April/May 2008

Greetings,

As winter slowly turns to spring, we here at the Center find renewal in our work as the days turn warm and sunny. This bi-monthly newsletter lists activities from the past two months at the O'Connor Center and upcoming activities for the next two months. The Center is a regional studies and public education program at The University of Montana located in the heart of the Rockies. The Rocky Mountain West is a region full of change and rich in history. We encourage you to contact us if you have any questions.

From all of us at the O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West, The University of Montana

Preserving the last buffalo?
provided by William Farr

Copyright, Antram Enterprises, 2020 Bickford Ave #30,
Snohomish, WA 98290, USA. All rights reserved.

     Prof. Spencer F. Baird, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. belatedly discovered in 1886, after reports that the bison had been virtually extinguished, that his institution had only two female hides and but one mounted male skeleton. What had seemed to be an inexhaustible supply had dwindled to a doomed few.
     Determined to remedy this situation, if it was not already too late, Prof. Baird decided to send the Smithsonian's chief taxidermist, William T. Hornaday, to eastern Montana to try and secure buffalo specimens, even if that meant killing some of the very few that were left in the wild. Since the species was doomed anyway, Baird rationalized, "between leaving them to be killed by the care-for-naught cowboys, who would leave them to decay. where they fell, and killing them for the purpose of preserving their remains, there was really no choice."
     Hornaday arrived on May 6, 1886, at Fort Keogh, just outside Miles City where he was provided with government field transportation, escort, camp equipment, guides, and encouragement before proceeding about 80 miles north of Miles City to establish a base camp on Phillips Creek. In this rugged, coulee-cut isolated country a reported last remnant of 35 buffalo attempted to hide. After ten days Hornaday's group captured a bison calf that eventually was taken back to Washington, D.C. (where it died) and killed one old bull whose splotchy spring hide was worthless. They did, however, preserve the skeleton. The reconnaissance trip was over, but Hornaday had seen enough to warrant a return trip in the fall.
     Late September saw Hornaday once again in Miles City. With a crew of seven, including local cowboys, the Smithsonian expedition once more headed north into the Big Open. In the following days, Hornaday and others would find and kill 23 bison. One old bull, enormous in size, was shot late in the day after a lengthy chase of some 12 miles. With darkness falling, the cowboys decided it would be best to carefully remove the prize hide the following morning and so they returned to camp. To their surprise they found upon their return that a band of Indians had discovered the kill and had skinned it, taken all of the edible meat, had broken the leg bones for morrow and had painted the head of the bull, one side red and the other yellow. Attached to one of the horns was a fluttering scrap of red cloth.
     Notwithstanding this setback, the Smithsonian expedition was a celebrated success and on Dec. 15 it hauled its preservation efforts back to Miles City and the railroad.  The very next year, Hornaday wrote an article for the popular Cosmopolitan magazine titled "The Passing of the Buffalo." Missing the irony, Hornaday began the article "At last the game butchers of the great West have stopped killing buffalo. The buffalo are all dead."
     The Smithsonian exhibited the preserved Hornaday buffalo until the 1950s, allowing Americans to know what they had almost lost. The museum installation was replaced in the 1950s and now, once again in Montana, the Hornaday-Smithsonian bison are housed at the Museum of the Northern Great Plains and Montana Agricultural Center in Fort Benton, Mont., not far from where these American icons had sought their last refuge.  Ironies abound. 

On March 29^th in Billings, Mont., Senior Fellow Bob Brown conducted recorded interviews for the Mansfield Library historical archives with former Montana House Minority Leader Lloyd C. "Sonny" Lockrem and former House Majority Leader Harrison Fagg at their homes.

On March 28^th Missoula, Mont., Senior Fellow Pat Williams was among the speakers at the riverside ceremony during which the Clark Fork River bypassed the nearly dismantled Milltown Dam and ran free for the first time in 100 years. Gov. Brian Schweitzer, U.S. Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester were also among the featured speakers.

