Great Falls Tribune from Great Falls, Montana • 42

2P Sunday, April 25, 1 999 Great Falls Tribune Great Falls Tribune Sunday, April 25, 1999 3P DECADES: 1930-1939 Memories roll in about farming, fashion, funerals For the Tribune The 1930s Depression: What life was like then Reputation of state's writers solidified in '30s Painter Fra Dana regretted her life as a rancher's wife FROM 1P By GAYLE SHIRLEY For the Tribune The company founder, David Adams Davidson, Ian's father, opened an investment office on the ground floor of the Steele Building in October 1935. It was the only branch office of E.J. Gibson which was based in Butte. D.A. Davidson was an officer, director and shareholder of E.J.

Gibson Inc. The Steele Building sat on the northwest corner of the intersection of 3rd Street and Central Avenue. The Davidson Building is there to By BOB GILLULY For the Tribune In response to the Tribune's request to share their memories of the 930s, generous readers responded with of flood of stories, photos and memorabilia. On this page appear a few excerpts from the delightful vignettes sent to us. The 1940s Share your stories and photos The "Decades of Montana" sections continue for the next seven Lee's first volume of verse, "Powder River, Let 'Er Buck," came out in 1930 and was followed in quick succession by three other volumes of verse.

They were homespun and witty, written in lilting rhythm and traditional four-line stanzas. One of Montana's best yarn spinners, Robert Fletcher, who wrote the inscriptions on Montana's high of Butte, owned a transfer and storage company. It was his legitimate business. His sideline was distributing illegal liquor during Prohibition. Three decades later, living in retirement in Hamilton, McTaggart agreed to a brief interview about the era.

"Everybody drank then. I think more alcohol was consumed during Prohibition than beforehand," he said. Montana was well positioned to handle an immense flow of bootleg booze, he pointed out. Its long border with Canada was Montana's reputation as a state where good writers flourished was enhanced and solidified during the 1930s. And certainly part-time resident Ernest Hemingway led the way.

Hemingway spent several months each year at a ranch near Red Lodge. Between hunting trips and going to town to buy bootleg liquor, he worked on magazine stories and novels. Two of the state's most prolific mm EM day. (In the 1960s, Ian bought the Steele Building and added the four upper floors.) The Gibson operation consisted of three people initially. One left after months on the last Sunday of the month.

In these sections the forces, trends, people and politics at work in Montana during the 20th century come into way markers of the 1930s, also wrote verse. His "Corral Dust" (1934) was strong in its ballads. Turning to serious fiction, three of the best play. Will you help us present these May the D.A. Davidson 1 If Tribune will do the decade of the 1940s.If you have photos from 1940 to 1949 showing some of the decade's major construction projects, businesses, people, trends, fashions or memories of the decade (keep them to less than 300 words) please submit Bob Humble brought in a photo album belonging to the Joe Paro-cai family of Dupuyer.

Many of the pictures were from the 1930s, including this one of a woman in a casket. Photos were not yet common, and historians say that many families took pictures of loved ones before they were buried because it sometimes writers, Frank Bird Linderman and James Willard Schultz, were winding up their careers in the '30s. Both wrote about Indians, K' JE 3 them by May 15 to Associate Editor Tom Kotynski, Great first-person accounts of settlement of Montana and the days of the open range. One of the best books was "We Pointed Them North," by longtime cattleman Teddy Blue Abbott. His book recalled the great cattle drives from Texas to Montana during the 1880s.

John R. Barrows, who spent his young adult years as a wrangler in the Judith Basin, penned "Ubet" in 1934, another description of the life of the cowboy. Noted western writer Will James, who labored during most of his career in Billings, loved writing about horses. In "Big Enough" (1931) he detailed the growing up of a cowboy and his horse on a Montana ranch. Many other Montana writers specialized in western novels, not pulp-magazine stuff but complex stories about the American West.

