Tribal elder leads parade
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RONAN — On Sunday, Aug. 2, people in Ronan were witnesses to something special and increasingly rare. As the annual Pioneer Days parade swung by the hospital and onto Main Street, just behind the retro police car came the horse-mounted Grand Marshal: Felicite Sapiye “Jim” McDonald, age 92, the esteemed carrier of Salish language and cultural traditions that reach back to time immemorial. With quiet dignity, elegantly dressed in a maroon dress adorned with elk teeth, carrying an eagle fan, her paint bedecked in a beaded martingale and saddlebags, Felicite led her large extended family at a stately pace. Behind her rode sons, daughters, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, all of them following, all of them continuing her long efforts to carry on the ways of their Salish and Pend d’Oreille ancestors. Close observers of the procession may have noticed Tom Quequesah leading a riderless horse in remembrance of his father, Alec Quequesah, himself a great teacher of tribal traditions, songs, and language, who passed away earlier this year. Alec called Felicite yaya, and she called him Chief.
Felicite was born into a traditional family in 1922, and almost from that time, she has been an active participant in all aspects of traditional Salish cultural life, including parading. Felicite was given the nickname “Jim” after her paternal grandfather, Bitterroot Jim Sapiye. She grew up with Salish as her first language, immersed in all aspects of Salish culture — including horse culture. Jim’s family had about 20 horses. Jim remembers when she was about eight years old, and a train struck and killed six of their horses at one time. Jim remembers her mother overcome with grief, sitting out in the field, crying and crying. Every fall, Jim’s family would take their horses over the mountains to the Seeley Lake area, where they would spend many weeks hunting for their winter meat. Jim sometimes would have to help Andrew Ninepipe lead the horses back over the Jocko, alternating horses to break through the deep snow.
And from the start, there was also parading. As a young girl, Jim traveled with her mother, Agnes Arlee Pilko, and stepfather, John Pilko, as a part of a large retinue of Salish people brought to ‘wild west shows’ around the country by the Arlee-based impresarios Grey Scott and Ed Lane. The group also included Eneas and Isabelle Granjo, Michel and Mary Kizer, Mose and Ellen Big Sam, and Andrew and Adolph “Happy” Ninepipe. They traveled to Bozeman and, by special train cars, to places far beyond Montana, including Chicago and New York.
“Once parading gets in your blood, then that’s it,” Jim said. She feels it’s important that Indian people celebrate their traditional ways in parades. She feels good so many of her family are following her footsteps (or horse-steps). For Jim, this is an important way to demonstrate the beauty and power of Salish ways and Salish people. And a couple of Sundays ago, in 90-plus degree heat, despite her age, arthritis, and a somewhat worried family, Jim insisted on riding her horse through Ronan.
For those of us lucky enough to have been there, it was obvious this was someone who was at home on the back of horse, and had been for some nine decades. And more than that, it was clear this was a great and graceful display of a way of life that reaches back countless generations, and will be carried forward for countless generations to come.
The family would like to say Lemlmts to Thompson Smith and Toni Incashola, her fellow co-workers (who she has adopted into the family), for capturing her story in this article. The family would also like to thank the Nick and Misty Clary family and the Colt and Holly Stonehocker family for generously offering their horses to the family for use in the Parade.
