Grinnell by John Taliaferro

Author:John Taliaferro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2019-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

The first stop on their trip was in Nebraska so Grinnell could introduce Elizabeth to Lute and Elvira North. They then spent three weeks among the Northern Cheyennes. “All seemed glad to see us,” Grinnell noted in his diary, at last acknowledging Elizabeth’s presence. She took a number of photographs, and together they observed the first government herd of cattle distributed among the Cheyennes, a project that Grinnell had been advocating for some time. “There was great excitement among the people,” he reported. In his diary he proudly made note of Elizabeth’s horsemanship: “All day in the saddle. Elizabeth had a narrow escape from a mad cow which she tried to turn and which almost caught her horse.” But it didn’t. Grinnell was not the only cowpuncher in the family.

They arrived on the Blackfeet reservation in time for the medicine lodge and were joined there by John J. White, Jr., and his wife, Grace, whom Grinnell had met at the first Sequoya League meeting, if not earlier. Jay White called himself a “broker,” which really meant that he kept an eye on his inherited wealth. Lately his main interest was collecting Indian artifacts, many of which were sold to him by Grinnell. With no profession of his own, White desired to emulate Grinnell—someone who divided his life between East and West, the engaging indoors of the former and the rugged outdoors of the latter.

The relationship took on an added dimension once Elizabeth entered the picture. Grace White was born in Africa, the daughter of an Episcopalian missionary, and she and Elizabeth Grinnell were similarly strong and self-confident. Outside of his siblings and their spouses, Grinnell had never forged a friendship with another couple. The Whites, for better or worse, were his first foray in that direction. By their ages alone—Jay White was forty-three in 1903, Grace forty-two—they provided a bridge between an older husband and his much younger wife.

After the medicine lodge the Grinnells and Whites headed for the mountains, guided by Jack Monroe and another old hand, Billy Upham, who had been with Grinnell on at least one earlier trip. On July 9 they pitched their tents—one for the men, a smaller one for the women—at the base of nine-thousand-foot Chief Mountain. The following morning they rode around to the west side, and from there struck out on foot, climbing upward through strata of loose rock that at times demanded the use of hands as well as feet. “The women climbed with extraordinary pluck and facility,” Grinnell noted in his diary. “At the very first, they had a little difficulty, but in a very few minutes Elizabeth came to understand how to walk and balance.”

The tour continued the next day. They rode up Swiftcurrent, past the lower falls and lakes that Grinnell knew by heart and was now anxious to share with Elizabeth. “Climbed to pass above my glacier,” he wrote. “The way was long and hard. The women did splendidly.”

Neither Grinnell nor White had brought along guns and thus did not disturb the forty or so mountain goats they spotted.

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