Search results for ""author joseph mcdonald""

Duncan McDonald (1849–1937) led a remarkable life as an entrepreneur, tribal leader, historian, and cultural broker on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana. The mixed-blood son of a Hudson’s Bay Company fur trader and a Nez Perce Indian woman, Duncan accompanied the Pend d’Oreille Indians on a buffalo hunt and horse-stealing expedition to the Montana plains during the early 1870s. During the late nineteenth century he was put in charge of Fort Connah, the Hudson’s Bay Company post on the Flathead Indian Reservation, and worked as an independent trader across the northern Rocky Mountains. Duncan established a hotel and restaurant, among other businesses, on the Flathead Reservation. In 1878 and 1879 he wrote a history of the 1877 Nez Perce Indian War, which was published in a Deer Lodge, Montana, newspaper. Long a thorn in the side of Flathead Indian agents, Duncan was chairman of the Flathead Business Committee between 1909 and 1924 and for many years represented the interests and views of tribal members to the Montana white community.

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2023 Best Historical Materials from the American Library Association This collection includes talks or petitions by Salish and Kootenai chiefs found in the surviving historical record. The Salish and Kootenai Indians of the Flathead Indian Reservation confronted many crises in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The physical and cultural survival of the tribes was challenged by epidemics, intertribal warfare with larger enemy tribes, and an invasion of white settlers. The tribes had to fight to have their voices heard and to get the United States government to keep its promises. Fortunately, the tribes had capable leaders who spoke up for their interests and negotiated with visiting government officials. The chiefs were able to get sympathetic white men to write letters supporting their efforts to keep a reservation in the Bitterroot Valley of western Montana and pressure the government to honor other promises made in the 1855 Hellgate Treaty. In later negotiations their white neighbors coveted tribal land and assets. Many of the chiefs’ statements were preserved in English by newspaper reporters and government clerks. The interpreters in the meetings had to struggle to explain white American cultural concepts of property and right and wrong. They were also challenged in trying to explain Salish and Kootenai values to the white officials.

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The documents collected in this book provide a window into a challenging and dangerous period in the history of the Salish and Pend d’Oreille Indians of western Montana. Although all of these sources were written or recorded by white people, used carefully, the documents provide important information about the experiences of the tribes. Between 1845 and 1874, the Salish and Pend d’Oreilles faced continued attacks, property loss, and death from the Plains Indian tribes east of the Continental Divide. The population losses the western tribes suffered nearly exterminated them as independent tribal bodies. The Salish and Pend d’Oreilles allied with and adopted warriors from other western tribes to replace some of their war losses. They also reached out for spiritual power from the Christian missionaries who established Saint Mary’s and Saint Ignatius missions. Another coping strategy was their alliance with the white men who invaded the Northern Rocky Mountains and fought the same Plains tribes. During this era, the Salish and Pend d’Oreilles also expanded their farms and horse and cattle herds to compensate for the declining plains buffalo herds.

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Warrior Athletes tells the story of ten prominent twentieth-century Salish and Kootenai Indian athletes from the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana: Charles Allard Jr. was a University of Montana football star and the 1901 captain of the Grizzly football team. Two Feathers, William Matt, and Henry Matt wrestled professionally in Montana and the Pacific Northwest from 1903 to 1905. Nick Lassa played on the Carlisle Indian School football team in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, from 1914 to 1918. Between 1918 and 1921 he played football for the Haskell Indian Institute in Lawrence, Kansas, and was a member of the only all-Indian National Football League team from 1922 to 1923. Jimmy Dupuis fought regular boxing matches in western Montana from 1930 to 1940. Frenchy Roullier and Sam Clairmont were basketball stars at Ronan High School, Mount Saint Charles College, and western Montana independent basketball teams from 1925 to 1940. Archie McDonald played football for the Haskell Indian Institute in Kansas and the Montana State University Grizzlies at Missoula from 1930 to 1939. Marvin Camel was the only Native American two-time world boxing champion and boxed professionally from 1973 to 1990.

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The written records of Salish, Pend d’Oreille, and Kootenai Indian history between 1907 and 1911 are dominated by continued complaints against allotting and opening the reservation. A long string of letters and a series of delegations to Washington, DC, left no doubt that the Indian leaders and tribal members opposed the opening. Tribal members recognized that the allotment policy was driven by white men’s greed and desire to get tribal assets at bargain prices. Most of the complaints that made it to the Indian Office files are from, or were initiated by, Sam Resurrection. To make matters even worse, in 1908 Senator Joseph Dixon secured funding for the Flathead Irrigation Project. The project would destroy most of the private irrigation ditches the Indian farmers had dug over the years and make the tribes pay for the construction of the irrigation project, which mainly benefited white homesteaders. The tribes fervently protested against this use of their assets—the land—to reward Dixon’s political backers. The allotment and opening of the Flathead Reservation devastated the new tribal economy based on livestock and agriculture.

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The nine years between 1912 and 1920 were a period of economic and political struggle for the Salish and Kootenai tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana. The Indian people toiled to maintain their economic independence despite the theft of most of their land assets. The new Flathead Irrigation Project destroyed most of the private irrigation ditches tribal farmers had dug over the years. Some tribal members opened businesses and organized rodeos, but many ventures were frustrated by government policies, fire, and drought. While trying to adapt to the economic impact of allotment, the tribe also fought against paternalistic and exploitive government policies. Until 1916 half of tribal income from timber and land sales was used to operate the agency and construct an irrigation project that largely benefited white settlers. During most of the 1912 to 1920 period, Flathead Agent Fred C. Morgan and his allies on the Flathead Business Committee fought the more radical Flathead Tribal Council over agency policies. The Flathead Tribal Council especially fought against congressional appropriations to construct the irrigation project as long as the construction was to be paid for with tribal funds or with liens on tribal allotments.

