Theresa Lamebull
Gros Ventre woman, 110, a living bridge to the 'buffalo days'
Article published Sep 17, 2006 The family was stunned when the priest translated the careful Latin script on the baptismal certificate. They knew their grandmother, the matriarch of the Gros Ventre Tribe, was about 100. Delivered by a midwife on the Fort Belknap Reservation, she had no birth certificate. The exact date had never been an issue, until they received an invitation last spring from the governor's office. Theresa Walker Lamebull was to be honored at a banquet in Helena with other Montana centenarians. But her family had to first prove when she was born. |
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Sacred Little Rockies
Despite mining's devastation, tribes consider Little Rockies sacred
Article published February 15, 2003 Fort Belknap Indian Community Council member Ray Chandler talks about a painting that hangs in his office that features Gros Ventre Indian legend Red Whip fighting against the Sioux in the 1800s. Many White Clay and Nakota people on the Fort Belknap reservation still use the Little Rocky Mountains in northeastern Montana for their sacred ceremonies, despite the mining destruction done to the mountains. |
Article published Sep 17, 2006
Gros Ventre woman, 110, a living bridge to the 'buffalo days'
By KAREN OGDEN Tribune Enterprise Editor
The family was stunned when the priest translated the careful Latin script on the baptismal certificate.
They knew their grandmother, the matriarch of the Gros Ventre Tribe, was about 100. Delivered by a midwife on the Fort Belknap Reservation, she had no birth certificate. The exact date had never been an issue, until they received an invitation last spring from the governor's office. Theresa Walker Lamebull was to be honored at a banquet in Helena with other Montana centenarians. But her family had to first prove when she was born.
They turned to Father Joseph Retzel at the St. Paul's Mission in Hays, where Lamebull is a devout, lifelong member. Soon after, the priest came to a family gathering with a copy of the baptismal certificate and some news.
"Grandma Theresa" was not 100. She was 110.
On April 4, 1897, the certificate said, a couple called White Weaselbrought their daughter to the St. Paul's Mission to be baptized. They named her Theresa. She was about 1 year old, it said, putting her birth in 1896. Lamebull has given other birth dates in the past that put her closer to 100. But Retzel said last week that he is confident the baptismal certificate he found is accurate and is hers.
If so, that could make Lamebull the state's oldest person, although there is no official list, said Charlie Rehbein, Aging Services Bureau chief with the state Department of Public Health and Human Services.
"Anybody over 110, they are going to be one of the oldest, if not the oldest," Rehbein said.
Walter Breuning, a cigar-smoking centenarian in Great Falls, is a close second. He celebrates his 110th birthday Thursday. An Ecuadorian woman considered the world's oldest person by Guinness World Records died late last month at 116.
But Lamebull's significance reaches far beyond talk of numbers. As a living bridge to what her tribe calls the "buffalo days," she is a cultural and spiritual treasure to her people.
"To me she is one of the few keepers of our way of life, our traditional way of life," said Terry Brockie, 36. Nine years ago, Brockie took an interest in learning his native language. He has since spent has spent countless hours with Lamebull, studying the Gros Ventre — or White Clay — language. Although young people are embracing the language, Lamebull is among fewer than five elders who spoke Gros Ventre as their first language. Brockie always visited her home in Hays, at the foot of the Little Rocky Mountains, bearing a traditional gift such as cow tongue. He believes Lamebull's longevity is a spiritual gift to the tribe. She carried the language and culture through turbulent times, holding it until younger generations were ready to learn and record it. "She's put on this Earth to keep things for our people," Brockie said. "To me she's the most important person to our tribe."
Smiling across a century
Though her hearing is failing and her body is frail, Lamebull is full of life. She lived alone with her beloved dog "Nuisance" until July. Her house was only a block from the old stone St. Paul's Mission Church where she was baptized. Now she's at the Northern Montana Care Center, where her good cheer and infectious giggle make her a darling of the staff. On a recent afternoon, a handful of great-grandchildren crowded into Lamebull's room, with a great-great-granddaughter, Danielle, in tow.
