I decide to spend a few days in Livingstone, Montana, once
a mining and railroading town. Tourism has now replaced those activities — not
always happily, as one local informs me: “You can’t make the same money cleaning
rooms that you could on the railway.” Trains still roll through, whistles
blowing, making buildings tremble.
Livingston is a chic venue. Over the years, the famous
and well-heeled have dropped by, spent time, or taken up residence. It’s also a
friendly place; complete strangers say hello to me on the streets, in bars, at
restaurant counters. Perhaps I’m the only one who thinks this is unusual; in
France, where I live, and such easy camaraderie doesn’t exist.
The red brick buildings in the town center have been
beautifully restored, but even back in 1883, Livingston drew the admiration of
one enthusiastic traveler: “The town site is as flat as a billiard table, the
streets are wide and straight. Concrete walks cover the entire city, and most
of the streets are paved… it’s one of
the finest looking towns in the northwest.” But all that earlier perfection was
destroyed in a series of fires in May, August, and November of 1885. Arson was
suspected, and vigilantes took matters into their own hands, warning bad
elements to leave. Some did. The rest were confronted by a posse of masked men
armed with rifles and a rope who indicated Livingston had no room for them.
Further fires in 1886, and 1903 were caused by faulty electric street wiring.
I trudge through the knee-deep snow, take back streets
lined by huge trees, where wooden frame houses have lovely glass doors, and large
verandas with welcoming sofas and benches hint at summer nights, crickets, and
warmth — although those balmy days are hard to imagine today
“Nice architecture,” I say to one smiling man who is
out here walking his fat brown dog.
He nods. “They knew how to build in the old days. Back
then things were different. When rich folks moved in, they lived like everyone
else. But now, new folks with money build big pretentious places, vast ugly castles.
They’ll look better as ruins, one day.”
I laugh. He looks more closely at me. “Where you
from?”
“I live in France, at the moment.”
He nods, moves off.
I wander down South B Street although there’s nothing
particular to see, just the usual parking lots, warehouses, businesses, and
further along, some modest houses. From 1890 until the 1920s, this was the
town’s red-light district, where prostitutes, lap dogs on their knees, sat in
windows lit by those famous red lights.
Shopkeepers
loved these ladies who spent their cash on furs, fans, and fancy clothes; but they
were, of course, the bane of townswomen, who watched with jaded eyes as they
rode through town in their carriages, accompanied, as ever, by their madam.
Those same “good women” made sure the “fallen angels” sat in the last rows in
the theatre, and in church. But perfumed, decked out in their jewels and silks,
the “angels” were very well behaved. “Real ladies,” said one admiring (probably
male) witness. Some of the ladies went on to marry local boys and become
respectable housewives.
The last houses of prostitution were closed at the end
of WWII, after protests that they were too close to the local school. Many
sadly said: “The town lost its color when the red lights went out.”
***
Human occupation of this area dates back to at least 11,000
years ago. When white explorers arrived with the Lewis and Clark expedition of
1805, the Nez Perce, Crow and Shoshone tribes were in residence, but European
American settlement brought disease — almost half the population of the Crow
died from smallpox and cholera — and disaster. The shameful Indian Removal Act
of 1830, the violation of treaties, Supreme Court rulings facilitating the spread of
settlers, the
encroachment of agriculture, and the mass killing of bison by travelers, settlers,
and government agents — one hundred thousand were killed each year and were on
the verge of extinction — pushed native peoples onto the hunting grounds of
others, resulted in violence, warfare, and intertribal combat.
When silver was discovered on local Sioux land, prospectors
paid no attention to treaties stating that tribal territory was not to be
encroached upon. Certainly, it would have been easy enough to get Native permission
to access the mining area, but the government moved slowly, and no negotiations
were undertaken. Resentful, the Sioux attacked, destroying smelters, bridges,
and stealing horses. The Montana Militia retaliated, proposing a war on those
“murdering savages,” the Sioux as well as the Crow, although these last weren’t
hostile. As one fur company clerk said in 1831, “The Crow, said to be thieves, rob
but would never kill. If they killed us, we would never come back, and they
would lose the chance of stealing from us.”
In 1867, six hundred men were organized into a
fighting force, although they were no more than renegades, outlaws, and horse
thieves, who were more than happy “to enroll under the protection of the law.” Undisciplined
and disloyal, in the first summer, a detachment of one hundred deserted at once,
raiding the commissary and carrying off what they could. When, in winter, water
and provisions were scarce and food vouchers were found to be useless, those
remaining killed each other in quarrels. More were murdered by each other than
by Natives, and their graves can still be found in Livingston.
In 1868, the survivors left, without pay, but happy to
escape. Regiments of the United States Army replaced the militia, but
instead of enforcing treaty regulations, the army provided protection and
ammunition to hunters who entered Native land and continued to slaughter
buffalo.
In 1923, James H. Cook wrote in his book, Fifty Years on the Frontier as a Cowboy,
Hunter, Guide, Scout, and Ranchman: “The American Indians of today who ever
lived as their fathers before them, wild and free, are few and fast tottering
into the long shadows of the sunset. Most of them are gentle enough now. They
will eat almost anything, which the white man cares to give them. Some of them
may still be called wild or hostile; but the most they ever do is to plead with
the Great White Father at Washington for the little portion of their former
land which is left to them — a residue which they see gradually being taken
possession of by every means that white men of big and little interests can devise.”
***
Two and a half hours away is Yellowstone National
Park, created by the geologist Ferdinand
V. Hayden in 1871 who warned that “vandals who are now waiting to enter into this
wonder-land, will in a single season despoil, beyond recovery, these remarkable
curiosities, which have required all the cunning skill of nature thousands of
years to prepare.”
