{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://historyidaho.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/639k35nd04/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Horace Axtell OH2753"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/201/original/Home-Logos_No-Bkgrnd_MB_blue.png?1630062257","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Preferred Citation"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eOral history interview with Horace Axtell, June 16, 2010, with Ellen Haffner. OH 2753 Idaho State Archives.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Horace Axtell (Narrator)","Ellen Haffner (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2010-06-16 (captured)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eIn his interview with Ellen Haffner in Boise, Idaho, on June 16, 2010, Horace Axtell discussed his experiences as a member of the Nez Perce tribe, growing up in Ferdinand, Idaho, and serving in the Army during World War II.  Axtell discussed the time from the 1920s to the time of the interview, and he covered the following topics: his family ranch near Ferdinand, Idaho; attending school in Ferdinand; foods, traditions, and family practices; training in the U.S.,  as well as serving in the Pacific Theater, during World War II; reconstruction work in Japan during the U.S. occupation of Japan; what it means to be an elder in the Nez Perce tribe; the practices and ceremonies of the Nez Perce native spirituality; Nez Perce funiary practices; and his work to communicate to both younger generations and non-Nez Perce the history and culture of that people.  This interview was conducted for the Idaho State Historical Societies Life History Collection.\u003c/p\u003e (abstract)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":[".mp3"]}},{"label":{"en":["Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["OH 2753 (local)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["World War II (topical term)","Drums, Religion (topical term)","Ferdinand, Idaho (geographic term)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["Nez Perce Indians, North America"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eIn his interview with Ellen Haffner in Boise, Idaho, on June 16, 2010, Horace Axtell discussed his experiences as a member of the Nez Perce tribe, growing up in Ferdinand, Idaho, and serving in the Army during World War II. \u0026nbsp;Axtell discussed the time from the 1920s to the time of the interview, and he covered the following topics: his family ranch near Ferdinand, Idaho; attending school in Ferdinand; foods, traditions, and family practices; training in the U.S., \u0026nbsp;as well as serving in the Pacific Theater, during World War II; reconstruction work in Japan during the U.S. occupation of Japan; what it means to be an elder in the Nez Perce tribe; the practices and ceremonies of the Nez Perce native spirituality; Nez Perce funiary practices; and his work to communicate to both younger generations and non-Nez Perce the history and culture of that people. \u0026nbsp;This interview was conducted for the Idaho State Historical Societies Life History Collection.\u003c/p\u003e"]},"provider":[{"id":"https://historyidaho.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Idaho State Historical Society"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://historyidaho.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Idaho State Historical Society"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/201/original/Home-Logos_No-Bkgrnd_MB_blue.png?1630062257","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://historyidaho.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1619/collection_resources/82582/file/170887","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 2 - Axtell_Horace_OH2753(1).mp3"]},"duration":3554.08975,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://historyidaho.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1619/collection_resources/82582/file/170887/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://historyidaho.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1619/collection_resources/82582/file/170887/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-historyidaho.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/170/887/original/Axtell_Horace_OH2753%281%29.mp3?1668811743","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mpeg","duration":3554.08975,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://historyidaho.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1619/collection_resources/82582/file/170887","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://historyidaho.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1619/collection_resources/82582/file/170887/transcript/40681","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Horace Axtell OH 2753 [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://historyidaho.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1619/collection_resources/82582/file/170887/transcript/40681/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Axtell, Horace (June 16, 2010) \nAxtell, Horace (June 16, 2010) \n\nNARRATOR:\tAxtell, Horace\nINTERVIEWER:\tEllen Haffner    \n\nDATE:   \t\tJune 16, 2010\nLOCATION:   \tBoise, Idaho\nPROJECT:  \t\tLife History \n\nSTART OF RECORDING\n\nTRACK ONE\n\nEH:\tOkay, today’s date is June 16th, 2010. My name is Ellen Haffner, and I’m with the Idaho State Historical Society. I’m here with Horace Axtell, and we are here talking about his life history. And Horace, as I said, we’ll start at the beginning. What year and where were you born?\n\nHA:\tI was born in 1924 in November. November the seventh of 1924. At a little place out of town of Ferdinand, Idaho, about three-and-a-half miles and close to a canyon, the Lawyers Canyon, where my father and my grandfather and my grandmother got that place when they gave a lot once to our Nez Perce Tribe. So he wanted that place. And it was all, like all timber and pastureland, because he wanted to raise horses and cattle, and then I grew up with horses and cattle. And my grandmother was there and my mother. After I was born, I guess my father left, and so I was raised by my grandmother and my mother. And I grew up right there on that little ranch and went to school from there, but the only really language that I really knew before I went to school was Nez Perce language. And my grandmother never did speak English or read or write. And she spoke to me in Nez Perce all the time. So that’s why I learned how to speak, so I can speak Nez Perce and I can speak English now.\n\nEH:\tSo it wasn’t until you went to school that you learned English?\nHA:\tYes.\n\nEH:\tOkay. So, could you describe your ranch a little bit? You said it was a small ranch. \nHA:\tYeah.\n\nEH:\tAbout how big?\n\nHA:\tIt was about, pretty close to two hundred acres.\n\nEH:\tOkay, and how many cattle and horses did you have?\n\nHA:\tWell, I guess Grandpa used to have more than what was left after—course, he died before I was born, and I never got to know him. I think he was probably dead for five years before I was born. And, of course, my grandmother and my mother was there when they had to sell cattle and horses and stuff to keep alive for a while. And there was just a little bit of farmland there that we used to raise hay on, but all that work was pretty hard for my mother and my grandmother, so we used to hire people to do that for them. Rent it out. And so after I was getting a little older, then I started learning how to do a lot of things around the farm, like taking care of the cows and horses and learning how to milk cows and [unintelligible] chickens and all of that. So I used to do that, and I grew up, and I learned a lot of Nez Perce language. My grandmother would talk to me all the time like that because she couldn’t speak English.\n\nEH:\tOkay, and your mom would speak Nez Perce as well?\n\nHA:\tYeah, my mother went to school in that little school where I went after I grew up, and she [unintelligible] musicians, she could play piano and that’s where I lost out. She used to want me to come in and learn how to play piano, and I was too busy playing and riding horses and everything, and I never got to learn how to play piano. But, she used to get hired from the old fiddlers in the town, where they used to like to have her do the [unintelligible], when they played a fiddle. Several people on different towns up there used to like to have her play for them. And she used to play for country dances and stuff, and then she belonged to the Grange up there in Ferdinand, and then that was an experience for me, too, ‘cause I, once in a while I used to go to the meetings with her. But after I got a little into school and everything so I was too busy staying home and studying, but then that was where I grew up. \n\nAnd then there was a lot of—my grandmother’s relatives used to come there and stay for a while and visit, and they were all the people that were Nez Perce and they never did speak English either. And I used to listen to them talk and I could understand, so I heard a lot of stories in my life about different things, and, of course, and then there was menfolks, too, that used to come and they were relatives from my grandmother, and I used to go up to the sweat house with them—the [unintelligible] sweat house they have for Indian people. We go inside and sit in there and have rock piles and then we heat and rocks and throw a little water on them to make them steam up, and then we’d stay in there and then we’d start sweating and then we’d get out and go into the little pool and wash off and sit around for a while, then go in again.