Lamebull beamed and reached out for the toddler. Danielle beamed right back and they gazed at each other across a century. "Happy! So happy!" Lamebull cooed to the smiling little girl. "What's you got? You got feet!" Lamebull thrived on the commotion in her little room, unleashing peals of laughter as her great-grandson, Damion Walker, cracked jokes. He urged his great-grandma, his "newa," to tell them about the past. In the old days, "we never stayed in one place very long," Lamebull said. "There used to be deep snow, and they would clean a place for our camp. They'd get all the snow off the ground where they'd build their tepee."
Every so often as she spoke, she pulled tight a brown blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her pink nail polish flashing from beneath. But her memories of those cold, hard winters are warm.
"They used to keep fire in the middle of the tepee, and that kept the whole place warm," she said. "They used to take turns keeping up the fire."
Growing up 'Indian way'
Lamebull was born the year door-to-door mail delivery started in Great Falls. Grover Cleveland was president. Her people, allies of the Blackfeet, were relegated to the present-day Fort Belknap Reservation only eight years earlier. Lamebull remembers little of her father, White Weasel, who died of a war wound. "They never got that bullet out," she said. "It was poisoning him." Her mother was Kills in the Brush. Lamebull was brought up in what Brockie calls the "Indian Way" by her grandmother. "I think that was the insurance that there's always going to be that seed of a person that has that old-time knowledge," he said.
Indeed Lamebull cooked traditional foods for friends and family for years. She told her grandchildren how she made pemmican with Juneberries and cherries. "You put the tallow in there and put sugar in there. ... It was like powder," she said. "Everybody liked that. Hardly anybody knew how to make it. Everybody used to come and ask me to make some. ... I wish I had some now." Hooves were a childhood favorite for Lamebull. "They'd boil them a long time," she said, sounding as if she could almost taste the words. "And gee they were good." They ate "good wild animals. Better than this beef we're getting now," she said, setting her grandchildren laughing. But cattle were already taking over the prairie. The thundering buffalo herds that sustained her people's lifestyle were gone. "After, we built a house," Lamebull said. "Everybody was building houses. My dad built a house too. ... Ohhh, I thought it was a wonderful place to live."
Hard times
Lamebull speaks mostly of happy memories: Christmas dances, food and her favorite girlhood horse "Roanie," who would lie down for her to climb on his back so they could roam the prairie. But her youth was a time of hardship for the Gros Ventre. Those stories are captured in a book of memoirs of Fort Belknap elders compiled in 1982. Lamebull, then in her 80s, was among 20 elders interviewed for the book, "Recollections of Fort Belknap's Past," by the Curriculum Development Project of the Fort Belknap Education Department. Only the elderly received government food rations, and not enough to last a week, her memoir says. The rest survived on their gardens and whatever wildlife they could catch: rabbits, deer, sage hens, antelope and prairie chickens. Indians were not allowed to leave the reservation without a permit. At age 12, Lamebull was sent to school at St. Paul's Mission. "We had to stay there. We had a high fence and we couldn't go home when we wanted to," she said in the memoir. "It really was a poor school. We hardly had anything to eat." When the flu epidemic struck in 1918, the survivors couldn't build coffins fast enough, she said. "Babies, women, men, and mostly women died that time." Lamebull lost two sons of her own — a day apart — to diphtheria in the 1920s, according to her granddaughter, Patty Addy. "She made it through, and then she lost adult sons: my dad and my Uncle Henry and her daughter Virginia," Addy said. "They were hard on her, but she's really something. She'll grieve and then she'll let them go... She just has a way of carrying on."
