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This website is updated periodically as new material is sent in.

 

Please submit additional written materials brief or long - articles, poems, messages, short well wishings, etc. to: Stephen Harvey swh10@shaw.ca

 

or to Maria H. Salter  maria226d@hotmail.com
 

MESSAGES:

1. Jim Loewen, Washington, DC

2. John Henry Sime  Readstown, WI

3. Charles Bracey Chicago, IL

4. Heather Booth, Washington,DC

5. Dale Jacobson Grand Forks, ND

6. Stephen Harvey, Courtenay, B.C.,Canada

7. Joyce Ladner, Sarasota, Florida

8. Roy T. Wortman, Gambier, Ohio

9. David Ranney, Washington Island, Wisconsin.

10. Steve Rossignol, Blanco County, Texas

11. David Finkel and Dianne Feeley Detroit, MI

12. Reber Boult Albuquerque, NM

13. Clyde Appleton, Tucson, AZ

14.) Joan Mulholland (Arlington, Virginia)

15.) Tim McGowan (Rochester,NY)

16.) Steven F. McNichols (San Francisco,CA)

17.) William Borden (Royse City, TX and Bemidji, MN)

18.) Kass Fleisher (Normal, Illinois)

19.) John Salter (Glyndon, Minn.)

20.) Duane Campbell (Sacramento, CA)

21.) Stephen Zunes (Santa Cruz,CA)

22.) John Lacny (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.)

23.) Joan C. Browning (Lewisburg,WV)

24.) Edward Pickersgill (Guelph, Ont., Canada)

25.) David MCReynolds New York, NY

26.) Jerry L. Severson (Grand Forks, ND)

27.) William Mandel (Oakland, CA)

28.) Ed Nakawatase (Philadelphia, PA)

29.) Theresa Alt (Ithaca, NY)

30.) Vivian E. Berg (Mandan, ND)

31.) Louis Proyect (New York,NY)

32.) Michael Hirsch (New York, NY)

33.) Rev. Edwin King (University of Mississippi Medical Center) Jackson

34. Sheila B. Michaels, St. Louis, Missouri

35. Macdonald John Enoch Stainsby, Vancouver, BC, Canada

36. Dan Hittner, Brooklyn,NY

37. Quinn Brisben Chicago, IL

38. Barry Cohen New York, NY

39. Steven F. McNichols San Francisco, CA

40.  Steve Rutledge  Charleston, W Virginia

41. Matthew McDaniel Maesai, Chiangrai, Thailand

42. Elliott and Muriel Ricehill  Black River Falls, WI

43. Sandra Thompson St. Cloud, Florida

POEMS

---

GHOSTS   [HUNTER GRAY / HUNTER BEAR DECEMBER 22  2003]

Note by Hunter Bear:  In just several days, this particular post has drawn a flood of  continuing praise.  Here are just a few of many indeed:

"This near-death experience by an authentic American hero--who was deeply involved in the Mississippi civil rights movement among many other principled stands--is so moving that I have to share it with you."

Steven F. McNichols [Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Attorney]
San Francisco, CA 94104-3503  12/21/03

great writing. xo Kass Fleisher  Author of forthcoming THE BEAR RIVER MASSACRE  [Spring 2004]    12/22/03

 I have forwarded this to my sons, calling it a wonderful read by a wonderful man who has led a wonderful life.  The whole thing belongs in your autobiography, including your present illness, because that will tell readers about your character.  And I urge you once again to get it written pronto, making arrangements for your writer and editor sons and whoever else to finish the job if you don't.

Bill [William Mandel]  Activist and author of many books -- including SAYING NO TO POWER  12/21/03

Oh, John!  This is wonderful.  Even with your terrible illness, your strength shines -- blazes, really.  My warmest gratitude to you and Eldri.  Paz.  Clyde    Clyde Appleton, Tucson, a close radical activist friend from the '50s.  December 27, 2003

Having been a subscriber for less than a year, I have very much regretted not having the opportunity to meet this man.  Knowing what I've learned of him through these pages inspires me to let him know that I very much appreciate his contributions and will miss him when he is no longer with us.  My wishes are for his impact to influence my thought world and that of others for many seasons and for his continued strength to continue to be with us for as long as he needs to be.

