The Call of the Mountains
The Artists of Glacier
National Park
June 27 to October 12, 2002
Napi by
Charles M. Russell
Courtesy: Trails
End Collection |
Sign
Talkers
Popular
authors of the early Twentieth Century like Frank Bird Linderman,
Mary Roberts Rinehart, and James Willard Schultz turned their
experiences around the Glacier National Park area into best-sellers.
Other writers like Agnes Laut and James Whilt were inspired
to poetry, or wrote histories of the Northern Rockies.
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Frank Bird Linderman
(1869 - 1938) Frank Bird Linderman arrived
in the Flathead Valley in March 1885 at the age of sixteen. He made
a living for seven years as a trapper and guide in the Flathead and
Swan Valleys before becoming assayer at the Curlew mine, south of
Missoula. He married Minnie Jane Johns in 1893, and settled in Sheridan,
Montana running an assay office. Six years later he bought the Sheridan
Chinook newspaper, and his writing career began.
Linderman had political ambitions and was elected to the State Legislature
in 1903 and 1905. In 1905, he moved to Helena, after being appointed
Assistant Secretary of State, and resided there for the next twelve
years.
Linderman became friendly with many local Native leaders, including
Rocky Boy (Stone Child) of the Chippewa, and Little Bear of the Cree.
Originally migrating to the northern plains from the Canadian Great
Lakes, the Chippewa and Cree had been left out of the reservation
process and many became squatters on any open land they could find.
In 1908, Linderman met with many influential Montanans, including
Senator Paris Gibson, and artist Charlie Russell to advocate the idea
of creating a reservation for these wandering, dispossessed people.
Writing almost five hundred letters and telegrams over a ten-year
period to support his cause, Linderman used his political influence
to persuade the legislature. In 1916, his ceaseless campaign culminated
in the creation of the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation near Havre, Montana.
Linderman had always been intrigued with Indian culture and, partly
inspired by George Bird Grinnell, he became totally immersed in their
legends, customs. and beliefs. In Sentember 1915, Charles Scribner's
Sons released Linderman's Indian Why Stories, a collection
of Blackfeet, Chippewa, and Cree legends retold by a fictional character
named War Eagle, molded after Chippewa leader, Chief Penneto. Dedicated
to his friends Grinnell and Russell, it was illustrated by Charlie
Russell himself! The book was warmly received by the public, and wildly
popular with children. Linderman went on to write numerous volumes
on Indian subjects. Through an interpreter, Linderman interviewed
Chief Plenty-Coups on the Crow Reservation. In 1931, the John Day
Company published Linderman's American; The Life and Story of
a Great Indian, Plenty-Coups, Chief of the Crows, of the most
powerful and revealing hooks ever written on the Plains Indians. Plenty-Coups
gave Linderman the name "Sign-Talker."
On the twenty-fifth anniversary of Glacier National Park, Linderman
was chosen by the Great Northern Railway to write the text for a book
introducing the magnificent Blackfeet portraits by Winold Reiss. In
the afterword, Linderman himself is profiled: "(his) Blackfeet
name is Iron Tooth ... The old Kootenai called him Bird Singer, and
the Crees and Chippewa called him Sings Like A Bird ..."
Although historically important, Linderman's books had limited commercial
success. He lamented, "The critics all praise my books, but the
public won't buy them...." Frank Bird Linderman would be pleased
to know that many of his books are still in print today, and are enjoyed
by western history enthusiasts around the world.
James Willard Schultz (1851
- 1947) James Willard Schultz was born in Boonville, New York in 1859.
As a youth he developed a passion for the outdoors, spending much
of his time in the Adirondacks. Following his junior year at the Peekskill
Military Academy on the Hudson River, Schultz traveled to St. Louis
to visit his uncle. He eagerly listened to tales of adventure spun
by riverboat crews returning from the West. Fascinated by their stories
of Montana's wilderness, Schultz booked passage and headed up the
Missouri for Fort Benton.
Shortly after he arrived, Schultz met Joseph Kipp, an early settler
of the region and well-known prospector, trader, army scout, and rancher.
Kipp took the young easterner under his wing. While spending the next
several years with Kipp and his Blackfeet in-laws, Shultz kept details
of his experiences in Montana. Chief Running Crane gave him the name
"Apikuni." Kipp's wife, Double Strike Woman, arranged the
marriage between fifteen year old Fine Shield Woman and James Willard
Schultz.
Fine Shield Woman bore his first son, Hart Merriam Schultz, who later
became a famous artist using his Blackfeet name Lone Wolf. From his
earliest days as a hunting guide James was known as a gifted storyteller,
and some of his adventures with Eastern clients found their way into
print in a book called Sport Among The Rockies. After the
sudden death of Fine Shield Woman from heart disease, Schultz agreed
to take Ralph Pulitzer, the son of the famous journalist, on a hunting
trip where they illegally shot four bighorn rams. Pulitzer was fined,
and Schultz fled the state. Drifting, he spent time in Arizona where
he wrote his most famous work My Life As An Indian, using
the pen name W. B. Anderson. The book was first serialized in Field
and Stream, and published in 1907 with photographs by George Bird
Grinnell. He settled in California and worked for the L.A. Times as
a literary editor.