Lamebull was about 16 when she married her first husband, John Walker, who doted on her, Addy said. He died of lung cancer in 1961. They had 10 children together. Lamebull outlived five of them and her second husband, Andrew Lamebull. Her greatest pride is that all of her children served in the military, with the exception of her daughter Virginia, whose poor health prevented it. Portraits of them hang on a wall in her room at the care center, arranged around a hologram of Jesus on the cross. "She has a marvelous spirit, and she does have a deep faith in the Lord, in Jesus, and her faith is very strong in her life," said Father Retzel, with St. Paul's in Hays.
Three years ago, at 107, Lamebull fell while walking along the gravel road to the church and couldn't get up, Retzel recalled. "She just stayed there until somebody came along, and when they did, she just laughed it off," he said. "That's typical of that lady."
Alcohol, drugs and gossip
When others fell along the path of life, Lamebull was there to pick them up or take them in. Addy was raised by Lamebull after her parents divorced and her mother fell ill with tuberculosis. She remembers her grandparents taking in three neighbor children, the Magpie kids. Lamebull taught them all to pray, go to church, be kind to each other and stay out of trouble. "She was really against alcohol and drugs," Addy said. "She said it ruined your life. And gossip, ... She just sees how it damaged so many homes."
When her children were grown, Lamebull taught arts and crafts in local schools. Her quilts are in homes across the reservation and beyond. In her 80s, she found another calling. Lamebull and fellow tribal elder Elmer Main would drive 70 miles roundtrip twice a week to the tribal college at Fort Belknap Agency to teach Gros Ventre language. Lamebull taught into her 90s. Now at the care center, she looks forward to going home for the next powwow. And everyone looks forward to seeing "Grandma Theresa," a woman who is never too tired, too frail or too old to greet you with a warm smile.
"She really makes you feel good about who you are as a White Clay person," Brockie said. "She has a real goodness about her, her aura. I think that comes from being on this Earth for so long."
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Article published Dec 1, 2004
Montanan hurt in Fallujah describes fighting
By MIKE STARK Of The Gazette Staff
The split seconds are still frozen in Catcher Cuts The Rope's memory. An enemy soldier in a burned-out house in Fallujah, Iraq. The pinless grenades dangling off his vest. Five bullets fired. A pause. A deafening explosion.
The shrapnel dug deep into his arms and legs.
Bleeding and scared and in searing pain, Cuts The Rope, a Marine corporal from Fort Belknap, pushed the button on his radio and yelled.
'Come get us. We're hit bad. We're hit bad,' " he said in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon from Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. "That's all I could say."
He pulled himself to a couch, listening to his men cry in pain and hoping he wouldn't bleed to death.
"It was unbelievable," Cuts The Rope said. "I've never hurt that bad in my life."
Cuts The Rope and his squad had been in Fallujah since early November, when the U.S. military launched its attack on insurgents in the city. Members of Alpha Company had been under heavy fire every day as they fought from block to block, house to house, room to room.
Two days before Thanksgiving, two squads took fire. One of his good friends was killed and, later, Cuts The Rope and a handful of fellow Marines were seriously injured when a man blew himself up 6 feet away in a war-torn house.
"It was terrible," Cuts The Rope said. "I think a lot of people that have never experienced combat before expect something out of a movie. I'm not going to lie. It was rough."
Cuts The Rope, 32, grew up in Hays, spent five years in the Army and then got out in 1997. He joined the Marines after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"I knew there was going to be a war. I thought I'd give a hand," he said.
After training at Camp Pendleton, Cuts The Rope was stationed in Hawaii three years ago. As the fighting in Iraq grew more severe, his battalion moved from Kuwait to Iraq in early October.
On Nov. 8, Cuts The Rope was part of a major offensive into Fallujah meant to drive out or kill insurgents in the city of 300,000. The main job was to secure the city and cut off supply routes.
Cuts The Rope said he'd seen combat before, but the urban warfare in Fallujah was a beast of its own kind. Eating, sleeping and fighting in the city, the Marines faced a daily barrage of grenades, homemade rockets and AK-47 rifle fire from rooftops, balconies and windows.