On March 21^st in Great Falls at the First Interstate Bank conference room, Center Director Larry Swanson met with and spoke to representatives of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation and community of Poplar to explore growth planning and workforce development. The meeting was hosted by Elouise Cobell of the Native American Community Development Corporation and Howard Valandra of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, who are working with the reservation on its community development initiatives.

On March 20^th in Missoula, Mont., Brown spoke about his trip to Cambodia at the regular weekly meeting of the Sentinel Kiwanis Club.

On March 18^th in Missoula, Mont., Swanson spoke at the Association of Montana Floodplain Managers annual meeting entitled "At the Confluence of Change." The conference was attended by representatives of local, state, and federal agencies engaged in flood plain and resource planning and management. Swanson discussed development trends in fast-growing areas of Montana.

On March 15^th Missoula, Mont., Williams gave the keynote address honoring the recipient of this year's Governor's Art Award, Ed Lahey. The event was held at the Missoula Art Museum.

On March 13^th in Livingston, Mont., Brown presented on the topic of border security and illegal immigration at a public meeting of about 100 people moderated by retired movie actress Margo Kidder. The meeting was sponsored by Montana Women For:.

On March 12^th Wash., DC, Williams was invited to testify before the Natural Resources Committee of the U.S. Senate as the committee deliberates mining law reform.

On March 6-14^th Brown met with senior class high school students at Kalispell, Whitefish, St. Ignatius, Townsend, Livingston and Butte to survey them on their attitudes toward political involvement and the upcoming election. Brown will do one or two newspaper columns leading up to the June 3 Montana primary election on the results of his survey and interaction with the students.

On Feb. 28^th in Bozeman, Mont., Swanson participated in a 3-state video conference hosted by the Yellowstone Business Partnership to kick off a region-wide community development and transportation planning study. YBP received study funding from area transportation departments and federal rural development programs. Planning teams from six sub-regions in the larger Yellowstone region participated in the video conference. Swanson presented findings from his earlier study for YBP on the changing economy of the Yellowstone-Teton region.

On Feb, 28^th in Missoula, Mont., Senior Fellow Daniel Kemmis gave the banquet keynote address to a conference jointly sponsored by the Montana Chapter of the Wildlife Society and the Society for Northwestern Vertebrate Biology. The conference drew several hundred biologists from the Pacific Northwest and the Canadian Rockies. The title of his speech was "Collaboration as a Late-Succession Species of Democracy."

On Feb. 27^th in Missoula, Mont., Swanson spoke at the plenary session of the Montana Chapter of The Wildlife Society, discussing growth and development in the larger region and implications for land use planning and resource protection.

On Feb. 26^th in Missoula, Mont., Swanson participated in a session of the Montana Wildlife Society annual meeting examining growth and development in western Montana.  

On Feb. 20^th in Missoula, Mont., Swanson spoke at the Downtown Rotary Club lunch, discussing key population and demographic trends in Montana and the Missoula area.

On Feb. 19^th in Missoula, Mont., at the Gallagher Business School at The University of Montana, the 11^th UM Native American Lecture was presented by Professor Eldon Yellowhorn entitled "'The Lost Boys' and Buffalo Jumps."  An audience of 190 people attended the presentation sponsored by The O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West in conjunction with The University of Montana Charter Day Celebration.

Professor Yellowhorn, Otahkotsskinna, a North Peigan from the Piikani First Nation at Brocket, Alberta and co-author of First Peoples in Canada, related the Blackfoot story of the constellation they call "the Lost Boys," otherwise known as the Pleiades. Visible to the naked eye are the six stars, sometimes called "the Bunch Stars," that often appear on Blackfeet tepee flaps. These represent "the Lost Boys" who had sought refuge in the "Sky World" instead of remaining on earth. Professor Yellowhorn linked this story to the emergence and intensification of communal buffalo hunts on the northern plains by peoples of the Besant culture who flourished some 2000 years ago. The disappearance in the spring of "the Lost Boys" came to function as an astronomical reminder for all the widely-scattered bands separated to their winter camps to come together for the spring buffalo hunt when the desirable calf hides were at their best.