\nEH:\tSo, could you describe for the recording, like, what the sweat lodge, the sweat house, looks like?\n\nHA:\tYeah, it’s, you see these little, little ice huts they used to have in Alaska?\n\nEH:\tOh, okay, like the igloos?\n\nHA:\tKind of like the way it used to look. It’s made out of willow trees, and they’d stick them in the ground and make it around and they bent these willows in different directions.\n\nEH:\tSo, it was like a little dome?\n\nHA:\tMake a little dome and then cover it up with [unintelligible] kind of blankets and stuff. Or then we could go into making it, putting a tarp over it and gunny sacks and then building dirt around it, sod, and next thing you know it [unintelligible] [laughter], but then it would really make it airtight. And they used to actually use gunny sacks, cut them and make them wider and use them for the flooring inside and break off branches off of fir trees or fir boughs and put them down and cover them up with a little straw and that would make it nice and soft in there.\nEH:\tNice.\n\nHA:\tSo that—and then they had a little pit on the side to put the heated rocks in. They’d have them build a fire and heat the rocks and put them inside and then when you wanted to make it steam up, you’d just throw a little water on the rocks and it would steam up and you could feel that steam getting onto you and making you sweat.\n\nEH:\tOkay, so was there like an age or some other requirement to be a part of that?\n\nHA:\tWell, I began when I must have been about four or five years old. I’d go in there and I’d barely remember some of it because I was maybe five years old, I think, but I already knew how to speak language and them old fellows would tell me what to do and everything and make sure you closed your eyes because that heat and steam would bother your eyes. So they said, “Close your eyes. Don’t open your eyes.” So, once in a while, they’d say something and you’d open your eyes to see what they was talking [laughter], but then you remembered and you closed your eyes again. But that’s the way I grew up, learning how to—Then the old men could tell stories in there, that’s what I liked. \n\nEH:\tSo what kind of stories would they tell?\n\nHA:\tWell, some of these were people were warriors who fought in the Nez Perce War, and I listened to them tell their stories. They wouldn’t tell them stories out in the open, but they’d sit among themselves and talk, and they could talk back and forth, and I could understand. So I heard a lot of good stories about the war, about 18--, when the Nez Perce got in the war with the United States Army and where the places were and, you know, after I grew up and after I became involved in the spirituality, I got to see a lot of these places and I followed the trail and I understand what—then I found out where my great-grandfather died in the war and where he’s buried, where he fell and where they buried him right there. And then, of course, my father left me when I was a baby, but in later years I caught him back. And when I first went over to that place they call Bear Paw Battlefield—that’s where my great-grandfather, my father’s grandfather, he got killed there, he was from the Whitebird band, and so I, after my father died, I went over there with my wife and my oldest son and his wife and we searched for that place where he was shot and killed and buried right there, and we finally found it. \nEH:\tOh, did you?\n\nHA:\tDrew up—he had a little marker on a pipe, had a little cap on it and it had his name written there and a number, 104. \n\nEH:\tOh, wow. Was that the number of people or?\n\nHA:\tYeah.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tHe was one of the people that got killed there, and they had them all numbered. But I found—I made some friends there in Chinook, Montana, and this one man, his name was Andy Anderson, I think, I haven’t heard from him for about a year now, I hope he’s still alive. But he got to be such a good friend, and he helped me locate the place. \n\nEH:\tThat’s nice.\n\nHA:\tAnd then they had the records in that place where he used to work, and of course he had a gas station there and he used to [be] involved with the burial grounds out there, and he got to know where everybody was at and course he kept up with it pretty nice. But there a few years back, his wife was passed away and he still lives there but I haven’t seen him for a couple years now, so, so he became a good friend. And so he helped me find that gravesite for my great-grandfather, and he was from the Whitebird band up there around Whitebird, Idaho, and up that—Salmon River country.\n\nEH:\tOkay. So can I ask you a little bit more about your mother? You said that she played music. What else do you remember about her?\nHA:\tWell, she was the, she was a good cook, I know that. And she used to make all kinds of good things—cakes and even made maple bars and all kinds of good things. And she was a cook and the people, the farmers around the area—during harvest time—they used to hire her to cook for their harvest crews. And she used to, you know, make money for buying me clothes for school, and so after I got older and I started working for farmers, too, that’s where I learned a lot about different kinds of machinery and how to handle horses and a lot of things. So I grew up there on the Camas Prairie, a little town called Ferdinand, and lived there with my mother and my grandmother, and of course we used to have a lot of visitors come, and they wanted to come up there and stay, some of them. Stayed for a month or two sometimes, and that was a, that was a learning time for me because I heard a lot of these good stories. And a lot of things that my grandmother did was gather Indian food.\nEH:\tOkay. Like what?\n\nHA:\tAll kinds of roots and berries and dried meat and dried salmon and all kinds—because that’s how our people lived a long time ago. They didn’t have storage places and there were no refrigerators or all that, but everything was mostly all dried. And I learned how to eat all these dried foods, and I still like them.\n\nEH:\tDid you learn how, like, the process of drying the foods?\n\nHA:\tYeah.\n\nEH:\tHow did you guys do that?\n\nHA:\tWell, you cut them in layers, thin as you can, I mean, you don’t want to make big nicks in it [unintelligible]. Start in like this and then you’d peel back and keep cutting like that [unintelligible] until you get a slab, then you make little nicks on it like that and hang it up, and then you’d use that little cedar stick to spread them apart and then hang them up and get them dry. But you’d never want to let them get damp. And every evening I’d stay there and gather them up, put them away, and then in the morning, she’d put them back up again.\n\nEH:\tOh, okay. So were they hung outside or inside?\n\nHA:\tWell, they were—some of them were—not in the direct sun. So they’d select a shady place like here, but when it was warm, they’d put them out there. And if you get them too hot right away, then they curl up on you. So they just let them dry easy, then they’d come out straight.\nEH:\tOh, okay.\n\nHA:\tSo there was all kinds of food like that. So, she’d put them away in what they call a part-flesh, like a little, made a little trunk made out of deer hide or elk hide, and put them in there and put them away. And in the winters she’d open them up, and when we’d want to eat some of it, she’d open some up and take it out and we eat and then we always had that little, little bag to keep them in.\n\nEH:\tOh, okay.\n\nHA:\tAnd most of them were made out of hides. And, you know, they had a certain way to design those, and they had little squares of different colors, and we used to have a lot of those, but when I was in the war that first month or so, I think it was about the third month and I got a letter from my mom one day and that was kind of a sad day for me ‘cause that’s when my mother wrote and told me that the house had burned down.\nEH:\tOh, no.\n\nHA:\tAnd the shed next door burned down. [Unintelligible] we lived out in the country and we never had any running water, we didn’t have any electricity, but we used to have to pack water. And when the fire started, they couldn’t put it out.\n\nEH:\tThat’s hard.\n\nHA:\tSo it burned completely down.\n\nEH:\tSo you lost a lot.