Becoming | A Market Place

Headwaters

We biography Joe Kipp and join an archeological adventure in order to understand the fur trade. Then, music helps heal the traumatic legacy of history.

Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: https://www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Eric Carlson art: https://www.instagram.com/esccarlson/ Behind the scenes pictures: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmSxSe2J

Jack Gladstone: https://www.jackgladstone.com/ Native America Speaks Program: https://www.nps.gov/glac/planyourvisit/nas.htm

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Lacy Kowalski: Headwaters is supported by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.

Daniel Lombardi: This is a story about the fur trade, about the collision of cultures. An epic crash three hundred years in the making. A collision slow but substantial, with whiplash still cracking to life in the 21st century. It can be understood through the eyes of someone who lived it—someone like Joe Kipp. This is his story. But it's also about history and landscape and about how we judge the past. And it all starts with the search for a missing cabin.

Kyle Langley: So as an archeologist, we look at old maps a lot. They're useful tools. They're kind of snapshots in time. And your eyes are drawn to, to this cabin that's kind of in the middle of nowhere.

Daniel: Kyle Langley is an archeologist here in Glacier National Park. And right now he's getting Peri ready for an adventure.

Peri Sasnett: [to Kyle] Because there's not a lot on those maps. There's lots of mountains and lakes and stuff, but just mountains, lakes and Kipp's cabin.

Kyle: Exactly

Peri: [to Kyle] No other cabins.

Kyle: Exactly. And every time there's been a crew in that area, they've looked for it.

Peri: [to Kyle] And they never found it.

Kyle: They've never found it. I think archeologists, you know, you put an X on a map kind of like that, and I think it's kind of like a siren call for us. You know, we will waste a lot of time looking for these things. [both laugh] But if you're persistent, you know, sometimes it pays off.

Daniel: So they went back to look for the cabin—one more time.

Kyle: We'd budgeted ourselves like an hour, and I think we were already at like three and a half hours or something [Peri laughs] and we're like, you know, we've got to wrap this up, should we give up, just about at home and—

Peri: [to Kyle] It's probably the afternoon, you're supposed to hike all the way back—all the way out

Kyle: You know, at some point, if you don't leave, you're going to be hiking out in the dark, in grizzly country. [both laugh] So, but, just happened to take a peek in the right batch of trees and found the remnants of a forge, like a old portable forge. And that was pretty much we knew right then and there that was where Kipp's Cabin was.

Daniel: Peri and Kyle are united in their fascination with Joe Kipp, a complicated character that lived in Glacier in the late 1800s. And a bit of a trickster, perhaps. And Peri thinks understanding Joe Kipp could be the key to understanding Glacier during the fur trade era. And Kyle, for his part, he's obsessed enough that he named his dog Kipp.

Kyle: Being lovers of Glacier, just like everyone, we wanted to name our dog something to do with Glacier. But if you go to the dog park anywhere in the Flathead and you call for like a Bowman or a Kintla, you're going to get like six dogs. [both laughing] So we wanted something a little more unique.

Daniel: The archeologists now have the location of Kipp's cabin marked on a map, but they haven't surveyed the site. They know the facts of his life, but they don't really know who he was.

Kyle: It's tough because we can't ever know them directly. I mean, he did interact with an astonishing number of historical figures who did keep records, who all wrote about him. But what you lack is kind of a full understanding of who he was as a person. He's kind of—he kind of fits in that intersection of fact and myth. And at the end of the day, you know, 120 years later, we're left with a kind of a semi-unclear picture of what kind of a guy Joe Kipp was. It's part of the draw of archeology in general is the physical objects and the places are things that you can connect to, whereas stories always leave you wondering.

Daniel: Welcome to Headwaters, [Headwaters season 3 theme begins to play] a show about how this one place in the Rocky Mountains is connected everywhere else.

[Headwaters season 3 theme plays, with the strumming of a string instrument, a flute, and drumbeats, then finishes]

Daniel: This is Season Three: Becoming. It's a collection of stories of how the American West became what it is today. I'm Daniel.

Peri: And I'm Peri.

Daniel: All right, Peri. Today we're talking about the fur trade. Tell me what we need to know to get started.

Peri: Well, our main character here is Joe Kipp. He was born around 1850 and died in 1913. So his life spans this really dramatic time in the Rocky Mountains and in the fur trade. He is of mixed descent—he's half white and half Mandan—and he makes a living doing pretty much everything a person could at this time.

Daniel: And so, Peri, you would argue that he's still relevant today?

Peri: Yeah, for sure. Joe Kipp is one of the most important figures in Glacier's past, in my opinion, but one whose name you almost never hear.

Daniel: But he does come up, you know, in some, some dark moments of Montana's history as well. And I feel like his role, it's not always clear.

Peri: Definitely. One example is in the negotiations over the Ceded Strip, which was Blackfeet land and is now the east side of Glacier National Park. You can learn more about that in the Two Medicine episode from Season One.

Daniel: Yeah, and that's still a sensitive topic today. So tell me about Joe Kipp's involvement in these negotiations.

Peri: Well, on the one hand, he probably stood to profit if the land was sold to the government and opened up for mining and tourism. But on the other hand, he was married to a Blackfeet woman, and he lived most of his adult life on the Blackfeet reservation, and he was really involved in that community. So it's hard to say from here whose side he may have been on in those negotiations.

