By SHERRY DEVLIN
The Missoulian
LOLO PASS – No longer merely a backdrop for speech-making by white men, Indians from the Nez Perce, Flathead and Colville reservations Friday came to the mountain pass where their ancestors once gathered to remember a shared and grievous past, celebrate a present-day success and look hopefully to the future.
The new Lolo Pass visitor’ center and rest area is evidence of “a true partnership between Native Americans and non-Indians,” said Tony Incashola, a cultural leader of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. “We have an opportunity, starting today with this dedication, to build a partnership for future generations.”
With hundreds of federal and state officials, history buffs and tourists bearing witness, tribal elders told stories of past gatherings in the meadows atop Lolo Pass – where their people came to trade buffalo meat, dried salmon, elk and deer skins, camas roots and traditional medicines.
Tears were shed in these meadows, said Charlie Moses, a member of the Chief Joseph band of the Nez Perce Tribe. The Nee-Me-Poo people camped here on their horrible flight from the U.S. Army in 1877. They were not allowed to return for many years.
Ultimately, their flight and exile caused the tribe to split, one band following Chief Joseph to northeastern Washington and the Colville Indian Reservation, the other returning to their ancestral home in central Idaho, promising to become Christians.
“There have been disagreements here,” said Incashola. “And sadness. But we have also enjoyed life in this place.”
The Salish people came to Lolo Pass from the east, bringing animal meat and skins collected in the Bitterroot Valley and on their hunting trips to the Great Plains. They intermarried with the Nez Perce people. Their families have memories and attachments on both sides of the mountains.
Now come thousands of visitors on the widened, black-topped version of the Lolo Trail. When they stop at the pass – elevation 5,225 feet – they will find a brand-new, beautiful log-hewn visitor center and interpretive displays that begin to tell the story of those who came before.
“Welcome to each and every one of you,” said Anthony Johnson, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe. “Welcome to the homeland of the Nez Perce people. Now you will also feel the pride that my people feel for this beautiful place.”
Many are the voices and drum beats that echo here, the elders said. They belong to Indians and non-Indians alike.
Led by Indian guides, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark camped with their rag-tag expedition atop Lolo Pass twice – in the snowy September of 1805 and again the following spring. In fact, the impending bicentennial of the expedition was the impetus for construction of the new visitor center.
State and federal officials expect thousands of visitors over the next three years, tourists anxious to know more about the Lolo Trail and its history, families anxious to relive a little of what Lewis and Clark experienced.
Those who happened upon the pass Friday afternoon got exactly that: Indian drummers from the Flathead and Nez Perce nations sang prayers of thanksgiving and remembrance. The youthful Lewis and Clark Fife and Drum Corps of St. Charles, Mo., provided songs from America’s earliest days. The Nez Perce Young Horsemen showed off their horses, elegant Appaloosa-Akahl-Teke crosses.
And with her family at her side, Stephenie Ambrose Tubbs paid tribute to her late father and the role he played in bringing the story of the Lolo Trail and the Lewis and Clark Expedition to a wider audience.
Stephen Ambrose’s popular account of the expedition, “Undaunted Courage,” is in large part responsible for the heightened interest in the Corps of Discovery. One of his favorite places on the explorers’ cross-country trail was atop Lolo Pass, where they camped in a meadow alongside Glade Creek.
Ambrose died of lung cancer last fall.
Now the historian-storyteller will also be memorialized here, said Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, who helped family members unveil a memorial to Ambrose – a plaque affixed to a granite boulder along the trail to Glade Creek.
“We are here to honor somebody who made history come alive for all of us,” said Hal Stearns, the retired history teacher who is the newly elected chairman of Montana’s Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commission. “Stephen Ambrose was a people’s historian.”
Thus the tribute on his memorial at Lolo Pass: “As a professor, his knowledge of history ran deep. As a writer, his gift was to breathe life into the past, re-igniting the interest of a nation in the events that took place along the route of Lewis and Clark two centuries ago.”
He was also a man who could make things happen. In the fall of 1993, Ambrose was instrumental in preventing Plum Creek Timber Co. from logging the Glade Creek campsite, his family and friends remembered. The trees were already marked for cutting when Ambrose picked up the telephone and helped raise the money needed to buy the land.
He and others succeeded, and the historic campsite is now owned by the state of Idaho and will forever be protected.
“I know for a fact that my father is smiling down on us all right now,” Tubbs said as hundreds gathered round the memorial to her father. “I know he is here with us today.”
So, too, did Horace Axtell feel the presence of his Nez Perce ancestors and Incashola of the Salish grandparents who raised him, always speaking in their native language.
“As we come together for this happy time, we also must remember those who came before,” said Axtell, a spiritual leader at the Nez Perce longhouse. “There is so much sadness.”
“My grandparents’ only hope, their only dream was to be accepted and understood,” said Incashola. “I think those dreams are coming true today. That is the responsibility that rests on our shoulders.”
“Native Americans are becoming true partners,” he said. “We are no longer just part of the environment, part of the backdrop at events such as this. We are partners. The hopes and dreams of our ancestors are slowly coming alive.”
Sunday, June 29, 2003
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