Included were Bertha M. Bower, Walt Coburn, Norman Fox, Archie Joscelyn, Lee Floren, Robert Mc-Caig, Eric Thane and (early in his career) Dan Cushman. One of the best novels written about ranch life was "On Sarpy Creek" (1938) by Ira Stephen Nelson, a writer who traveled often between Miles City and Hardin to talk with pioneer ranchers. His tale is a detailed account of a large family and their neighbors who deal with drought, hail, insects and personal troubles, yet manage to survive over several decades. Cowboy poets are all over Montana these days, but their patron saint was Jack H.

"Powder River" Lee, who lived in the southeastern part of the state during the 1930s. Falls Tribune, Box 5468, Great Falls, MT 59403. You may also fax him at (406) 791-1431, or e-mail him at: tomkotynskimcn.net, or call him at 791-1477 or (800) 438-6600. Walker jn the 1930s were Mildred Walker of Great Falls, Naomi Lane Babson of Bozeman and Myron Brinig, who spent his early years in Montana. One of the state's best-ever writers, Dorothy M.

Johnson, wrote mostly short just a few years, leaving D.A. Davidson and a secretarycashier until 1958, when Ian became its third employee. Today, the company employs about 610 people, about 220 in Great Falls. In the 1930s, stock quotes were relayed to the Gibson office in Great Falls from New York via Western Union wire. Someone in the Great Falls office, often D.A Davidson himself, would write the stock prices on a large chalkboard.

was the only photo they had. detailing a way Linderman of life with communal interests, spirituality, endurance and courage. Schultz wrote 40 books between 1907 and 1931, Remembering the Red funeral stones for magazines in the 1930s. But she would soon return to Montana from New York City and begin work on her trio of acclaimed novels. The same could Almost a century ago, promising artist Fra Dana had to give up her paints and brushes to help run the family ranch.

But in the 1930s, after the ranch was sold, Dana resumed the painting she had learned and loved as a child. She moved into a Great Falls apartment, where she produced several dozen paintings that art critics have praised as some of the best produced in the West in the first half of the century. Dennis Kern, former fine arts curator at the University of Montana, believes that Dana's talent was superior in some ways to that of famous Montana artist Charles Russell. But he also recognizes Dana's limitations. "All of the people she knew kind of regarded her as a hobby painter, and I know that was very frustrating for her," Kern said.

"She was actually a very good artist. The only reservation I have is that she didn't paint more. If she had painted more, I think she could have been a major figure in American art. Certainly the ability was there, and the vision." Dana's paintings primarily still lifes and portraits rendered in oils reflect the influence of her early teachers, some of whom were among America's best impressionists. They included J.H.

Sharp of the Cincinnati Art Academy and William Merritt Chase at the Art Institute of Chicago. One of Dana's works, a self-portrait titled "On the Window Seat," contains "more than a whisper of impressionist techniques," Kern said. In it, Dana portrayed herself reading the newspaper beside a window framed with masses of spring-green foliage. Kern describes the piece as a "metaphor for her loneliness and for hope. In the painting, she leans out of the gray shadows toward the warmth and light outside." In 1947, Dana donated her art collection 45 paintings of her own, as well as several by Sharp, Chase, and Alfred Maurer to the University of Montana Museum of Fine Arts in Missoula.

Maggie Mudd, director of UM's Museum of Fine Arts, hopes to put Dana's work on permanent display when enough money is raised to expand UM's fine arts facility. Dana was born Nov. 26, 1874, in Terre Haute, Ind. When she was 15, Dana enrolled at the Cincinnati Art Academy and began studying under Sharp, whose portraits of famous Indians hang in the Smithsonian Institu- while Linderman was noted for his authentic retelling of Indian legends. His "Old Man Coyote" (1932) was a best-seller and his biography of Crow 1940.

8. Somewhat surprisingly, the state's population increased from 537,600 to 559,500 in that span. One reason was that the birth rate increased during a mini-baby boom following World War I. I What was it like for residents in those days? "I think 1934 was the worst year in history to get out of high school and look for a job," said Dean Beall. After getting his diploma from Whitehall High School he went to work at a gas station for $65 per month plus a small sales commission.

