The Red Paint Cave

"Where did the Salish first come from? We know only the story our old men told our men down from the beginning: the first Salish were driven down from the country of big ice mountains, where there were strange animals. Fierce people who were not Salish drove them south. So in our stories our people have said, 'The river of life, for us, heads in the north.'

After many generations, the Salish held the grounds from way west, eastward, and past the red-paint caves near Helena." -Flathead/Salish elders interviewed by Bon Whealdon in 1923, quoted by Ella Clark in her book "Indian Legends from the Northern Rockies" (University of Oklahoma Press, 1966, p. 107).

I read this passage in my teens, in the 1970s, when I read all the mythology and Indian history I could. I always wondered, where are these red paint caves? Years later I learned of various red paint (iron oxides, etc.) deposits in the area, along the banks of the Missouri near Townsend, and further away, along some of the road cuts between Helena and Missoula, yet I never heard of any "red-paint caves near Helena," and no one I talked to had either.

When I worked for the Helena National Forest as an archaeologist in the early to mid-1990s, I found a cave in one of the gulches of the Big Belt mountains. Most cave entrances in the Belts are above eye level, but this one was down below the road and looked to be a long crack under the cliffs inclining downward, with lots of loose eroded material sloping down into the cave. I went down, as it was walkable, more like a very large rockshelter really. I always hoped to locate human activity in such places, as that was my job, to document these places.

Once I slid my way down onto the cave floor, I noticed there was a screen set up there, as if someone had been doing archaeology, through there was no record of any such efforts, at least not since the Canyon Ferry surveys of the 1950s by Richard Forbis and Carling Malouf. It was dim of course, but the floor was stable, the room was long and of decent size if my memory serves me correctly, though the ceiling was low. I could see the cave continued back and downward into blackness. Not being a spelunker and aware of cave hazards, I backed off and made my notes, and told myself I would return with some folks and investigate further. Work however had other priorities, and I never returned.

This week I was reading James A. Teit's "The Flathead Group," an extract from "The Salishan Tribes of the Western Plateaus" (45th B.A.E. Annual Report, 1927-28)...On page 340:

"A famous spot for obtaining red paint in the Flathead country was at a'pel yu'tsamen ('possessing red paint'), near Helena. The paint was obtained from a large, long cave under a cliff. As the paint rock was at the head of the cave, and it was quite dark inside, a rope was tied to the waist of the man who went in, so that he might readily find his way back. When the head of the cave was reached the searcher felt with his hands and pulled down blocks of the decomposed rock, returning with as much as he could carry. When he came out he divided the paint among the people, who put it into hide sacks. Long ago the best quality of paint rock from this place was exported by the Helena people to neighboring tribes. After the introduction of horses, parties of Flathead and their allies [their later historical allies included the various Salishan groups, Nez Perce, and sometimes the Shoshoni] gathered paint at this place when passing or hunting near there. It is said that several men lost their lives or were injured in this cave by rocks falling on them. There was also a belief that this cave could open and shut at will, and that several men had been killed by it." (p. 340).

Was this cave I entered the red-paint cave of the Flathead/Salish tradition? Perhaps. The description of the cave is right. The gulches in this area are full of pictographs painted in red on the cliffs. Most of these seem to be related to the vision quest vigil, where the seeker fasted in a lonely place in hope that a spirit-power (Salish: "sumesh") would take pity and grant medicine (spiritual power/ability) to the seeker. Perhaps not. But the caves still await discovery.

I located several interesting places and had a few odd experiences during my job as an archaeologist in the Helena National Forest and over the next few posts, I will relate some of them here. I shall not pinpoint the locations exactly, because people tend to vandalize what they don't understand.

"Prehistoric Peacemaking"

This is an oil painting I did a number of years ago. It portrays two precontact Native American groups in Montana, ready for war, but choosing to make peace instead. The large shields which covered more of the body were used previous to the introduction of the horse. Currently it is in a private collection in Nebraska.

Chapter One: I Become an Archaeologist

I enjoy blogging and thought it would be cool to start a blog on Montana Archaeology. There's information about, here and there, but I want to try and pull something together to help people understand just what a wonderful thing archaeology is and how cool Montana is when it comes to archaeology.

I should tell you a little about myself, and my connections to Montana archaeology. I was raised in Helena, which is in the heart of Montana's mining country. When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, when we were out in the hills hunting or just looking around, there were lots of old miners' cabins and ghost towns, graveyards, heaps of rusting machinery, areas of torn up ground from placer mines, and tailings and mill structures. The hills were full of these old remains, and they stirred my imagination, wondering about all that had happened there, and about where the people had went.