Marie Jackson, SNCC discussion list, January 6, 2004

ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING!  Dale Jacobson  Poet and Scholar  January 23  2004

From Tiffany: 2/21/05

Wow!  All that I can say is that I'm amazed.  i know you've probably heard
this so much that it's old, but your writing ability is incredible!  I'm
totally blind, lost my sight at two months old, have never been to Arizona,
and yet I saw the places to which you were referring.  I felt that I was
with you as you made that journey.  Then again, what else should i expect
from such an admirable figure as yourself?  [Tiffany]

 

GHOSTS
 

I was suddenly but gently aware that I was standing at the edge of a large
stand of tall, slim jackpine timber.  I was in a very strange half-light
that I had never before experienced.

I dream little -- at least in any recollective sense --  at any time.

But this was no dream of any kind. I had gone to sleep that night in our
'way far up home on the far western edge of Pocatello, Idaho.

I knew precisely where I now was:  several yards from our old and quite
isolated and remote -- and almost roadless -- family hunting  camp on the
very edge of the vast and beautiful Sycamore Canyon Wilderness Area
southwest of my hometown of Flagstaff, Arizona. Through eternity, the always
flowing Sycamore Creek continues  to cut at glacial pace -- deeper and
deeper.

I was looking from the Canyon's east rim directly west: down at the western
slope which then rose sharply to its rim -- in contrast to our eastern area
which had some substantial sloping regions in its upper setting. Then I
looked across that western rim and the widespread cedar plains that
dominated that side.

I looked southwest -- looking over a dozen mountain ranges that stretched
very far off toward the Colorado River -- and the California border.

And then  I was looking south: many, many miles down the Great Canyon into
Sycamore Basin and  its vast, and cedar-sprinkled open reaches -- bounded by
small mountains and high ridges.

And then beyond, directly south into the Verde Valley with its sprinkling of
tiny towns and scattered, often downright hardscrabble folk.

And then up above the Valley -- up the slopes of Mingus Mountain -- where a
handful of lights signaled the tenacious existence of the once fabulous
copper mining town of Jerome.  It had been a ghost town since the early
1950s -- and it was still legend.

Now the Great Canyon pulled suggestively -- and it pulled south.

And then, suddenly, I knew I was in Borders -- a complex of them.  And I was
also at Choices.

I had to go south -- directly down into the innards of Sycamore and then
southward 'way, 'way through the Canyon -- into the Verde Valley.

I had done that before -- a long time ago.

I was extremely ill with a sudden-striking and mysterious illness called
Systemic Lupus -- and the very worst and  deadly form of that particular
version of the oft lethal disease.  It had struck only a very few months ago:
widespread rashes, fever, extreme weakness, body pain, swelling -- all sorts
of deep disorders. It has no cure.

And the  destructive variant  with which we are dealing -- what my doctors
call
"a very serious case" -- attacks and threatens lungs, liver, blood vessels,
kidneys, and a number of other critical organs with a bloody passion.

In less than four months, I've been in the Pocatello mountain hospital three
times -- and  have come extremely close to dying at each  beginning point in
those week long stays.

This Lupus could  and will attack literally Anytime -- with virtually no
warning.

Early on, even before Lupus had been specifically diagnosed, our immediate
family gathered to do my Will in my hospital room: Eldri [my spouse of 43
years], myself, Maria [school staff] and her two children -- Samantha [13]
and  our grandson/son Thomas [21], Josie [just graduated from Idaho State in
Social Work].  Our two oldest sons, Beba [John ] a writer; and Peter, a
newspaper editor; each worn to the  bone from travel exertion arrived on
schedule:    Beba had come from Fargo to Lincoln, picked up Peter, and they
had driven a thousand miles to Idaho,

It's the Will of a Native family: solidarity, consensus, communalism.  While
a surprised -- and in some instances discomfited hospital staff  watched and
listened surreptitiously -- we took it point by point.  The family was the
executor committee and could choose its spokesperson when the time came; our
home -- very new, relatively large, big yard area, best view in Pocatello ,
rapidly climbing value -- would remain in the full hands of the family with
Maria authorized to use it throughout her life and the others able to use it
at will;  our big historical and contemporary Native arts and crafts
collection would remain forever in the group and nothing could be taken nor
sold. [Beba subsequently drew up an intricate codicil which provides for
very careful loans to reputable exhibits and institutions; same basically
for my quite large collection of Western American and Western Canadian
radical labor material.]  There is more, of course -- but mostly on a share
and share alike basis.