"That wasn't bad pay. But some of my friends didn't get a job for months. During that time the Anaconda Copper Mining Co. was laying off workers in Butte and Anaconda," said Beall, now 82. Mary M.

Hyland, a farm wife and mother, taught at rural schools near Livingston to help the family make ends meet. Her husband's only regular work at the time was for a season on construction of the Red Lodge-Cooke City highway. "Married teachers were looked upon with some scorn," said the Hylands' daughter, Mary, in writing a family history years later. "It was thought they were taking work away from single teachers who needed it more." "There was quite a bit of opposition to Social Security," said State Rep. Lester Loble of Helena, who was invited to Washington by the Roosevelt Administration to testify for the bill in Congress in 1935.

"Small businesses across the nation were opposed to Social Security. They said they couldn't afford to contribute a small portion of their incomes to old-age pensions," Loble added. A decade earlier the Helena attorney had sponsored Montana's first pension plan for public employees. Pioneer aviator Earl Vance of Great Falls was a stockholder and pilot for National Park Air Lines in 1931. He and others in the company were trying to hold onto their airmail contract with the Postal Service, their only reliable source of revenue.

"We stole telephone books from the hotel in Salt Lake City, wrapped them up and airmailed them to our destinations in Montana," said Vance. Despite this subterfuge, National Parks Air Lines lost its mail contract a year later. The company was absorbed by a larger flying outfit later known as Western Air Lines. "In 1933 the Valley County March 1932 was about as bad as it has ever been for Sheridan County. Local officials were pleading with state and federal governments for food assistance and eight boxcars of flour, and more of potatoes, arrived the next month.

A two-day blizzard and temperatures as low as minus 28 shut down most travel. And then there was the funeral for 14-year-old Janis Salisbury, daughter of Communist Sheriff Rodney Salisbury. She died March 1 of appendicitis, and her funeral was held five days later at the Farmer-Labor Temple in Johnson She was given the rites of a full Bolshevik funeral, completed with a red flag of Communism draping her coffin. Here's how the Producer News described the scene: "The windows and stage were covered with red and black drap-ings, decorated with hammer and sickle emblems. Over the flowers on the coffin, the Young Pioneers draped the red flag.

Led by the Pioneers, the audience rose and participated in singing of 'The the hymn of the toiling masses throughout the world. Comrade Rasmussen then opened the services with a few words on the terrible loss we had suffered through the death of our beloved comrade." Janis Salisbury was buried on the family farm near the Canadian border, a red scarf accompanying her coffin into the earth. Conditions in Sheridan County did not become appreciably better the remainder of 1932. However, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president of the United States, and WPA, PWA and the Fort Peck Dam Project created hopes for thousands of residents in the ensuing years. JOE NISTLER Plentywood Living the 'Dirty '30s' How poor most of the people were in the "Dirty '30s'," troubles seemed to come in bunches poor crops, low prices, grasshoppers and crickets.

My boyhood consisted of herding cows and turkeys and chopping firewood. Basic entertainment was visiting the neighbors. The summer of 1938 was the turning point it rained and there were good crops of hay and grain. JOHN O'MALLEY Havre be said for AB. Guthrie a Kentucky newspaper writer who would return to Montana in the '40s after winning a Pulitzer Prize.

Schultz Chief Plenty Coups (1930) was considered a classic in its field. The 1930s also saw the end of Trlbuno flla photo Dana's "Indian Maiden" is part of the University of Montana's Fra Dana Collection. Dana was ambivalent about her life as a rancher. The ranch's prosperity did enable her to travel to Mexico, Egypt and Europe and to assemble a fine collection of jewelry, furniture and china. But her husband's objections also squelched her dream of becoming a successful artist.

During a visit to Paris, Dana was advised by Mary Cassatt to be "ruthless" and leave her husband. But Dana resigned herself to life on the ranch. She did have regrets. In September 1911 she bitterly wrote in her journal: "If my life is to be bounded by Pass Creek, how can I stand it? I am full enough of life to want friends, music, painting, the theater; all the stimulus of modern movements. I could fight the world and conquer, but I cannot fight the world and Edwin, too.

