Thompson's book "Black Robes Enter Coyote's World" featured rarely seen journal pages of Indian Agent Thomas Adams, including this portrait of Salish leader Sxʷúytis Smx̣e or Grizzly Bear Tracks. Art courtesy Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library
by
Robert Chaney
Sally
Thompson often finds herself of two minds this winter, in more ways than one.
In 2024, the anthropologist and
author got to celebrate not one, but two published books plunging mainstream
readers deep into the perspectives of their Native American neighbors. Last
May, she released Disturbing the Sleeping Buffalo: 23 Unexpected Stories
that Awaken Montana’s Past. Then on December 18, the launch of her latest, Black
Robes Enter Coyote’s World: Chief Charlo & Father De Smet in the Rocky
Mountains, brought back to life a heartrending chapter of Salish Indian history,
in the voices of living descendants.
The two books probe corners of
Rocky Mountain culture that resonate in today’s events and actions. Missoula-based
Thompson has spent four decades of her anthropology career working with Native
American tribes across the West. That work often involved fundamental
encounters between sovereign tribal nations and U.S. state or federal
government. In Montana, she provided expert witness testimony for the
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes to show how mining company ARCO caused
off-reservation treaty losses through its historic pollution of the upper Clark
Fork River watershed.
She was also instrumental in the
cultural review of the Badger-Two Medicine area that helped the Blackfeet Tribe
protect it from oil and gas drilling. Thompson closed Disturbing the
Sleeping Buffalo with her account of that experience, which she subtitled
“Confessions of a naïve anthropologist in a Blackfeet holy land.”
It’s often not just a spot on the map but the stories that grow from those spots that people value.
High on her list of transgressions was
her mindset as a White anthropologist and representative of the U.S. government.
Her job was to identify the important spots on the region south of the
Blackfeet Indian Reservation so they might be excluded from energy exploration.
After some awkward missteps, Thompson received guidance from Blackfeet Crazy
Dog Society leader Floyd “Tiny Man” Heavy Runner, who illuminated how Blackfeet
valued the landscape.
Sally Thompson melded her anthropology and history experience to release two books exploring the blending of Native and White world views in 2024: "Disturbing the Sleeping Buffalo" and "Black Robes Enter Coyote's World." Photo by Robert Chaney
“I realized that theirs is a
spiritual reality while the government’s is material, measurable, separable,”
Thompson wrote in Disturbing the Sleeping Buffalo. “We needed to
understand that, in the world of the Blackfeet, discrete lines could not be
drawn around individual parts … A Blackfeet seeker would be unable to purify
himself with water contaminated from drilling activities, and it would be
impossible to fast and pray for four days while listening to a drilling rig
buzzing down below.”
Historian and author Peter Stark
credited Thompson’s determination to search out original sources as the driving
power inside her work.
“She’s an incredible resource as
someone who knows both worlds: Native and White,” Stark said of Thompson. “She
knows all the history and all the interactions of all these people.”
Black Robes Enter Coyote’s World reveals new records and artwork
recounting the meeting of Jesuit missionaries (the Black Robes) and the Salish
Indians of the Northern Rocky Mountains who related to their natural world
through spiritual beings such as Coyote. The Salish were one of the tribes that
took pity on Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery as it struggled to cross the
Rockies, only to see their generosity discounted as waves of White settlers
later arrived and the buffalo, which glued together so much of their
livelihood, had been wiped out.
“You’ve got to be willing to look at different sides of the story. We became so abstract about this world." – Sally Thompson
Thompson was also fascinated by the
experience of Pierre-Jean
De Smet, the Jesuit missionary whom the Salish invited to their Rocky Mountain
homeland in 1840. She chronicles the “impetuous” Flemish priest’s youth, which
included running away from his parents, his religious vows and even the
American continent before finally focusing on his dream of proclaiming the
Gospel of Christ and saving souls for Heaven. The audacity of his determination
to travel as a solo missionary into little-known country with erratic health
was compelling all by itself.
Thompson received a grant from
Humanities Montana to write about De Smet’s travels through Indian Country in
2016. Unexpectedly, she found herself drifting away from her subject.
“I
found myself feeling not that interested in De Smet, and lots of other people
have written about him,” Thompson said. “I sought more of the point of view of this place.”
An Adams portrait of Salish Chief Xweɫxƛ̣ ̓cín, also known as Many Horses or Victor, appears in his rarely seen journal pages. Victor was chief of the Flathead Salish and met both Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery and Jesuit missionary Peter-Jan De Smet. He was also father to Sɫm̓x̣e Q̓woxq̣eys (Claw of the Small Grizzly Bear), also known as Chief Charlo, whose struggle to retain his people's homeland in Montana's Bitterroot Valley is recounted in Sally Thompson's Black Robes Enter Coyote's World. Art courtesy Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library
Montana historian and journalist
Kim Briggeman was one of several friends who helped Thompson focus the
manuscript, which at one point was trying to round up philosophical and
historical themes across three continents and 10,000 years into a single narrative
she called “the worlds we carry: the European mind compared to the Native
mind.”
