Joe McGeshick

Joe McGeshick

 

I'm Joe McGeshick. Born and raised here on the Fort Peck Reservation. Forty-two years old. I've been in Indian education for about twenty-five years, taught high school and college level. Currently teaching at Fort Peck Community College, Native American Studies and History. Attended universities at Montana State University and Washington State University. Also taught at both of those institutions. Moved back here to Fort Peck Rez five years ago and been here ever since.

The Assiniboine had been in contact with Whites for fifty years before Lewis and Clark were fur trapping and trading with Frenchmen who had stayed on after 1863. The French and Indian War when Britain 1763 comes to dominate pretty much the continent, the western half of the continent and what we know as Canada today through the Hudson's Bay Company. After the French political force is moved out after 1763, most Frenchmen stayed and they are hired by the Hudson's Bay Company. So we have Frenchmen working for the British there in the fur trade and which they'd been before that time with their own country.

Most of the Assiniboine are initially coming in contact with Frenchmen who are working for the Hudson's Bay Company. When Lewis and Clark come up after they united, the American Republic is founded and they obtained the Louisiana Purchase so they want to explore this whole area. Obviously the Assiniboya, and the Assiniboine and their country, Assiniboya just a small area the whole expanse that Lewis and Clark expedition is trying to map out and understand.

It's a part that becomes actually kind of separated from it's main area once the border in 1819 is drawn, or as the Indians call it, the Medicine Line. They referred to it as the Medicine Line. What it does is that politically it kind of cuts off the lower Assiniboine down here in what are the States. In fact even today most of the Assiniboine are in Canada. Even today we have two groups that are the southern vanguard of Assiniboya, which there were many bands residing here. We see the remnant groups residing here on Fort Peck and on the Fort Belknap Reservation.

Most of the Assiniboine were north of what they call the Medicine Line which is the Canadian 49th Parallel. The reason why they called it the Medicine Line and that term really comes into play much later in the nineteenth century when groups like Sitting Bull were trying to escape the government, you know the capture from the American government. And a lot of times they'll ride across the border and then the soldiers would stop. Or vice versa. You know you're out in the middle of nowhere and then all of a sudden they stop pursuing you? That's big medicine.

According to that story the oral tradition claims that the Assiniboine saw Lewis and Clark. The first story that I heard though was that they actually came in contact with them and told them to keep going because they were afraid of smallpox, which seems reasonable, but obviously that's not anywhere in the journals. Lewis and Clark would have not neglected to write something of that magnitude down because they don't meet any Indians in Montana except the Shoshones. On the way back the Blackfeet and the Crow, but on the way over none, zero. I mean they go for about four and a half months without seeing one live Indian and this is Indian country. Well, because you know they're going through the Missouri and the mosquitoes and they complain about them. They're complaining about the mosquitoes and naturally the Indians are not immune to them and so they're not going to hang around and so they're up in the high bench country north of the river where the buffalo are as well.

This is Assiniboine country the oral culture story says that they had watched them and actually scouted. A scouting party had saw them and reported back to one of the bands, these lower Assiniboine bands, and told about them. It's not like they're, you know, Martians from Mars. Indians know about White men. They'd been dealing with the French and British for fifty years or so before Lewis and Clark and so it's not anything new to them. It's a new group of people and wondering what their intentions are is probably what's going through their mind. But as far as being overly concerned I doubt if the whole Assiniboine nation, which was close to about thirty thousand I suppose at that time, it really didn't make much significance to them because most of them were up in Canada anyway. What made the difference to them was the trade that they were already engaging in and had been for a couple of generations with the Hudson's Bay Company. So this really is an insignificant expedition. It is to us now today of course, but back then it was probably nothing to them.

They come up and they supposedly see them and they will report back and this is the story that, what I call a pageant, this production had been a taken. Which is okay I mean. You can't refute a story that says we saw you, but you didn't see us. You know, how do you deal with that historically? So it's part of the oral culture and you can take it as the oral culture and you can build off that if you want, or you can choose not to. I myself choose not to because there really isn't a lot. We can all conjecture certain things, what could have happened. What's important is what did happen and how can we find that out.