Peri: [narrating] Throughout this story, I've really kind of struggled with our ability to look back and make moral judgments about people from the past. My hope was that diving into this story and finding a tangible connection with Joe Kipp would help me sort through this. And it definitely ended up changing how I see this place.

Music: [clip of John Wayne speaking plays over a catchy beat] There's right and there's wrong. You’ve gotta do one or the other. You do the one and you're living; do the other, and you may be walking around, but you're dead as a beaver hat.

[sounds of footsteps]

Peri: It's a warm summer morning, and Michael, Gaby and I have joined Kyle and Brent, the archeologists, on a backpacking trip to finally survey Joe Kipp's cabin. You can tell these two spend too much time in the backcountry together eating dehydrated meals because they refer to normal food as rehydrated food.

[footsteps]

Peri: [in the field] What would you be most excited to find?

Kyle: You're looking for a skillet, right?

Peri: [in the field; laughing] I'd love one! I've been told I can't take one home, so.

Peri: I'm kind of obsessed with cast iron cookware. I don't know whether it's their history, their beauty, that they last forever, or that I just like to cook in them. But I adore old cast irons. And if I get to touch one artifact—one thing of Joe Kipp's—I hope it's a skillet. The archeologists are very fun, but they are also very fit. My strategy, whenever I need a break or a rehydrated snack, is to ask questions about Joe Kipp. Kyle and Brent get on a roll telling stories, and I get to catch my breath.

Brent Rowley: Yeah. I mean, Joe Kipp was one of the most influential people in the latter half of the 19th century in the Glacier National Park region. But he was kind of all over the place, and to actually tie one location to him is really important. I mean, he had an influence on so many locations, but to actually have sort of a place that defines him as a person.

Peri: [to Brent and Kyle] And so to you, why is he the most important person?

Brent: I mean, he was kind of involved in all the pivotal events that happened in this region, but in kind of his own way. He was involved in the bison trade, you know, he was running whiskey across the Canadian border and had influence on even the border getting established. He was the guide for so many people, and he guided Grinnell through the park. I mean, he was, you know, involved with all these people.

Kyle: I think when you compare him to other historical figures in the park's history, I mean, Glacier has a lot of big name folks. And I think what Joe Kipp's contribution was, is he's kind of exemplary of what it meant to just make a living and exist at that time. And in so doing, I think he kind of encapsulates what it what it meant to be, you know, someone in the 1800s just kind of making your making your way in the world.

Peri: [in the field] Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, seeing history through this one person's choices.

Kyle: Yeah. He's not exactly the common man by any means. He was definitely like, you know, out there trying to make a name for himself in his own way. But I think he's definitely way more of the like, a representative of the common man's experience. He just happened to have like eight common man's experiences, like, all in one lifetime. [all laugh]

Brent: Yeah, that's for sure.

[a beat plays, marking a transition]

Daniel: Hey Peri, I think we need to do a little Fur Trade 101 here.

Peri: [laughing] Okay.

Daniel: What are they actually trading furs, I guess, but what are they trading them for?

Peri: So what Europeans are training to get these furs are, for the most part, guns. High quality British rifles. At some points, alcohol is a big part of the trade, too, along with other manufactured goods and supplies, including cast iron cookware. Joe Kipp's father, James Kipp, is working in this trade in the early to mid 1800s, and he's focused on beaver furs, which are going to make hats.

Daniel: Hats... like Davy Crockett's?

Peri: [laughing] I think that's a raccoon? Picture men in the 1700s, 1800s in like black top hats, the men in Jane Austen movies, or on Bridgerton, or Napoleon's hat—all made of beaver fur.

Daniel: Gotcha. The raw material is beaver fur, but the end product looks basically like felt.

Peri: Yeah, they don't really resemble the original creature… but they're hugely popular and there's a big demand for those furs. But eventually, fashions change and railroads and steamships make it possible to transport much larger cargo, especially compared to a canoe. So bison hides, which are also called bison robes, become the more desirable product.

Daniel: Okay. So how does Joe Kipp fit into all of this?

Peri: Well, his father is working for the American Fur Company, a competitor to the Hudson's Bay Company that probably you've heard of. And he's living in villages with Mandan people for several years. And like a lot of white men in the fur trade, he marries an Indigenous woman. It's sort of a strategic alliance between the tribe and the traders. And so Joe, their son, is of mixed descent, which is sometimes called métis, and he grows up in this fur trade world.

Daniel: So then Joe Kipp grows up... Does he do the same thing as his father?

Peri: No, not really. He's more of a freelancer. He's kind of a middleman in the bison trade. He sets up these trading posts for a few years at a time near one native group or another, and they would bring in buffalo robes and other animal furs and exchange them for trade goods, supplies and alcohol. And he'd turn around and sell them to bigger companies. There's actually a Charlie Russell painting called Joe Kipp's Trading Post. You should look it up sometime.

Daniel: Mmm okay. So what do you think Kyle meant when he said that Joe Kipp had eight common man's experiences?

Peri: Well, he just did so many things. Our story here is about the fur trade, but things are changing so rapidly in the late 1800s. And Joe Kipp is involved in everything. After the end of the bison in the 1880s, he dabbles in prospecting, which is what his cabin is for, and he gets involved in guiding people around this area too, as tourism starts to grow. He hunted and trapped wolves; he was involved in politics on the reservation. Later in life, he owned a general store, a ranch and a stagecoach business.

Daniel: So he did everything.

Peri: Everything.

Daniel: And I think you told me that at one point he was scouting for the Army and involved in the Baker massacre, right?