Once Eldri and I are both gone, and the Will then locks in with total
finality, no changes can be made in any  dimension of it save by bona fide
family consensus.  But it's a very close and tight outfit indeed.

Back home, I typed it up, and all signed via notary plus witnesses.

And Eldri and I did  a Living Will which provides for moderate efforts to
resuscitate.

After that there were more very close brushes with Death, twelve physicians,
twenty pills a day.

But before we ended that meeting, Beba raised a final point: looking at me,
he asked, "What do we do with you?"

"Cremation," I said slowly.

"And the ashes?" he continued.

"In the end there's only one place," I said. Heads nodded.

And that  -- our historic and long ago hunting camp, to which as a  Teen  we
had brought the huge
 Black coming-of -age bear which I had a lifelong mandate to kill and did --
is where I now stood.

Now I began walking slowly --- still in half-light -- down the trail into
the Great Canyon.  And there I hoped  to travel all the way down the Canyon
and into and through the Basin to the Verde Valley.

And Jerome glittered on Mingus Mountain.

--------------------

Jerome, Arizona. July 10, 1917.

Two hundred thugs armed with Winchester 44/40s, pickaxe handles,  and
baseball bats designated themselves a "Loyalty League" with the blessing of
United Verde Copper Company.  The great IWW-led copper strike, [Industrial
Workers of the World] -- from Butte to the Mexican border -- necessitated by
wartime inflation and static wages, had just begun.  The so-called
vigilantes rounded up 75 key  Jerome strikers in the early morning hours of
that terrible day, beat them badly, placed them in United Verde boxcars, and
took them far westward to Kingman, Arizona on the California border.  When
many tried to return, they were jailed at the Yavapai County seat of
Prescott.

Two days later, on the Mexican border at Cochise County, 1200 strikers and
sympathizers were rounded up by hundreds of Loyalty League vigilantes with
the full backing of the Phelps Dodge Copper corporation and local lawmen --
and taken by boxcars to Columbus, New Mexico where they were dumped in the
desert with neither food nor water.

In the early morning of August 1, 1917 at Butte,  Montana, a major IWW
leader, organizer, and copper strike coordinator -- the Cherokee, Frank H.
Little -- was hideously murdered by gunmen employed by massive Anaconda
Copper.

Blood dark clouds gathered in the Western copper country where memories are
very long indeed.  They are still there -- now, to this very day,

There was much, much more  anti-labor and anti-radical brutality across the
West -- and eventually the country itself. No one was ever punished for
these atrocities.  And then the Federal government itself rounded up 150
leaders of the IWW, quickly convicting them [along with Gene Debs, the
socialist], of the completely spurious charges of "Espionage" and
"Sedition."

That was long before my time, of course,  But the historic, always
remembered Jerome Deportation was -- along with the racist brutality and
economic exploitation of Flagstaff and many regional environs -- a key
factor in my own eventual radicalization at  barely 21.

--------------------

The half-light didn't change -- but I had no difficulty seeing and
navigating. The Canyon was forty miles long, north to south, and I was
taking the lower 30 all the way to the end.  But for me now time and distance
were meaningless.

For a few moments, I studied myself.  I was big, very muscular, much hair.
I wore my traditional J.C. Penney wide-brimmed hat, Levis, worn blue Western
shirt,  heavy and steel toed logging boots cut slightly  long ago by a
mis-aimed double-bitted axe blow.  I carried my old 30/30 Winchester lever
action, with its curved butt plate and long octagon barrel.  On my left hip,
I packed a large hunting knife.

And I had energy! -- energy I had not had since the hideous disease had
struck many weeks before.

Almost 50 years earlier, in May 1955, I had taken this very route over a
major junket of several leisurely days. [I know of no contemporary person in
those days -- and maybe even to this day -- who ever made that trip.] I was
a basically healthy kid -- but there were problems.  The Army, in which I
had just served a full stretch --  very honorably by its standards -- had
left marks. I had a brand-new IWW  card.  This was fine by my parents, but
they still hoped [and Mother pushed ] for a "respectable" career to which I
was resistant. That far off trip through Sycamore  -- coming home to my very
special setting -- was in large part to organize my own thinking.

