The Cowboy Tribe
Last week I invited you to a totem pole raising in a small Native Alaskan community called Hydaburg. This week I continue on the theme of tribes and clans. If you have a thought I’d welcome your contribution in the comment section below. Also, if you know someone who might enjoy the Loose Cannon Boost feel free to share it.
Tribes and Clans
Some of my most profound experiences of artistry and community have come from being with indigenous people. I marvel at the generosity I’ve been shown. The only thing that has saved me from overromanticizing my experiences has been when I assume I understand what’s going on, and then make some ridiculous statement or do something insensitive. It’s humbling to be reminded, just by a glance, that you may be welcome, but you are still an outsider and there are things you don’t understand.
After last week’s story from Alaska, my high school friend, Kathy Schoenhals Feigal, wrote, “I may not have a Totem Pole, but through your stories and songs, you have helped me recognize that we are from the same tribe.” Though Kathy and I were not close friends in high school, we grew up in adjacent neighborhoods. We were both raised Mormon. Music has been a guiding force in both our lives since we were young. After high school we both left home for summer jobs: she worked at Grand Canyon while I flipped omelets at Zion Lodge. And these days, we are both working to live artful lives. We may not be related by blood but we are of the same tribe and for some reason that means more and more as I grow older.
“Tribe” originates in the Latin tribus, and refers to one of the three original tribes of ancient Rome. When it comes to the modern meaning of “tribe” things get complicated. Because tribe has been used as a word to relegate people to colonial purposes it can be a loaded term, particularly for indigenous people. And yet, by definition, we all are members of tribes through common language, political systems, family structures, generations and more. To make things more complicated, we’ve come to use the words “tribe and clan” more broadly to identify us in all sorts of affiliations putting a great deal of burden on these simple little four- and five-letter words.
Rather than scold us for not being exact in our use of language, I’d like to glory in the deep and sacred feeling and thoughts people have about what they consider their tribe, their clan. This week I will introduce you to cowboy poet and singer extraordinaire Buck Ramsey and what he had to say about the cowboy tribe. Also, you will meet Arthur Cavanaugh who was a wonderful Western Shoshone singer from Fort McDermitt, Nevada. I didn’t know Art nearly as well as I knew Buck. Art was a rancher and former tribal chairman and had performed traditional songs at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. He died in 1999 owing me $35 but I ended up owing him much more.
If you believe in the old western movies where cowboys and Indians were pitted against each other, then this may not make sense to you. In reality some of the best cowboys have been and are Indians and also, there is a strong admiration amongst Anglo cowboys for Native Americans and there always has been. Buck Ramsey once told me, “I have such little real understanding of the Native American and yet I’m almost slavishly dedicated to the pure part of that idea without seeming to be a hanger on’er.”
Buck Ramsey
When Buck was twenty-five, working as a cowboy near his home on the Canadian River Breaks, his horse bucked him off and he landed wrong. He was paralyzed from the chest down for the rest of his life. When he was released from the hospital in a wheelchair, he, his bride Bette and baby Amanda settled into a new life. Bette was a teacher. She could make a living. Buck was a bird with a broken wing but never lost his wild and inquisitive spirit. Transferring his energy to reading and study, he became interested in politics and started writing a column for the local Amarillo newspaper, hanging around the intellectual crowd. He did a stint writing speeches for the progressive Texas activist, Jim Hightower. He was never shy about expressing political activism, but Buck was cowboy to the core, ever respectful of the traditions in which he grew up.
In 1989 Buck traveled from his home in Amarillo Texas to Elko, Nevada for the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. There, he found kindred spirits and the rest of us found a soul who would carry us into a bigger and deeper world through his poetry and song.
After that first trip to Elko, Buck was so enthused that he came back for the Gathering the next year, more than a week early. A wealthy friend of his, Stanley Marsh—the art collector who was best known for lining his long driveway with a row of big-finned Cadillacs planted nose-down with their fins sticking up—had purchased a handicap-accessible van for Buck. Finally, Buck and his wheelchair were independent, and Buck celebrated by driving all the way from his home in Amarillo, Texas to Salt Lake City, where I was living at the time.
I found him a handicap-accessible room at a nearby hotel and he hung out with me until it was time to drive to Elko for the event. I worked each day, covering last-minute details. Each evening, I was fixing up an old house on L Street in Salt Lake City and Buck came over to visit. As I mudded and sanded new sheetrock, he rolled after me in his wheelchair, talking excitedly about old-time cowboy songs. He’d sing a verse or two and I’d answer with another verse. We were both covered in plaster dust, so he decided to take over the shop vacuum, cleaning up the mess after me. Two very white and dusty boys singing cowboy songs over the scream of a vacuum: this is how we became friends.
After those first visits to Elko, I started traveling regularly to Texas and Buck and I would hang out there. Once we performed for the historic Cowboy Christmas Ball in Anson, Texas. We traveled to Tennessee for the National Storytelling Festival where he was featured. We headed to Washington, DC a couple of times, once to lobby for the National Endowment for the Arts, (NEA) and again when he was honored with a National Heritage Award which, I am proud to say, I had nominated him for. When Buck died unexpectedly in January of 1998, everyone who knew him was devastated. I’m not just talking about those who agreed with his politics. Even the most conservative cowboys loved Buck. There was something so true-blue about him. At the time, politics didn’t matter as much as that common devotion to the cowboy tribe.