\n\nHA:\tYeah, we lost all my high school honors that I got when I played basketball and baseball, and my letters and all my annual books and everything burned. There were some, a couple of guns I had and all my clothing that I left behind. [Laughs] So, all burned. ‘Cause I had them all upstairs and they couldn’t even get close to that stairway.\n\nEH:\tSo how far away was the water supply?\n\nHA:\tOh, there was a little well down below our house there, but my mother wouldn’t let us drink that ‘cause it was close to where the barn was and where the cattle were, so we had a spring down in the little canyon, down close to, our house was here and then there’s a road across the draw, and you’d go down into Lawyers Canyon. So, but down in here, there was a spring, real good water, drinking water, so we used to have to carry our water from there to the house. So that was one of my chores. Used to go down there with a little canteen and fill it up, and then after I got older, I used to have to carry buckets and have our drinking water, so—and she used it, have to use it for cooking, too. But she wouldn’t let us drink that water close to our barn.\nEH:\tWas that for the animals?\n\nHA:\tYeah.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tAnd then a little further there was a little creek and then we used to have a water hole there for the animals to drink out of. So finally got our yard built around the house so we would come into the yard, you know. I remember a lot of things about that.\n\nEH:\tSo, how big was your house? You’ve mentioned it had an upstairs.\n\nHA:\tYeah, we had a room upstairs and down below a big kitchen and dining room together and then a living room and a little small bedroom here, so my grandmother lived there, and my mom used to have a little couch she used to sleep on over here in the living room. But I slept upstairs, had a stairway going up there. And the room I had was long, ‘cause it was up on the roof of the house, I mean, the roof was above us but this long room had beds here and beds there for guests. So, that’s why I lived over here, so I could look out the window and see the yard and see the chicken house and all that. And then across the draw there was an area here that we used to make hay out of, and then over here was all timber. Once in a while, I’d get up and look out the window. I could see deer over here. And so after maybe, after breakfast, I’d go look for ‘em. [Laughs] But that’s where I grew up. I still have memories there. But one good thing—I inherited that place after my family died. So I have interest there with my cousins, my mother’s sister, and she had more kids than my mother did. I was the only child of hers. So I inherited quite a bit of that, and then my cousins had to split theirs with the heir from their mother, so then, so I have about, a little bit over half-interest in that place yet, so I still keep that place. I go there and visit around. It’s up at Ferdinand, and I live in Lewiston. So once in a while I drive up there and roam around and—\n\nEH:\tAbout how much of a drive is it from Lewiston to Ferdinand?\n\nHA:\tOh, it’s about pretty close to fifty miles.\n\nEH:\tOkay, I’m not really sure where Ferdinand in the scheme up there.\n\nHA:\tIt’s a little village. Of course, when they rebuilt the highways there, they bypass Ferdinand now, and it used to go right through town, the old road, but they made this wider road and it goes right on the edge of Ferdinand, but—you can see it when you by, but a lot time ago there used to be traffic going right through town every day. And when I was going to that school, in high school, there was still that road there. But after the war, they rebuilt that into a highway, it’s a big highway now. So—\nEH:\tSo, about how many people lived in Ferdinand while you were growing up?\n\nHA:\tWell, there was, oh, about pretty close to five hundred people living in Ferdinand, but not that many now. But mostly all German people, a few different, like Norwegians and a few of those and different, different nationalities, but that’s all there was was just white people. And most of the Indians lived around the little farms where they had land, and that’s where we were out on—like, this would be Ferdinand here, then out this way there was an old road that come across the canyon here and gone over and over to this other area, but we lived on this side of the canyon about three-and-a-half, four miles out of Ferdinand. And so, we used to have to ride horses into town to go for a store, and my mother—when we had a team of horses, we used to use a wagon. \nEH:\tOh, okay.\n\nHA:\tFinally, in I can’t remember what year, but we finally bought a car [laughs] and I finally learned how to drive after I got older, but my mother learned how to drive from somebody and she used to drive for my grandmother.\n\nEH:\tSo, do you mind me asking your mother’s name?\n\nHA:\tMy mother’s name was Nellie.\n\nEH:\tNellie, okay. We keep just referring to her, so I thought it would be good to get her name.\n\nHA:\tYeah.\n\nEH:\tAnd what was your grandmother’s name?\n\nHA:\tJane.\n\nEH:\tJane?\n\nHA:\tJ-a-n-e, Jane. Jane Moody, M-o-o-d-y, Moody. And that was my grandfather’s name—Andrew Moody.\n\nEH:\tOh, okay. And so Jane and Andrew, were they your mother’s parents or your father’s parents?\n\nHA:\tMy mother’s father, yeah, Andrew.\n\nEH:\tI just wanted to make sure I had that straight in my head.\n\nHA:\tYeah. But he died before I was born. I didn’t get to know him.\n\nEH:\tYeah. So, you mentioned that you would go into Ferdinand. You’ve mentioned a store. What other types of businesses were there?\n\nHA:\tOh, there was two stores, both like grocery stores. And both of them had hardware stuff in them. This one store, my grandmother knew him from I don’t know when. But he used to take her stuff, like she made a lot of buckskin clothes, moccasins and things, and so he made a little case out of it and he had all her workings in there and he’d sell them for her.\nEH:\tOh, nice.\n\nHA:\tSo, she used to do a lot of sewing and making buckskin and oh, a lot of that stuff. You could see her busy all day long. So, when the time came when she was making these hides, like in the spring, so she had a teepee out there, so she’d call me in there and she’d tell me to sit down and put our feet together and then we’d stretch these hides when they were being processed. So, when I was younger, she used to pull hard enough to make me stand up. So, one time I just kept, kept my mouth shut, after I grew up and got stronger, so one time I was going to pull, so I pulled her ‘til she stood up! [Laughter]\n\nEH:\tOh, no! You were waiting for that day.\n\nHA:\tYeah, she got such a kick out of that, she just had to tell everybody what I did.\n\nEH:\tYeah.\n\nHA:\tBut that was the highlight of my life was growing up with grandmother.\n\nEH:\tYeah, yeah, sounds like it.\n\nHA:\tAnd I still use a lot of things that I learned from him, especially the language.\n\nEH:\tYeah.\n\nHA:\tAnd I never forgot any of it.\n\nEH:\tSo, did you go hunting? Did you hunt while you were growing up?\n\nHA:\tOh, yeah. We used to, after I got into high school, I used to—instead of riding a horse, I would jog into school so I’d stay in shape for basketball or baseball. And I didn’t mind that at all—it was about three miles. After I got to the highway--I’d have to go through the fields, two fields, before I’d get to the highway. But I had to walk that because it was a steep hill. And I’d get on the highway and then I’d jump and start jogging. So, a lot of times I used to have to tell my mother to keep the dogs in the house ‘til I’m gone for a while. But then they finally figured out where I was going and they’d smell my tracks, and when I’d get out of school they’d be sitting at the door waiting for me. Or after basketball practice. And so then I’d jog on home and make them run home, too. \nBut, you know, after I got into the Army, and I told my mother to keep the dogs in the house when I was leaving, so it was snowing on the ground so I had to walk into town to catch the bus. So I told her to leave them in the house. So they both used to like to stay by the stove in the winter, and it was kind of winter yet, and they’d get warm and just sleep there. So I sneaked out the back door and left, and when the dogs woke up they run upstairs to see if I was up there and they come back down and they got to the door and they started scratching the door, so they wanted to go outside, and she said that they were gone for, oh, a couple hours. Then they came back and they run upstairs again and they run down to the barn, and they was looking for me, but they never did find me. And so after that they stuck around, and then she said one day they disappeared, they went into town or something and never would come back.\nEH:\tHow weird.\n\nHA:\tBut that made me sad when she told me that on the letter.\n\nEH:\tYeah. Yeah.\n\nHA:\tHad a bigger dog and a little smaller dog, and that little dog used to have a time trying to keep up with us when I’d ride the horse, but every time I got the horse ready to saddle him up and they would be sitting there with their wags going, tails going like that, when I was going to go somewhere, so—\n\nEH:\tYeah, bet they were excited.