He will always pull against me in the life that I desire. So 1 shall give up. He has won." In 1937, Edwin retired to a ranch he purchased just south of Great Falls, but Fra, whose health was failing, chose to live in Great Falls. There, she resumed her painting, and it was during this final stage of her life that she produced her best work. Dana didn't live to see her work get the recognition it deserved.

She died of cancer in Great Falls in 1948 after a lifetime spent watching her dream waste away. When the university asked her for biographical information to accompany her art collection, her reply was brief, humble, and tinged with remorse: "I do not know that there is anything to tell you about my life. My annals are short and simple. I was bom, I married, I painted a little, I am ready to die." CowtMy of ttw University of Montana Muaaum of Flna Arts, Fra Dana Collodion Great Falls artist Fra Dana, ever the lady as in this photograph, could don work clothes and be the rancher's wife, as well. tion.

He was so impressed with her that he once pronounced: "She paints like a man!" But that Dana was not a man was the crux of the dilemma that confronted her all her life. At the turn of the century, women were expected to settle into the roles of wife and mother, and abandon any notions of pursuing their own careers. Dana had moved with her mother and half-sister to Wyoming. There, she met Edwin L. Dana, a successful and charismatic cattle rancher 10 years her senior.

They married July 1, 1896, but only after Edwin promised that Fra could continue to study art. A year after the wedding, Fra enrolled at the Art Institute in Chicago and, later, at the Art Students League in New York. She went on to Paris to study with avant-garde artists Mary Cassatt and Alfred Maurer. Edwin stayed behind to run their flourishing ranch. "She was as involved in the ranch as he was," Kern said.

"While a part of her was very genteel and cultured, there were times when she had to put on waders and wade through the manure in the barnyard. It was a business Black Eagle man remembers parent's wedding gift from artist Ace Powell 6 We didn't know we were poor' Tough weeds lightly patrolled by federal agents. Rumrunners used powerful cars and trucks on back roads to pick up loads of whiskey and other spirits. Some even used airplanes. From the border southward, sometimes as far as Denver and Salt Lake City, the illegal alcohol went to local bootleggers and, eventually, to eager consumers.

U.S. citizens could legally make wine and beer for home consumption during Prohibition, McTaggart added. "They'd invite the whole neighborhood over for a party on Saturday night, and dip out the drinks from their bathtubs or crocks." Entertainment and recreation, in fact, is what helped Mon-tanans get through the Depression. Their activities were limited by lack of money but it cost only a dime for a movie ticket in most towns. Mom, dad and the kids could save a few dimes and go to the theater every two weeks.

Summer baseball games were well patronized, especially in the semi-pro Copper League towns of Butte, Anaconda, Helena, Great Falls, East Helena and Bonner. Campouts also were popular. Farmers had no money to speak of, but they took their produce to town and bartered or sold it. Weekly newspapers would accept a sack of potatoes in lieu of a subscription payment. Many fanners sold milk, butter and dressed chickens in town.

Politically, Montana turned solidly Democratic during the 1930s, especially in sending delegates to Congress. Sens. Thomas Walsh, Burton K. Wheeler and James Murray won term after term. A succession of Democrats with Republican Rep.

Scott Leavitt of Great Falls the only consistent exception went to the House of Representatives. President Roosevelt carried Montana by landslide margins in 1932 and 1936. He twice visited fort Peck Dam, his pet project, during the '30s. Gradually, hard times went away. New Deal farm programs speeded rural recovery.

The Agricultural Adjustment Administration purchased surplus grain and livestock, promoted conservation work and started regular subsidy payments to farmers. And by 1938 and 1939, war clouds were on the horizon. Industrial and military output increased. Crops became productive again, helped by hard-learned practices such as summer fallowing and contour plowing. Demand for food staples increased across the nation.

War, the ultimate mixed blessing, finally brought recovery to Montana. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an emergency conservation bill for our nation's forests and parks on March 31, 1933. Men ages 18 to 25 were allotted $30 per month, $25 of which went back home to their families on relief rolls. The Civilian Conservation Corps built trails, roads, bridges, irrigation, etc.