Last Tuesday, his eight-man squad was clearing a building when word came over the radio that another nearby squad was taking fire from a rooftop. A Marine from Pennsylvania, Mike Cohen, had been fatally wounded. "He was just really kind-hearted, one of those guys that gave a damn," Cuts The Rope said.
The Marines called in extra fire support, began treating the wounded and tried to push forward.
They cleared three more buildings on that block before running into trouble on the fourth, a two-story house that had been hit by tanks. When Cuts The Rope and his Marines arrived, the rooms were aglow with furniture burning from early strikes.
By then it was dark and night-vision goggles weren't effective in the dust and smoke, Cuts The Rope said. The soldiers moved through the house with flashlights and guns drawn, searching each room for enemy combatants. Just when they thought the house was safe, the Marines saw blood on the wall near a small room beneath the stairwell.
One of the Marines threw open the door and sprayed the corner with gunfire, killing one man inside, Cuts The Rope said. Then seconds later, another insurgent ran out of the room with grenades on his vest. "I shot him five times and he didn't go down," Cuts The Rope said. "And then he explodes."
Metal shrapnel peppered the Marines.
When other Marines arrived, they made sure there were no other insurgents in the house and then began evacuating the wounded. Cuts The Rope remembered how his lieutenant picked him up beneath the arms and dragged him to a vehicle outside.
"All I can remember saying to the lieutenant is 'please don't drop me sir, please don't drop me.' And he said 'I won't,' " Cuts The Rope said. "Marines take care of each other."
Cuts The Rope underwent surgery at Camp Fallujah and was then taken by helicopter to Baghdad, where he received further treatment. Within 24 hours, he was in a hospital in Germany, where he underwent surgery again. By then, it was Thanksgiving. Cuts The Rope ate with fellow soldiers from the Army, Air Force and Marines.
"It was the best damn Thanksgiving I've ever had," he said. "I was just thankful to be alive."
Cuts The Rope arrived at Bethesda on Monday night and soon found out that one of the medics treating him was from Kalispell. "That just made it extra special," he said.
He's scheduled to fly to Camp Pendleton on Thursday and later back to Hawaii, where he'll be able to spend Christmas with his wife and son, who turns 1 on Christmas Eve. He expects a full round of physical therapy to repair damage to his arms and legs.
His son's traditional name, The Rainbow After The Storm, has become particularly meaningful, he said.
"I can't believe what I went through and what all those young men went through," he said. "There's got to be a better way for countries to settle their differences."
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Taken from the Helena Independent Record, 2/15/03 http://www.helenair.com/articles/2003/02/15/top/a01021503_01.txt
Despite mining's devastation, tribes consider Little Rockies sacred
By SHAWN WHITE WOLF, IR Staff Writer - 02/15/03
(By Jon Ebelt IR Staff Photographer) Fort Belknap Indian Community Council member Ray Chandler talks about a painting that hangs in his office that features Gros Ventre Indian legend Red Whip fighting against the Sioux in the 1800s. Many White Clay and Nakota people on the Fort Belknap reservation still use the Little Rocky Mountains in northeastern Montana for their sacred ceremonies, despite the mining destruction done to the mountains.
The problems that have surrounded the Little Rockies, according to 30-year Tribal Natural Resources veteran Delmar "Poncho" Bigby, go back to 1884 when U.S. agents learned that precious minerals such as gold and silver were located in those mountains.
"Soldiers from Fort Assiniboine and the local Indian agent permitted the miners to remain as long as whiskey was not brought on the reservation," Bigby said. "The U.S. agents periodically informed the trespassing miners that their presence was unauthorized. However, the miners were allowed to continue their activities."
Long before the 19th Century, miners started to arrive in Montana, American Indians knew of the useless soft yellow rock located in the Little Rocky Mountains. More important for the tribes is the fact that the Little Rocky Mountains were a special place where mysterious serpents roamed and where American Indians conducted sacred ceremonies for centuries.