\n\nHA:\tSo sometimes on Saturday or Sunday I’d ride out, and sometimes I’d camp overnight by myself, and my horse and my two dogs, a couple blankets, and we’d stay there. And Grandma always made me a lunch and a little stuff there to feed the dogs. So that’s where I always used to spend my time, but then I made friends with some other boys that lived close by and we had to go by them. They had horses, too, so we’d ride horses together. They had a little town called Klingmotlip [spelling?], about nine miles to our way; I used to ride over there to visit them, so then they’d ride over to visit me.\n\nEH:\tOh, okay.\n\nHA:\tThey had three brothers. Me, I only had myself.\n\nEH:\tYeah. So, what, could you describe what your school was like?\n\nHA:\tWell, the school where I first started was a little country school. It wasn’t too far from our house—oh, about, oh, about a mile, I think. Oh, not quite a mile. But it was up on a hill. So I’d have to go through a fence here and another fence up there, and finally get to school. But then my neighbors lived across the draw over on this side, and then they’d come by and we’d all walk together to the school, and they had more girls and boys. And we all used to walk together to school. And then some of them were older than me and some of them were younger than me, so we had more kids then—I think eleven children all together. So I used to play with them and I learned, could speak German a little bit, and they just spoke a language and so the mother and father, they spoke the German language a lot, and they listened to them talk. And, of course, the children got to where they could understand them, so they would—if they started talking about the kids, why, they knew what they were talking about. [Laughter]\n\nEH:\tYes. \nHA:\tSo they had one listener that would listen for that. So they’d tell each other, “Why, you better be careful what you do or what you say because Mom and Dad’s been listening.” [Coughs]\nEH:\tDo you need a drink of water?\n\nHA:\tI think so.\n\nEH:\tOkay. [Pours water] There you go. So you said there was about eleven students in the school?\n\nHA:\tPardon?\n\nEH:\tAbout how many students in the school? Did you say eleven?\n\nHA:\tOh, in grade school, I had—I went there my eighth grade, because in this country school we had a different teacher every other, it seemed like every year we’d have a different teacher. So when I got into eighth grade, and I was the only eighth grader, and so we had to go into town to take our yearly test, to that other school. So I was out here, and this new teacher, he was a man, ‘cause I grew up with a woman teacher, and so this man he paid more attention to the other children. So I was out here, trying to study and everything, and so when I had to take the state test to pass to go into high school, then I failed. So then the following year I told my mom, “I’m going to school in Ferdinand,” because I wanted to pass. I wanted to get into high school so I could play ball. [Laughs]\nEH:\tYeah. \n\nHA:\tSo, anyway, I started going to school in town. Had Catholic sisters for teachers, nuns. So I went to school there, and I enrolled and I was in the eighth grade, ‘cause I failed. So then the teacher one day asked me if I could stay after school for about fifteen minutes every day, so I did. And she really helped me. You know, ‘cause I went there for that whole semester, whole year, when I took that test in the spring before school was out, I passed. Oh, boy! [Unintelligible] good grades, because she used to make me stay after school for fifteen minutes and helped me.\n\nEH:\tThat’s nice.\n\nHA:\tI still remember her. Her name was Sister Bernadette. She was from that—\n\nEH:\tWas it from St. Gertrude’s?\n\nHA:\tBy Cottonwood, there’s a—\n\nEH:\tSt. Gertrude’s.\n\nHA:\tYeah, St. Gertrude’s. And she come from there. Oh, she was so nice, and once in a while she’d ask me how to say things in Nez Perce. And she got so she could kind of understand some of the words that I was saying. So, anyway, we got to be such close—so close—and then she was so tickled when I told her that I passed.\n\nEH:\tI’m sure. I’m sure.\n\nHA:\tThen I went to high school. There I started failing again, because I was so interested in sports, and [of] course then I had young classmates from over here that used to help me. They wanted to make sure that I stayed in, within that limit where I could pass my grades so I could be able to play basketball and baseball, because I really used to love to play basketball and baseball. So that’s why I went to high school.\n\nEH:\tOkay. And so what year was it that you started high school, do you--?\nHA:\tOh, I can’t remember. It must have been—\n\nEH:\t‘Cause you joined the Army in 1943, right?\n\nHA:\tYeah.\n\nEH:\tOkay. So, and how old were you when you joined the Army?\n\nHA:\tI was still in my senior year.\n\nEH:\tYour senior year, okay. And I have the date of February 16th of ’43, does that sound right?\n\nHA:\tYes.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tYeah.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tBut I was still in my senior year, and it was in February.\n\nEH:\tSo, do you remember first hearing about the United States going to war—or did you hear about the attack at Pearl Harbor?\n\nHA:\tYeah. Yeah.\n\nEH:\tWhat do you recall?\n\nHA:\tThat’s what made me want to get into the war.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\t‘Cause we had a man—well, he was a younger man, he was in high school in Ferdinand when I was still in grade school. So when I got into high school, he was already out, but then he was still living in Ferdinand. So he used to come and help us with our [unintelligible], Nez Perces that lived there, and he used to gather us up and teach us how to play basketball and baseball, and he was a good musician but we never could get out there long enough to learn how to play the trumpet like he did or to play the piano like he did, and he was pretty much a good person. So one day, him and his older nephew joined the Army, and they were in the Philippines when they run—that general that used to be over charge there.\n\nEH:\tMacArthur?\n\nHA:\tI can’t remember his name.\n\nEH:\tIs it MacArthur?\n\nHA:\tYeah.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tAnd then that’s when they overtook the Philippines, the Japanese. And then when they came back, they had to march in there and then they became prisoners of war, and then he died—he died there. I don’t know whether they got killed or what, but this nephew of his that was with him, he survived. But then all of us that were like under him when he was teaching us remembered that, ‘cause I was still in high school. So I wanted to get in the Army so bad. I tried to get in the Marines, and I tried to get in the Navy, but I got turned down because of my injury to my eye, you know, as a kid. And I didn’t pass. So what I did was I raised my age one year so I could join the—oh, what’d they call that, where you get drafted?\nEH:\tOh, the, yeah, the draft, yeah.\n\nHA:\tSo I signed up, I raised my age so I could sign up for that, and one day my name came up and I went and I passed. That’s how I got in.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tBut I wanted to get in there so bad because of my, our teacher. He was such a good man. And he used to come and stay with us up there, right where I lived.\n\nEH:\tSo you mentioned that you had an eye injury. Can you tell me what happened?\n\nHA:\tYeah, that happened before I was out of grade school. ‘Cause we used to, my mother and grandmother used to like to go pick huckleberries. So I went from where we lived—there was a big butte over here called Mason Butte and the road goes way out here this way, there’s a mountainous area. So we used to go over there with horses and camp, and Mother used to, Grandma used to pick huckleberries, and I used to like to go fishing in the creek. So we was going over there, and I had a horse and I stopped to pick up some rocks in my slingshot. I used to shoot at posts and stuff on the way over, and so I picked up some rocks and I filled my pocket, so I got behind, so I started to gallop to catch up with them, my mom and my grandmother on the wagon. And on the way I started galloping and all of a sudden I seen the ground coming up at me like that near my—[unintelligible] must have gotten my horse—and I rolled off and I landed on my face like that.\n\nEH:\tOh, no.