In the course of that Great Trek , I explored some vasty side canyons coming
down off the western rim. I saw ancient Indian ruins in cliff settings --
the location of which I would never reveal.   The entire journey featured
all sorts of wild game -- much of it not afraid of me at all -- and I saw
hundreds of elk antlers, seasonally shed  in winter grazing areas.   At one
point, I saw huge bear tracks -- very fresh -- under Sycamore trees which
had been clawed eight feet or so up.  This was grizzly sign -- even though
no grizzlies were supposed to exist anywhere in Arizona by that time.  At
another point, resting on a knoll above Sycamore Creek,  I heard a noisy
crashing sound coming in toward me through the brush.  I waited.  Suddenly,
a huge jet black long-horn bull emerged nosily, limping from an old wound on
one back thigh evidenced by old lion or bear claw scars.  He drank from the
creek.  When he had finished, I asked him quietly, "How are you doing
today?"  He jerked his head up -- had never, I'm sure, seen a human creature
before -- and looked directly at me.  Then   he turned and plunged back into
the brush.  He was a direct descendant of many generations of purely wild
cattle, stemming from Spanish gold mining operations in the latter 1700s.

Eventually, when the geology had shifted into the Great Verde Fault, I found
rose quartz -- gold-bearing quartz -- but I would never reveal the location
of that, ever.

In due course, at the lower end of the Great Canyon, I emerged into the land
of our two old hermit friends -- Joe Dickson, a  retired hard-rock miner and
Jerry Greaves, a former merchant seaman.  They lived in the Old Packard
Ranch and I spent a day with them, telling what I'd seen.  They were a bit
disappointed that I had not cut the sign of the Lost Spanish Mine, somewhere
in the vastnesses of Sycamore, guarded -- according to legend --  by the
ghost of a black-robed Spanish priest.

And when I soon "came out" in the comparatively "civilized" Verde Valley, I
was  very much together.  Not long thereafter, I went with my family to
Mexico where Dad painted and lectured -- and I spent the month studying that
fascinating nation's radicalism and union movements.  And then to sociology
at the University of Arizona and eventually to Arizona State University --
fine enough.  But almost immediately I  fortunately connected with  radical
and democratic  -- and consistently embattled --  industrial unionism. My
organizing career all over the country in Native rights, labor, civil rights
and liberties, social justice in general,  has been -- no false modesty --
successful.  I still keep going.

Now I was at the bottom of the Canyon, turning south, downward.  Sycamore
Creek's familiar running and rippling and splashing noises were old and
friendly music. And so was everything else I experienced-- almost all of
which I remembered with the most intricate clarity -- as I walked, slowly
but strangely down, down Sycamore, mile after mile after mile. Again, time
and distance meant nothing for me here,  I was extremely happy and I liked
my thinking.

And then I was suddenly  awake -- in my bed on the far western frontier of
Pocatello. It was dawn and the half light was gone. I was weak, utterly weak
and felt generally like Hell.  My one-half Bobcat, Cloudy, nuzzled me.
Eldri was cooking breakfast and my daughter, Maria, handed me a huge cup of
super strong black coffee.

My head, as always was very clear.

"If you had to choose," my newspaper son Peter asked a few days ago,
"between physical health  on the one hand and your thinking and writing
ability on the other, which would you take?"

"My mind always," I replied.


And what I do know is that it's critical to keep fighting -- and to always
remember that if one lives with grace he/she should be prepared to die with
grace.

How much time do I have?  Maybe lots, maybe not much.

But I'd like, too,  within the now somewhat narrowed borders of my
canyon-of-life, to help others do some good things as well. Let me know.

In the mountains of southeastern Idaho.

Nialetch/Onen

Hunter Gray  [Hunterbear] Micmac / St Francis Abenaki/ St Regis Mohawk
Late December, 2003
www.hunterbear.org
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'


In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the
game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the
high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own
inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down
on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings.  Then
it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and mysterious and
remembering way. [Hunter Bear]

_

THE STORMY ADOPTION OF AN INDIAN CHILD -- MY FATHER

[HUNTER GRAY/HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER, JR] JUNE 11 2004 WITH JULY 6  AND JULY 9 2004 ADDENDA

 

Dear Hunter,  [July 8 2004]

Thanks so very much for sharing the details of your father's adoption that you experienced.

It is a valuable addition to those who are interested in William Mackintire Salter.  Oh that we had his voice telling us the story. 

