“The Great Epidemic”
Culture: Kutenai | Narrator: Barnaby | Source: Boas & Chamberlain (1918:268)
Entry by Michelle Scalise Sugiyama
Story
Well, I’ll tell a story of what happened long ago.
The people were living there, and at once they had an epidemic. They died. All died. Then they went about. They told one another the news. Among all the Kutenai there was sickness. They arrived at one town and told the news to one another. It was everywhere the same. At one town they did not see anybody. They were all dead. Only one person was left. One day the one that was left was cured. He was a man. He was alone. He thought: “Well, let me go around this world to see if there is any place where there is any one. If there is no one left, I won’t see it again. There is nobody. Nobody ever comes on a visit.” Then he started in his canoe. He went about in it. He started in his canoe, and came to the last camp of the Kutenai. When he arrived by the water where the people used to be, there was nobody; and when he went about, he saw only dead ones, no signs (of a living person). He knew that nobody was left. There were no signs (of life). After the one who was alive had left, not having seen anything, he went along in his canoe. He arrived where there had been a town. He went out, and there were only dead ones. There was nobody in the town. He started to go back. Then he came to the last place where Kutenai lived. He went to the town, and dead bodies were all piled up inside the tents. He always went about, and he knew that all the people were gone. He was crying as he went along. He thought: “I am the only one left in this country, for the dogs are also dead.” When he came to the furthest village, he went about, and he saw some footprints of people. They had a tent. There were no dead bodies. Farther away there was the village site. He knew there must be two or three (alive). He even saw footprints-large ones and smaller ones. He did not know if there were three. He knew some one was saved. He went on in his canoe, and thought: “I’ll paddle that way. Those who lived here used to go that way. If it is a man, he might have moved.” Then he started in his canoe. He went along in his canoe, and saw above there two black bears eating berries. He thought: “I’ll go and shoot them. If I shoot them, I’ll eat them. I’ll dry them. Then I’ll see if any one is left. After I have dried the meat, I’ll look for them. I have seen footprints of people. They might be hungry men or women. They shall eat.” Then he started , and went there, where the bears were. He arrived, and saw that they were not bears, but women. He saw one older one, and the other one a girl. He thought: ”I am glad to see people. Let me take that woman to be my wife.” Then he went and took hold of the girl. The girl spoke and said to her mother: “Mother, I see a man.” Her mother looked. The woman saw that her daughter was telling the truth. She saw a man taking her daughter. Then the woman and the girl and the youth cried, because they saw that all the Kutenai were dead. When they saw each other, they all cried together. The older woman said: “Don’t take my daughter. She is still small. Take me. You shall be my husband. Later on, when this my daughter is large, she shall be your wife. Then you shall have children.” Then the youth married the older woman. It was not long before the woman said: “Now I see that my daughter is grown up. Now she may be your wife. It is good if you have children. Her body is strong now.” Then the youth took the girl for his wife. Then the Kutenai increased from these.
Now I have told what happened long ago. Enough.
Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Zoology
This story provides information about bear diet, habitat, and morphology. As the man is paddling his canoe, he sees what he thinks are two bears eating berries “above there.” This indicates that bears eat berries and can be found in berry patches “above” bodies of water—presumably, on banks or terraces. This information is useful for hunting bears and for avoiding bear attack: in the fruiting season, it’s a good idea to keep an eye out for bears when near berry patches. The story also indicates that bears are good to eat, and that their meat can be preserved by drying. The fact that the man mistakes the people for bears indicates that, from a distance, these species are similar in size, shape, and/or movement.
Photo by Mike Bender
Botany
This story also provides information about a plant resource. The “bears” eating the berries above the water turn out to be a woman and her daughter. This tells us that berries can be found in the vicinity of rivers and lakes, and that they are edible. The fact that the man sees the berry eaters as he is paddling his canoe tells us that this resource is available at a time of year when the rivers and lakes are navigable. Although the story does not describe or identify the berry species by name, the fact that the man mistakes the berry eaters for bears indicates that bears eat this fruit as well. This, in turn, indicates two ecological cues to look for when searching for berries: bear tracks and bear dung with berries in it.
Physical Geography
The story also provides information about topography. The man travels almost exclusively by canoe, indicating that there are navigable water courses in the region. It also implies that travel by water is less difficult or more efficient than travel by land in this area.