\n\nHA:\tThat’s how I injured my eye. And I got up and I hollered and I hollered, and I know Grandmother couldn’t hear me because she was hard of hearing. Finally, my mother heard me and she stopped the horses and looked around and seen me laying on the ground. And she come running back and I had blood coming out of my eye. They took me up to where my grandmother was holding the horses and the team, and Grandmother got so scared. She thought I’d lost my eye ‘cause it was bleeding so bad, you know, and they wanted to turn back and go back to the house, and I said, “No, we can’t do that,” ‘cause there was an elder man and his wife already there waiting for us where we were going to pick huckleberries ‘cause they’d never been there before. But they got ahead of us and I told them how to get there, and so I told [unintelligible], “Just keep going, I’ll be all right.” \n\t\tSo I finally got the bleeding stopped, and so the next morning when I woke up I couldn’t open my eye [unintelligible] getting’ shut, so my grandmother looked at me and so she got a washrag, soaked it up, and put it over my eye. And then after a bit I was laying there and I opened my right—left eye and I looked around and I couldn’t see anybody, ‘cause she was gone. So after a while, I heard her come back and I heard her out there pounding on something [pounds his hands], and there she went and dug out a—I don’t know what kind of root it was, but it was a root and she made it, and then she soaked it in water and put it in a wash cloth and laid it down on my eye. And I laid like that for two or three days, and so one morning she was opening it up to see what my eye looked like and when she did that I opened my eyelid a little bit and I could see her. And I told her, in my language, I said, [unknown Nez Perce phrase], “Grandmother, I can see you.” And she started crying. She was so happy. She was worried my eye was gone, and she was so happy she just cried, held me in her lap, and so, so I never did go to the doctor.\nEH:\tYeah. She took care of you.\n\nHA:\tAfter a certain time, my mother took me in there, but she said that tear duct was the one that got damaged so now my water, eye waters a little bit, and still does, and it did that all my life. But I still made the Army.\nEH:\tOkay. So, so you joined the Army. Was there a certain division that you were in?\n\nHA:\tYeah, I was in what we called the Engineers.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tBecause of my abilities, I guess, from learning, been working with these farmers a lot, learned how to run machinery and drive trucks and all that. I got put in the Engineers because of my IQ test.\n\nEH:\tOh, okay.\n\nHA:\tAnd, so, that’s where I became—I liked that ‘cause I learned so much more about doing things. To use ropes and all kinds of things, boats, ‘cause we built these floating bridges. And we built them out of big pontoons and there were all these ropes and all kinds of stuff. And I liked that. So after a while, I got promoted. What they called the staff sergeant who was in charge of our platoon, he turned my name in for being a motor pool dispatcher. So the captain of our company went through all the different names, and I told him that I was a senior in high school but I quit to come in the Army here, and according to my IQ test, that’s how come I got picked. ‘Cause I had a good IQ score, from being in high school. I just got out—well, I was still going to school when I left, I left my books there and everything. [Laughs] So I got that job as a motor pool dispatcher.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tSo I had to take care of all the records of my trucks, my vehicles, and the jeeps and all the other things, and the boats—that was my job.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tSo I got there. And then there was three of us—had one for each platoon, what they called, so many guys in one platoon that hung together and worked together. I was in the third platoon, and the first and second [unintelligible] over here, and so this staff sergeant, he was from Lewiston, Idaho, and just where my—most of my people were, my ex-, my fellow soldiers, come from all these little towns on the prairie, and I knew most of them ‘cause I played ball against them. And then we had people from California and Washington and Oregon, all from the Northwest. So we had a good company. Then we had a captain from, he was from, oh, let’s see, I can’t remember the name of the town, it was almost in Florida. And, anyway, he was really such a nice man. His name was Captain Evans, had red hair, tall guy, and he had a real good manner of expressing. He would give us a little lecture but he done it in such a nice way that we all understood and we all did what he wanted. And then we had—course, in our company, when we floated a bridge, there was other companies doing the same thing. So when we got down here toward the end of our time, before we went overseas, we had a, like a, contest, so we won. We built our bridge first, and everything was put together perfect, and so we got selected to go overseas.\nEH:\tOh, okay.\n\nHA:\tSo then, this company man, he was such a nice man, he treated us so kind, but then when he got after us, he did it in such a way that we’d all listen and do what he said. That’s what made us. And he had this southern drawl, he was from the South, but he went to school at this big college and he was just a great man.\n\nEH:\tWell, good. So where were you stationed before you went overseas?\n\nHA:\tIt was in Camp Swift, Texas—not much I can say about Texas. [Laughter]\n\nEH:\tWas it, about how long was it that you were there?\n\nHA:\tAbout a year.\n\nEH:\tOkay, before—and then you went—\n\nHA:\tAnd then we completed our training, and we became picked to go over there—it was the 529th Floating Bridge Company Engineers.\n\nEH:\tOkay, and where was it that you were sent from Texas?\n\nHA:\tWe was going over to Normandy, but—before we was going to ship out, each one of us got a little furlough to come home and visit our families and friends. So I come home and I visited my cousin I had, she was older than me, but because I never had any sisters she became a lot like my big sister. She kind of watched over me when I was younger. And she already had a family, already had three or four kids, but I went down to visit her and I was at Kamiah--Kamiah, Idaho—so before I was going to visit around, just before I was going to leave for home, back up to Ferdinand, ‘cause I was leaving the next day, I went down to visit her. And I think all her kids were home, and then she gave me a piece of cake. I ate that and said, “Well, I better leave now. I got to go back home and get my stuff and get ready to go back to camp.” So, she come to the door with me and I was getting ready to step outside and shook her hand, and she said, “Well,” she said, “I hope you don’t get what the kids have.”\nEH:\tOh, no.\n\nHA:\tAnd I said, “Well, do what do they have?” She said, “They got the mumps--”\n\nEH:\tOh, no.\n\nHA:\t“--But I didn’t want to tell you that.” So that made me worry. And on the way to the Norman—to the port of embarkation, which was in New York, close to New York, I was worried. And, sure enough, about the second day out on the train, I couldn’t swallow my food. And I got feverish.\n\nEH:\tOh, oh.\n\nHA:\tSo I went on sick call like I should have, because I didn’t want to spread it, so, right away they said, “You got the mumps.” And this guy that I was bunking with, he was from Craigmont, and so I infected him, too. So both of us got put in a little quarantine place where they had a place for—so him and I [unintelligible] that place and never got to visit any of my friends. They waited until everybody got off the train and they took us off last and they were already gone. Never said nothing to the other guys, and they left and I never seen them again. But then we stayed in the hospital for twenty-one days till I got over it. And they told us to stay in bed that first week. So they put me in bed, and I heard a guy next door groaning, next room, hear him going around at night. So one day I got curious and I sneaked out of my bed and I went over to peek in his door and I seen him. He was laying there with his covers off. And what they called his mumps went down on him and his testicles were swollen and big, and that’s why they told us to stay in bed, ‘cause he was walking around. Oh, boy, I got back in bed and I stayed there, stayed there. And I come out all right. Was there for twenty-one days till they made sure I was okay.\n\nEH:\tSo did they go ahead and send off your platoon?\n\nHA:\tYeah, they left soon after we got there. Never got to say, say anything to them.\n\nEH:\tSo where did you end up going next after you got out of the hospital?\n\nHA:\tWell, they had a place, what they call a, oh, they had a special name for it, where all these guys got left behind and some of them got sick, too, and they were all there—replacement center, they called it. \nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tSo I stayed there for almost a month after they had gone. And then when—they had PA [public address] systems all around so people could hear what was going on, so one morning they talked about Normandy, how we invaded, what had happened, how many people were getting killed, and not realizing that my unit was there, too. That was kind of sad to hear that ‘cause I thought about all my fellow soldiers that I knew, we played ball against them, and they come from different little towns around the village where I was born and raised. There was like Craigmont, Cottonwood, and different towns, Reubens, and all of that. [Laughs] Anyway, I finally got put into another unit, and I got on a big train and went down, back down to the South again. This time I went to, oh, Alabama.