I shall be sharing this bit of history with the archivist of the American Ethical Union and a few others that have been interested in you and your ancestors' lives.

Life is busy here and I never get everything I wanted to do done in the day.  I'm sure you have the same problem.  We are all grateful for your writings.

Most Cordially,
Dorothy Lockhart
Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago

 

Hunter: The more we learn about you and the remarkable connection of
various individuals in your family to important circumstances, events,
and movements in this country's history, the more urgent it seems to me
that you assemble it all into an autobiography. In my own case, I
started with my grandparents, but they did not represent the kind of
diversity, in every sense of the word, that yours and their forebears
do. Your book would SELL, and in my view a hell of a lot better than
mine has, among other reasons because you write very well.
                                William (Bill) Mandel  7/9/2004

Hi to all,

So glad to hear from you, hope all is well with you!!

Love & Prayers

Alta M. Bruce
Indian Health Service
Injury Control Specialist

Belcourt, ND 58316   [8/4/2004]


NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR:

This is hard to write about.  Initially [7/9/04], I posted this only on Bear Without Borders. As of the end of this July, however, I have expanded it somewhat and am sending it out much more widely.

This is not an argument against sensible and committed cross racial
adoptions.

This page, now on our Lair of Hunterbear website,  deals with
my Native father's adoption by a well-known liberal activist family, William
Mackintire Salter and Mary Gibbens Salter.  Their brother-in-law, Professor
William James of Harvard, initially opposed the adoption -- not because Dad
was an Indian but because of the limitations of the Salters.

"I can't help from expressing the feelings which have been besetting me
throughout the day, and growing hourly stronger, about the Salters' project
of adopting a child. The plan seems to me fraught with terrible risks for
the remoter future and with a present inconvenience which I should think
would be fairly disastrous. If they were younger, securer in health, and if
they dwelt in the country or in a rural town it would be different. And it
would be different if, being as they are, they were richer. It would be
different also morally if they were now leading merely selfish lives and not
devoting themselves to arduous public ideals."   William James, to his
mother-in-law, Eliza Putnam Webb Gibbens, June 20, 1900.

Among his several liberal affiliations, William M Salter was active in the
almost all-white Indian Rights Association -- which, during this era, was
mistakenly pushing the cultural assimilation of Native people.  The IRA
was encouraging its members to adopt Indian children.

Dad was essentially a full blood.  His mother, Mamie E Gray
[Wabanaki and Mohawk] and his father, Thomas Taylor [Micmac
and Maliseet] were Northern Maine Indians.  [A portion of Thomas Taylor's family became closely involved with the Penobscot Nation,  near Old Town, Maine.]

When the adoption did occur, William James and his family got
vigorously behind it.  William M Salter, however, soured badly on it
 -- although  Mary Gibbens Salter remained a kind and loving person.

The shadow of this adoption hung -- and in a very real sense still hangs --
over our family. I -- a consistent supporter of my father always -- have had
a very tough time coming to terms with it.  Yet I can see how, in the
strange way in which the cards often fall out, Dad benefited from
the travail.

In 1978, the Indian Child Welfare Act was enacted -- providing considerable
protection for Native children and working actively to keep them within
their extended family, or the tribe itself, or in the Indian community.

_____________________
 

Amy Kittelstrom, has been doing a PhD
dissertation on William James [with substantial mention of W. M. Salter and some
mention of Dad]. She interviewed me almost two years ago. Her
work is now finished, will be published as a book, and here are a few very
salient excerpts. Our assumption has always been that Louise
Annance died quite young at Greenville, Me. [She is my great grandmother and
grandmother Mamie's mother.] But, as per these recently opened James letters, she worked for the James family at Cambridge-- as several other Annances did. The Massachusetts state agency to which Dad wrote for more of his background details in 1950, providing bureaucratic confirmation of the essence of which we already knew, referred to his mother, "Mamie E. Gray" [born in Maine], and to Mamie's
parents, "Louise A. Gray" and "John E. Gray." John E. Gray is not to be confused with our other direct ancestor, John Gray [Ignace Hatchiorauquasha], Mohawk fur hunter in the Far West. 

[John E.  Gray was a violent and abusive person.  Louise's relationship with him was short lived and centered almost completely in the Moosehead Lake region.]

