Spurred West. Ian Neligh
restrictive American government and a chance to continue to practice their traditions without hindrance. In some cases those who participated in the Battle of Little Big Horn, which resulted in the death of General George Armstrong Custer, were able to avoid the government while traveling with Cody’s show. The significance of the location wasn’t lost on Gillette and the others as they learned about the site.
“I thought that was pretty darn cool,” she says. “It gave me the chills.”
Committed to the Future
Over time a career in office management pulled her focus away from the March Powwow and in another direction, and Gillette found herself less involved with the event and its organization. Then one day while looking at a story on the cover of a Denver newspaper, she read that someone on the powwow’s committee was misrepresenting the importance of the drums and songs used during the dance, calling them essentially meaningless.
“He said, ‘Oh, it’s nothing. Just a bunch of chanting, it doesn’t mean anything.’ And I thought, what the heck? So that really got my attention. This was not right,” Gillette says. She adds that there is a great deal of meaning in the chanting and songs, which are sometimes very old. She tells me the songs are sometimes so old that it is impossible to know when it was first created.
“Our history is oral, so I don’t think anybody can say that song was made in 1955 by so-and-so,” she says. “There are just some songs that have been around forever, and I don’t think any one person can be given a right of ownership.”
Gillette says the person who spoke with the newspaper had “no knowledge” about the significance of the songs and drums. In fact, these were essential to the powwows.
“Each society had different positions and within those societies there was always a drum keeper—and the drums are treated like a human being,” she says. “They are fed, they are given water, they are prayed with, they have a special place in the home of the drum keeper. It used to be not just anyone could go sit at the drum and sing. They had to be part of that drum keeper’s family, and they only sang certain songs at [specific] times of the year or for certain occasions.”
She adds that at the intertribal powwow a lot of the drum groups still respect those ways. People don’t just sit down at a drum and start singing because it’s not respectful.
“The answer this person gave who was a coordinator of the event … to say that they had ‘no meaning, it was just a bunch of chanting’—to me, it just rubbed me the wrong way,” she says. “One of our goals [at the powwow] is to present, is to bring cultural awareness to our people, to provide an event with educational value, and if one of the organizers doesn’t know the educational value, then something’s wrong.”
She read that interview as a call to action, and it led to her becoming involved once again with the organizing of the powwow. She eventually worked her way up into the executive director position, a job she’s happily embraced for three decades now.
“It’s the best way for a Native child in Denver to stay in touch with their roots, even if it is once a year to go out there and take pride in who they are,” Gillette says. “When they’re in there, [they think] ‘I’m just one of another instead of being one in a crowd’—and that’s what I’d like to see more of.”
Deep Pride
As I sit and watch the dancers, the drum keepers, every participant in the powwow, I see the deep pride Gillette speaks of. In a massive clockwise circle the dancers continue to come out onto the floor of the arena as the Denver March Powwow’s drum circle sings “A Living Hoop.” Soon the arena floor is full and the event’s Grand Entry is complete. The powwow’s dance competitions are about to begin. The story of the people of the American West continues. New generations are born to inherit the past, to forge a new future, and to preserve their heritage.
CHAPTER 5
CATTLE, BLOOD, AND THUNDER
Terry Florian walks along the suspended walkway, surveying the cattle below. The distant sounds of traffic and the bellowing of the cattle below are punctuated by the regular, easy staccato of his boots on the weathered boards of the raised platform. Always vigilant, he says he still has run-ins with modern-day cattle rustlers.
“We had some not-so-nice people that were stealing stuff here,” Florian admits. The brand inspector supervisor carries a pair of well-worn manual shears and a narrow clipboard in both of his back pockets. The shears are used to get a closer look at a cattle brand to identify ownership, and the clipboard to keep track of his various charges. The tools of the trade haven’t changed much in the last hundred years, nor has the type of person called to this unique career field. Just as they did more than one hundred years ago, brand inspectors still spend their days preventing the theft of livestock and, when able, returning them to their rightful owners. They’re statutory peace officers with the power to arrest criminals, though they don’t carry firearms anymore. Thefts happen somewhat frequently, but they rarely escalate to become a dangerous situation. Of course, there are exceptions.
The Producers Livestock Marketing Association, a Greeley cattle sale barn, is still largely quiet as we looked out over the pens below. A few cattle call out to each other as the sun burns away the overcast morning sky. A veteran of the business for thirty years, Florian is the latest in a long line of inspectors dating back to a time before Colorado was even a state. As we stand there and wait for a shipment of cattle to be dropped off, Florian recalls a rustling incident that took place almost twenty years ago involving some violent men who had stolen their neighbor’s livestock.
“I called for the sheriff to go, then he figured out where I was going and said it was in my ‘best interest to look the other way,’” Florian says. “They had shot at one of the sheriff’s cars who went into their yard like three months earlier. That’s why he said he wouldn’t send any of his guys out there. I said, ‘Well, I’m going anyway, with or without you.’”
Florian called one of his fellow cattle brand inspectors to tell him where he was going and then drove in his pickup truck to the property with the stolen calves. He told the men they were suspected of cattle rustling, which they accepted without issue. “They knew they were caught,” Florian tells me, adding they already knew him and got along with him well enough. Brand inspectors eventually meet and get to know everyone in their district regardless of their potential for future cattle thievery. “They didn’t see me as a threat, [but] I was scared,” Florian says, chuckling at the memory. He doesn’t seem like the type to scare easy.
“There were four or five of them guys and they’re pretty good sized, and they’re just kind of moving around your pickup wondering what the heck you’re doing there,” Florian says. “You tell them and they kind of hear what you’ve got going on, you know, ‘what’s the scoop?’ We got it worked out.”
But not entirely in the way he had hoped. The neighbors were ultimately too afraid to press charges against the men. “The people who owned them said, ‘You know, that’s a $300 calf and they could do $10,000 of damage to my place,’ [and] because it was their neighbor, he said ‘I don’t care. They can have the calves,’” Florian says. The men ended up just paying for the stolen animals.
Brand inspectors have roamed the shrinking frontier, looking for lost and stolen cattle and horses since 1865. The job of cattle inspector was established for a very good reason. The history of rustlers is a terrible and bloody one, proving again and again the necessity for the specialized Western lawmen.
Bonanza
When gold was discovered in Colorado in 1859, those desperate to make their fortunes raced across the plains in a frantic scramble. Likely the thought of changing their economic destiny overnight caused many to risk life and limb. In the winter of 1860, the Rocky Mountain News did its best to warn the soon-to-be-arriving waves of hopeful prospectors and miners about the realities of living in the unforgiving mountainous climate. “Thousands will no doubt set out for Pike’s Peak only intent upon getting there, without