Arapaho elders hold ceremony to bring closure on smallpox outbreak

Editor's note: Watch for more on this in Friday's Hi-Line Living.

Hundreds of Native Americans from across Washington, Wyoming and Montana gathered together Saturday outside of Dodson for the 150-year anniversary of a smallpox outbreak which left many Native people from the Gros Ventre, or Aaniiih; Assiniboine, or Nakoda; Crow; Northern Arapaho, and other tribes dead.

Organizers hope the ceremony will help reduce modern suicides as well as.

The healing ceremony for the Aaniiih and Nakoda Citizens event was organized by the Gros Ventre Treaty Committee of the Fort Belknap Indian Community and included events and ceremonies in Dodson, Fort Belknap Agency and Hays.

"It was an honor to have these people come up," organizer and Gros Ventre tribal member "Snuffy" Main said.

He said that 150 years ago a few miles from where Dodson later was established, a large number of Native Americans including Gros Ventre, Assiniboine, River Crow and Northern Arapaho had gathered and were preparing for a bison hunt. He said that, at the time, the nearby U.S. troops stationed at Fort Browning near People's Creek felt threatened because of the hostility which still existed between the U.S. government and Native American people.

He said elders of his tribe say two men from the fort approached the tribes and offered them a mysterious gift, a sealed box which the men told tribal members not to open for two days. After two days, numerous tribal people gathered to open the box. Inside of the gift were rags which were contaminated by smallpox. He said that smallpox began to spread rapidly through the tribal members, killing a large majority of them.

At first, the bodies were given a proper burial, but the bodies began to accumulate at an alarming rate and the majority of the people who died were not able to be properly laid to rest, Main said. He added that smallpox was not the main cause of death for many of those who were infected, but it was suicide. Many of those who were infected, rather than slowly dying from the illness, would kill themselves.

He said that in Native American culture, like many other cultures, if a body is not properly laid to rest or if the body is disturbed after burial, the soul is left in unrest, not able to pass on to the afterlife.

He added that it was important to have the ceremonies. Fort Belknap has experienced a large number of suicides in the past years and many of the tribal members have lost their traditional ways. The ceremony is aimed to help put those spirits to rest as well as help people heal, Main said.

Northern Arapaho, who also experienced a great loss of lives in the smallpox epidemic, have a special bond with the Gros Ventre people, the tribes being related and their languages being similar, he said. He added that he was very grateful to the Northern Arapaho, whose elders conducted the traditional ceremony.

A few years ago the Northern Arapaho had a rash of suicides but after the ceremony was conducted they stopped, he said. Main said he hopes that having the ceremony at Fort Belknap will have similar effects.

"We are all the same people," he said. "... I want them to leave with a good feeling and really think about what the words they heard from these guys today about sticking together and uniting and stopping all the bickering. It's not doing us any good."