We don't know when Louise died but it was still very probably at a relatively young age. Ms. Kittelstrom found this material on Louise -- a bit of which we have not known before today.  

--------------------------------------------------------

FROM THE DISSERTATION – Democracy Upon Its Trial: Pluralism and Categories of Difference

"Not until the Shaw oration did James use language that advocated mixture.
Until that point he expressed distinct squeamishness about social mixing
across categories of difference. In 1880 he wanted to design his home's hall
to avoid "the disagreeableness of servants going through to the door when
there are guests," thinking aristocratically-for he wrote up his new plan
while in England-of a way to separate the household by "a lower kitchen." In
1881 James was pleased enough that his wife was retaining two Wabanaki
servants, although "with every allowance made for natives on sentimental
grounds, how poor a pick of them there seems to be." Yet he could not see
how his wife could keep Louise Annance, the Wabanaki female, as well as "one
white [female] servant." He seemed to fear the possible dissatisfaction of
his white servant, were her race not in the majority, over the Wabanaki's
desire for employment. . ."

* * *

"When William Salter and his wife, a decade after the death of their only
child from measles, moved to adopt a ward of the state, the two-year-old
grandson of James's Wabanaki servant Louise Annance, the character of the
adoption is unclear. Were they taking the young Frank Gray to be their son,just as though he were flesh of their flesh? The legal formality of the
adoption and the changing of his name to John Randall Salter would seem to
suggest so. So does the fact that he played with William James's kids-the
children of his adoptive mother's sister, and therefore his cousins-on terms
of equality, eventually receiving a wedding present "from your cousin Alice
and me," that is, from William James, Jr., and his wife. But he often did
not live with the Salters in Chicago, mostly staying back east in Chocorua
near where the rest of his extended family ranged. The Salters did not make
sure he attended school every year, extending such little oversight that he
never attended any high school at all. If they viewed him as their own son,
wouldn't they have taken him along when they spent a year in Europe? Instead
they placed him with a family in Evanston, Illinois. But John Dewey and his
wife also left their sons behind when they traveled in Europe, with
heartbreaking consequences: two of their three sons died while the Deweys
were away.

It could be that the Salters wanted John to remain near his extended family
to cultivate his Indian culture. William Salter was apparently open to
talking about John's background, although he made no effort to help him
retain the language or the Catholic religion to which his ancestors had long
since converted. But Salter mostly seemed quite distant from his adopted
son. Acrimony increased between them until 1913, when John was fifteen, and
Salter dragged him to an Army recruiter to try to sign him up and be rid of
him. The recruiter chastised Salter, saying John was "far too young." The
rift, by that point irreparable, led John to escape as a cabin boy on a ship
out of Boston. Salter cut him out of his will. Mary Gibbens Salter set up a
small trust fund for him at the State Street Bank in Boston, and eventually
the James estate paid for John Randall Salter's education at the Art
Institute of Chicago.

Of his years with the Salters, John Randall Salter would remember Mary
Salter's warmth and lovingness, William Salter's emotional reserve, and
sylvan times in Chocorua with the James family. "There was nothing ever even
slightly remote about William James," John would teach his own son. John
remembered sitting by Lake Chocorua with James discussing the possibility of
frogs having souls. He never forgot visiting James's deathbed in Chocorua
with Salter, a day or so before James passed. He also remembered the
contrast between James's children's camaraderie with him and Salter's
brother Sumner's children, who taunted him, calling him "Sitting Bull," and
once accused him of stealing a watch from them. And of John's years with the
Salters, what would William Salter remember? He never wrote of it, left no
record of the meaning of it for him. He would remain a member of the IRA
until 1916, three years after John ran away, by which point he would have
reached the age of majority and Salter could have felt his responsibility
fully absolved."

* * *
 

Note by Hunter Bear:

In early May, 2003, Eldri and I drove to Chicago where I delivered a major Founder's Day talk to the Ethical Humanist Society of Greater Chicago.  This had been founded by William M. Salter. 