Peri: Yeah. That's a whole other story, and a pretty terrible one. He said that he tried to prevent it, but there are some moments in his history that it's hard to know what to make of.

Daniel: Well, what do people say about Kipp? Like, what did they have to say about his character, who he was?

Peri: That's kind of hard to say, too. I mean, his obituary talks about his kindness and generosity to those in need, both white and native. It says, "though during his lifetime, he made great sums of money, the most of it went for charity, and he died by no means a rich man." And another account says his funeral was attended by "the largest crowd ever assembled on such an occasion on the reservation."

Daniel: Do you think everyone's obituary says something nice about them, though? [both laugh]

Peri: I mean, yes, probably. And the author, James Schultz, is known to tell a few tall tales. So in the end, there are a lot of stories out there about Joe Kipp, and it's hard to know where the truth really lies.

[beat plays, marking a transition]

Rosalyn LaPier: So my name is Rosalyn LaPier and I'm a member of the Blackfeet tribe, but I'm also Métis. My family has been in what is now Montana for many generations, including my Métis side as well. And I am a historian, an environmental historian.

Peri: [to Rosalyn] You know, as a kid, it's just—history is this set of facts and dates and you learn it. And the more that I've engaged with it, the more it's like, oh, this is like it's a practice. It's something that's constructed. It's something that's built and retold.

Rosalyn: The way historians think about history, history is interpretation, right? You know, there's four of us sitting in the room right now. Imagine that there is a car accident that happens in the middle. But because we're all sitting in a separate part of the room, what we actually see is going to be different. You know, one of us is going to say, "oh, it was this person's fault" and somebody else is going to say, "oh, no, wait, no, it was this other person's fault." I mean, that's what history is. Right?

Peri: [to Rosalyn] Right.

Rosalyn: And what historians try to do is we acknowledge that the accident happened. [laughing]

Peri: [to Rosalyn] Right.

Rosalyn: So that's the fact or the event or... but let's try and find all the different interpretations of about that particular fact, because it often happens that we only tell one side. We only tell one person's story.

Peri: The history of the fur trade has dark moments, moments that turn Rosalyn stern, but most of the time she's funny and lighthearted. Off mic, we bonded over playing the fiddle and our love of fun dog names.

Peri: [to Rosalyn] And do you want to introduce your dog as well?

Rosalyn: And I brought my dog with me today. This is Poka-immoyii-tapi, which means Child of Sasquatch. [Peri laughs] But we just call her Immoyii, which means furry.

Peri: [to Rosalyn] Very fluffy. [both laugh] What…what does it mean to be Métis? Like capital-M Métis.

Rosalyn: So métis is a word that grew out of the fur trade that occurred in what is now Canada. So métis means, you know, mixed, and the Métis develop to have their own identity. They had their own language, their own religious practice, their own cultural practices, and so they became their own distinct ethnic group.

Peri: [to Rosalyn] Yeah, because you could see it as, “oh, it's half French and half Indigenous,” but really it's become its own thing.

Rosalyn: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it was half and half back in the 1600s. [both laughing] Maybe the early 1700s. But that was, you know, like 400 years ago. Yeah.

Peri: [to Rosalyn] How did Métis people interact with the fur trade?

Rosalyn: So either hunting, either processing, sometimes being the middlemen and connecting with trading companies. It is, you know, men, it's women, it's entire families that are working these different roles.

Peri: I can't really say whether Joe Kipp would have identified as Capital M, culturally Métis, but he certainly used every part of his upbringing and background to try and make a living. The fur trade ties through his father, his knowledge of Indigenous languages and cultures from his mother's side, and his ties to the Blackfeet community through his wife and children. In addition to wondering about métis people, I also wanted Roslyn to help walk me through the bigger picture of the fair trade and its context.

Rosalyn: So the difference between the fur trade and what had occurred previous to that is just the scale.

Peri: [to Rosalyn] Okay.

Rosalyn: So the idea of hunting more or harvesting more so that you could take that extra surplus and then trade for somebody or barter with somebody. Buying and selling, not new at all. You could argue that trade networks could be very capitalistic. But what is different is it's not a corporation that is is buying what you're selling. So it wasn't until the fur trade that that level of globalism gets introduced to this area, they ultimately end up bartering for money. And having money is different than saying I will trade corn for wild rice.

Peri: [to Rosalyn] So that's a new introduction.

Rosalyn: That's a new introduction. Also, the concept of credit and debit is a new concept. So they're not trading one object for another object. And some people just didn't trade. That's kind of one of the kind of missing part of the story. Again, it wasn't like this... all of a sudden, people are like, “oh my god, I need, you know, a copper bowl!” [both laugh] You know? It just it was like this—people were just like, “yeah, I don't need that copper bowl.” So for the Blackfeet, one of the things that we know about Blackfeet society historically is that women owned everything. That changed over time when the Americans introduced the concept of men owning everything.

Peri: [to Rosalyn] Here's the patriarchy. You're welcome. [both laughing]

Rosalyn: Exactly. It was... It was a cultural value, I guess, that men not own anything. That it would impact their freedom or slow them down.

Peri: [to Rosalyn] Mmmm right.

Rosalyn: Whereas women own everything, the whole household. Remember, women were already—there was already hunting, they're already processing the hides. They owned all of that. So one of the things that kind of gets introduced also as part of this process of colonialism and capitalism is the idea that men, quote, unquote, own what they hunt. Hmm. And that—that changed really slowly over time. It didn't happen overnight. It was a real, real slow kind of cultural change.