In the Glacier Park area, my dad, Louie Green, ran a blasting crew making trails and roads. At the CCC, one of Dad's friends was western artist Ace Powell who gave my folks a forest scene with carved black bears on it as a wedding gift. I remember playing with them as a young lad. Our folks told us that we cut our baby teeth on those bears. Fred Green, Black Eagle mm I was 17 at the time and was always eager to make a few pennies.

The ground was dry and the Russian thistles were tough. The implements we had at that time were not able to pull these strong-rooted weeds out of the ground. The shovels on the cultivator would only slide around them. So with a good sharp hoe, a file and a 98-cent pocket watch, I walked the neighboring farmers summer fallow strips cutting out these terrible weeds. The good Lord had blessed me with a pair of good strong legs and determination, so it usually was 10-hour days that made me one dollar.

As I look back on my close to four score years in this wonderful state of Montana, I find out that hard work surely did not hurt me. BOB WESTER Sun Rise Bluffs, Fort Benton Ace Powell, left, hangs out with fellow CCC worker Louie Green, center, and an unknown worker in the Glacier Park area in the early 1930s. I lived at 2123 8th Avenue North all my life, except for three years in the Army. I was born Dec. 21, 1929, at the old Columbus Hospital on 3rd Avenue North and 16th Street.

I was one of the last kids to be born there. I was born and we had a Depression. We didn't know we were poor as everyone else was poor. Our house is at the back of the lot, so our whole front yard was a garden. My mom would can the vegetables, so we had them in the winter.

Just about everyone had a garden. The neighborhood was made up of mostly Slav immigrants or firstborn Americans. When my dad bought our house in 1927, there was a wheat field on the south side of 8th, and empty lots along 8th. There were no houses up to 23rd Street, with the exception of one house on 8th and 24th and one on 7th Avenue and 24th. From 8th Avenue North to 3rd Avenue North, all the way to 32nd Street and Boston Heights, was prairie, except for the baseball field on 8th and 25th.

Baseball was a big thing in Great Falls, with local players making several teams. The circus would come to town on the railroad tracks. My dad would carry me on his shoulders to watch the circus load up. The elephants would push the circus wagons up on the flatbed. I would go to sleep on my dad's shoulders and he would carry me home.

We used to play baseball out in the field behind our house, and built caves all over the field using railroad ties for roofs. We ice-skated where St. Gerard's is now. The city would plow out a spot and flood it. My folks would buy skates a couple sizes big so they would fit us a couple of years.

I wore my first skates out on the sides. We would go to Gibson Park to skate, too. They'would have ice carnivals there. My brother jumped 18 barrels. Most people who lived in my neighborhood worked at the smelter and would walk to work across the prairie.

It looked like a spider web of paths heading to the Black Eagle Dam to work. RICHARD KLEMENCIC, Great Falls Photo courtesy of Frad Green Bob and his hoe. Shoe shine more than he bargained for mm i Generations health nurse reported a number of cases of malnutrition," said editor Sam Gilluly in Glasgow. "Some farm wives were canning gophers to put meat on the table for their families." Ranchers were feeding thistles, the only forage available, to their cattle, Gilluly added. They dubbed it "Hoover Hay" because of the anemic recovery efforts of outgoing President Herbert Hoover.

But some people ate well and had good incomes in the early 1930s. They were the bootleggers. "My warehouse was half-full of booze every week," said Archie McTaggart of Butte. "Some of it was good stuff, out of Canada, and some of it was rotgut." McTaggart, a onetime mayor First class remembers graduating from GFH GREAT FALLS rl MONTANA A I KaWarBBLPPB I aH In 1937, my grandfather decided I should raise a 4-H vegetable garden so I could go to the fair with my prize corp. After spading in a wagon load of old sheep manure on my plot, I got to plant, irrigate and weed all summer.