Kootenay National Park | Photo by skille
Peyto Lake, Banff National Park | Photo by Tobias Alt
Bow River, Banff National Park | Photo by Jakub Fryš
Cultural Geography
This story provides information about the occurrence and effects of a devastating epidemic: there is sickness among “all the Kutenai,” people stop coming to visit, villages are filled with dead bodies, and only three people survive. The story also models a coping strategy: the man goes out in search of survivors, and forms a new family by marrying the woman he encounters. The story also provides information about marriage rules: the arrangement made by the woman indicates that mothers have a say in whom their children marry, that girls are not allowed to marry until they are strong enough to bear children, and that divorce is permitted.
The Land and The People
Lower Consolation Lake, Banff National Park | Photo by Chuck Szmurlo
The Kutenai homeland extends from the valley of the Kootenay River to the western slopes of the Canadian Rockies, in what are now southeastern British Columbia, northwestern Montana, and the Idaho panhandle. At the time of European contact, near the end of the eighteenth century, the Upper Kutenai people occupied the valley from present-day Jennings, Montana to the upper Columbia River. The Lower Kutenai occupied the valley from Jennings down to Kootenay Lake. A third Kutenai group lived on the Plains east of the Rockies, from the Bow River region in Banff, Alberta to northern Montana. Each of these groups spoke a slightly different dialect of the Kutenai language, which is an isolate. The meaning and etymology of their autonym, Ktunaxa, are unclear. The Kutenai of Montana use the ethnonym ksanka, “standing arrow,” to refer to all Kutenai peoples.
In the early contact period, there were six different Kutenai bands, four Upper Kutenai and two Lower Kutenai. The former were primarily hunters, while the latter depended more heavily on fishing. In the winter, the people lived in semi-permanent villages of 150 to 200 individuals along the Kootenay River. Each settlement was known by the name of its winter village site. The Dayton-Elmo band, for example, was known as the “people of the fish weir.” This name refers to the weir built across Dayton Creek where it flows into Flathead Lake. In the summer, villages would break up into family units or small groups of families and travel to various hunting, fishing, and gathering sites to take advantage of seasonal resources. The Kootenay River was an important travel corridor, plied by canoe in summer and snowshoe in winter.
Subsistence patterns revolved around the seasonal fluctuations of the Kootenay River. In the winter, when the water was frozen and snowfall was heavy, the people lived in their winter villages, and went hunting and fishing at upriver sites. At this time of year, people also hunted bison on snowshoes in the valleys east of the Rocky Mountains. In the summer, when the river flooded, the people moved to seasonal camps downriver to fish, gather plant foods, hunt waterfowl, and participate in deer drives. Bears were hunted both for their meat and for their skins, which were used for clothing. Fish species important in the diet were salmon, sturgeon, suckers, whitefish, and trout. Summer was also the time for gathering roots and berries, such as bitterroot, camas, chokecherries, red currants, and huckleberries.
A Kutenai household typically consisted of a married couple, their unmarried children, married daughters and their family, and occasionally a married son and his family. Household members cooperated economically: men were responsible for hunting, horses, and ceremonial activities; women were in charge of gathering, food preparation, hide processing, clothing manufacture, and child care. Marriage was consensual: if one person proposed and the other accepted, they were considered married. Although parents sometimes attempted to influence their children’s choice, parental approval was not required in order for a couple to marry. Both divorce and remarriage were allowed.
Red currant (Ribes sanguineum) | Photo by Patrice78500
Photo by Sola Ishibashi on Unsplash
The Kutenai population was greatly reduced by introduced disease. Long before their first known encounter with Europeans in 1792, Kutenai bands had been ravaged by smallpox through contact with other tribes. Diphtheria was also a problem, and further epidemics occurred in 1855 and 1901. According to Kutenai oral history, the Plains Kutenai, who comprised several bands, were decimated by smallpox around 1730, and the survivors moved west from their villages in the eastern foothills of the Rockies to the Kootenay River valley.
Map
Kutenai territory traditionally stretched from the Kootenay River valley to the plains east of the Canadian Rockies, in what are now British Columbia, Alberta, Idaho, and Montana.
References
Boas, F. & Chamberlain, A. (1918). Kutenai tales. Bulletin of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 59. Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution.
Brunton, B. (1998). Kootenai. In D. Walker, Jr. (Ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 12. Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution, 223-237.
Brunton, B. (2018). Culture summary: Kutenai. New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files. Retrieved from https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=nf08-000
Chamberlain, A. F. (1893). Report on the Kootenay Indians of south-eastern British Columbia. Report of the sixty-second meeting of the British society for the advancement of science held at Edinburgh, August 1892, pp. 545-615. New Haven, CT: Human Relations Area Files. Retrieved from https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=nf08-008
Teit, J. & Boas, F. (1930). The Salishan tribes of the Western Plateaus. 45th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1927/28, pp. 25-395. Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution.