By Harlan McKasato
I was kneeling beside the headwaters of the Great Missouri River. I listened to the three rivers the way long-forgotten Ponca, Santee, Nez Perce and Blackfeet hunters used to listen to the prairie for the hoof beats of buffalo. The way Crazy Horse listened to the greasy grass for Custer. I listened. I heard the trumpets sound and saw the rockets red glare clear from St. Louis. The Corps of Discovery was on its way.
The Missouri, named after the Nu-ta-che' people who are close relatives of the Jhe-we-day, or Otoe people, is the longest river in the U.S. and stretches more than 2,500 miles from Montana to the mighty Mississippi. Combined with the Mississippi, it forms the fourth longest river system in the world, draining approximately one-sixth of the North American continent.
If you've never stood next to the Missouri, nicknamed the Big Muddy, when it's spread bank-to-bank after a spring thunderstorm. If you've never heard its raw power, felt its sheer power and witnessed its pure power, then it may be hard to imagine this river with a life and will of its own. But make no mistake.
For if the Missouri could speak, it would have tales to tell - ancient stories that go back to prehistoric times. The Missouri has seen the bones of great dinosaurs walk its bottom. It would tell about the first Red Man to drink its waters. It would whisper the names of great tribes, and warriors, and women who took care of the water, the animals, the people and the land.
I was rafting the waters one night under the moonlight on the Great Missouri River. I was Huckleberry Finn. No, I was Kawliga the Wooden Indian. No, I was Big Shoulder of the Omaha, I was Wanata of the Yankton, I was Four Bears of the Mandan. I was gliding over the waves when I saw two men, Lewis and Clark, watching me from the bank.
I had seen white men along the river before, traders. But weren't these the men who had set out in the name of the United States of America and their Great White Father, Jefferson. As I floated past them I asked myself the question that would cross the minds of many Native people during the Lewis and Clark expedition, "should I kill them now? Or should I let the river?"
The river was chosen as Lewis and Clark's route because French, British, and some Spanish traders had been using it for decades to establish commerce with the tribes who lived and traded up and down the river. The tribes had their own dividing lines and were very territorial about who crossed into their lands.
But new alliances might be struck with the Americans, who in turn might bring guns and other valuables. It could give our tribe a decided advantage over one of our traditional enemies. Besides, word on the prairie says there is an endless number of white people who are coming. It may be best, I imagined, to make peace with the newcomers and test our fate.
I was traveling the Great Missouri River on a giant steamboat named the Blue Belle. She was a sight to see. I could see the Indians watching from the shadows of the tree lines. The river used to be the major lifeline for the tribes of the Missouri Valley - the Teton Sioux, the Hidatsa, Arikara, the Assiniboine and others. But today, very few tribal members use the Missouri in any traditional way.
Those who lived throughout the basin before Lewis and Clark, those who fished its waters, farmed its fertile lands, and hunted its woods have been displaced by the offspring of those settlers who took part in Manifest Destiny and western expansion to take over this so-called wilderness. But as Chief Seattle once said, these children "are not alone."
Like the tribes, the Missouri has suffered through dramatic and traumatic transformation since Lewis and Clark first searched for a route to the Pacific. The river's natural flow has been captured, put inside iron fences and cement walls, curtailed from its traditional culture, and an attempt has been made to tame its perceived wildness. It used to be a mile-wide in some places.
But the Pick-Sloan project has dammed the river and harnessed the water within 900-foot wide channels in the name of conservation, flood control, recreation, irrigation and shipping. It has brought benefits to the new people of the area but it has also ruined ancient villages, submerged traditional burial grounds, endangered critical ecosystems, and broken the hearts of indigenous people.
There was a speedboat flying over the waves of the Great Missouri River. It was pulling a young man on skis at about 30 knots. The waves shook our poles and probably scared off the fish, as the young men shouted war-hoops at us mockingly and spun off out of sight. Even in earlier days, the river's hidden islands and submerged oaks had done in both youth and arrogance.
There was a tribal casino on the Iowa side of the Missouri, across from Nebraska. After a new survey of the river, seems the Omaha owned a little stretch of land across from their main reservation homelands. Since Nebraska does not allow gambling, the tribe opened up their casino in Iowa. The odds are probably better of winning at bingo then pulling a pallid sturgeon out of the river.
But looking out over the waters, they are always moving, always in motion, always searching for the freedom that it once had. And there is a certain reciprocity to the river. What comes around goes around, it says.
Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery found something that Americans longed for - a beautiful, pristine environment that evoked independence and opportunity. Maybe this time around America will find something different - proud Natives who are still here and have been here since the Great Missouri River first flowed.
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