"In my speech at Chicago -- a packed house with a number of non-Society
members present, I spoke of the enduring influence on our family of my
ggg/grandfather, John Gray [Ignace Hatchiorauquasha], fiery and committed
leader of the Mohawk fur hunters in the Columbia and Snake River country in
their disputes with the Anglo fur bosses. I spoke, too, of a maternal great
grandfather, Michael Senn -- Swiss immigrant to Kansas Territory in the
early 1850s, Abolitionist, Civil War veteran, founder of the Knights of
Labor in Kansas, major leader of the Populist Party and a Populist state
senator, denouncer of atrocities against the Indian people, cousin of Chris
Hoffman ["Millionaire Socialist of Kansas" who died of a heart attack while
addressing an IWW rally at Kansas City.] Michael Senn became a Socialist
himself.

But now, for the first time publicly, I also spoke of the very positive
influence of William Mackintire Salter for our family:  his great commitment
to the Haymarket victims and their families, his opposition to American
imperialism, his many endeavours on behalf of Indian and Black people, his
staunch support for civil liberties which never wavered in the several
nefarious periods of spontaneous and concocted fear and hysteria through
which he lived and worked. . .

In the end, however oft-turbulent Dad's adoption, he got the best of both
worlds -- Native and Anglo social activist -- and my parents passed all of
that along to me."

KASS FLEISHER WRITES AN EXCELLENT POST ON JULY 9 AND I RESPOND:

Kass writes:

"hunter, this is painful indeed.  i knew there was strain betw your
father and his adoptive father but didn't know that w.s. had broken
with him entirely.  do you have a sense of the reason?  or should we
conclude the obvious, that racism was eating at him?  anyway.  you
have come a long way, a long walk.  what a miracle you are."  k

_____________________
 

I very much appreciate your kind words, Kass.  This is the first anniversary
of our realization that something was seriously wrong with me, medically.
We had gone to ISU to pick up Josie who had just finished her last exam
prior to graduation.  She had no vehicle then but is now a working LSW
Social Worker and she and Cameron [IBEW] have a fine new Jeep Liberty.  The
world seems a bit more distant to me each day!

On William M Salter:  It was an almost total break all the way around --
though there were occasional points of contact, at least with Mary Salter.
Although Mother met both William and Mary, it was only briefly and they died
not long before I was born. They may have been a little frightened by her:
Western horse ranching and Idaho and Washington state mining engineering
antecedents on one side of her family and rambunctious Populism on the
other. Obviously, the reservations expressed [however delicately] by William
James vis-a-vis the Salters are points very well taken indeed.  In addition
to that, Salter's high idealism which had traveled and survived so many
rough trails  apparently could not -- in the instance of a lively child --
avoid the rocks and rapids of the River of No Return.

I definitely don't believe he was a racist -- at least not a conscious one.
With his close colleague, Jane Addams and several dozen others, he signed
the Call to Organization of the NAACP in 1909.  As I've noted, he was, for
better or worse, involved in the Indian Rights Association. He was
consistently opposed to American imperialism. His courage in defending the
Haymarket victims and their families and his advocacy on their behalf with
Governor Atgeld was tremendous. But Salter was old -- well beyond his years
as it turned out -- and brittle.

He took voluminous notes -- his books are full of them -- and, if no written
record of his feelings on the adoption were found, there is at least the
possibility that he destroyed them.  After both William and Mary Salter
died, my parents, visiting their large home [the Hilltop] in the
Chocorua/Silver Lake NH setting, went into their large barn.  There,
partially concealed at least, was a box with two dozen photos of Dad at
various points and some adoption documents.  We speculate that Mary Salter
put them there to avoid their destruction by William.  All of these have
been in my possession for many years.

All best, Kass.  Humans were made to survive and, as I was told when I was
near death from Scarlet Fever at the age of five or six, "Only the good die
young."

H

Kass, I should add, is the author of the excellent,  The Bear River Massacre and the Making of History, [Albany:  State University of New York Press, 2004.] The mass murder of almost 300 Shoshone people -- men, women, children -- by Union affiliated troops in Southern Idaho, January, 1863 and the wide-ranging chronological and geographical and cultural implications and ramifications.  H
 

HUNTER GRAY  [HUNTER BEAR]   Micmac /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
www.hunterbear.org
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'
 

In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the
game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the
high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own
inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down
on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings. Then
it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and mysterious and
remembering way. [Hunter Bear]

_________________

TRIBUTES AND GOOD THOUGHTS
FOR AND ABOUT
HUNTER BEAR

Hunter Gray [Hunter Bear]

Mi'kmaq/St Francis Abenaki/St Regis Mohawk

1.  JAMES W. LOEWEN

2.  JOHN H. SIME