Peri: [to Rosalyn] Early on, this is a colonial enterprise, but it doesn't seem like settler colonialism? Like they're like we want these furs, but like we don't want the land.

Rosalyn: Yes, so no that's a good interpretation of what happened. No, I think that in the beginning, people are just interested in resource extraction. People are not interested in living here. That changes over time. And you got to remember, over generations, right? So like what Grandpa would have done versus what Mom, you know, down to the kid. By the time the kid is doing it, it's a different economic system. It's not an overnight thing that happens where capitalism gets introduced and boom. There it is.

Peri: [to Rosalyn] It arrives, it's here.

Rosalyn: Yeah, but it's something that evolves over time. Because one of the things we know from the historic record is that when fur traders first come here, they had to adapt to the system that existed here, right.

Peri: [to Rosalyn] Cause they were coming into these Indigenous places and Indigenous systems of everything.

Rosalyn: Yes.

Peri: [to Rosalyn] Life, etiquette...

Rosalyn: Yes. We often think of contact, right, cultural contact as like something that happens like a car wreck—immediate and a big bang and, and like things change after that contact. We don't often think of contact between, you know, the Americans and Indigenous groups, or Europeans and Indigenous groups, as like this slow, like process, that happens over decades and generations. [pensive music begins to play] And we see the end result, which looks like a car wreck, but we don't see the beginning, which is not that at all. Right. It's something very different.

[music builds]

Rosalyn: So one of the things that is really different with the way that the Americans and the U.S. government dealt with Indigenous people was that they did not see anything wrong with coming and outright stealing Indigenous land, outright stealing resources and not thinking of it as somebody else's resources or somebody else's place. So when we talk about colonialism or we talk about capitalism, that system is based on a system of thievery. Even at that time, they know they're stealing from Indigenous people. We think of capitalism as benign, right? We think of it just as an economic process.

Peri: [to Rosalyn] Right. The free market. It's this like non-active entity.

Rosalyn: Yes.

Peri: [to Rosalyn] I think we're not—as a culture, we're not very good students of history. History isn't the past. Not only are we making history every day, but also we are living with the repercussions of history from hundreds and thousands of years ago. Every day.

Rosalyn: Yeah. And I think that—I mean, this is one of those things that, you know, will America ever come to terms with this? We will see.

[music ends]

[western tanager begins to sing]

Peri: It's first thing in the morning at our campsite. Everyone is trying to eat their rehydrated, dehydrated breakfast, and I'm pestering Kyle about what we might find at the cabin site today.

Kyle: One thing that'd be really cool to find would be like I was saying, something diagnostic, which is just like something that you can use to, like a time and a place.

Peri: [in the field] Like to firmly say this is older than this or younger than this?

Kyle: Yeah. And one really great thing for that is complete bottle bases. Tin cans and things like that can also sometimes help.

Peri: [in the field] Because we don't know where the actual cabin was.

Brent: Oh yeah, we do.

Peri: [in the field] Or we do, did you find like the footprint?

Brent: We found not the actual footprint, but we found a forge. We have a really good idea of where it was.

Peri: [in the field] Because things like a big forge or a skillet would not have moved over time, whereas rifle casings could be all over.

Brent: Yeah.

Peri: I know we won't find the cabin itself, because it was burned down by Joe Cosley, another glacier trickster—allegedly. So if I want to understand Joe Kipp, it'll have to be by what's left behind. I wonder what things of mine would survive a fire and a century in the woods. My cast irons would…definitely not my fiddle though. It would be an incomplete picture, but it'd be a glimpse of what was important to me.

[a beat plays briefly, marking a transition]

Daniel: So we're talking about the fur trade today, right?

Peri: Yes.

Daniel: But we're talking about it through one person.

Peri: Yeah. Through Joe Kipp's story.

Daniel: Yeah, at least it's tempting for me, is like, okay, I'm trying to understand this piece of history. I'm trying to understand this one person, and I want to understand them through the ethics and the morals of today.

Peri: Yeah I mean, any main character in a story, you're trying to decide how you feel about them.

Daniel: Like is this person, the hero or the anti-hero?

Peri: Right, fit them into an archetype. Like, am I rooting for them? Am I not? How do I feel about this person?

Michael Faist: You do that to humanize history and you put yourself in people's shoes like, “would I do that? How would I feel if I did that?”

Daniel: Sure. Well, tell us about Joe Kipp, Peri.

Peri: So his family is very distinguished on both sides. He comes from a very prominent New York family. And the Kip's Bay neighborhood in Manhattan is named for his family.

Daniel: Wow, okay.

Gaby Eseverri: I have family there.

Peri: What?!

Gaby: Yeah! [both laughing]

Peri: Gaby, the Joe Kipp connections are everywhere! And his mother is the daughter of a Mandan chief named Four Bears, who's also quite a character. I definitely recommend googling him.

Daniel: He's connected to everything with, like, these wild stories every time.

Peri: Every time.

Gaby: Yeah. Did you guys know that he and George Bird Grinnell were good friends?

Daniel: Okay. So, Grinnell… Grinnell helped establish Glacier National Park.

Gaby: Yeah. So after one of his trips, Grinnell goes back home, back to New York City, and one day gets a package. So he goes downstairs, and in the middle of the street are two grizzly bear cubs.

Peri: Loose?!

Daniel: In New York?

Gaby: [laughing] Yeah, that's the package. And he didn't even need to see a note—

Peri: "Delivery for you!"