On Feb. 12^th in Twin Falls, Idaho, Swanson was the featured speaker at the annual outlook breakfast meeting sponsored by First Federal Bank of Twin Falls, discussing population and economic growth in the community and region. More than 200 people from the surrounding area attended the meeting.

On Feb. 11^th in West Yellowstone, Mont., Swanson participated in a planning meeting organized by the Yellowstone Business Partnership regarding expansion of YBP's "Turning On the Off-Season" project. YBP has received grants from federal and state economic development and transportation departments to conduct a variety of planning studies in the region.

" You have chosen to live where you live. If you chose to live in certain locations, you're accepting a certain risk."

" This isn't your grandfather's power plant."

" [Coal] has a CO2 problem, wind has a reliability problem, solar has a price problem, nukes have a price and radiation problem."

" We've been told a lot of myths -- that all growth is good, that you can't have jobs and a clean environment."

regional trends

Where the Buffalo Once Roamed

 Remaining bison range in 1989
Source: World Wildlife Fund (NPCN Conservation Assessment, 2005)

center in the news 

Local bright spots in economic news - Billings Gazette, March 28, 2008

War on Iraq 'a disaster' - Great Falls Tribune, March 19, 2008

Senators hear case for mine cleanup - Independent Record, March 13, 2008

Yellowstone Business Partnership kicks off workshops to tackle common socioeconomic and transportation challenges - Billings Gazette, Feb. 24, 2008

Western Montana housing market not following national trend - KPAX, Feb. 21, 2008

Devotion displayed on canvas in Vail - Vail Daily, Feb. 13, 2008

Lecturer traces Blackfoot origins - Great Falls Tribune, Feb. 9, 2008

Officials to close I-90 for avalanche control - Missoulian, Feb. 5, 2008

Obama's Message Resounds in Rockies-But Why? - New West Network, Feb. 2, 2008

Bush rebate plan is a 'fairy tale' adding new, unaffordable debt - Idaho Mountain Express, Feb. 1, 2008

upcoming events

On April 2^nd in Portland, Ore., Senior Fellow Daniel Kemmis will speak at Portland State University, as part of a lecture series entitled "What's the Big Idea?" sponsored by the College of Urban and Public Affairs at PSU. Kemmis's speech, entitled "Is the Presidency Overrated?" will explore the changing role of the nation-state, and in particular of the presidency, in a world that is simultaneously becoming more globalized and more regionalized.

On April 4^th, in Tacoma, Wash., Senior Fellow Pat Williams will give the luncheon address at a Watershed Restoration and Forest Road Symposium.

On April 8^th in Great Falls, Mont., Center Director Larry Swanson will participate in a community forum hosted by Great Falls Development Authority (GFDA) examining the Great Falls trade area. Swanson is participating in a economic development study with Angelou Economics of Fort Worth, Tex., for GFDA.

On April 8-9^th in Laramie, Wyo., Kemmis will present guest lectures in two classes at the University of Wyoming. One course is entitled "Wyoming's Political Identity: Its History and Politics," and the other is "Wyoming Futures."

On April 10^th in Missoula, Mont., Swanson will speak at a meeting of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the American Public Works Association, discussing key population and demographic trends affecting community development and infrastructure planning in the future.

On April 11^th in Missoula, Mont., Williams will keynote the 20^th anniversary banquet of the Association of Disabled Students at The University of Montana.

On April 14^th in Billings, Mont., Swanson will speak at a forum organized and hosted by Billings Public Schools. BPS is evaluating ways of incorporating "career pathways" programming into its high schools in guiding students toward promising careers after high school. Swanson will discuss key changes in the economy and work force relating to these career planning in the schools.

On April 25^th in Kalispell, Mont., Senior Fellow Bob Brown will be the luncheon speaker at the weekly meeting of the Glacier County Pachyderm Club.

