High Valley summer officially arrived at Alderspring this week. The mercury pushed near eighty degrees—a fairly wide swing from frost this morning. I often leave sweaters and wool vests around the ranch at this time of year and my aging cranium often has trouble recalling which fencepost I left them on.
We had a nice week off from shipping this week, and were able to enjoy a Memorial Day barbeque with some friends at their home near Salmon, Idaho. It included enough food to founder on, but Caryl and I did not because of a basketball game that beckoned with cowboys half our age. Amazingly, we did not die.
The other fun part of the ‘cue was visiting with an old logger friend of mine, Mel. He described to me the buffalo skull he found on a rocky mountainside just up the valley from us. It had to be over 100 years old when he found it, and occasionally, folks still stumble upon such an intact reminder of our valley’s native bovine past. It turns out that our dry climate preserves such things, especially when in the right spot—on dry rocks, and away from the rotting foliage of trees. Nearby, he discovered a trail built across the steep sidehill in the rocks by Native Shoshoni that ended in a cliff—with a nearby pit blind where they would herd small groups of bison, or buffalo to the edge of the rocks to pierce them with arrows as they contemplated the precipice.
Mel went on to remark about how crafty the natives were with their ingenious bison trap. They did what they could with the small herds that found the Salmon River Mountains their home. Lewis and Clark indicated that most Shoshoni groups hunted the beasts out on the Great Plains, after a long trek with on horseback with wooden drag skids behind that predated the wheel, worldwide: the travois.
And the Shoshoni were horsemen. Cameahwait, de-facto leader of the band that Lewis and Clark met in 1805 when they first found their way over the Continental Divide on Lemhi Pass, had as many as 1000 horses in their care (by Lewis and Clark’s rough count) to meet the needs of his small village. Many experts say that this honorable leader of this Shoshoni band saved the Lewis and Clark expedition by providing them with much needed horses. It helped a great deal in the brokering of such a deal that he also happened to be brother to his long lost sister, Sacajewea, whose knowledge of everything from food to geography was markedly helpful in getting the Corps of Discovery as far as finally reaching the Pacific watershed.
My conversation with Mel brought me back in my mind’s eye to a phone call I received from a Lemhi Shoshoni woman some 25 years ago. Since I was the local forester in charge of US Department of Interior lands, Rosanne asked if I would be willing to get her a cedar pole, about 20 feet in length.
“Does it have to be cedar? What do you need it for, anyway?” I was trying to better understand what it might be used for, so I could get her exactly what she needed. Most folks used them for fenceposts.
“Yes”¦the kind that grows in the draws around Salmon. Oh—and I can’t tell you what I need it for. Just meet me at the Leadore town mercantile at 9 AM on Saturday, if you could.”
I could, and I would. We had just begun ranching in that era so it wasn’t a complete time killer (like it is now!), and were even kidless. What else would one do on a lovely Saturday morning? Besides”¦the secrecy of the “why” had my curiosity piqued. Regarding that piece of timber, I knew then that she had to be referring to a Rocky Mountain Juniper, locally called cedar. My coworker, Richard, knew exactly where to find one in a steep gully along the shores of Williams lake, high in the foothills above Salmon, Idaho.
Richard and I found a beauty and cut it down. All we had to do now was get it back to the truck. It was danged heavy. This was a green cedar pole, remember, and between lugging the chainsaw back down the mountain and the green weight of the log, Rich and I practically were undone by the time we got to the truck, in spite of this happening in my younger, part time logger days.
Later that week, I complied with Rosanne’s request, and met her at the Leadore store at 9am sharp on Saturday, cedar log sticking long, a little sideways and precariously out of the back of the pickup. This was Lemhi County, and even though it was an hour long drive to get to the Merc, I met only a couple of pickups on the road on my way up the valley so there was little chance for collision or worse: a ticket from the Sheriff.
There was quite an entourage at the store. About a dozen pickups and cars crowded the tiny parking lot, and nearly all of them were Native Americans. Some wore partially beaded outfits, and an occasional feather could be seen. There were a few white folks; I knew all of them. They were all local ranchers. Even a guy we called Big Larry was there. Now Larry was huge. His six foot six frame probably weighed in at 340 lbs, and he was the Idaho champion powerlifter on the clean and jerk for several years in a row. Massive might be a better word. He had been irrigating a nearby ranch, and was wearing his hip waders. He was also a former member of a notorious biker gang or something (he never told me the whole story, and wouldn’t), and sported many tattoo scars on his barrel shaped arms, where re-entry into law abiding and considerate society caused him to scratch off his former racous and perhaps perverse former allegiances.
“What are you doing here, Dexter?” It was the nickname the local ranch culture had saddled him with. He reached out a grizzly sized hand and clasped mine, smiling. He had a lot to grin about. A week before, he had drenched me with a five gallon bucket of water from behind a willow bush as I passed doing chores on my dirt bike…and almost knocked me over.
“They are my blood brothers,” he said, with a swing of his head toward the Shoshonis, as his smile straightened to serious. Enough said.
Rosanne called us together. “Brothers, sisters, and friends, we have come together to honor one who has gone before. Every generation, or 25 years, as most of you know, we place a new cedar pole atop that mountain as our forefathers had promised many generations ago.” She pointed to a distant and rocky peak in the high foothills of the Lemhi Range. It looked steep”¦and precipice strewn. It was red with the telltale deposition of iron-rich volcanic rubble. “We will never forget him”¦a leader of our people”¦that was among the greatest. He was the last of the great leaders to live when our people still lived in the old way.”
I figured, later I found correctly, that she meant that his leadership era was before white settlement.