Gaby: —or any information, he knew. He just knew it was from Joe Kipp.

Peri: "Which one of my friends would mail me bear cubs?"

Michael: Why? Why did he send him bear cubs?

Gaby: That's a great question, Michael. A question we all kind of still have. It's not totally clear, but Joe Kipp had a trading post, and behind one of his trading posts, he had two pet grizzly bear cubs.

Peri: So George Grinnell was like, I’d love some bear cubs.

Daniel: He must have said something. And so then Joe Kipp just mails them to New York.

Gaby: But they were safe. They made it safe, and they ended up at the Central Park Zoo.

Daniel: Okay.

Peri: Maybe Joe Kipp just thought better of having two adult grizzly bears out back of his store.

Gaby: I think maybe he saw that they were growing and growing fast. [laughing]

Daniel: Okay. So he's a kooky character, he's—but he's just involved in everything. He's doing business and he knows the area really well. He can be a cultural bridge with a foot in a bunch of different worlds at once.

Michael: Yeah. So he was not by any means the first person to have good working knowledge of how to navigate this landscape that would eventually become Glacier, but he was one of the first people that started to market it. In this 1896 map of the place that would later become the park—it's beautiful, hand-drawn, and it has Joe Kipp's name in the bottom right as a copyright.

Gaby: Wow.

Peri: And this is one of the first maps of this area, at least that was widely distributed, right? Yeah.

Michael: Certainly one of the first detailed maps of this place. He didn't draw the map himself. It was drawn by somebody else, but it was based on his descriptions of the landscape.

Daniel: Not only is he involved in everything, but he's literally putting Glacier on the map. Yeah.

Peri: Yeah. Another Joe Kipp story, and I think this one's important, is about him smuggling alcohol across the Canadian border because the U.S. is cracking down on alcohol sales to tribes.

Gaby: Hmm.

Peri: So he's trying to get these wagon loads of whiskey across the border, and the U.S. Marshal is chasing him down a hundred miles—hundreds of miles across the plains. And finally, the Marshal catches him and is like, "all right, I got you. Give it up." But Joe Kipp is like, "you know what? It's kind of unclear where the border is. Looks to me like we're in Canada."

Gaby: Oh my God.

Peri: And the Marshal's like, "no, we absolutely are not. We are a few hundred yards shy of the border." And Joe Kipp's like, "well, there's five of us and one of you, we're in Canada." [all laugh] Essentially the Marshal was like, "all right, fair play" and rides off. And when they eventually surveyed the border in that area, they were, in fact, a couple of hundred yards on the U.S. side.

Daniel: Oh of course.

Gaby: Wow.

Michael: It's like a classic Hollywood Western, like standoff.

Peri: Well, so apparently, one of Joe Kipp's lines was, "I stand you off!" And then once they got across the border, he named his trading post Fort Standoff!

Michael: Wow.

Peri: It's a whole thing.

Daniel: Very Hollywood,.

Peri: Very.

Daniel: Hero or anti-hero? I don't know.

Peri: I know. I don't—I don't really know what box to put him in. In a way that makes him a great character because he is pretty ambiguous.

Daniel: He's complicated.

Peri: Definitely.

Music: [clip of John Wayne speaking plays over a catchy beat] There's right and there's wrong. You’ve gotta do one or the other. You do the one and you're living; do the other, and you may be walking around, but you're dead as a beaver hat.

Peri: Joe Kipp is doing quite the balancing act in this era of rapid change changing cultures, ecology, infrastructure, ways of life. Most of the time, it's impossible to know how he felt about this. But his obituary, written by James Schultz, has a rare quote. After the last bison were killed, Kipp apparently said, "I was born in the bison trade, I expected to die in the bison trade. The bison are gone and I don't know what to do." This cabin is basically his plan B—or one of them anyway. Trying to get by after the end of this system he'd made a life in.

[birds singing]

Michael: Describe where we are.

Peri: [in the field, over the sound of footsteps] In a beautiful subalpine meadow surrounded by subalpine fir and spruce. The morning light's coming up over the ridge. The ground is dewy. My toes are getting wet.

[white crowned sparrow sings]

Peri: I follow Kyle and Brent through patchy meadows and forest up toward the cabin site and we all set our packs down. They get out their trowels, flags to mark artifacts, GPS unit, and other tools of their trade. As we walk into a little clearing in the trees, the first thing we find is...

Kyle: That’s a doorknob. I don't think we recorded that the first time.

Brent: No, we didn't see that last time.

Kyle: So that's kind of cool because that means there's a door somewhere.

Brent: Yep. [both laugh]

Kyle: But so anyway, if you guys start peeking around in the woods, you start seeing all sorts of stuff, I think—

Peri: [in the field] We get to be archeologists for the day?!

Kyle: Yeah. [Peri laughs]

Peri: Turns out I'm not a great archeologist, but luckily I have professionals with me. Historic artifacts are protected though, so even with the pros, everything is left where we found it. Including, of all things, a coffee grinder.

Brent: Whoaaa!

Kyle: A coffee grinder, huh?

Sarah: Maybe.

Peri: [in the field] Oh, yeah. That's totally a burr grinder. Like it looks like a burr grinder.

Brent: Oh a burr—okay. Yeah yeah, I see what you're saying. I thought you said a bird grinder. [everyone laughs loudly] And I was picturing Joe Kipp stuffing like a ptarmigan in there. [laughing]

Peri: And then my personal highlight….