His popularity continued to increase, and in 1914, Schultz made the
decision to return to Montana. With his new prominence, he was somewhat
of a celebrity. Each summer, beginning in 1915, Schulz and his wife
were brought by the Great Northern Railway from Southern California
and given lodging in the Park. In an effort to bring further national
attention to the area, Schultz engaged some of his Blackfeet friends
to visit important sites in Glacier. Photographer Roland Reed accompanied
the party and shot dramatic images of the Blackfeet amidst spectacular
settings. Schultz used Reed's photographs to illustrate the resulting
book Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park, which chronicled
Native legends and was dedicated to Louis Hill, the president of the
railroad.
Although Schultz had little formal education, he proved to be a prolific
writer, often finishing two or three books a year. It is estimated
that since 1911, over 2 million copies of his books had been printed,
with My Life As An Indian accounting for nearly 500,000 of
the total number. In addition to the 37 books published in his lifetime,
four other manuscripts were published posthumously.
One of Schultz's greatest accomplishments was his leadership of The
Indian Welfare League, an organization that struggled to attain full
citizenship for all Native Americans. Schultz's writings remain popular
today. The James Willard Schultz Society, founded in 1976, publishes
a quarterly and holds its conventions in Glacier National Park. Schultz
brought to the American people compelling narratives of the Blackfeet,
written with the compassion and understanding that could only come
from his own experience.
Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958)
Mary Roberts Rinehart was one of the most famous mystery writers in
America when she wrote Through Glacier Park in 1916. The
Man in Lower Ten (1906) and The Circular Staircase (1907)
are among the earliest works by an American author still in print.
Through Glacier Park was a departure from her suspenseful style.
Sprinkled with photographs, it documented her 300-mile horseback trip
across Glacier National Park led by the famous dude rancher, Howard
Eaton. At first, Rinehart was somewhat averse to traveling with Eaton
and his dudes, but her days in Glacier proved to be a wonderful experience.
In 1918 she penned a sequel, Tenting To-Night. It showcased
images of the Park by several photographers, including Ted Marble
and Fred Kiser. Rinehart's enthusiasm for Glacier National Park was
noticed by Louis Hill of the Great Northern Railway, and she was commissioned
to write introductions for their brochures.
An Appreciation of Glacier
National Park
If you are normal and philosophical, if you love your
country, if you are willing to learn how little you count in the eternal
scheme of things, go ride in the Rocky Mountains and save your soul.
There are no "Keep off the Grass" signs in Glacier National
Park. It is the wildest part of America. If the Government had not
preserved it, it would have preserved itself but you and I would not
have seen it. It is perhaps the most unique of all our parks, as it
is undoubtedly the most magnificent. Seen from an automobile or a
horse, Glacier National Park is a good place to visit.
Here the Rocky Mountains run northwest and southeast, and in their
glacier carved basins are great spaces; cool shadowy depths in which
lie blue lakes; mountain-sides threaded with white, where, from some
hidden lake or glacier far above, the overflow falls a thousand feet
or more, and over all the great silence of the Rockies.
Here nerves that have been tightened for years slowly relax.
Here is the last home of a vanishing race - the Blackfeet Indians.
Here is the last stand of the Rocky Mountain sheep and the Rocky Mountain
goal; here are elk, deer, black and grizzly bears, and mountain lions.
Here are trails that follow the old game trails along the mountainside;
here are meadows of June roses, forget-me-not, larkspur, and Indian
paintbrush growing beside glaciers, snowfields and trails of a beauty
to make you gasp. Here and there a trail leads through a snowfield;
the hot sun seems to make no impression on these glacier-like patches.
Flowers grow at their very borders, striped squirrels and whistling
marmots run about, quite fearless, or sit up and watch the passing
of horses and riders so close they can almost be touched.
The call of the mountains is a real call.
Throw off the impedimenta of civilization. Go out to the West and
ride the mountain trails.
Throw out your chest and breathe-look across green valleys to wild
peaks where mountain sheep stand impassive on the edge of space. Then
the mountains will get you. You will go back. The call is a real call.
I have traveled a great deal of Europe. The Alps have never held this
lure for me. Perhaps it is because these mountains are my own-in my
own country.
Cities call - I have heard them. But there is no voice in all the
world so insistent to me as the wordless call of these mountains.
I shall go back. Those who go once always hope to go back. The lure
of the great free spaces is in their blood.
Mary Roberts Rinehart
Agnes Laut (1871-1936)
Agnes Laut was a Canadian author.
One of her best known early works was the historical novel, Pathfinders
of the West: The Thrilling Story of The Adventures of The Men Who
Discovered The Great Northwest-Radisson, La Verendrye,
Lewis and Clark (1904), featuring illustrations by Philip R.
Goodwin, John Marchand and Frederic Remington. In 1925, the president
of the Great Northern Railway, Ralph Budd, invited Agnes Laut and
other notables to join the upper Missouri Historical Expedition. Beginning
in St. Paul, the expedition was a celebration of the railroad's influence
on the Northern Plains and Rocky Mountain region. This expedition
was the inspiration for two books by Laut, Blazed Trail of the
Old Frontier and Enchanted Trails of Glacier Park which
featured human-interest stories by James Willard Schultz, illustrations
by artists Charles M. Russell and John Clarke, plus photographs by
Roland Reed.
James Whilt was
a popular poet who wrote at least three volumes about Glacier National
Park and it's environs; Rhymes of the Rockies, Mountain
Memories, and Giggles from Glacier Guides. His poem about
the North Fork of the Flathead River is on display in Call of the
Mountains.