The Dream of Pembina: A Montana Saga

Montana's Exceptionalism, Or,
Ultra-Montanism in Theory and Practice


From Stephen Vincent Benet's "Western Star"

"That sun-dance has been blotted from the map.
Call as you will, those dancers will not come
To tear their breasts upon the bloody strap,
Mute-visaged, to the passion of a drum,
For some strange empire, nor the painted ghosts
Speak from the smoke and summon up the hosts."

One thing I learned from Joe Howard's "Strange Empire" is that Louis Riel was an "Ultra-montanist" (literally, "beyond the mountains" or present human experience - viz., utopian).  When I looked that up in Wikipedia, I found that it was understood to be an extreme form of Papal Infallibility, and the supremacy of the Papacy over all of the Church (not to mention the planet).  Obviously, Riel was a driven man, thoroughly influenced by his seminary teachers and his own fervant faith.  So, call that a good thing.

And of course he is counted among our greatest intellectual and spiritual forefathers in Montana - teacher,  revolutionary, and prophet.  This was his "wilderness period" between his two revolutionary insurgencies against the tyranny of the British Empire.  This was where he married and had children.  Montana, we find, was his real spiritual home. 

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Half a century ago, when I first began reflecting on Montana's place in the U.S. and the world, I noticed that only Montana resembled the whole United States in its geographical profile. 

Although we were definitely a "Northern State", many have written about Montana's strong Southern - even Secessionist - tendencies.  One of the first big gold strikes was at Confederate Gulch in what is now Meagher County.  Helena was heavily settled by ex-Confederate soldiers and sympathizers, as was the Bitterroot and several other parts of Montana. 

Great Falls became virtually a segregated town after about 1920, and right up to the 1960's, we're told.  There has always been a substantial Black population here, and both Belt and Cascade count Black women among their founders.  Fort Shaw was home to the "Buffalo Soldiers", and named for the Union Colonel Shaw, played by Matthew Broderick in the film, "Glory."  Yet, a perusal of my GFHS Roundups from the early 1960's show a total of two black students, and about the same number of Native Americans, out of the dozens or hundreds who lived here.  Many more went to Central Catholic High School (now the public alternative - VoTech high school and adult education center) with less than 1/4  the student population of Great Falls High.   Many Catholics also attended the public schools as circumstances or interests changed.  (There was no CM Russell High School, yet). 

When I arrived at a large urban, cosmopolitan university, I found that my own prejudices were quite extreme, although I didn't have any racist ideology to go with them, and soon found myself identifying with the "underclass" of whatever race or background.  Children don't really "get" racism (or any other bigotry or xenophobia), unless it's beaten into their heads by adult parents, teachers, or other role models.  Custer was the "bad guy" in our family, and we always had an interest in leftist or "radical" thinking of whatever kind.  But it was always open and critical, never dogmatic or "conspiratorial."

One of the first serious pieces I wrote for a daily newspaper (the Missoulian) was about the possibility of Montana withdrawing from the United States, and either joining Canada, or forming a new nation out of adjoining Northern Rockies states and Provinces.  Little did I know in those days that this was precisely Louis Riel's vision for Pembina - a Metis, Catholic Republic which would maintain the culture and sovereignty of the various French-Canadian tribes and their less-"developed" and "integrated" counterparts to the West.  That piece was never published, but the Missoulian editors assured me they discussed it, and found it very interesting. 

It would be another 30 years before I finally read Joseph Kinsey Howard's "Strange Empire," which is a real history of the Metis and the Dream of Pembina, and its tragic final outcome with Louis Riel being hanged for treason.  But that dream is very much alive, and there are hundreds of local people, not all of them visibly Metis or Native American, who still believe in and serve this "Empire."  I've often wondered at the title, and suspected that it was added posthumously to Howard's work.  Riel's vision was neither Strange nor an Empire, but merely one of hundreds of Jesuit-inspired Republics formed to protect the land and cultures of indigenous peoples.  But further research (like reading the cover page) identified the source as Stephen Vincent Benet's "Western Star"

"That sun-dance has been blotted from the map.
Call as you will, those dancers will not come
To tear their breasts upon the bloody strap,
Mute-visaged, to the passion of a drum,
For some strange empire, nor the painted ghosts
Speak from the smoke and summon up the hosts."

After their initial defeat, Riel and many of his followers fled to Montana, where there was a large Metis community in Big Springs (Lewistown) and  Fort Benton.  Riel settled in as a teacher at St. Peter's Mission near Cascade, where he taught for a couple of years.  It was Gabriel Dumont who organized the continued resistance, and came to St. Peter's to ask Riel to rejoin them.  The history of these campaigns and the tremendous suffering inflicted on the "rebellious" French and Cree-speaking Metis is the  substance of "Strange Empire."  Following the second defeat and Riel's surrender and martyrdom, Dumont and his followers took refuge in the Teton Canyon, where their descendents still live in the Choteau area (Howard had a cabin and wrote "Strange Empire" there) as well as Lewistown ("Big Springs"), Rocky Boy's Reservation, and throughout Eastern Montana.

Joseph Kinsey Howard was employed by the Great Falls Tribune (then entirely local and independent, owned by the Warden family) in the 1930's and '40's, and probably the greatest journalist-historian-activist Montana ever produced.  I always marvel at how people like him, without even a high school diploma, and working more than full-time as Managing Editor of the Leader, the afternoon paper published by the Tribune, could still write such great books and contribute to many of the leading intellectual magazines on the East Coast, as well as organizing conferences and educational programs throughout the state.  Would that I had done the same, rather than chasing the false promise of a degree from a "leading university" like UCLA.

Like the younger Wallace Stegner, Howard was born in Canada, and moved to Great Falls as a boy.  In fact, their careers are strikingly similar, except that Stegner ended up running the Creative Writing program at Stanford, thus gaining a much wider following among writers and academic historians and other purveyors of the culture of the West. 

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Montana is a mythic land.  Like California, we were a creation of Romantic visionaries long before we actually became an English-speaking "state."  Indeed, one might well ask if Montana, like Oz, has ever "been civilized."  Huck Finn, as Leslie Fiedler liked to point out, was supposed to have fled to Montana after the events in Twain's book were over, and he "grew up."  He might have taken the steamboat to Fort Benton, like my great-grandfather Jim Stephens, and worked for I.G. Baker & Company, which owned the ranches on Highwood Creek which are now Katzenberger's and Harris's.  In between, the Katzenberger as well as the Halmes ranch (later John Hoyt's "Jolly Roger") were owned by an Anaconda Smelter superintendant named O'Grady. 

The original Howell Harris of the 1880's raised cattle both at Highwood and in Canada, to feed the Mounties at the newly-built Fort MacLeod, and the "Whoop-up Trail" (notorious for its illegal "trade whiskey") was also used to ship supplies to Calgary and Fort MacLeod before the railroads reached Western Canada in the same year they came to Helena - 1883.  That marked the end of the steam boat traffic, since rail was cheaper, faster, and a whole lot safer for passengers as well as freight.  

Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kinsey_Howard

http://books.google.com/books/about/Strange_Empire.html?id=6pae2d_28GYC