John Allen, a tribal councilman, said the Little Rocky Mountains were a place of worship and fasting for both the White Clay and Nakota tribes. He said that after long trips across the prairies, the Nakotas would see the mountains as something like an island paradise.
"When our people would see the mountains, they would sing happy songs like ‘going home, going back to the mountains, remember me, don't forget me,' " Allen said.
Those age-old beliefs are why American Indians today call the Little Rocky Mountains sacred ground. It is not sacred because of what it represents — it is sacred ground because of what is there.
Allen said his people used the red willows, sage, and the black root and white top from the echinacea plant that is found in the prairies in and around the Little Rocky Mountains for medicinal and ceremonial purposes. The black root is used in heart medicine; the white top is used for diabetes.
The red willows and sage are used in prayer and spiritual ceremonies that include ones similar to the sweat lodges and sun dances.
"The only way we can get the supernatural close to us is for us to purify ourselves through the sweat lodges, fasting and smudging," said Allen. "If we are doing good work then the supernatural will come and help us."
Raymond Chandler, a tribal councilman, also knows of the White Clay people's sacred ceremonies held within the Little Rocky Mountains.
"I have a little boy, he's 6 years old, he's been going to the sweat lodges since he was 2 years old," Chandler said. "He knows all of our lodge brothers and all their songs."
Chandler said the White Clay people are returning to their roots and beginning to revive their spiritual beliefs that strengthened and sustained their people centuries ago.
"The mountains are reviving back to what it was," said Chandler, "I go up and down the creek and there are sweats (sweat lodges); it's kind of like in Lame Deer. I've been down there twice and I can see smoke circling around Lame Deer, and when I go where the smoke is, I see a sweat going on."
Chandler said there are many spiritual healing and medicinal types of plants growing in the Little Rocky Mountains. He said he really doesn't know definitely what kinds of plants his tribe used because of his Christian upbringing.
"We are shy because of our Christian upbringing; we are shy to ask about any of this because we still consider it taboo," said Chandler.
In 1887, St. Paul's Mission was established by Jesuit priests, also known by the American Indians on the Fort Belknap reservation as the black robes.
The combination of disease, priests and the federal government's heavy-handedness against ceremonies led to the demise of some of the White Clay and Nakota tribes' long established sacred ceremonies. However, a feathered and flat pipe that has long been regarded as a source of life for the tribes is still maintained by selected men.
Chandler said he remembered a recent story where a White Clay spiritual leader had gone to fast for four days at a sacred place called Eagle Childs located within the Little Rocky Mountains. However, when the spiritual leader thought he heard a serpent moving nearby he was frightened so much that he came down out of the mountains.
The White Clay, along with many other tribes in Montana, had believed for centuries that there were serpents that live in or near the mountains. Although it's hard to say where this belief came from, it is a well-known legend in Montana's Indian country.
Societies of the White Clay
Prior to the white man's arrival, the White Clay people had age-related ceremonial societies. A boy would enter into the Fly Lodge society and then graduate into six other societies throughout his lifetime until he died. In each society, the boy would take on more responsibilities until the day he became an elder.
The societies no longer exist today, but in order they were the Fly Lodge, Crazy Lodge, Kit-Fox Lodge, Dog Lodge, Drum Lodge, Old Men's Lodge and Law Enforcers Lodge.
Until the early 1900s, young White Clay and Nakota boys joined societies called Stars or Wolves. Here the boys of one group would dance, sing and beg for donations to be distributed to other people, while challenging the other group to outdo them. The other group always took the challenge. These societies are being revitalized today.
Another society of the Nakota is the Clown Society, which did everything backward or opposite. They wore their clothes backwards or dressed as women. The society is still active today, conducting its own special ceremonies.
The Clown Society also had a reputation as a people whose purpose in battle was to die. This spooked their enemies.
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