Brent: We found your artifact.

Peri: [in the field] You did? [gasps] A skillet!

Brent: Yeah.

Peri: [in the field] I love it! It's got a heat ring, it's got a gate mark, just like mine. This is why I love cast iron skillets. Because they're just like—I mean, mine hasn't been, like, sitting in the ground for 100 years, but it's like, looks a lot like this.

Brent: Yeah. I mean, maybe a few decades ago, it has still been usable.

Peri: [in the field] I know, mine doesn't have any holes in the bottom, but…

Brent: Yeah.

Kyle: You could become a specialist in cast iron archeology.

Brent: Yeah.

Kyle: I could see an entire master's thesis on it.

Peri: [in the field] I would love that. [both laughing]

Brent: I always think finding stuff like this is cool because, like, it's kind of a really personal connection to someone. Like, he was probably, like, frying up his meat in that, you know, item.

Peri: Later, we'd all spread out around the site, chatting, snacking, and Kyle came and got me.

Kyle: So this is kind of still a guess phase, [raven calling] but there's a line from here out to here. And if you trowel underneath like here, you just find tons of wood, and a lot of the wood's burned. And then I did the same thing over here, and I didn't find that wood or the charcoal. And so there's a possibility this is…

Brent: A cabin.

Kyle: An old cabin wall. [ringing of a trowel scraping on the ground] So if that story of the cabin burning is true, there could be some remnant of an actual like floor.

[pensive music begins to play]

Peri: As Kyle scraped his trowel along the floor I was standing on, and pointed out what looked like one wall of the cabin, I felt surprisingly emotional. I don't know whether to describe it as a thrill or a shiver, but it felt a little bit like time traveling.

Kyle: So then you can kind of say stove here, forge there... You start kind of getting a spatial—

Peri: [in the field] So we're like in the cabin?

Brent: Possibly.

Peri: [in the field] Maybe.

Kyle: So this is… like where I'm standing right now, I mean, very well could have been like an entryway.

Peri: [in the field] You're standing on the doorstep.

Kyle: Standing on the doorstep, yeah.

Peri: It was surreal to be there, standing on the doorstep of Joe Kipp's cabin, after reading and wondering about him for so long. And coming to the cabin did answer some of my questions. Turns out he was a bit of a coffee snob, and we have the same taste in cast iron skillets. It felt like I could reach across that gap in time just a little bit. But there's so much more that I just can't know from this distance. What were his motivations? His hopes, his fears? Was he a good person? And does that even matter?

[music finishes playing; a new more upbeat piece of music plays briefly]

Daniel: On a day that Peri was doing another interview, Gaby and I drove over Going-to-the-Sun Road to talk with Jack Gladstone.

Gaby: [in the field] We recording?

Daniel: [in the field] Yeah.

Jack Gladstone: Hey.

Daniel: [in the field]Hey, Jack.

Gaby: [in the field]Hey, Jack.

Daniel: Jack is a locally famous musician who fuzes history into his songs and I think into everything else in his life, too.

Jack: Coffee. Really good. Coffee. That is fresh in the thermos.

Daniel: He's a big guy, and it's not hard to believe that he won a Rose Bowl playing football for the University of Washington.

Jack: Okay, cups for you.

Daniel: He calls his house the Buffalo Chalet, and he built it himself. Of course.

Gaby: [in the field] It's a Charlie Russell mug. So we're sitting on Jack's porch. Jack just walked out with his guitar.

Jack: Yeah, we're on the porch overlooking Lower Saint Mary's Lake, and we're—we're drinking a blend of deep, dark roast. [Gaby laughing]

Daniel: [in the field] That's good.

Jack: We are blends.

Gaby: [in the field] Yeah.

Jack: I am Jack Gladstone. A cross-blood, Blackfeet Indian, German-American singer-songwriter, cultural interpreter, co-founder of Native American Speaks.

Daniel: We talked to Jack for hours. Sometimes I would ask him about his personal life and he would answer with an obscure piece of history. Then other times I would ask him about history, and he'd answer with an intimate story from his childhood. Mostly we talked about his music, and two songs in particular that illustrate this era of the fur trade with extremely catchy lyrics. We started with his song, Hudson Bay Blues, which is all about the Hudson Bay trading company and the culture of shopping that it introduced to this region.

Gaby: [in the field] So in like two sentences. What is the song about to you?

Jack: The introduction and the intrusion and the full manifest intoxication of the market or commercialism.

Gaby: [in the field] Can you play a little bit of that?

Jack: Oh, sure.

Daniel: [in the field] You notice Gaby knows all that, all your lyrics. [Gaby laughing]

Jack: Oh, I appreciate that.

Music: [Jack playing "Hudson Bay Blues" while playing his guitary] I was riding on my pony hunting bison on the plains when the moccasin telegraph reported something strange, someone built lodges made with stone and logs, they had bushes on their faces and funky looking dogs.

Jack: Pretty much in a hunting gathering society, most everything that you utilize is taken from a relatively local chain.

Music: ["Hudson Bay Blues" continues] When the smoke was over, they said, we've got a gift for you that'll fill your head with the visions make you strong and happy too. Didn't quite know what to think before we drank that rum, firewater...

Jack: When the first white men were perceived by our people, we noticed they had incredible powers. Napi is the trickster. Náápiikoan would translate to trickster men, and the napi-aohkíí is the alcohol. And would convert a person into this trickster man that seemed to be a little bit more full of the seven deadly sins.