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tI had another round of what they called—I can’t remember the name but then that’s where you learned how to be a soldier—I had to go through that again.\n\nEH:\tLike basic training?\n\nHA:\tBasic training. And so, I had to go through that okay, and this time I got into a battalion they called Combat Engineers. It was a little bit different. We done everything—built bridges and oh, learned everything, and you also had to do combat battle if we had to, so we had to train for that, too.\nEND OF TRACK ONE \n\nTRACK TWO\n\nHA:\tSo then, after a time, then we went overseas but then we went to the Pacific Theatre.\nEH:\tSo where did you end up going in the Pacific?\n\nHA:\tWell, the first thing we did was go to Hawaii and we got equipment there, more equipment, and then we got on big—what they call a LSD landing strip, landing big boat that takes you up, and the doors open up and we get on. Then we had our equipment in there, too. So then finally they told us that we were going to get, loaded our ship and got on and never knew where we was going. Till finally got way out there where we couldn’t send any messages or anything and they told us we were going to invade Japan.\n\nEH:\tOh, okay.\n\nHA:\tSo, there was a whole bunch of other ships with loaded soldiers and Marines and big battleships and a whole big convoy, I mean, all going at once. And it took us quite a few days to get there. But after we was about two days away, then the atomic bomb was dropped, then the war ended, but we still went on in there. And [unintelligible] spent nine months there.\n\nEH:\tOh, yeah? What kinds of things did you do in Japan?\n\nHA:\tWell, we rebuilt Japan. All the roads was in bad shape. All the houses were knocked down, most of them. And a lot of rubble piles and all kinds of stuff. I mean, it was sad. I still remember some of them kids that come out. They was happy to see us. The war was over, but they were there, and a lot of them didn’t have any parents, no clothes, all scarred up, burnt places.\n\nEH:\tWhere in Japan did you, were you stationed? In what city, do you remember?\n\nHA:\tYeah, I don’t quite remember, but there was a lot of little kids there.\n\nEH:\tOkay, I was just curious.\n\nHA:\tAnyway, there was also people, some of them were lost also. They didn’t have any homes, their homes all destroyed, and it was kind of a hard place to be a soldier, and a lot of things happened there after that, during that time. And, [of] course, we was there to help build the bridges and built the roads back up and tried to clean up all that rubble that was there. [Of] course, we had the Japanese men that were able to come up and work so, so I got hired, I mean, I had a special truck that I used and I was just the driver, but I had a staff sergeant with me and we went down to the place where they had these Japanese workers all ready to go and help throw on the, all that back, you know, rubble and stuff. And try to clean up the mess that was left behind. And the first day we went out there and we picked up a whole bunch of Japanese men and young boys, boys and everybody, and drove them out to where we was going to pick up, our duties were assigned, where we were assigned to. So I pulled up and I stayed in my truck and the sergeant got out and tried to get them off the truck and they didn’t want to get off ‘cause they wanted to ride around some more [laughs]. They was having fun. We could hear them hollering and everything over there. And so they didn’t want to get off. So he come back and he said, “Horace, I can’t, I can’t get these guys to get off.” I said, “Oh, okay.” So I reached down and I put that bed to the truck, starting raising it up like that.\nEH:\tOh, no. [Laughter]\n\nHA:\tAnd they start hollering, hollering, “Oy, oy.” I could hear them say that. I [unintelligible] could remember that word, “Oy, oy.” And they kept saying that and they kept getting louder and some of them just started crying. And so I stopped and let it back down and they all jumped off.\n\nEH:\tSo it was just like the truck bed lifted up.\n\nHA:\tYeah, it lifted up. It was ready to just dump them on the ground.\n\nEH:\tYeah, like, “I’ll get them out.” [Laughter]\n\nHA:\tSo the sergeant come back and he thanked me, said, “I didn’t think of that,” he said, “That’s quite, quite a trick you pulled.”\n\nEH:\tYeah. Well, I wondered, at one point in hearing you talk in the last couple days, you mentioned that you experienced some prejudice because of your being Nez Perce and some racism. Could you explain some of what you’ve experienced there?\nHA:\tOh, well, it wasn’t really bad. Just verbs—verbally, I guess. ‘Cause I’d get in the shower and they’d look at me ‘cause my skin was darker, and a few of the guys, especially from California, would say things till finally I got into it with one of them. So after that I was left alone, but I had friends that I played ball against. They all stuck up for me.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tThat I knew and they knew me. And ‘course we played against each other but we was all friends, and so I never had any trouble that way. So they stuck up for me. So then, after a while, the other guys wore off, never had any problems with that again.\n\nEH:\tWell, good.\n\nHA:\tTill I got back in this other unit and then it started over that way again and finally got that straightened out, but I never really got into a fight or anything.\n\nEH:\tOh, good.\n\nHA:\tWords don’t mean that much to me. People call you names and stuff, but that’s just verbally, but if they want to really hurt your feelings or get beat up, that’s a different—\n\nEH:\tYeah.\n\nHA:\tSo, anyway, I guess I made myself clear that I was willing to do that, but I didn’t want to hurt anybody. So, one time I did get in a scuffle. After that, they left me alone. This man that I was talking about, he showed us how to box, too. [Laughs]\nEH:\tSo you knew what you were doing.\n\nHA:\tYeah. So, then, he was such an athlete that he could do everything. He was a good pitcher in baseball. And then he taught us how to bat. He used to take a broom handle and made us a bat with that.\n\nEH:\tOh, yeah.\n\nHA:\tHe’d pitch, and he took a baseball, tore the [unintelligible] off, then got the hardball out of there, then he stuffed that with deer hair that my grandmother used to scrape hides and then pile the deer hair, so he stuffed that up as hard as he could and he sewed it back up. Then when he’d throw that, he could throw curves. Boy, he could really throw curves with that, ‘cause it was light [snaps fingers]. And he give us this broom handle to bat with and we’d try to hit that. And he’d keep doing that, and every day, every day, we’d have batting practice. And finally one day I hit one of them. And he said, “Now you’re getting it. That’s what I wanted you to do.”\n\nEH:\tYeah. So—\n\nHA:\tFirst few things I’d swing and miss it every time. So I finally read the ball and I’d see it coming and I could tell it when it was starting to curve ‘cause I seen it would turn a little different, and by golly, I thought, I’m going to do this, get a little bit lower than where it’s coming. I did that—\n\nEH:\tAnd you got it.\n\nHA:\tI sent it over the top of him. So after that I began to learn how to bat. ‘Cause then some of the pitchers would throw hard curves. So then when I got on the baseball team after we worked out with the coach, when we played ball I was the lead-off batter. I was always—I always got a hit and always got on base but there were times, a lot of times, I’d get stranded there because no other guys got a hit. And finally one day they said, “You watch Horace. Watch him.” And I watched the ball come in every time and they’d swing at it unless I got about right here and, see, you could see the seam turn when it was getting ready to curve. So I told them that, and so then after that we started winning ball games and we played Grangeville, that was a bigger school. The first time they skunked us. But the second time we didn’t win but then we scored.\nEH:\tGood.\n\nHA:\tSo after that we started winning some games. So then, same way with basketball. He taught us how to dribble, how to pass, and everything about basketball. When you shoot, you don’t—when you can shoot, then you don’t look at the ball go in or out, he said, “Just don’t worry about it, because if you do, you’re going to get in trouble. You’re going to be—they’ll watch you, standing there watching the ball go in and come along and maybe push you down or something.” He said, “You just go up the side and make sure that you’re on guard if they do steal the ball, then you’re on there, ready to stop them.”\n\nEH:\tSo, did you say what his name was?\n\nHA:\tYeah, his name was Alvin.\n\nEH:\tAlvin.\n\nHA:\tAlvin Amera, A-m-e-r-a, his last name.