“Now, let’s load up and head to the base of the hill.”
And so we did. We formed a pickup truck procession, not unlike a funeral procession, as we strung out along State Highway 28. After a few minutes, we turned off on a dirt track for another few miles. The peak loomed above our dusty parade, and blocked the sun as we arrived at the foot of the hill. As I got out of my pickup, I squinted at the summit. There, set against an azure and cloud skittering sky, was the tiny needle-like silhouette of a pole. It was the first time I had noticed it in the years of working in the shadow of the mountain. I never had known about the pole. I looked at my heavy replica in the back of the pickup, and glanced again at the distant and high needle in the sky. It was then that I began to feel ill.
Big Larry interrupted my little personal nightmare as he tapped me on the shoulder. I slowly turned around to see his smiling mug. “We got this,” he said.
Together, we lifted the green beast out of the pickup. Larry led, and took the much larger base. And so began the silent trek up the rocky crag. It was silent not from anyone’s request. It was as if we all knew it would be inappropriate to talk. We would focus only on the climb and the work of getting our substantial burden to the top.
As we clambered over the seemingly interminable stairstep of boulders, many hands and shoulders appeared to help in bearing the log skyward. Sometimes, there were 6 of us shouldering the cedar as we passed it to new hands over a rock outcrop or cliff. As we gained elevation, the breathtaking view improved with each step. Snow-clad peaks marched long across the horizon in any direction, partially shadowing the valley below. It was exhausting, yet exhilarating work, as we were propelled upward by the ever improving vista.
Larry was building up some sweat as well. Those hip waders had to be tough on those rocks, and a portable sauna for his feet.
Ledges near the summit made negotiating the tree interesting, and many willing hands made it possible. Finally, we crested the last of the ledges, and stood, crowded, collectively on the kitchen-sized red rock that formed the peak. Together, we placed the trunk of the log in a right sized crevice, only 8 feet from the other pole set by our forebears. While Larry and I held it in place, rocks were placed in the crevice to wedge the log securely in its vertical position. Colored banners of cloth festooned the top of the pole and rippled in the ever present breeze.
Rosanne kindly asked if we white participants could retreat to just below the summit as they placed offerings of tobacco, cloth and prayers in commemoration of their former leader. We complied, and as I descended I spotted what looked like bleached bones with beadwork attached to it in crevices along the way. I had heard of Shoshoni burying their dead in rocks on these high crags along the valley. Perhaps I was seeing the remains of the one they honored.
Soon, the Shoshoni worked their way down to join us. We began the descent, and now, we all spoke freely, in friendships made after a job well done.
It was somewhere on a rocky ledge that I found myself in front of Rosanne, as she shared more details of the pole markers to someone following her; more details than she had previously let on.
I couldn’t help but hear the key question from behind:”Who is that, up there, Rosanne? Who have we honored?”
“Cameahwait was his name. I am his daughter through many generations.”
At that time, I knew little of Cameahwait, except that he was Sacajewea’s brother. But the plot thickened after I learned more: he was the man who likely saved the Corps of Discovery, and the further exploration of the Northwest.
The story of Cameahwait actually aided us in the management of Alderspring’s cattle on their summer range as Lewis and Clark’s account of him provided a missing piece of the puzzle. Cameahwait and his people traveled many miles to hunt buffalo on the distant plains. In fact, when Lewis and Clark first showed up in the leader’s Lemhi Valley village, he was unwilling to give them some of their many horses. But then, he changed his mind, seemingly to get rid of the Corps, because the tribe wanted to go buffalo hunting in Montana with a winter on the way and send the white men on their way. Why would they travel so far to hunt? Didn’t they have enough buffalo in their valley?
Indeed they did, as skulls were still being discovered in the Lemhi as late as 30 or 40 years ago. But the fact of the matter is that buffalo herds in the mountain west were small—more like buffalo pods of 10 to 200 head—rather than the huge herds of thousands and occasionally millions, that occupied the Eastern Montana plains. It made hunting them unreliable, and difficult for the Lemhi Shoshoni in their own valley. Unlike many of their enemies, who traded with Spaniards, they had no guns. They needed the great herds of the wide open and treeless plains so that they could more easily overtake them with their horses-or ambush them in their great numbers and false sense of security it gave.
After putting this train of logic together, it gave us a prototype for how to run on our ranges in a way that mimicked the way native buffalo ran in our same hills, just 150 years ago. They did not decimate all vegetation down to the dirt like the huge herds of the Midwest did. In fact, botanical research shows that many of our range plants would not thrive under those conditions, indicating that they likely adapted to small herd grazing in a more dispersed manner than the high impacting plains bison did.
We’ve seen them grazing this way on our frequent forays into nearby Yellowstone. The bison there are scattered in small groups, and I’ve never seen them in highly vegetation and soil impacting mob-like herds as they often behaved on the great plains. It reinforces the lessons we’ve learned from the likes of Cameahwait and Lewis and Clark.
And that replication of how bison historically grazed here is what we believe to be one of the keys for sustaining our wild rangelands, and for growing great beef on it. Listening to these old stories about our mountain landscape almost always provides great food for thought. In addition, it often helps us grow even greater food for you.
We’ll keep listening to those stories. I hope you will too. Happy Trails!
Glenn, Caryl and Girls at Alderspring
P.S. The cedar pole is still there. I saw it a couple of weeks ago, but I haven’t been back to the summit since that time. I’m still awaiting that phone call”¦anytime now, as it has been over 25 years. Be advised that if Rosanne calls, I’ll pick a smaller tree as my friend Dexter is aging, and so am I.
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