Remember When

50 YEARS AGO • APRIL 25, 1968

BOOSTER CLUB FORMED TO BACK TF STUDENTS

A booster club to support athletics, music and other extra-curricular activities at Thompson Falls High School was organized Monday night by a group of 18 parents and interested citizens.

Bill Chisenhall was elected president of the club to serve during the first year. Louis H. Dufresne was elected vice president and Mrs. Richard Wilkinson secretary-treasurer.

First major project of the club will be to work for construction of a new athletic field with a regulation track and football field on school owned land north of the city dump.

Trustee Norman Allen, who served as initial temporary chairman of the meeting, pointed out that he and Coach Wayne Ward had laid out the location of the proposed field. He said Ben G. Cox had inspected the site and estimated that less than a half day work with a dozer would be required to clear some trees. Then a grader could level the field.

Mayor Orin P. Kendall said he thought the city council would authorize installation of a small pump in the old city well, which is located near the proposed field, and would provide all of the water that would be needed for summer irrigation. The city no longer uses the old well, and depends instead upon the larger, newer well as a supplemental summer source of water.

Generally the aim of the Booster Club will be to support all extra-curricular student activities and promote greater participation in school affairs by adults.

FRED E. PEESO, FORMER INDIAN TRADER, RECALLS OLD TIMES AT CAMAS STORE

Taken from ‘Settlers and Sod Busters

When I first saw Camas Hot Springs and vicinity, it was surely a beautiful country. The streams were filled with native trout, deer, bear and grouse in the hills – fat cattle, horses and prairie chickens on the flats.

To the south, on and around Camas Prairie, were quite a few Kalispels or Pend d’Orielles. Fences were few and far between. The larger ranches had their own irrigation systems.

Frank Hammons had a store and the Camas post office on the north side of Hot Springs Creek on Ed Lamoreaux’s place. In 1908, I built a small building on the south side of the creek and opened up a store there.

Indians from all over the reservation and also from Idaho, Washington and other places came in the spring or summer to camp and bathe in the springs. For a number of years each spring, about Bitterroot digging time, they held dances there.

In those days, very few of the Indians spoke English and to get along at all, a trader had to learn their language; Flathead and Kalispel are identical, but Kootenai is absolutely different, so the most satisfactory way was to have a trading vocabulary in both languages. A knowledge of the sign language was also a great help.

In 1912, the Kootenais had their last Sun Dance and that was the first one they had had for many years. The camp circle of about fifty lodges was pitched south of where Mrs. Gannaway’s building now stands.

Indians were honest people and your property and women were safe among them.

One day the store was very crowded with Indians and whites. After almost everybody had left, a woman came to me and said some Indian had stolen her pocketbook. That made me angry. I told her “Indians do not steal. If an Indian took it you will find it was by mistake and it will be returned. If it was taken by a white person, I will make you no promises.” Sure enough in a day or so an Indian woman came in with the pocketbook, explaining that she had taken it by mistake as it looked so much like hers. Sometime after, the owner of the purse came in and I handed it to her, I told her, “Look and see if anything is missing.” “No,” she said, “everything is there.”

One spring we were putting on an Indian dance and Indians were coming in from all directions driving their extra horses along with them.

A farmer came to me and said, “Some of your old Indians have stolen my horses.” “Listen here,” I told him, “Those Indians did not take your horses, look elsewhere for them.”

He was honest enough to come and tell me later that he had found out that the Indians had cut out his horses and turned them back as they passed along the road.

The whites have come and robbed the Indians of their lands and other possessions, killed off their game and destroyed their means of livelihood, made it impossible to get a square deal in the courts. Not satisfied with that, they have tried by every means to defame their character and give them a bad name.