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By the beginning of the nineteenth century the crescendo of economic change on the Flathead Reservation was reaching a climax. Income was not distributed equally on the reservation even though by 1905 the Indians were basically self-supporting and most of the poorer tribal members had enough to get by. But the surrounding white community cast covetous eyes on tribal assets—especially the land. In 1903, Congressman Joseph Dixon led an assault on the tribes to force the sale of reservation land to white homesteaders at far below its real value. Tribal leaders realized they were being robbed and protested vigorously—to no avail. With the loss of their assets in land, the tribes’ future income declined, leaving them poorer than white rural Montanans. As part of the allotment policy, tribal members wrestled with a formal enrollment to determine who had rights on the reservation. White businessmen also moved to claim possession of the dam site at the foot of Flathead Lake. While the tribes were fighting against the coerced allotment, they fought the State of Montana over taxes and hunting rights. In the background alcohol and crime impacted some tribal members.

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In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Salish, Pend d’Oreille, and Kootenai tribes of western Montana navigated a world of military struggles with enemy tribes in alliance with the newly arrived tribe of white Americans. By the last quarter of the century—from 1875 to 1889—the paradigm had shifted, as the tribes worked to keep the peace and preserve their tribal rights and assets against the onslaught of the growing white population. In just fifteen years, the Flathead Reservation tribes careened from dramatic efforts to stay out of the 1877 Nez Perce War to pressing the white justice system to punish white men who murdered Indians. In 1889 the Missoula County sheriff actively pursued Indians accused of murdering white men, but whites accused of killing Pend d’Oreille chief Michelle’s relatives and Kootenai chief Eneas’s son went unpunished. In 1882 tribal leaders negotiated terms for the sale of a railroad right of way through the reservation. Throughout the 1880s, Chief Charlo worked to secure the Salish’s right to remain in the Bitterroot and, if possible, obtain enough government aid to help establish a self-supporting Salish community in the Bitterroot Valley.

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To Keep the Land for My Children’s Children is a collection of primary documents about the Salish and Kootenai tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana between 1890 and 1899. The 1890s witnessed the heartbreaking climax of the struggle of Chief Charlo and the Salish Indians to develop a self-supporting community in the Bitterroot Valley. The period also saw the doleful impact of a biased white-controlled justice system and predatory economic interests in western Montana. Four Indians were hung for murder in Missoula in 1890, but whites who murdered Indians escaped punishment. In the 1890s tribal leaders labored to hold the agency-controlled Indian police and Indian court accountable. Serious crimes were tried in off-reservation courts with varying degrees of justice. In the early part of the decade government agent Peter Ronan and Kootenai leaders tried and failed to protect Kootenai farmers just north of the reservation boundary. A predacious Missoula County government developed new and novel legal theories to justify collecting county taxes from the “mixed blood” people on the reservations. Duncan McDonald and Charles Allard Sr. ran a hotel and a stage line on the reserve. Sources describe a community that actively looked out for its interests and fought to protect tribal independence and assets.

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Moral injury is a profound violation of a human being's core moral identity through experiences of violence or trauma. This is the first book in which scholars from different faith and academic backgrounds consider the concept of moral injury not merely from a pastoral or philosophical point of view but through critical engagement with the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and American Civil Religion.This collection of essays explores the ambiguities of personal culpability among both perpetrators and victims of violence and the suffering involved in accepting personal agency in trauma. Contributors provide fresh and compelling readings of texts from different faith traditions and use their findings to reflect on real-life strategies for recovery from violations of core moral beliefs and their consequences such as shame, depression and addiction. With interpretations of the sacred texts, contributors reflect on the concerns of the morally-injured today and offer particular aspects of healing from their communities as support, making this a groundbreaking contribution to the study of moral injury and trauma.

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This history of the Nez Perce War was written in 1878–79 by Duncan McDonald, a relative of Chief Looking Glass and the son of a Hudson’s Bay Company fur trader and a Nez Perce Indian woman. McDonald spent most of his life on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana. McDonald wrote the history based on interviews and family sources. In 1878 he traveled to Canada to interview Nez Perce chief White Bird and learn his side of the story. Remarkably, the history was published in a Deer Lodge, Montana, newspaper only a year or two after the war ended. McDonald’s Nez Perce War history is published with a historical introduction and selection of his other essays on Indian affairs, in which he objects to the United States government’s unjust treatment of northwest Indian tribes and condemns the threats of some Montana whites to attack Indians who were friendly to the settlers.

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This book is a window into the Flathead Indian Reservation of western Montana in the twentieth century. The manuscript has been taken from the transcripts of a series of thirteen audio and video interviews conducted with Charles Duncan McDonald between 1982 and 1991. He tells much about his life, experiences, and the Flathead Reservation ordeal during the twentieth century. McDonald was a widely respected elder of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. During his long life (1897–1995), he was an eyewitness to almost a century of economic and political change on the reservation. He experienced the loss of his allotment and the hard times of the second decade of the last century and the Depression years in the 1920s and the 1930s. As a tribal councilman and later as a tribal employee, he witnessed the slow growth of the economic and political power of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes between 1935 and the end of the twentieth century. In his later years his excellent memory and willingness to share his experiences made him a frequent source of reservation history.

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