Music: ["Hudson Bay Blues" continues] Silver bells, tallow candles, sugar, flour, dark molasses, colored beads, looking glasses, pale ale, gin and brandy, fine wine and hard rock candy. Ride-through service was awful handy! Though. We couldn't stop shopping....

Jack: But I don't take a value judgment. I do recognize the pernicious nature, the potential pernicious nature of the capitalist system, unfettered, unregulated, without a conscience. Don't talk about your freedom if your freedom is collapsing the life support system.

Music: ["Hudson Bay Blues" continues] Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Cowboys and Indians! In the 21st century, K-Mart, Walmart, Target, Shopko, Sam's Club, yes even Costco.com are nothing more than fur trading posts on steroids! Now we get spandex goretex...

Jack: I think the big question is not whether the shopping culture and the fur trade and everything that it brought was positive or negative. The big question is what we do to bring pleasure and economic gain? Is that a sustainable activity?

Music: ["Hudson Bay Blues" continues] We can't stop shopping at the Hudson's Bay Company

Jack: When I introduced Napi, Old Man Napi, he was our Blackfeet inflection of the trickster. The thing about the trickster and the hero is both archetypes are woven into—are baked into the cake. And which one do we become? Well, I think it's both.

Daniel: [in the field] You try not to put too much a value judgment or good or bad on forces of history. In this case, it seems like you've seen the bad brought by Hudson Bay introducing alcohol.

Jack: Geez. You know, I—that was my first, first traumatic experiences in my life was the confusion when my dad came home with the uncles and his buddies and they were drinking or drinking around, and there were, you know, fights and stuff in the middle of the night. You know, and then, you know, what do you do when you're a kid? But that's napi-aohkíí. That's Napi's water.

Daniel: The other song we talked about is called Whoop Up Trail. If Hudson Bay Blues was all about the arrival of commercialism, then Whoop Up Trail is about the aftermath. Joe Kipp, he's not mentioned anywhere in the song, but the bison robe trade, running whiskey up to Canada, literally along the Whoop Up Trail... There are some loud echoes.

Daniel: [in the field] Just for someone who hasn't heard of it, what's the very short, just... what literally was the Whoop Up Trail?

Jack: The Whoop Up Trail was actually 1869, started going big time to 1874. The Whoop Up Trail was an illegally constructed whiskey running trail from Fort Benton, Montana, ultimately to Fort Whoop Up, not far from Lethbridge. They rebuilt exact replica the same way my great-great-grandfather, the Hudson's Bay Company man, built it. And it was unregulated, unconscientious tidal wave of opportunity to drink and to trade off what was of most value, which was the bison as a single resource.

Gaby: [in the field] Hudson Bay Blues is kind of like the causes and introduction of this lifestyle. Whoop trail, it's almost like the effects and the consequences of, of all of this.

Jack: There was a value structure that was based on the market and the United States was growing and there was no limits on... hope. Although one—one people's hope is kind of another, another culture's doom. [starts playing the first chords of “Whoop Up Trail”] I am a child of the Whoop Up Trail. You might be, too.

Music: [Jack plays "Whoop Up Trail"] After the Civil War bloodbath was over, anxious eyes were focused on the West. Gold fields were calling...

Jack: Alcohol not only would get you a good return, but it would reduce your customers' power of reasoning and power of fairness. A buffalo robe that was not tanned or not processed was not value. I guess it would took around a month of tanning that hide in order for it to be valuable. That could be gone with—with another couple of drinks. Everything was melting down.

Music: ["Whoop Up Trail" continues] Looking for the Whoop Up Trail. Went bounding down the Whoop Up Trail. Steamboats switched cargo...

Jack: When I was a little kid, the Whoop Up Trail was still happening, when the party started and wouldn't end. And there was a point, though, when there was violence and somebody was getting hit and somebody was bleeding, and that was the Whoop Up Trail. But not the historical Whoop Up Trail.

Music: ["Whoop Up Trail" continues] U.S. authorities made law for the red man, the whiskey trading scabs were told to move on, to the no law and order land, north of the line, they went...

Jack: No law and order up north of the border, that was the status of the situation. And a stupendously spectacular profit margin. Understanding that essentially if the Indians—if Blackfoot Confederacy extinguishes themself, it's much cheaper.

Music: ["Whoop Up Trail" continues] No law and order up north of the line. We'll sell anything to any man, gold is in the vault. What happens when the sun goes down? Hell it's not our fault. Show me the money. Build me a robe mine...

Jack: Gold is in the vault. What happens when the sun goes down? Hell, it's not our fault. Hell is not our fault. In other words, disclaiming any responsibility. They're the ones that are taking the drink. We didn't make them drink.

Music: ["Whoop Up Trail" continues] The trickster stumbles off in drunken stupor. Lost is the freedom of ten thousand years. A sober reflection in history's glass. Looking down the Whoop Up Trail, we bounded down the Whoop Up, Children of the Whoop Up Trail.

[final chords of Whoop Up Trail ring quietly]

Jack: Good, bad and the ugly there… Morality, whether something is right or wrong gets clouded, maybe for our survival, justifiably so. If your family is hungry, and you're looking for the best deal you can make at that particular time to make sure they get fed.

Daniel: [in the field] Why do you focus on the positive parts?

Jack: This political figure here or that general back there in history? They were human. Of course. I don't demonize them anymore. That's something I could very easily do. You know, it's not a binary anymore. It's a spectrum.