I won some ribbons at the county level and was able to go to the State Fair in Great Falls. (I was doing ranch work and) raking in 25 cents a day and hoarding it for the fair. A year before, I had spent a night with my grandfather in the Rainbow Hotel and next to riding the elevator, the big thrill was seeing him get his shoes shined. One of my secret ambitions as a "cowboy" and "big money man," was to get my shoes shined in a regular shoe shine parlor. Well, as soon as we got to the big city, I headed over to a shoe shine parlor near the Mint Saloon.

It had four or five chairs and was full so I had to wait my turn. I was quaking inside when I finally sat down and put my feet on the shiny brass shoe holders. The man rolled up my pant legs and started polishing. When he started the brushing, he kind of scolded me to hold my feet still. Boy, when he started popping that shining rag, my feet were fastened so tight my legs were quivering.

The crowning embarrassment was when he rolled my pant legs back down. Some hay fell out of the cuffs and he announced to one and all, "look here boys, we've got a real hayseed this time." On top of that it cost me a day's wages. I decided right then to buy some ammunition, stay in the mountains and be a hunter instead of a farmer or city slicker. F.L. DES ROSIER, Browning We were the first class to graduate from the new Great Falls High School, on June 4, 1931.

We established the tradition of "senior entrance." Our senior class play was, "Smiling Through." Our football team beat Butte High School 25-13 for the first time in eight years. The assembly Roundup Day was presented by the Roundup and Iniwa staff members. Our school paper became the "Iniwa," a Blackfeet expression meaning, "The Bison," after 10 years as the "Hi-Life." Our class officers were Jack Pope, president; Robert Patton, vice-president; LeRoy Southmayd secretary; and Fred Jones, treasurer. Rosalea Spaulding was our class sponsor. Our prom was May 29 at the Green Mill.

Our graduating class was the largest in the history of the school at that time, 262 seniors. In 1931 Josephine V. Harrison was study hall supervisor. She financed two of her students through college and died in poverty, buried by contributions of class members. Surviving members of the Class of 1931 include Bill Morris (historian), George Angermeier, Lillie Bailey, Cecelia Franich James, Adele Bannister Cortright, Helen Gilchrist Thurlow, Helen Grabovic, Glenn Robinson, Roy Bell, Alta Bell Haugse.

ofPROGRESS Since 1938 Borrie's Supper Club was established in 1938 in Black Emilio "Borrie" Grasseschi and his wife, Anna, made a place for Anaconda Copper refinery workers to stop on the way home and enjoy a pork chop sandwich. In 1956, a new building was built and Borrie's became a full service restaurant By this time, their son and daughter, Ernie and Juanita "Rose" joined the business. Borrie died in 1963, the same year the building had a major fire. Trie family kept the business going, offering up traditional Italian fare along with steaks, chicken, and their Tuesday night specialty prime rib. In 1989 a New addition expanded the dining twit-i-i qnrl tnMniUI TVnio onrl Vile info DECADE HIGHLIGHTS 13 College of Technology GREAT FALLS 1930-39 The Depression, New Deal and World War II dominate culture.

"Big band" sound was tremendously popular and jazz became "swing" Over 60,000 artists, authors and musicians fled Germany Popularity of comic strips grows. Blondie begins. New York Yankees dominate baseball. Decade brought good economic times and bad to Indians By SANJAY TALWANI Tribune Staff Writer Max Baer and Joe Lewis noted boxers. Gene Sarazen noted golfer.

I Will CU1U IJIV11I1. 1UV (UiU I HO t'UVi Arlene, are now assisted by a third aeration of Grasseschi's, daughters ebbie and Cindy, and son Barry. 1930 The card game of bridge becomes popular. 1931 Knute Rockne died. To all our many friends as well as 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles.

1933 First baseball All Star game. mWi MbaeBBBBBfl 1934 Dionne quintuplets born. 1935 CIO organized by John L. Lewis. the many new acquaintances we make everyday, we wish to express our sincere gratitude.

