3. CHARLES M. RUSSELL’S BLACKFOOT NAMESAKE

Russell Fredrick Tharp

After Russell Tharp arrived in Spokane, he took up a more Euro-American lifestyle. At the age of twenty-three, Russell married Mary E. Dawkins, a Christian Scientist. In the next years, he would be employed on various jobs including: Financial Officer for American Zinc, Lead and Smelting Co. in Ione, Washington; Accountant for a car dealership; Financial Officer for Eastern State Hospital (from which he retired), and Realtor for Lakeshore Real Estate, Priest Lake, Idaho.

Separated from his Blackfoot cultural roots in Montana, Russell blended smoothly into the Spokane community and lived there for the rest of his life. It was not until Russell retired from Eastern State Hospital that his grandson Clancy Clark got to know him, and Clancy described him as follows: “Russell was soft spoken, but direct in his words. He held a clearly defined position in the family which granted him great respect.” Russell was trustworthy, dependable and showed respect for all types of people.

In reflecting on his interactions with Russell, Clancy recalls one moment that is exemplary of his personality in this way:

During the summer of 1987, I had become enthralled in fishing. Running up and down the beach of Priest Lake, I would display my recent catches. Apparently, Russell noticed my love for fishing and stopped me one day in his home. He handed over a small metal box and said, “I think you could use this.” Slightly taken back because he rarely spoke directly to me, I took the box and ran into one of the empty rooms in the house. Inside the box, I found an assortment of tied fishing lures that he had used when he was young. So excited, I softly closed the box and safely guarded it from harm. To this day, I have not used the lures for I see them as symbols of his sincere kindness. Somehow, I feel if I were to lose a lure, I would be going against his good will. 

This brief moment with Russell would be one of the last times I would interact with him. In January of 1990, Russell died of pancreatic cancer. At his wishes, he spent the last weeks of his life in his home with my mother and other nucleus family members. As my mother related later, the last few days were extremely powerful and heart felt. It was an emotionally and physically draining experience which allowed for long needed dialogue.

Clancy Clark’s further reflections on his grandfather and his heritage are:

Russell’s death became a familial rebirth. We had always cherished our heritage. My parents stressed the importance of respecting all of our roots from the Pennsylvanian Dutch to the Blackfoot; all equally important to the make-up of my character. For the first time, I looked beyond the simple blood connection to my Blackfoot heritage. Why did Russell speak so little about the reservation? Why did my mother know so little? Who could I talk to who would know more?

Over the last seven years, my questions have been answered. Most of the confusion about our family background is attributed to the atmosphere of Montana in Russell’s childhood. He wanted to leave it all behind for a better life. However, Russell never completely severed his ties to the Blackfoot Reservation. We learned that he had valued his heritage more than we realized.

Although Russell never took an active role in conveying his past, I as well as my family have attempted to restore our lost past and revitalize our Native American heritage though academia, letters, family records, and general dialogue.

As time goes on, I hope to gather more information to both better understand his life and the lives of other Native Americans coming out of this period of forced assimilation. The cultural salvage work that I am conducting has shown the pain felt by many of my ancestors. The void in my heritage stems from federal policy and educational programs of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Fortunately, Russell Tharp preserved our Blackfoot heritage for coming generations.

Written by Dr. Clancy J. Clark

2. THE EDUCATION OF CHARLES M. RUSSELL’S BLACKFOOT NAMESAKE

Charles Russell - When Blackfoot and Sioux Meet

Education of Native Americans began early in Indian-White contact. Missionaries of all denominations ventured into the frontier to “civilize” the Indian. Among the first to campaign for “civilizing” Native Americans was John Daniel Hammerer, an Englishman. In the 1730s, he published Account of a Plan for Civilizing the North American Indian he expressed his view of the “Indian Problem”:

Promote their spiritual as well as temporal welfare, as far it is the Power of Men, and therefore, might be concluded to be of their duty to do it; so, on the other hand, a gradual stop would thereby be put to those bloody wars, and horrid barbarities . . . and a great expense of men and money saved to this Nation. (John D. Hammerer, Account of a Plan for Civilizing the North American Indians, 1, Historical Printing Club1890)

Not until one hundred and fifty years later, in the 1870s, did the federal government institutionalize his ideas by making education compulsory for all Native Americans. At the forefront of this federal educational agenda Richard Henry Pratt opened the first off-reservation boarding school.  Pratt tested his experimental educational system on 72 prisoners from the Kowa, Comanche, and Chyenne tribes. The government turned the prisoners over to Pratt after being captured in the Red River War. In 1875, Pratt transported these men from the plains to Fort Marion, a small abandoned fort in Florida. (Wilcomb E. Washburn, “History of Indian-White Relations” Handbook of North American Indians, 290, 1988)

The boarding school system, which based itself on forced assimilation and isolation of Native American children, spread throughout the West. The number of off-reservation boarding schools increased from only the Carlisle School (under the direction of Richard Pratt) in the Hampton Institute, in the early 1870s, to 25 schools in 1900. (Szasz 1974:10) In the 1880s, schools originally under the direction of religious denominations were placed under federal direction. By the 1920s and 1930s, federal boarding schools were less common and funding was redirected to reservation-based day schools, which were obtaining a larger attendance.

