ckestep

My mother was the oldest surviving child of John Grinnell and Julia Porcupine Grinnell. She worked the ranch and fields near Elbowoods, driving a team of horses and riding her favorite cutting horse Roanie, as a child and survived to the age of 94. I grew up listening to her many personal stories, many, many times at my request, with great delight. She especially liked relating her early life listening to the many stories of her 'great-grandfather' Black Chest. Black Chest was commissioned to take a message to Custer, but when he arrived he took one look at what was going on and returned quickly to North Dakota. After her father passed awayin the early 1970's, she and my father returned to Fort Berthold to record in Hidatsa 'stories' of life on the reservation. Alas, once back home near San Francisco, she discovered that Hidatsa did not translate at all well to English and abandoned her project. What a loss - because of our oral tradition.