It is your patronage that has made BORRIE'S one of Great Falls' most popular and progressive popular and progressive Photo courteey of F.L Dm Rosier A group of Indian leaders pose for a picture in the 1930s. 1936 Duke of Windsor marries Wallis Simpson and abdicates his throne. 1937 Amelia Earhard disappears. i i restaurants. Nation, revolving credit lines helped livestock holdings increase fourfold between 1933 and 1941.

Education and income also improved during this time. As the journey to assimilation quickened, Indians in the '30s also made significant attempts to recover elements of their culture that had been attacked by federal policy. The banned Sun Dance, one of the most important and sacred rituals, returned to the reservations. The '30s were also a time of struggle and disaster. On the Fort Belknap Reservation, the St.

Paul Mission School burned in 1931, leaving only a boarding school. Fires in 1936 burned much of the tribe's timber base and destroyed livestock. Meanwhile, ongoing development of the gold mines just off the reservation near Zortman and Landusky presented a hope for economic growth but also promised social and environmental disruption. Members of the Rocky Boy's Reservation reached 90 percent employment during the heyday of the Indian Emergency Conservation Program. But the drought of 1936 challenged the reservation again with a fresh influx of the Little Shell band of the Chippewa.

To help absorb the newcomers, a 1937 plan to annex land slowly came into reality, adding 45,523 acres and 414 of Montana's landless Indians in 1947. 1938 40 hour work week established in the U. S. 1939 Nylon stockings first used. The New Deal is best known in Montana for building roads and dams and for providing Montana farmers with millions in assistance to keep their farms alive.

But for Indians living on reservations, the most important piece of legislation signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt may have been the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. In 1928, the Brookings Institute issued the Merriam Report, pointing to inadequate medical care and education, and many corrupt or confused federal administrators. By the '30s, Indians were losing their allotted land as homesteaders and speculators settled in, often buying Indians' land at rock-bottom rates. Along with land, tradition was disappearing also, as the federal government tried to end activities such as the Sun Dance.

Children in boarding schools were prohibited from speaking their native tongue. The 1934 act didn't change everything. But it helped Indians keep their land and gave them more self-determination than at any point since the days when the white man seemed but a minor distant concern. The act rescinded the old Dawes Allotment Act of 1887, which had distributed tribal land among individuals and left the remainder avail- 771300 able to homesteaders. Of 137 million acres of land held by Indians nationwide in 1887, only 52 million remained by 1934.

John Collier, appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs by Roosevelt in 1933, shepherded the reorganization act into law, then championed its enforcement. Concerned with what he saw as a disappearing culture, Collier helped create an Arts and Crafts Board, promoted pan-Indianism and lobbied to make New Deal programs such as the Indian Emergency Conservation Program find their way to the reservations. He also helped end the government's long policy of attempting to banish the traditional native religious practices. Although some have decried Col- lier's forceful tactics in persuading Indians to submit to the reorganization act, many regard the act, co-sponsored by Montana's U.S. Sen.

Burton K. Wheeler, as the Indians' New Deal. The reorganization act had its critics in and out of Indian Country, and not every tribe accepted its terms. The act still saved vast powers for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and gave Uncle Sam veto power of many aspects of tribal self-administration. With one new law for 250 tribes nationwide, there were inevitably some places where a square peg was being shoved through a round hole.

Tribes used the act to determine tribal membership and established Tribal Councils. On the Blackfeet DECADES STAFF EDITOR: Tom Kotynski. COPY EDITORS: Carrie Koppy, Kathleen Schultz, Amber McLaughlin. REPORTERS: Richard Ecke, Peter Johnson, Wendy Raney, Sanjay Talwani, Paula Coleman, Eric Green and Ralph Pomnichowski. DESIGN, GRAPHICS: Take Uda.

Carrie Koppy. PHOTOS: Cascade County Historical Society, Montana Historical Society, I University of Montana Museum of Fine Arts Fra Dana Collection, Mon-J tana Range Museum, Montana State University Library Collection, Tribune files, contributions from the community. HMSUJP Falls Campus!) BBS Restaurant stmmmmmmmmmmmmmmJ.