On the Flathead reservation, Russell Tharp attended a reservation school similar to the type previously mentioned with a deeply imbedded assimilation agenda. The most powerful aspect of the federal educational system was the ban on speaking native languages in the school classroom. With the English-only educational system, young Native Americans lost much of their oral history. Russell adapted easily into the Eurocentric schooling system by taking part in athletics, specifically baseball, basketball and track.

For high school, Russell Tharp moved to 340 South Third Street, Missoula, Montana. There, he enrolled into Cramer Addition, a local high school. After graduation Dartmouth College of New Hampshire offered to give him a scholarship in pole-vaulting. Russell declined the offer and entered into the University of Montana in Missoula.

During Russell Tharp’s teenage years, Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana was drafting ground braking legislation in Native American policy. The Howard-Wheeler or Reorganization Act, as it would be called, helped consolidate reservations divided by the allotment policy of the Dawes Act. This legislation was the first attempt by the federal government to give Native Americans a voice. Disappointingly, the federal policy resulting from this act created a more paternalistic atmosphere on reservations.

The Johnson-O’Malley Act, passed in 1934, also brought change in the Native American community. This federal legislation “authorized federal support for Indian clients utilizing majority-run education, health, and social service agencies and facilities.” (Laurence French, Psychocultural Change and the American Indian, 35, Garland Publishing 1987) Therefore, under this legislation, the school system faced major reform and restructuring. The reformation of the government schooling system ended an era of forced assimilation and cultural genocide supported and controlled by the federal government. Articulate and verbose reformers pushed the federal government into an era of cultural suppression and in the same manner saved the United States from destroying part of its identity, Native North American cultures.

Charles Russell's view on the plight of Indians

Despite the revolutionary aspects of this reform, it did not immediately affect Russell and other Native Americans of Montana. On one hand, the educational system still enforced the assimilationist agenda and on the other the Great Depression brought hard times to Montana. As a result of these social influences, Russell Tharp moved out of Montana. Russell’s daughter Nancy Josephine Clark put it poignantly, “They (Native Americans) wanted to get out of Montana . . . No one could be proud to be an Indian.” After Russell’s second year at the University of Montana, he left his native roots in Montana and moved to Spokane, Washington to attend business school.

Written by Dr. Clancy J. Clark

1. WHO WAS CHARLES M. RUSSELL’S BLACKFOOT NAMESAKE?

Charles Russell - A Piegan Flirtation

On February 20, 1917, Russell F. Tharp was born in the wake of this western expansion and in the midst of the allotment period. His parents, Josephine Wright and George Fredrick Tharp, resided in Polson, Montana on the Flathead Reservation. Ironically, Russell Tharp was not Kootenai or Salish, but instead because he was a child of Blackfoot Josephine Wright Tharp, he was a member of the Blackfoot nation, specifically the South Piegan Band (Amskapi Pikunni). Genealogically, Josephine’s side of the family was South Piegan, and Russell’s great grandmother, Mary Ahkahtah (Blown-Up) who was a full-blooded Piegan, is reported to have been the sister of Black Weasel, the “last civil chief of the Blackfoot Tribe.

Fred and Josephine named their son Russell after their close and dearest friend Charles M. Russell (Charlie), a Western painter and Montana resident. Their close relationship began when C. M. Russell and his wife, Nancy Russell, housed Josephine through her high school days in Polson. The possibility that Josephine was attending boarding school on the Flathead Reservation might explain why she was living in their home. The Tharp relationship with C. M. Russell lasted until Charlie’s death in 1926.

Russell Tharp (left) and Jack Russell (Nancy and
Charlie Russell's son)

Although Fred and Josephine raised Russell on the Flathead Reservation, Russell never became incorporated into the tribe. In the early years implementing the reservation system, the membership of the Flathead Reservation included all people living within the border of the reservation. In 1910, the federal government gained control of determining tribal membership on the Flathead reservation. According to the policies of the Dawes Act, all tribal members received allotments of land up to 160 acres. The descendants of these landowners then became the only members of the tribe. Therefore, Russell could never become a member of the Flathead Reservation despite spending his entire adolescent life among the “true” Flathead Indians.

Russell, however, did find membership on the Blackfoot Reservation. The blood relations of his mother gave him immediate acceptance into the tribe. In his youth, he was given the Indian name of A-put-skinny-suke-mopi cowboy) at a Powwow in Browning, Montana. Although Russell was extremely proud of his heritage, he refrained from expressing his cultural and spiritual attachments to the Blackfoot Reservation.

The suppression of these family ties can be attributed to social influences during his childhood and teenage years in Montana. Many of the Native Americans born at the beginning of the twentieth-century faced major cultural, economic and social changes. Federal policy, missionaries, and education programs stimulated these changes. Assimilation and cultural genocide agendas of missionaries and federal education programs played a key role in forming the psyche of this new generation of Native Americans. Scattered throughout the West, classrooms of missions and boarding schools acted as the locus of social influence.

Written by Dr. Clancy J. Clark