Ethnos        Assiniboine

Three traditional Assiniboine Indian stories – one the story of the creation of the morning and evening stars, the others stories about Inkdomi the trickster – offer a reflection of a sustaining culture, many of whose members live in northeastern Montana on the Fort Peck and Fort Belknap reservations.

A book in the Indian Reading Series, How the Morning and Evening Stars Came to Be offers authentic Indian stories, created in cooperation with tribal culture committees. Written at an elementary reading level, these stories provide insights into tribal culture that will be appreciated by both children and adults.

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Part of the Indian Reading Series, a collection of authentic material cooperatively developed by Indian people, How the Summer Season Came to Be includes explanatory, cautionary, and supernatural traditional tales from the Assiniboine tribe, a tribe whose members are now located primarily on the Fort Peck reservation in northern Montana. Recorded by Assiniboine storytellers and illustrated by Indian artists, these Assiniboine stories were originally intended to help educate young tribal members about their history and culture. Perfect for reluctant readers, these high interest stories provide a fascinating entrée into traditional Assiniboine culture. Enter into the legendary world of the Assiniboine of long ago through six traditional tales.

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Edwin Thompson Denig entered the fur trade on the Upper Missouri River in 1833. As husband to the daughter of an Assiniboine headman and as a bookkeeper stationed at Fort Union, Denig became knowledgeable about the tribal groups of the Upper Missouri. By the 1840s and 1850s, several noted investigators of Indian culture were consulting him, including Audubon, Hayden, and Schoolcraft. He was not content to draw on his own knowledge but instead interviewed "in company with the Indians for an entire year" until he had obtained satisfactory answers.

Denig's manuscript was unpublished until 1930, when it was edited for publication in the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology's "Forty-sixth Annual Report." The report, long unavailable, is reprinted here for the first time. It includes a complete ethnology of the Assiniboine Indians, including information on their history, tribal organizations and government, religion, manners and customs, warfare, dances, and language.

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My Dear Reader Friends; To finish the work was very important to me. Working at the Fort Peck Tribal Archives, as Director, these photographs were discovered hidden away in filing cabinets. And as I explored them I felt the peoples spirit prompting me. The prompting was that they needed to have an identity and their story told to let people know what they did and what happened to them in the past. Ms. Linda Stampoulos and I began putting them together. Traveling across the Fort Peck Reservation I also collected others. At first people didn't believe in it, but for me the desire was very strong. After countless miles traveled and hours of labor, soon it was finished. The book is unique in that it contains a spiritual as well as a historic message. Because these are the faces of people that suffered sickness, starvation, spiritual deprivement, poverty, government unfairness and death. Feeling very humble and sad at what we found, it was for they're sakes, and our deep feelings for the Assiniboine and Sioux, that the creation of this work was done with much heart, dedication and commitment. If there is any mistake in this work it is because of the imperfection of the natural man - me. Please know that, "I love these ancestors, because without them, there is no Native American history". Thank you for your interest in the book because now they're story can be told. "Pidamaya" Thank you. - signed >Bad Temper Bear<

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