On April 25^th in Helena, Mont., Williams will host the year's second Leadership Seminar at Feathered Pipe Ranch. The gathering is sponsored by the Policy Institute of Helena. 

On April 29^th in Missoula, Mont., Swanson will participate in a meeting of the Missoula Community Medical Center strategic planning committee. Swanson is a member of the committee.

On May 1^st in Missoula, Mont., Swanson will speak at a client meeting organized and hosted by Payne Financial Group, headquartered in Missoula, that does commercial insurance business throughout western Montana and Idaho. Swanson will discuss key trends shaping the region.

On May 6^th in Missoula, Mont., Brown will be the campus escort for Rolfe Scheutte, Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany, San Francisco Consulate.

On May 12-14^th in Rapid City, So. Dak., Swanson will make the keynote presentation at a special gathering of rural development specialists and program directors from seven land grant universities in the central and northern Great Plains region. Aspects of rural decline are accelerating in many areas of the region and land grant professionals are considering new approaches and initiatives to counter the decline. The meeting is being organized by the Nebraska Rural Initiative Program at the University of Nebraska.

On May 28^th in St. Paul, Minn., Kemmis will welcome participants to the third annual Grassroots and Groundwork conference sponsored by the Northwest Area Foundation,   The conference is for service providers and others working to reduce poverty.

On May 28-30^th in Limerick, Ireland, Swanson will speak at the annual conference of Observatory PASCAL entitled "Lifelong Learning's Role in Regional Development and Re-generation."Swanson will be part of a session on new approaches to economic development planning nearby national parks around the world.The Limerick conference also will include presentations on the recently completed OECD study of learning regions around the world (PASCAL European Network of Learning Regions).

project activity

On Feb. 21^st, Headwaters News and the University of Montana Bookstore and Fact & Fiction launched a new feature: On the Bookshelf. The monthly column, provided by UM Bookstore and Fact & Fiction personnel, provides readers a review of books of interest to Headwaters News' readers. The first book review was Public Lands: Governance of Western Public Lands: Mapping Its Present and Future" by Martin Nie.In March, Animal Dialogues: Craig Childs' collection of essays takes readers deep into the animal kingdom was the selection.

Director Larry Swanson and the Center recently contracted with the Great Falls Development Authority for a study of the  Great Falls trade area. The study is part of a larger economic development study for GFDA being conducted by Angelo Economics of Fort Worth, Tex.

Swanson and the Center have contracted with the Indian Land Tenure Foundation (ILTF) of Little Canada, Minn., to assist in community and economic development planning on three of Montana's reservations. ILTF is collaborating with the Native American Community Development Corporation in working with reservation community members, tribal governments, tribal colleges, and other supporting organizations to bring greater economic self-determination and sovereignty to the reservations.

Swanson and the Center recently completed a comprehensive assessment for First Interstate BancSystem (FIB) of Billings of the larger FIB region, identifying and analyzing sub-markets served by FIB in Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota and key trends in area growth and change.

During UM's Spring Semester, Senior Fellow Bob Brown is co-teaching a course entitled "Montana Politics: The Real Story" (Political Science 383) with State Senator Dave Wanzenried.

Along with classes in History/Geography 401 (Regionalism and Rocky Mountain West) and Forestry 423 (Montana Wilderness Policy & Politics) this semester, Senior Fellow Pat Williams also taught a course with the University's Lifelong Learning Institute:  "Montana Wilderness History and Policy."

Senior Fellow Daniel Kemmis has joined the Board of Directors of Philanthropy Northwest, an association of community, private and public foundations operating in the  Pacific Northwest.The association promotes philanthropy by offering technical assistance, information, consulting and networking to both established and emerging grantmaking entities. On March 18^th in Portland, Ore. he attended a meeting of the association, which is exploring ways that private foundations can more effectively serve rural and reservation communities.

Center Director Larry Swanson was appointed to serve on UM's Campus Priorities Committee that is working under UM's Provost to explore new directions and priorities for UM programming and Foundation fund-raising in the future.