In February of 1995, Buck, Art Cavanaugh and I traveled to Washington, D.C. at the behest of the National Endowment for the Arts to give testimony on how the NEA had benefited us and our communities. This was a rough time for the NEA, which was besieged by members of congress who wanted to take funding away from the agency because they didn’t believe that the art that was supported through Endowment funding represented basic American values. The main hot point of this controversy centered around the art of Robert Mapplethorpe.
In retrospect, it seems like with all battles, they are fought in the trenches by foot soldiers. I have great respect for the NEA but frankly very little of their funding has ever supported the traditional arts of ordinary people. I’m one who will shout out for freedom of expression and the need for some artists to test the boundaries. But when I look at the sweep of the NEA over its long history, I think it has paid too little attention to the expressive culture of ordinary people and way too much for the art that supports the social aims of the wealthy. Just saying.
Back to my story. This was a sober governmental meeting with testimony from a wide swath of people. Frankly, it was pretty dull and full of folks patting each other on the back. If I’m honest, my own comments fit pretty well in that category. The whole mood shifted when Art Cavanaugh got up to sing a traditional Shoshone song. Oh my, the power of his singing. Take a listen by CLICKING HERE.
The next day, I asked Buck to re-read his statement so I could record it. This is how he began:
“There’s much talk of values -- family, community, national values. It seems to me it’s useless to separate our values from tradition as it is to separate a garden from the rain. I grew up in a wonderful family with good family values but I think the principle mooring of my ethical life is to the broader values of my tribe which is the cowboy tribe."
He went on to outline the value of tradition:
“I think our tribe, our nation and our species has a common memory that keeps us, through tradition, connected, reminded of the precious things our minds and hearts and souls have sifted and sanctified from our long and common experience.”
You can hear a four-minute excerpt of his statement below.
4:10 excerpt of Buck Ramsey’s statement to the National Endowment for the Arts Council. February 3, 1995. Thanks to the Western Folklife Center and National Cowboy Poetry Gathering
The next day the three of us were taken to visit some of the congressional delegates from Utah, Nevada and Texas. Did we do any good? It’s hard to say but I hope so. I’ve always believed in grassroots diplomacy. It’s one reason, when I was working at the Western Folklife Center, I pushed so hard for international cultural exchanges between American ranch folks and grazing and horse people from around the world. We could use a lot more of that these days where our little tribes and clans have become so insular and self-serving that they often don’t see beyond their tribal affiliations. Just saying.
The kicker of the trip was the last thing Art Cavanaugh and I did before catching our flight home. We didn’t have a whole lot of time but he wanted to see our Nation’s Capital so we took a stroll around the rotunda. In his presence, I noticed something I had missed before: that most of the grand historic paintings depictied Native people in subservience. We both walked in silence until I decided to change the unspoken subject. I told him that for each state in the union there was a statue of one important historic figure and I pointed, with some pride (always the double edged sword) to my great-great-grandfather, Brigham Young who, cast life-sized in bronze was Utah’s representative. As we walked around to each state I felt Arts mood change, and then when we finished the circle, he turned to me and simply asked, “Where are the Indians?”
I wish Art and Buck were still around and we could go back to the Capital where there have been a few sculptural additions since 1995. Sometimes we go in the direction of right and fairness, just saying.
Po’pay
Marble by Cliff Fragua, 2005.Sakakawea
Bronze by Leonard Crunelle, 1909 (copied by Arizona Bronze Atelier in 2003).Chief Standing Bear
Bronze by Benjamin Victor, 2019.Chief Washakie
Bronze by Dave McGary, 2000.Sarah Winnemucca
Bronze by Benjamin Victor, 2005.
Postscript: Hittin’ the Trail Tonight
One of my favorite Buck Ramsey songs is one we used to sing together a lot called “Hittin the Trail.” It comes from a Bruce Kiskaddon cowboy poem which I loved so much I put a melody to it. The song has been recorded by dozens of cowboy singers, but the best-known version is Buck’s.
It’s about another side of the cowboy that we all seem to respond to, the rugged individual. I love the image of the lone cowboy too but as I age, I’ve come to realize that misanthropy can only get you so far, just saying.
“I did not try to say goodbye, let somebody else do that. I’ll ride alone and I’ll find a home, wherever I hang my hat.”
Click Here to listen to Buck Ramsey’s version of “Hittin’ the Trail,” the title cut of his Smithsonian Folkways recording.
Beautifully said Hal about remarkable people during a remarkable time.
I'm marveling at your memory as I read these fabulous stories. You must have taken good notes. Hearing Art Cavanaugh sing brought a lump to my throat, as a lot of Indian singing does. Ever since I saw “The Last of His Tribe,” with Graham Greene as Ishi, I haven't been able to hear that kind of singing without getting emotional. You may have heard of this true story of the sole remaining member of the Yahi tribe, a group of Northern California Native Americans massacred in the 1800s. At the end of the film, the man that befriended Ishi sings a song Ishi taught him and it did me in. When you sing the refrain with "Whoa" in your Zion song, it has the same effect on me. I hate what was done to the Indians. It's one of the reasons I support Adopt A Native Elder.