(C) Daily Montanan This story was originally published by Daily Montanan and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Heirlooms West – Daily Montanan [1] ['More From Author', 'January', 'Fred Haefele'] Date: 2023-01-29 Late last summer, following a tedious series of squabbles, my wife and her siblings proceeded to divide up the material goods of her mother’s estate. Among the items we inherited were a rare three-legged buffalo nickel, a pristine Morris chair, a Civil War era Starr percussion carbine and an oil painting by Caroline’s grandfather, a New York artist by the name of Tom Moore. A large canvas, 48-by-28 inches, the painting is a sitting portrait of Paul Charlo. Paul is the grandson of Victor Charlo, preeminent chief in 1890 when the Salish were forced to leave their Bitterroot homeland and “relocate” to the Jocko Valley, 60 miles north. With the seats in our Subaru laid flat, my wife and I filled the back of the car with heirlooms and ferried them home. Most were packed in boxes, except for the carbine and the portrait, which entered our house uncovered, essentially, already on display. The painting is not some faded homage to forgotten Indians. It is bright, vivid and flooded with color. Beside the Anglo-Indigenous interface, another of the painting’s contexts is the story of Tom Moore, the one-armed, conservatory-trained artist who, during the Depression, moved his family from Long Island to Hamilton, Montana. There, Moore worked as a medical illustrator for the Rocky Mountain Research laboratory. With his wife and three girls, he spent eight years in the Bitterroot. In addition to his illustrations, he painted a stunning series of Salish portraits, 12 of which still hang in the Smithsonian American Arts Museum. Then, in 1943, Moore packed up his kit, bought a ticket east and left his family behind in an apparent poor man’s divorce. When the Charlo portrait crossed our threshold, it was like a distinguished guest arrived and it seemed a good time to show some hospitality – maybe clean up my own act, who knows? Considering the painting is 80 years old, Chief Paul looks pretty good, and his image quickly commands our living room’s west wall. Posed on a blanket-covered stool, hands loose on his lap, he sits bareheaded while his warbonnet hangs on the wall behind. He is in a coral-colored shirt with crimson elbow rosettes, and a breast plate of what looks like avian bone. He wears beaded leggings and unadorned deerskin moccasins. He has an open, intelligent face, alert and slightly quizzical. If you indulge in such fancy, he might be saying “Where am I now, and who the hell are you people?” These strike me as pretty good questions, as it’s hard to view this painting without a reminder of the double-dealing, chicanery, inept translation and flat-out lies through which the government induced the Salish to leave their homeland. Like the portrait, the carbine is in great shape; the wooden stock’s a bit scratched, but the .54 caliber bore is perfect, the action is still crisp. With whimsey, I consider the time when a combat rifle might be single shot. Manufactured in 1855 by Ebenezer Starr armaments in Yonkers, it shares its New York origins with the artist, Tom Moore. With the cavalryman’s saddle ring intact, I learn the internet value increases 20 percent. This carbine served in the Civil War and subsequent frontier wars, but with the advent of repeating weapons, it soon became obsolete. Firing a rifled bullet in a paper cartridge, the need to make that first shot is apparent. On horseback, the Starr must be a bitch to reload. There was likely no interplay between this gun and the Salish “migration,” thanks to their tenuously peaceful exodus to the Jocko Valley to the north. Governor Isaac Stevens, then Supervisor of Indian Affairs, asserted the Jocko was “better adapted to the wants of the tribe,” but everyone knew to whose wants the move was adapted, and it was the settlers, not the Salish. The visionary Chief Victor, well aware of this, was perhaps more acutely aware of a larger factor: Throughout the 19th century, the massacre of Indians had a way of happening routinely whenever cavalry in force was attending. It was at Charlo’s unswerving persistence this grotesque relocation was escorted by a minimum contingent. Later, it pleased the government to describe this event as peaceful “migration,” yet to this day, the tribe chooses to call it “the Salish Trail of Tears.” The heirloom Morris chair is big and sprawling, conspicuously more comfortable than our own furniture. It proves a good place to sit and consider these new arrivals, and what significance they might present. I heft the Starr carbine. In that way old guns can provoke, I find my fingers itching to explore it; to open the breech, cock it, dry fire it at my newel post, hoping to make that first shot count. It occurs to me this pairing of historic painting and extinct firearm provides a unique swatch of history, and to conjure perspective, I kick back and pour a Maker’s Mark. I’ve lived in Montana 40 years. I still count myself a newcomer, but I’m abruptly sharing my living room with a prominent Salish chief and a highly collectible antique rifle. And yet, beyond the corresponding time frame of the 1855 Hellgate Treaty and the carbine’s 1855 manufacture, there is no reason to imagine the two crossed paths in any way at any time. I’m a tad embarrassed. How like overeducated people to, recreationally, try to make something out of nothing? These two potent artifacts, filtered through a strata of cultural injustice and family dispute, arrived at my house a random tableau of the frontier West. Beyond this, who says they have to mean anything? The truth is, it’s hard to feel either heirloom properly belongs to me. Paired up as they are, they most likely belong to each other. [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2023/01/29/heirlooms-west/ Published and (C) by Daily Montanan Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/montanan/