Shoshone-Bannock women have always been strong.
In long ago days, they owned almost everything--the tipi trimmings, dogs,
children.
My grandmother and I are walking, her pace is slow, for the roads in the Fort Hall townsite are in bad need of repair. We are going to visit Big Rose Koops, and in true Indian fashion we are just dropping in for a visit, uninvited. Grandmother is talking about her as we walk.
"I've known Roase since I was a young girl, she was always independent as hell, a crack shot and a good rider. She could do anything a man could, and prided herself in doing it even better."
Shoshone-Bannock women have always been strong. In long ago, they owned almost everything--the tipi trimmings, dogs, children. They made the buckskin and were true artists with beads and quills. Although not allowed in council sessions, their voices were heard everywhere else in camp and undoubtedly in their men's ears. In the daughters of the trappers and their Shoshone-Bannock wives, that freedom of spirit and strong character were magnified.
I grew up around such women of English and French or Indian lineage: My Grandmother, Hazel Truchot, my great aunts, Emlie Edmo and Louise Truchot, and of course, Big Rose Koops, and of her I was terrified. If you were a child and around big Rose you had to be well-behaved, or get your rear end switched with a handy willow.
My Grandmother and I arrive at the log cabin of Big Rose. It has large elms growing around it, and is shady even in the hottest of days. An old couch and chair are underneath on of the trees, she loves the out-of-doors. We are asked to enter and find Big Rose watching TV. It is on loud, because she is hard of hearing. Grandmother comes up behind Rose's big green easy chair.
"Rose it's me Hazel," Grandmother says in a loud voice. Rose Koops looks up, surprised, and then a slow broad smile comes across her face and her eyes twinkle. I have always been amazed by her eyes--they speak of a women who loves life, and someone who could raise a lot of hell if her body was willing. He hair is cropped short and curled. She wears a print dress, calico apron, and well worn slippers. She smokes cigarettes; in early years she rolled her own--Bull Durham or Golden Harvest tobacco.
"Hazel, I'm glad to see you!" she smiles again.
"Rose, I brought my grandson along. He wants to talk to you about your father and old times," Grandma says.
"Sure, sit down and let's talk."
The conversation first proceeds to the operation Rose had on her eye. She says laughingly:
"I'm crippled, deaf and blind, but still keep-a-going! I'll be ninety on June first. I think I'll buy me a jug of whiskey to celebrate--that's what folks do for a good time these days.!" She takes a drag of her cigarette. "You know, when I was young we didn't need to drink to have a good time, and we worked hard. Ain't that right Hazel?" My grandmother nods her head in agreement.
"The problem with kids today is they are loved to death. They don't have to do nothing--that they don't want to do, and they get rewarded for it! When we were kids living on the ranch along Teton River, we walked five miles to school each morning, and washed dishes and made beds before we did that! We kids were seen and not heard, when visitors came to call. I remember when dad guided Teddy Roosevelt, that was in 1892. I was being sassy around him, so he took me over his knee and spanked me! I bet I'm the only Indian that was ever spanked by a President! She grins at that thought. "We spoke both English and Bannock when I was small. A language is important to a people, especially Indians. Indian people should talk Indian, not be ashamed of it. There was a time that's all you heard around these parts, but now all you hear is English. We Indians are becoming white people." She put out her cigarette.
"When I was two weeks old, I road my first horse! My mother put me in a baby board, hung it from her saddle,a nd we went from our place on the Teton River to Jackson Hole; that's a three days ride! I rode horseback ever since then." At this my grandmother smiles and lights her cigarette. She remembers her own cowgirl days working for her family at their ranch around Ferry Butte in Fort Hall.
"Rose, you must tell me about your father and his first family," I say. Big Rose looks out to space, she lights another cigarette.
"My father never celebrated Christmas or New Years. Between those dates in 1876 his wife Jenny and six kids died of smallpox. He used to stop at this Indian camp on his trapping rounds. One day he stopped there and everyone was dead except a baby. He took it home; it died--and his whole family also. He buried them along the Smoke River near Rexburg. I don't know if that flood done any harm to their graves or not."
"Do you think the grave should be moved to a safer place, Rose?"
"No, it should be right where it is. My dad married my mother when he was past 50 and she was fourteen. My grandfather's name was Pag Pege-a-ben-ni, my mother Sue Tadpole. They were Bannocks, full blood. My dad built fires around the tipi my mother was born in; it was very cold that time in th the Shoshone-Bannock winter camp--that was up near St. Anthony. He saved her from freezing to death. So her father gave her to him.
"They helped the first Mormon's that came into the St. Anthony area; they came by wagon in June, to late to plant crops. Some of then brought a cow or maybe some chickens or even a pig or two. Those folks might have starved to death if it wasn't for my mother teaching them to dry chokecherries, dig roots, and dry meat. My father kept them in game during the winter. Those old time Mormons were good folks.
"One time my dad and one of these Mormon ranchers were putting up hay. After working in the fields they were sitting in the house. That fellow said, "Rick, why don't you sent your Indian squaw and those kids to the reservation and get you a white women?" My dad just looked at him, and then pointed to the door. "The next time you come through the door you'll be carried out feet first!' I guess that Mormon rancher meant well; maybe he had one too many wives and they couldn't get along!" She chuckles at this and takes a puff of her cigarette.
"My dad was a guide, and one of the last of the old time mountain men. He was a guide for Hayden in 1872, zmotsn in 1879, and Teddy Roosevelt in 1892, just to name a few of them. There was no highway into there then, just elk and Indians' trails. Everything changed up there now. When I was in Jackson for the Centennial Celebration they asked me, 'Rose, is this place like it was when you were you were young?' I told them, 'No! What happened to all of your trees? Why are they all brown or dead?" They told me it was bark beetles and they were spraying to kill the bark beetles. Well, they werekilling everything else off too. While I was there, I saw only one squirrel and a moose!
"I'm a half breed, but I'm not proud of it. They think they are so damn smart. Look what they done to the buffalo. That was the Indian's food. My dad killed buffalo for the Hudson's Bay Company. Two bits a piece; they took their hides, tongue, hump, and tenderloins, left the rest to rot.
"A women came up to my cabin in Salmon one time., she wanted to meet me I guess. We started to talk and she told me, 'Rose, there was plenty of wild game for everyone, until the Indians came and ruined it.' Well, I got her told; she never did come back.
"My friend Lilly Mosho told me that she could remember salmon in the Yankee Fork so thick your could almost run across their backs! Now what has happened to the salmon? Too many damns and not enough water!
"There's an Indian prayer that I remember: 'Our Father, thank you for thy many gifts to us, your Indian children. Thank you for the clear running streams, the deer and buffalo you have given us in abundance. Thank you for the sunshine and the blue sky, and the green things from it. A voice we send to you throught the eagle. Thank you for the life we live."
"Well, we must go, Rose, thank you for visiting. We'll come back some time again," my grandmother says.
"Sure, anytime," Rose says with a sly smile, "and if you
decide to go elk hunting up in Jackson Hole this fall, you better include me in!
We'll have meat in the camp that night."
As told to Clyde Hall, Native American of Shoshone-Cree lineage, and Replica
Commission member. Reprinted from Idaho Heritage.