One year later, no sooner had the national park been
created, a swarm of poachers, squatters, tourists, and petty criminals
rampaged in. Army engineer William Ludlow reconnoitered the region in 1875, and
he reported: “The visitors prowled about with shovel and ax, chopping, and
hacking, and prying up great pieces of the most ornamental geyser they could
find; women and men alike joining in the barbarous pastime.”
Over the next fourteen years, game herds were
slaughtered, trees were felled, homesteads were erected, and hot spring
formations destroyed. Finally, the U.S. Army took charge of the park for the
next thirty-two years.
Modern tourism — in 2018, over 4 million people
visited Yellowstone — is still taking its toll on the park. According to the
Idaho News, in the winter of 2000, 76,271 people entered Yellowstone National
Park on snowmobiles, outnumbering the 40,727 visitors who came in cars, 10,779
in snow coaches, and 512 on skis. Snowmobile noise could be heard 70% of the
time at 11 of 13 sample sites, and 90% of the time at 8 sites. At the Old
Faithful geyser, snowmobiles could be heard 100% of the time during the daytime
period, and the noise drowned out the sound of the geyser erupting.
Michael V. Finley, former superintendent of Yellowstone,
protested against trout illegally dumped into Yellowstone Lake, poachers, and
hostile ranchers who continue to slaughter bison for fear they might transmit
disease to domestic livestock, and warned that the Crown Butte Mines Inc., two
and a half miles from Yellowstone’s northeast boundary, produces acidic waste
rock that, when exposed to air and water, generates sulfuric acid and leaches
heavy metals such as lead and cadmium into waterways and killing all life.
***
“Where you from?” asks the man with the long beard
standing next to me in the bar.
“Well, I live in France at the moment.”
“France, huh. That’s the place where you’ve got all
those Muslims blackmailing people. Why don’t you get rid of them all, throw
them out of the country?”
“That’s not exactly how democracy works…” I begin, but
he’s not waiting for the rest of the argument.
“I’ll tell you what the problem is over here in the
USA. They never tell us anything. We never find out what’s going on in other
countries.”
“Yeah,” says another man, short, grizzled, standing
beside him. “Ain’t that the truth, too. My friend Bill? He told me he met an Iraqi,
a well-educated man, a perfectly normal person. You don’t imagine that kind of
thing.”
“You know,” says beard, “we Americans, we only go to
war to help people out.”
“Like in Viet Nam? Laos? Cambodia? Cuba? Grenada?
Iraq?”
He chews that over for a minute or two. “Well, we just
have our pride, I guess.”
***
Another man, handsome, charming, runs a local
bookshop. He asks where I’m from.
“I live in France, at the moment.”
He nods, not really all that interested. He used to be
a high roller in New York, but in the 60s, he threw up the pressure and the
success for life out here. “I have my horses and my bookshop. Life is good.”
In his shop, he specializes in local history, although
none have been written by Native Americans. “The ones who leave the
reservations and go to university get into the intellectual sphere and don’t
come back.”
“What’s life like on the reservations now?”
“The Crow
reservation is rich, large, and the Crow are well-traveled people. Some have
been all over the world, but then they come back here. That’s the negative side
of close-knit family ties and tribal connections; they make it difficult to
stay away, even when life could be better elsewhere. On the reservation,
everyone is caught up in petty jealousies and fights — one extended family
against another, everyone hating another’s success — so nothing progresses the
way it should, and nothing functions. The nearby Cheyenne reservation is much
poorer, but there’s none of the in-fighting, and the reservation works very
well. Over there, they call the Crows apples — red outside, white inside —
because of their cow-towing and demands upon Washington in the past and the present,
too.
***
I notice that, although everyone is extremely friendly
and willing to confide, exchange, chat, give their opinion, buy me drinks and
give me the feeling I’m welcome, absolutely no one has asked me a question, other
than the one about where I live. No one is in the least bit curious about my
life, my interests, my work, my destination, my background, or my pet dog. Not
that it matters: I’m not here to stay.
A soldier is standing behind me in the line in the bus
station where we’re waiting to pass through the
metal detector, just in case
someone has an itchy trigger finger or is particularly fond of knives.
“Where d’you come from?” asks the soldier.
“I live in France at the moment.”
“Oh, yeah? Me, I’m proud
to be an American. Life’s different here. Aggression’s not part of the American
way of life. I don’t even lock my door at night. Sure, crime’s just the result
of people not getting work, but the criminals here all come from other
countries. You know, places like South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East.
They’re not Americans. There’s very little violence in the USA.”
I stare at him in pure astonishment. “The gun-related
murder rate is twenty-five times higher in the United States than any other
developed nation.”
“Where do you get crap information like that? There
are far more murders in Germany and Japan than there are here.”
“Of course there aren’t.” Although I have no
statistics available, I know that Germany is far safer than the USA, and Japan
has one of the lowest murder rates in the world.
“I know what I’m talking about,” he insists. “Japan is
ripped apart by gun wars. I’ve been around, I know a lot. I’m a history buff; I
eat the local food in all the other counties; I make an effort. I even learn
how to speak other languages. For example, I can speak real good Japanese.”
“Can you? Say something to me in Japanese.”
“Like what?”
“For example, how do you say ‘hello’ in Japanese?”
He stares at me. Wheels are turning in his head, but
they go slowly. “Well, I can’t remember exactly. You sort of forget when you’re
not there.”
When I finally take a seat on the bus, I make sure I’m
very far away from him.