“To start with, you know she’s an
anthropologist,” Briggeman said. “But to me she’s unique in that she’s also a
very good writer. She talks about all the things I want to learn about.”
The resulting Black Robes Enter
Coyote’s World pivots around a wrenching speech given by Salish Chief
Charlo in 1876, lamenting how White politicians were trying to evict his people
from their Bitterroot Valley homelands after the tribe had succored and
sheltered the newcomers since the days of Lewis and Clark.
“It
was printed in the Missoulian or we wouldn’t know about it,” Thompson said of
Charlo’s jeremiad. “The county wanted to tax them, and he’s furious. He
attributes their meanness and greed to being cast out of the Garden of Eden;
that kind of disconnection from the creator.”
The speech was printed in English,
apparently as translated to a reporter on the scene. Charlo let his anger flow:
“To take and to lie should be burnt on his forehead, as he burns the sides of
my stolen horses with his own name.” Regarding treaty negotiator Isaac Stevens,
“Did he not invite our hands to his papers; did he not promise before the sun,
and before the eye that put fire in it, and in the name of both, and in the
name of his own Chief, promise us what he promised: to give us what he has not
given, to do what he knew he would never do?”
At one point the manuscript was trying to round up philosophical and historical themes across three continents and 10,000 years into a single narrative Thompson called “the worlds we carry: the European mind compared to the Native mind.”
At the December 18 gathering in the
Missoula Art Museum, Salish elder and spiritual leader Johnny Arlee recited the
speech, in the original Salish. Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Council
member Martin Charlo, a direct descendent of Chief Charlo, followed with the
English version.
“This is my family history; I grew
up learning it,” Martin Charlo said. “But it’s not as much taught in the
schools. Hearing our language spoken renews our connection to land and place.”
Thompson spent two decades trying
to set the record straight, get relatives of the original sources involved and
track down lost documents. One remarkable break was the Princeton University
Library Special Collections release of digitized landscapes and portraits by
field artist Thomas Adams, who sketched many of Chief Charlo’s contemporaries
during his travels with John Mullan’s 1853 survey team.
“[Salish is] not as much taught in the schools. Hearing our language spoken renews our connection to land and place.” – Martin Charlo, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Council member
Toward the end of the decade-long
process struggling with those big themes, Thompson actually stepped back and composed
a second book which became Disturbing the Sleeping Buffalo. Its 23 crisp
chapters feature stories and anecdotes the anthropologist had developed over
her career that crystalize how separate cultures blend or bounce off one
another when they collide.
Salish elder and spiritual leader Johnny Arlee reads an 1876 speech by Salish leader Sɫm̓x̣e Q̓woxq̣eys (Claw of the Small Grizzly Bear), also known as Chief Charlo, which Arlee translated into the original Salish language for the debut of historian Sally Thompson's book "Black Robes Enter Coyote's World" on Dec. 18. Charlo's jeremiad recounted the broken promises and persecutions laid on his people as White settlers pressured them to leave their homeland in Montana's Bitterroot Valley. Photo by Robert Chaney
The title chapter, for example, recounts
the “three forced migrations” of a boulder resembling a reclining bison. What
geologists call a glacial erratic, many Plains Indian tribes considered a
landmark loaded with guidance and reminders about the respectful ways to hunt
buffalo. White settlers saw the rock as either an artifact to be collected or
an obstacle to road construction in need of removal.
“You’ve got to be willing to look
at different sides of the story,” Thompson said. “We became so abstract about
this world. We disassociated ourselves from our physical, spiritual and
emotional beings and just became disconnected from responsibility. That gave us
permission to exploit the world.”
Throughout the writing, Thompson
wrestled with her role in recounting the stories of others. As her experience
with the Badger-Two Medicine showed, it’s often not just a spot on the map but
the stories that grow from those spots that people value.
“History aside, think about the
courage it took for Sally to write this book,” Briggeman said of Thompson’s
undertaking. “Here is a non-Catholic, non-Salish taking a deep dive into
interpreting and reconciling different religions, different backgrounds, and
different worldviews. Not everyone will like the result, but it was a truly
gutsy undertaking.”
The results were printed on the
cover of Black Robes Enter Coyote’s World in a commendation from Johnny
Arlee: “It presents an honest and respectful view of Séliš history.”
About Robert Chaney
Robert Chaney grew up in western Montana and has spent most of his journalism career writing about the Rocky Mountain West, its people, and their environment. His reporting has also taken him from Jamaica and Brazil to Japan and Nepal. He studied political science at Macalester College and has won numerous awards for his writing and photography, including fellowships at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and the National Evolutionary Science Center at Duke University. In Montana, Chaney wrote for the Hungry Horse News, Bozeman Daily Chronicle and Missoulian, including stints as photographer, managing editor and book author (The Grizzly in the Driveway). He lives in Missoula.
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