\n\nEH:\tA-m-e-r-a?\n\nHA:\tYeah, Alvin.\n\nEH:\tSo, I want to, we’re kind of running out of town here. They’re going to come steal you away from me in a minute, but I wanted to ask you, first of all, in your bio and whatnot, it says that you’re an elder in the Nez Perce Tribe. What does that mean, to be an elder? \nHA:\tWell, when I was growing up, I was told, “When your elder talks to you, you listen, because they see you’re a pretty good boy and a lot of times they’ll reward you with stuff. And then just be nice to them if you see them trying to reach something like a glass of water and they start having a hard time picking it up, go ahead and help them.” And also, [unintelligible] used to have a [unintelligible], and sometimes it would be a shaky time to drink a water, then go help them. So that’s why I kept doing that. And always, I remember all them things, when they speak to you, you answer. Don’t get shy. Because, well, I knew how to speak Nez Perce, and that’s what they liked, because I could understand them. They wouldn’t have to explain what they wanted. They’d tell me what they want and I’d go and do it for them. So that just grew into me. So I try to do that with young children now. And it really works. \n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tSo, anyway, that’s how I try to teach all the young children the different ways that we have in the long house and the way they do things and how they can help. And what they can do when they be a boy, and then when, if they’re a girl, then the elder ladies have charge there. So I don’t interfere with that. So I just worry about the boys. So that’s—I got some good boys in my long house now and some of them are beginning to be singers.\n\nEH:\tOh, nice.\n\nHA:\tAnd drums. They use the drums. So that’s—they begin by dancing. And both has girls on one side and boys on the other, and when we sing a song, they dance. These boys will come this way. I mean, the boys will come this way and the girls will come around this other way like that. Then they change places. \n\nEH:\tOh, okay.\n\nHA:\tThen they stand there until the second person, the third person comes, and then they come back, back to their same place again.\n\nEH:\tSo is it in like a square that they’re dancing?\n\nHA:\tYeah.\n\nEH:\tOkay, okay.\n\nHA:\tBecause that floor is open. That’s why they would call it a sacred floor.  So then all the people can come out there and speak, speak after we sing a song, and if they want to they can come up and speak to the Creator, you know, pray or even sing a song or whatever they want to do.\n\nEH:\tSo is it, would it be just anybody from the group? \n\nHA:\tYeah.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tBut these kids are dancing around to make that sacred floor, like protect it. And they all wear moccasins and ribbon shirts and [unintelligible] dresses. \n\nEH:\tSo how often do you have like a meeting like that?\n\nHA:\tEvery Sunday.\n\nEH:\tEvery Sunday? Okay.\n\nHA:\tBut during the summer months, we’re off. Like, we’re off right now because it’s a time for gathering of food.\n\nEH:\tOh, okay.\n\nHA:\tSo there’s all different kinds of food growing in the mountains and in the, like in the month of August, all the huckleberries grow in the mountains and all that. Different kinds of roots are growing here and there, so women go, then the hunters go start hunting pretty soon, and right now they’re fishing.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tSo then they fill up our locker or freezer, and we store food and gather all kinds of food all summer long, and when we come back in the fall we start doing our services every Sunday.\n\nEH:\tOkay. So, I’m wondering, so, first of all, what is the name of what you call your religion or your—what is it—your spirituality?\n\nHA:\tWell, I guess it would be, most simple one is, they call it the Seven Drums.\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tWell, to start with, sometimes we use seven drums and sometimes we use twelve. For funerals like we do, we use twelve, because twelve songs, because each, each life that we have lives for twelve months and makes one year. So we send our people to the happy land with twelve songs, and that gives them the right to go there.\n\nEH:\tOkay, so, you mentioned the funeral, and I was wondering, the funeral services that you do, you know, you talked about how you perform parts of them or what do those look like? There’s the twelve songs—\n\nHA:\tOh, yeah. All the memories. Anybody during the, between the songs can get up and talk about this person, whether it’s their relative, or close relative, or whether it’s a friend, and they want to say farewell, they can do that, but in between the songs. Sometimes four or five will come out and we sit there till they all get done, and then they go sit down and then we start another song. Or sometimes we last pretty near all night, but in the morning early is when we take it to the ceremony and bury.\n\nEH:\tIs there any, like, special—you know how there’s funeral markers and gravestones and things like that. Do you have any special thing that you do at the gravesite?\n\nHA:\tOh, yeah. We bury them. Yeah, we go out and sing songs and let the grave down, let the body down into the ground, but—and there’s some other things that we do, like giving dirt to this person. We sing a song and each person that wants to can come out and grab a handful of dirt and throw it on the grave. That’s their farewell.\n\nEH:\tSo you said it’s called giving dirt?\n\nHA:\tYes.\n\nEH:\tOkay, and what does that symbolize—or is that just goodbye or--?\n\nHA:\tYes.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\t‘Cause that handful of dirt will be with the body the rest of the time.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tAnd it will be like comfort.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tSo that’s just a simple explanation of that, and we do that. And after we get through with that and then we have to, men, boys and men, cover the body up with shovels and they get all done and then we have girls that take care of the flowers and they put them on and then we give one more farewell song before we all leave.\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tSo that’s just the way it is.\n\nEH:\tSo it’s like an evening and then the next morning.\n\nHA:\tYes, early.\n\nEH:\tEarly, okay. Okay.\n\nHA:\tBefore, before noon. Before the time the sun changes, the shade goes this way. The shade is this way in the morning, and in the afternoon it’s the other way.\nEH:\tSo you have to before the shade—\n\nHA:\tYeah.\n\nEH:\tOkay. All right. About how many people, when you have a gathering on Sundays, about how many people gather with you?\n\nHA:\tWell, usually we have the same ones, but then we have, sometimes have visitors. They can come, anybody, and I have some people that come from Lewiston, they’re non-Indians. And they’re welcome. And they understand it—I mean, after we, they see it for themselves, what it’s all about. And some of them come back.\n\nEH:\tSo that usually—do you have like fifty or a hundred or about how many people?\n\nHA:\tOh, yeah, well, not the place we’ve had, small place, but now we’re going to get a new long house.\n\nEH:\tOh, okay.\n\nHA:\tSo that’s just about into the process of starting building. After about thirty years of this, I’ve been trying to get one through the tribe and now it’s happening. So we’re going to have one by, hopefully, before winter.\n\nEH:\tOh, good. So where is the long house located? Is it near Lewiston—or where is it?\n\nHA:\tYeah, it’s a place called Spalding.\n\nEH:\tOh, okay.\n\nHA:\tYeah, there’s a little old house, a shed it was. This lady that lived there, it’s just a little [unintelligible] out of Spalding, you have to go around this curve that goes towards Lapwai. There’s a little bridge right here, well, then, after that, that’s the old highway over here and the railroad track. And so this new highway goes on this side. So we go here, then we go across the tracks, and then back there on that old highway, then there’s a house there with a barn, and that’s where we gather.\n\nEH:\tOh, okay.\n\nHA:\tThis lady that owned that old place wanted that to use. She cleaned it out. It used to be her workplace, storage place, and then she cleaned that out so we could have a place to gather.\n\nEH:\tOh, nice.\n\nHA:\tAnd we’re still using it, but she’s gone now.\n\nEH:\tBut you’re going to be building a new building?\n\nHA:\tYeah, we’re going to complete the new building now. And it’s going to be a lot bigger. Going to have a kitchen and dining room and everything. So, we’re just—and then we have families that come there, different families, bring their children, and they come up and we have a dinner after we gather to our services and sing songs while their people are setting the table, and do a lot of things like that. [Unintelligible] just a nice day.\nEH:\tHow long are you usually at that gathering?\n\nHA:\tJust about all afternoon. Just in the afternoon, get all done, and then we all leave.