Daniel: [in the field] You're telling a history of this area. You're telling a Blackfeet history, you're telling your family's history, and you're telling your personal history. Like, it seems like they're all kind of the same story.

Jack: That water from the well is what I sip. There's a history behind, behind everything. And that's some of the that's some of the painful, painful parts of doing the work that I do.

Peri: At the end of our field day at Joe Kipp's cabin, we climbed up to a high point to take in the view. We could see the whole valley below us, streams and pools glinting in the evening light. [haunting violin music begins to play] In the other direction, dark smoke was blooming from a wildfire. We sat and talked about history and landscape and what it means to really get to know a place, absorbing both the easy beauty and the difficult shadows of this place.

Brent: I like to call it a fourth dimensional view of the landscape because, you know, with the fourth dimension being time. And so my travel through Glacier is definitely very fourth dimensional where I see, you know, all the, the, the patterning of all these places and how they—how people, you know, deposited leftover materials that represent their cultures and the various time periods they lived in.

Kyle: You know, one thing about Joe Kipp's cabin too, you know, it doesn't stand out on the landscape or anything. So if you were to just look at that area from a distance, you wouldn't notice it. But you can add in this history component, that totally has revolutionized my love of the place beyond just how pretty something is. I just think of how many times we've been in, like, some beautiful place, and we’re both just like staring at the ground. [all laughing]

Brent: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I, like, sometimes forget to look up at the mountains. [laughing]

Peri: [in the field] An occupational hazard.

Brent: Yeah. The archeological sites in general, just.... They tell the story of human history in this place that people think of as only a natural place. But it's actually a place that's been lived in for, you know, well over 10,000 years, a place where families were raised, a place where people hunted for their food, a place where people did religious practices and—all fitting within like, this beautiful natural landscape. But so much of that human history is left out of the story that we tell here.

Peri: I looked out at the same view I had seen before, and this time I thought about all the people who'd come and gone from these valleys, picked berries, made camp here, built a cabin, tried to make a living to feed their families. Instead of seeing this as somewhere remote, somewhere to get away from people, to feel solitude and isolation, I started to see it as a place with layers of human history and culture. Maybe it's not possible to really know Joe Kipp, to understand him as a person or to judge him from this far away. But learning his story and seeing how this history is intertwined with this place—the good, the bad and the ugly—has shown me a new dimension to this landscape.

Kyle: [in studio] Frank Linderman was asking Joe Kipp if he if he could write his story. And I believe Joe Kipp said something to the effect of "No, Frank, if I told you the truth, they'd hang me yet."

Peri: [both laughing] That's a good one!

Kyle: So I think—I think even Kipp admits at that at that moment that his life sort of flits between, you know, ethical and moral and right and wrong. And we like to, in the modern era, [Whoop Up Trail begins to play softly] sort of characterize people as being one thing. And I think Joe Kipp was probably a lot of things.

Music: [studio version of Whoop Up Trail plays] No law and order up north of the line. Show me the money. Build me a robe mine. No law and order, up north of the border, no law and order go north of the line.

Daniel: A quick reminder. We looked at a lot of historic artifacts this episode, and we left them all where we found them. They're protected by law. So if you find any, please do the same.

Daniel: Headwaters is a production of Glacier National Park, with support from our partner, the Glacier National Park Conservancy. This season of Headwaters was made by me, Daniel Lombardi, Peri Sasnett, Michael Faist, and Gaby Eseverri. Frank Waln wrote and performed our music, and Eric Carlson created this season's cover art. And for this episode, a special thank you to Kyle Langley, Sarah Foster and Jack Gladstone….

Gaby: Thanks for the coffee Jack!

Daniel: Rosalyn LaPier…

Gaby: And her furry dog.

Daniel: Of course Anne Hyde, and all the producers of those dehydrated backpacking meals. We could not have made Season Three without Lacy Kowalski or Melissa Sladek and Sierra Mandelko, Brent Rowley, Darren Lewis, the Glacier National Park Archives and the Montana Historical Society. Thanks for listening.

Lacy: Next time on Headwaters.

Peri: We ask, who built the Great Northern Railway?

Stephen Sadis: It was a fourth transcontinental… it was unnecessary. It was ridiculous

Linda Tamura: My grandfather was one of those. His first job was actually working on a railroad crew in Cut Bank Montana, in Glacier County

Voice actor: Who else but Americans could have laid twelve miles of track in ten hours?

Peri: That’s next time, on Headwaters.

[music finishes playing]

Peri: [to Andrew] Hey, Andrew.

Andrew Smith: Hey, Peri.

Peri: [to Andrew] Welcome back to the studio.

Andrew: Thanks. Nice to be here.

Peri: [to Andrew] So the Conservancy supports Headwaters, but you guys also support a ton of other projects in the park.

Andrew: Yeah. One I'd like to talk to you about today is the Piikuni Lands Service Corps, which is a project where youth from the Blackfeet Reservation and young adults, they get to build some really great job skills in conservation by working on projects in Glacier, in the national forest, a lot of different lands around-- it's a big partnership between a lot of organizations, and I think it's it's really special because we get some great conservation work done. But it also leads to careers in conservation for a lot of these students and young adults. And so it's it's great to see them finding their passion out there.

Peri: [to Andrew] That sounds like a really cool opportunity.

Andrew: Yeah, we're really excited to be part of it.

Peri: [to Andrew] And if people want to learn more, where can they do that?

Andrew: They should check out our website. It's Glacier.org