I am also part Indian myself, and old man Eddie Barbeau down on Custer Avenue showed us how to peel tipi poles, tan buckskin, and set up tipis. We used to sit around, and he would tell us about the stone tipi rings around Helena, and about hunting buffalo. We would visit buffalo jumps and see artifacts and wonderful dioramas at the Montana Historical Society. I really miss those dioramas.

So between the mining landscape and the Indian traditions, I guess I never had a chance, but became fascinated by Montana's past, and the past in general. Some folks gravitate to history, and though I love books (ask my sagging shelves) my real love was for the actual places and "old junk" that lay out there, waiting to tell a story I was eager to learn to read.

To make a long story shorter, I ended up attending the University of Montana (after I graduated from Helena High in 1978) and majoring in Anthropology, with a minor in Native American Studies. In those days, Anthropology was still taught wholistically, and we had to learn all four subfields: cultural anthropology, archaeology, physical anthropology, and linguistics. I am something of an anachronism anymore, still oriented more holistically in my interests than a particular specialization such as faunal analysis or lithics.

Dr. Dee Taylor taught the "Archaeology of Montana" course at the time, and I enjoyed it a lot. I also took "Historic Sites Archaeology" from Dr. Carling Malouf. Both men are historic figures in the story of doing archaeology in Montana. They had lots of personal experiences to share with the classes. In the Historic Sites Archaeology class we went to Fort Fizzle; we actually did some test excavations at Fort Missoula and Fort Shaw. Dr. Tom Foor taught a class in anthropological statistics, and took us out to do some test pits, I think it was near a place called Owl Creek (maybe someone can correct me if I misremember that).

Well, after a period of being footloose, and introduced to "the life" by archaeo-classmate Dennis Pry I found myself following the archaeology trail as what is known as "a Shovel Bum" (aka in those less-than-PC days a "digro"). I worked for four years as a shovel monkey on CRM surveys and excavations for beans-and-bacon money through the states of Montana, California, Washington state, Maryland, Virginia, and North Dakota. The sites ranged from Archaic through the 1960s and every period of prehistoric and historic archaeology between. I was a CRM guy, and never worked on an academic site after the U of M days. Just an underpaid underclass, true to my roots :-)

I worked in Montana for Historical Research Associates (out of Missoula) and for Ethnoscience (the Deavers out of Billings). Sites in Montana I worked on included a survey in the Cabinet Mountains, a survey in Helena, an excavation near Bozeman, and monitoring in the Blackfoot River corridor.

Then in 1990, I snagged a job at the Helena National Forest (HNF) as a field archaeologist working for Gary Fairchild. I ended up that year getting a student internship position at the HNF, and if I would go back to college and get an M.A., I would get a job upon graduation. So from 1991-1995 I worked as an archaeologist for the HNF, mostly doing surveys and Section 106 work for proposed timber sales, mining operations, and land exchanges. It was a great job, and though the economy took a downturn and I didn't get a job when I graduated as was promised, there are no regrets and I count those years as some of the best of my life. The Helena area is full of excellent archaeological sites, both prehistoric and historic. I'll share some stories and sites later on.

After I got my M.A. in Anthropology from Iowa State University, where I took archaeology classes from Dr. David Gradwohl, Dr. Joseph Tiffany, and Dr. John Bower, I got intrigued with more about archaeology of the landscape, and got an M.L.A. in Landscape Architecture from Iowa State, under Robert Harvey and Tim Keller. Combining archaeology, anthropology, and historic and cultural landscapes was a good thing, and I started out by doing a landscape archaeology project at Gaines' Mill, a Civil War site in Virginia. Then I worked for the National Park Service as a historical landscape architect for four years, specializing in Native American landscapes and archaeological landscapes all over the southwest (I was stationed in Santa Fe) and then Alaska.

My last gig was in Hawai'i, for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, where I headed up the division for Native Rights, Land and Culture, and helped advocate for the preservation of Hawaiian sites and burials for three years. I've had some stuff published too, including some stuff about archaeology and native peoples.

Now I am an artist and adjunct faculty at the University of Montana, College of Technology, in Helena. Next term I am going to teach not only painting (I taught drawing this term) but also a new course, Introduction to Archaeology. So this blog in some ways, is not only a reminiscence, but a way to order my thoughts about Montana archaeology in particular, and to put some stuff online for students to consider and learn from.

I have met some great people doing archaeology in Montana, and all over, and I hope they say hello sometime, maybe leave a note on this blog as a comment.