2: She wasn't able to finish a completed draft before her death,
Speaker 2: and when she died, her notes for the book were
Speaker 2: with Dean and Geraldine Kowey. Apparently Dean had planned to
Speaker 2: turn these notes into an actual book after he retired,
Speaker 2: but then he died in nineteen seventy eight without having
Speaker 2: done so. Geraldine later gave the notes to her former
Speaker 2: anthropology professor and friend, Erna Gunter, who, ultimately, after working
Speaker 2: with them a bit, returned them back to Geraldine. More
Speaker 2: than four decades after her death, Mourning Dove's notes, contained
Speaker 2: in about twenty folders, were given to J. Miller, who
Speaker 2: at that point had been working with Calville tribe elders
Speaker 2: on recording their stories for about five years. Miller edited
Speaker 2: the notes for print. His introduction states that he would
Speaker 2: not have been able to turn her notes into a
Speaker 2: book without his experience working with Calville elders, which he
Speaker 2: continued to do as he worked with the autobiography. He
Speaker 2: had been working with the people whose first language was
Speaker 2: an interior Salish one, but whose words were being written
Speaker 2: down in English. In an essay, he described this as
Speaker 2: thinking in Salish and writing in English. The same was
Speaker 2: true of Mourning Dove, who was always more fluent in
Speaker 2: Insucchin than in English. Her writing in English often reflected
Speaker 2: thought processes and structures that came from the syntax of
Speaker 2: her first language and her indigenous culture. Miller also made
Speaker 2: changes based on how the Callville people he was working
Speaker 2: with in the nineteen eighties were writing and speaking like.
Speaker 2: In some cases, the language she had used fifty or
Speaker 2: more years before had come to be seen as antiquated
Speaker 2: or referencing stereotypes. This book, Mourning Dove, a Salition Autobiography,
Speaker 2: came out in nineteen ninety. There have been criticisms of
Speaker 2: Miller's work with this autobiography. For example, in her review
Speaker 2: of both the autobiography and of a new printing of
Speaker 2: Coogiuea that came out in nineteen ninety, Alana Kathleen Brown
Speaker 2: argues that Miller downplayed the significance of Mourning Dove's achievements
Speaker 2: and undermined her authority as the narrator of her own life.
Speaker 2: She frames Miller's portrayal of Mourning Dove as misogynist and
Speaker 2: argues that his no votes that were part of the
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety edition of Coyote Stories were patronizing and pedantic.
Speaker 2: She also disagrees with his decisions to edit Mourning Dove's
Speaker 2: work into Standard English, saying that doing that took away
Speaker 2: a lot of her thought and nuance. This review is
Speaker 2: really pretty scathing, but at the same time, Brown also
Speaker 2: notes that the autobiography itself is really important as a
Speaker 2: work by an Indigenous woman talking about her own life
Speaker 2: from her own perspective at that point in history. Today,
Speaker 2: the Confederated Tribes of the Callville Reservation is a federally
Speaker 2: recognized tribe with more than nine thousand yearrolled members, and
Speaker 2: it is still affected by the outcome of the Indian
Speaker 2: Reorganization Act vote that Morning Dove was connected to in
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties. In twenty eleven, then tribal chairman Michael
Speaker 2: Finley spoke about the ongoing legacy of the vote before
Speaker 2: the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs during oversight hearings on
Speaker 2: the seventy fifth anniversary of the Act. As one example,
Speaker 2: since the tribe wasn't able to reacquire lands under the Act,
Speaker 2: parts of the reservation are sort of a checkerboard, which
Speaker 2: creates problems related to whether the tribe or another community
Speaker 2: has jurisdiction in terms of things like law enforcement and
Speaker 2: public safety. He also noted that the lack of protections
Speaker 2: from the Act gave the tribe less negotiating power during
Speaker 2: the construction of the Grand Cooley Dam. The dam was
Speaker 2: finished in nineteen forty two and was built partly on
Speaker 2: reservation lands and flooded roughly eighteen thousand acres of reservation land,
Speaker 2: including people's homes and burial sites.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, even though this has happened right at the end
Speaker 2: of her life, something that she sort of I think
Speaker 2: would have continued to advocate for had she lived longer,
Speaker 2: something that's still having just a lot of ongoing impact today,
Speaker 2: almost one hundred years later. Yeah, and I have a
Speaker 2: little bit of listener mail we wrap up today's episode.
Speaker 2: This is from Aaron, who says, Hello, Holly and Tracy,
Speaker 2: thank you for the hard work you guys put into
Speaker 2: the podcast. I'm currently renovating my home in Wilmington, North Carolina,
Speaker 2: and catching up on missed episodes has kept me company.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed your latest six Impossible episodes on Ghosts.
Speaker 2: I'm from Wilmington about twenty five minutes north of where
Speaker 2: the Makeo light has been seen. My father in law
Speaker 2: used to go out with his friends in the early
Speaker 2: seventies and try to see the light. He swears he's
Speaker 2: seen it twice, and one of those times he says
Speaker 2: he's seen the shadow of a man swinging the light.
Speaker 2: He loves telling the grandkids about it in the spookiest
Speaker 2: voices he can muster. We all love it, especially this
Speaker 2: time of year. It's so fun to hear the history
Speaker 2: of things so close to home. I would love to
Speaker 2: hear more about the eighteen ninety eight coupdeta. I admit
Speaker 2: I have not looked to see if another host has
Speaker 2: done it already. Attached is my pet tax, my sweet
Speaker 2: baby boy Bagheera. He is every bit the giant protective panther.
Speaker 2: He's named for not going to feel bad about ending
Speaker 2: that sentence with a preposition because all the rules are
Speaker 2: made up and the points don't matter. That is my
Speaker 2: mom holding him the first picture. She is not that small.
Speaker 2: Baggy pants is just huge.
Speaker 1: Much loved.
Speaker 2: Aaron. I wrote back to Aaron and said, actually, Holly
Speaker 2: and I did a two part podcast on the eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight Coupdeta in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Speaker 1: I do not remember exactly when that came out, and.
Speaker 2: So I love these cat pictures for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 2: One is that the cat that I grew up with
Speaker 2: as a child was a gray tabby that had some
Speaker 2: similar markings and colorings to this kitty cat. That cat, however,
Speaker 2: was much smaller. It is truly enormous cat, according to
Speaker 2: the picture, very big. I want to pet this kiddy always,
Speaker 2: So thank you, so so much, Erin for these wonderful
Speaker 2: cat pictures.
Speaker 1: And for the story.
Speaker 2: I love hearing about people, people's family stories, about the
Speaker 2: make up light and whatever other ghost stories that we
Speaker 2: talked about in that episode.
Speaker 1: So if you would like.
Speaker 2: To send us a note about this or any of
Speaker 2: their podcast we're at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: We're all over social media. Missed in History, which is
Speaker 2: where you'll find our Facebook, our x thing, our Instagram,
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. You can send us a note
Speaker 2: at History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, which I might
Speaker 2: have said already, and you can subscribe to our show
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