Beribboned

Sunday October 17 2010

He's a unique horse: big, beautiful, brave, clever, calculating, always getting in trouble (and hates to get caught and yelled at), very sensitive - his feelings and under saddle. He'll closely watch you unlatch or unhook a gate, and spend hours or days working at it himself - and he'll eventually get it open. He went down to roll once and got two of his legs through a chicken wire fence (okay... so that wasn't so smart), and he laid there not panicking while four of us helped get him out. He can help herd cattle without a rider. He likes to get out on the trails and ride. And yet, get him out on the trail in front, and he can be the biggest spooker, the biggest chicken (just ask that jackrabbit we met only a quarter-mile down the trail this morning).

And so today I put a hula skirt of ribbons around his neck, for marking trail.

"Now that's a broke horse!" Andy said, as he came by on a spooking bucking horse on a wild ride of his own.

Well, now, I thought, is Dudley broke for this? It was breezy. There were a lot of ribbons around his neck, and if he started panicking then bucking, there would be no stopping him, ever.

I walked Dudley around with his ribbon hula skirt, then I lunged him in a circle around me. The ribbons flapped in the wind. They danced in the breeze, swishing like a hula skirt.


Spooky? Jumpy? Bucky? Hardly. Dudley thought he was awesomely handsome (which he was), and the more the flags fluttered, the taller he posed. He positively sashayed to make the ribbons sway more. That horse posed with his ribbon hula skirt like a movie star.


And so we went, marking the Utter Disaster Trail with Regina and Michelle for the Owyhee Hallowed Weenies Endurance Ride, on October 30-31 (costumes are highly recommended on Halloween!). Dudley is very good at putting ribbons out. When I pulled a ribbon off his skirt, he was even anticipating the bushes I was going to pin it on.

He was good at supervising too.


When the last ribbon was gone from Dudley's hula skirt, he looked like just another handsome horse on the prairie.


But he's got some clever ideas churning in that calculating mind of his. Like maybe being a Hula Dancer on Halloween. Or finding a parade to star in...

What About the Indians?

Friday November 6 2009

We looked at the Utter Disaster story from 1860. I just rode over the trail where the event happened near the Snake River. Here in Murphy, the county seat of Owyhee, is a monument for the massacre of the Utter wagon train pioneers, erected by the Sons and Daughters of Idaho Pioneers in 1935.

My question: What about the Indians?

If you have read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, you know the story. If you haven't read it, that's one book you should read in your lifetime. But here's the short of the story:

White man comes to America with the need to discover, to escape tyranny, to explore, (or to explore and conquer), or with noble self-righteous goals of 'helping the poor savages'.

Indians don't always see this noble White intention as salvation. Sometimes they fight to keep what is theirs. (Can this really be surprising.) White Man wants the land. White Man needs the land. White Man has more and bigger guns. Indians die. They lose their land. (Except for the dreariest and crappiest places in America for their Reservations the White Man so kindly and generously gave them.)(Unless the White Man changed his mind and wanted those places too). The End. Epilogue: White Man gets the plaques.

John Winthrop, who led a group of Puritans from England to their new home in Massachusetts in 1630, was convinced that part of their mission was to help the native Indians, who wanted and needed their help.

In 1845, journalist John O'Sullivan talked of America's "manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our multiplying millions." (Ah - now there's much more of the truth - 'We's got too many peoples and no room - so scootch over!').

I get it, Manifest Destiny and all that Hoohaw.

Now, I myself am from Sorbian stock (Slavic immigrants from Lusatia, an area in eastern Germany) - Texas Wends - who fled oppression, discrimination, and religious tyranny in the 1850's; and while my ancestors ensconced themselves in a rather peaceful corner of Texas (very likely the Indians had already been run off), I reckon they would have done the same thing to claim and keep their new home, as did the Whites who moved from East to West, taking over their great new land. So you can say my Euro-White Man ancestors did the same thing - came to the New World for a new life, and everything included in that quest; and they probably would have fought and died for that right. And we would have put up plaques for them.

I seem to have the Vagabond gene I must answer to (I know I'm meant to be in the West), and probably would have done the same thing in 1680 and 1860 that I'm doing now (though I'd'a refused to wear those Little-House-On-The-Prairie dresses, thank you very much), so I would have Manifested my Own Destiny, whoever was in my way, too.

Now, back to Owyhee, Idaho and the Utter Massacre (and all the others):

I'm not pointing fingers, I'm not accusing, I'm not acknowledging this was not a tragedy (for both sides), I'm simply reciting history, and I'm just sayin'.

What about the Indians?

Utter Disaster

Wednesday October 28 2009

If you ride up onto the flats above Pickett Creek and look to the southeast, three drainages over is Castle Creek, coming down from the Owyhee Mountains. Look northeast and you'll see where Castle Creek meets the Snake River, and part of the Oregon Trail and Castle Butte just this side of the river.

If you were here 149 years ago, following the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon by Castle Butte, you might have been riding into big trouble. On September 9th, 1860, (an alternate date recorded is August 1860) the wagon train led by Elijah P Utter (sometimes spelled Otter) was attacked by around 100 Indians, probably Bannock and Boise Shoshone.

There were 44 emigrants total in the group - 4 families (12 in the Utter family, led by father Elijah) and 2 Reith brothers. They had gathered together from southern Minnesota and Iowa and started on the Oregon Trail westward.

One of the biggest dangers faced by the emigrants crossing the country - besides injuries, illness, bad weather, wild animals, treacherous terrain, getting lost, and anything else under the sun - was attacks by Indians.

The Utter wagon train was attacked. The wagons were circled to protect the livestock the Indians were trying to stampede. The conflict stopped momentarily when the white men offered the Indians food. The wagon train started moving again, but they were shortly attacked again on Henderson flat. The fighting lasted into the next evening, when the emigrants again tried to move onward to the Snake River, as they and their stock were desperate for water.

The Indians renewed their attack; in total approximately 50 Indians and 19 whites, including Mr and Mrs Utter and 4 of their children, were killed. The Indians turned their attention to plundering the wagons; the remaining 25 emigrants fled and hid, leaving everything behind but a few firearms, and continued on foot down the Snake River, traveling by night and hiding by day.

A week later the survivors arrived at the mouth of the Owhyee River 75 miles away, where most were too weak to continue. The two Reith brothers went to look for help; the rest hunkered down here and waited for rescue, including 18 children.

After two weeks, more Shoshone Indians appeared at the Owyhee camp and traded some food for the last of the survivors' possessions, and stole their guns.

The Van Norman (sometimes spelled Van Ornum) family then struck out to look for help. Three young girls were taken captive by Indians; the rest were murdered. (The girls were apparently found several years later.)

By this time the Army was out looking for the survivors, having gotten word from the Reith brothers, who had finally made it to the Umatilla Indian Agency in Oregon for help.

The murdered Van Norman family was discovered by the Army, six weeks after they had fled their wagon train; and finally the debilitated party on the Owyhee River was found, 16 people who'd survived on berries, frogs, snakes, mice, a few fish from the Indians - and the bodies of a man, boy and infant who had died. Several young children had starved to death.

This Saturday, at the Hallowed Weenies endurance ride down the road in Owyhee county, we'll have something besides Halloween ghouls and goblins to ponder as we ride over the site of the attacks.