\n\nEH:\tOkay. So it doesn’t usually start, like, late morning?\n\nHA:\tOh, usually around ten o’clock—no early birds [laughs].\n\nEH:\tYeah, so you do the dances and then offer the prayers and whatnot in the, you called it the sacred floor, around the sacred floor?\n\nHA:\tYeah. We have, like, women sitting on this side and men on this side.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tWe don’t sit together. And then the girls come out and dance and then they go over on the opposite side, and the boys come over on this side, in front of the women, you know. And the girls are in front of the men. So when they dance around, they dance two verses. After the third verse, I meant the second verse, then the third verse they go around, they interchange places.\n\nEH:\tOkay. And then the boys are in front of the men and the girls—okay.\n\nHA:\tYeah. Yeah, and then the last person they come back around, and the boys will be here and the girls will be over here.\n\nEH:\tOkay. \n\nHA:\tSo they do that with each song.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tSo that’s just the way it is, and that’s about all I can explain with that.\n\nEH:\tNo, that’s fine. That’s what I was wondering about, though. I want to, final question and then I’ll let you get on with your day, you talked about the importance of your language, about knowing the native language, the Nez Perce, and passing it on. So could you talk a little bit about why you think that’s important?\n\nHA:\tWell, the main thing, like in the long house, that’s all I do is speak language. So the kids can hear it. And then, and then they get to learn the songs that way ‘cause they don’t just around and around. We pause here. If I, if I think something should be said, so I stop and then we explain something and the children will stand there quiet and listen. They don’t squirm around or move around; they just stand there and wait. So then when the song starts and the drums start beating, then they pick up the rhythm. They jump up and down, all in unison, the same time, that looks really pretty.\nEH:\tYes, I bet.\n\nHA:\tAnd they’re all quiet, no, no noise or anything. And that’s the way they, everybody teaches, and then the parents can get after their children, but me I don’t. I just tell them, “Be careful and do this and that.”\n\nEH:\tSo, besides just using the language, do you teach in classes or how do you pass on the use of the language?\n\nHA:\tWell, we use it, I talk a lot in Nez Perce, yeah. And they listen, and they begin to learn what I’m saying by listening to what I say about how you should do or whatever I have to say or whether, whether somebody else comes out and then talks the language that is like, do the testimony or whatever, and they could listen to all them words and they put them together.\n\nEH:\tSo you don’t have any, like, translation or anything to another language, or--?\n\nHA:\tNo, no.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tSo a lot of them can come out and speak English, too, so we have younger people that don’t quite know the language, so they can speak English.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tAnd we have visitors that come like, you know, white people, and they get used to it and then they’ll come out there and talk.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tSo, I even had one man that was a, he’s retired now, but he was a professor at the college, Lewis-Clark State, so when I was going to Lewis and Clark, teaching Nez Perce language, I got acquainted with this man and he kept wanting to learn. Well, he could speak the language. And so, he wanted to know about the long house, and I told him to come out there on Sunday. So he came out and the first time he really liked it. So then he seen us all having drums, so he wanted me to make him one. So I made him one and now he’s one of my singers. [Laughs]\n\nEH:\tOh, fun. Well, good.\n\nHA:\tAnd he’s a professor, a doctor.\n\nEH:\tOkay, cool. Well, do you have anything else that you want to share that you want to get on the recording before we shut it off?\n\nHA:\tWell, just that I don’t like to express too much about our old ways, but then, if it’s used to try to make people understand that, that we had a spirituality before any other missionaries came to our land, and what the missionaries done, they’ve changed a lot of our people from our old ways to the new ways. And so, that’s our little barrier that we have now. Of course, there’s Catholics and all kinds of different denominations, but those of us that stick with our old ways, we still filter in and we still get along with everybody and we don’t make fun of each other.\nEH:\tYeah, it sounds like a good community.\n\nHA:\tYeah.\n\nEH:\tSo, all right.\n\nHA:\tSo, a lot of times somebody will have a birthday, so we have a good gathering for that, and usually on Sundays we’ll honor the one that had the birthday.\n\nEH:\tOh, okay.\n\nHA:\tSo, some of these other people know about it and they’ll come and, have a relative here who’s having a birthday, they’ll all come, so we have a full house, so that’s the way it works.\n\nEH:\tOh, fun. Well, anything else that you want to get on the recording?\n\nHA:\tWell, I come down here quite often with different things for, to help my tribe people, and I speak a lot about the things that I’ve come to talk about, but I’m amazed about a lot of things that the non-Indians don’t quite understand. The way I explain it, then that makes a good feeling between most parties.\n\nEH:\tYeah.\n\nHA:\tAnd, then, so I’ve been, made myself kind of a person that doesn’t, that don’t, don’t say no. I go ahead and, go ahead and speak what [they] wanted me to speak about and try to explain as close as I can about who we are and why we are and our history. History is what tells us a lot. So I don’t really complain about what happened in the past. I just stay for now. Now we’re together and we still [unintelligible] and we, I have so many friends that are white and I worked in the mill for thirty-six years and I had good friends there, and a lot of them have passed on now that was older than me when I worked there, and so I miss a lot of my good friends. They were just like brothers. And I still have my same attitude. I don’t try to cause trouble or anything. Somebody says some bad things, I just ignore them. \n\nEH:\tYeah. Okay.\n\nHA:\tIt’s not the idea that I get mad or anything. I just say, “Well, you can keep your mind and you can keep your words, but I don’t want to listen.”\n\nEH:\tYeah.\n\nHA:\tI don’t get mad about it. So, I live in Lewiston, where very few of us live. But I came down from the prairie and moved down there to get the job, and I bought my homes there from working. That’s why I stay there.\n\nEH:\tOkay.\n\nHA:\tSo I got good neighbors. They’re friendly and never—and I give them some of the salmon that I get or some of the elk meat or whatever. So, we’re just good neighbors.\n\nEH:\tOkay, good. Well, thank you for spending some time with me today and telling me your stories.\n\nHA:\tSo I’ve got neighbors right now that’s watching my house, and they take my mail in and my paper, so when I get back, they give it all to me in a paper sack.\n\nEH:\tYeah, it’s nice to have good neighbors.\n\nHA:\tOh, yeah.\n\nEH:\tPeople that can help you out.\n\nHA:\tOh, yeah. On both sides of me, I have good neighbors. And watched them raise their children, and they watched me raise my grandchildren, and so we’ll get to know each other pretty well.\n\nEH:\tThat’s fun. Well, cool. Want me to go ahead and shut this off now and we’ll get-- \n\nEND TRACK TWO\nEND OF INTERVIEW\n\nTranscribed by Ellen Haffner, February 12, 2010; audited by Marlene Fritz, August 8, 2011;\n\n� PAGE �1�\n�PAGE  �1�\n\n� PAGE �44�","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://historyidaho.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1619/collection_resources/82582/file/170887#t=0.0,3554.08975"}]}]},{"id":"https://historyidaho.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1619/collection_resources/82582/file/170888","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 2 of 2 - Axtell_Horace_OH2753(2).mp3"]},"duration":2051.39588,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://historyidaho.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1619/collection_resources/82582/file/170888/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://historyidaho.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1619/collection_resources/82582/file/170888/content/2/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-historyidaho.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/170/888/original/Axtell_Horace_OH2753%282%29.mp3?1668811766","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mpeg","duration":2051.39588,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://historyidaho.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1619/collection_resources/82582/file/170888","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[]}]}