01 Kevin Finley: Introduction

My name is Kevin Finley and I’m from the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation my ancestry goes back to on my dad’s side is Adi Huber and Blackhawk and now my mother’s side is small ankle and we are teeth small ankle had actually he had six boys if I’ll try to get their name right he had wolf chief he had charging enemy but charging enemy was later just charging so that’s how I’m related to all the charging and then he also had Red Kettle I and he had flies low he had bears still and he had full I don’t want to say I better not say but it’s full something I don’t remember and they only had one daughter he only had one daughter and that was our Haiti we uh that means Buffalo bird woman I mean it’s a brown bird that sits on a buffalo that’s what well hey Delia means so that would be and they had so my mother comes from that side and from there while Haiti we are she married son of the star from there they had the Reverend Edward good bird and that would be my great grandpa and from there comes from Grandpa Charlie grandpa Donald my dad my mom’s dad who was grandpa Ben and grandpa John grandma Isobel and Grandma she married loan fight Who am I thinking of Charlie grandma Mabel grandma me alone fighting so that’s the side that I come from that’s the lineage I come from on my mother’s side my mom’s dad’s dad was the Reverend Edward good bird and he married soon woman and that’s where my mom and him all came from he had another wife too but my mom’s dad that the Reverend Edward good bird was our very first ordained minister on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation when he was younger his boyhood name was strong bull how he acquired that name was you know back then to find their medicine they’re a power they would go and they would do they would hang themselves either off a tree or off a cliff and Pierce here until they had the region that’s how they were their names came to them well my great-great grandpa he kept trying and trying his dad was taking him out there the last time that they tried he told himself he wasn’t going to try anymore so the last time that he tried to have his vision and get his power by wolf chief was really close to my great-great grandpa ed Edward that was his uncle and his dad Reverend Edward good bird they hung him off a cliff and they told him don’t suffer to come home one year when it hurts too much so he would he stayed there all night and nothing so he went back to their sweat their earth lodge that next morning and he his dad pile seven Buffalo skins up and told him just to lay down and recover and get better he was sleeping and he heard someone walking around their earth Lodge saying well done you did well my son he said buff Strongbow you did well today so he woke up and told his dad and his dad said I wasn’t outside so your powers came to you and he if powers are the Buffalo because they called him Strongbow that was his boyhood name now as we got older in our lives from what I’ve been told and what I from the stories handed down was we had boyhood names and we had adult names but he never got an adult name because he had converted over to the Christian religion and he became our first ordained minister built his first church with his own hands that church is still standing down to independence he acquired the land ten acres of land for or no I think about 25 acres of land from his uncle who is really close to wolf Henry wolf chief but back then you couldn’t you couldn’t sell your land that was allotted to you or if you are no he wanted to have donate the land but you couldn’t donate the land that was allotted to you because it was already given to you so he told my his nephew my great-great grandpa he said I’ll sell you the land for your church so he sold it and when they got done those boys gave his money back to him and they thought they’d really fooled the government so that’s how that church had come to be down at the independence and my great-great grandpa Edward learn the English language learned how to read him Henry wolf chief had the first store down in Independence area so independence area was before the flood came and after the flood came they everybody got moved up to what’s now independence and in different places there over a Shell Creek in different places we’re away from the from the floodwaters and it was during that move there were there were a lot of stories that I was told one was they were they were moving their horses one time and it was so cold out that there was warmer in the water so they put their horses in the water and to come upstream and to come to their new village then so how we stayed there to what there was smallpox had invaded and I was reading a story where my great-great grandma while he D we would crawl and crawl in bed with her grandma and ask for speck for stories she told about how the smallpox had taken her dad in all that all the children and that made her feel bad but that’s just so that’s how some of those stories are handed down it was no big gathering they just tell it right there you know and then it’s stored in our minds and for me I’m fortunate because of my uncles and they had talked with my great-grandpa Edward one of them my uncle Herman was really close to him like wolf chief and great-grandpa Edward and Herman was my uncle Herman was always with a fake grandpa ed like that so when it came he was really sick it was his life was over and they knew he was about ready to go ready to go to the his next life and they my uncle Herman went in to see him and he had an orange my mom my uncle Arnie told me this story he had a mmm great-grandpa Edward had an orange on the dresser and he taught him and take that orange and go outside and eat it my mom and him said they were all outside and while later there at all those people in that in that room start crying I thought he died he didn’t want my uncle Herman to see him pass away so he gave him my orange and said to him outside so that’s just a little bit about some of the lineage where I come there are so many independents he’ll is still out there if you go out there it’s just tip of it sticking out below it below it is where elbow woods was like a fishhook village he’s up just up upstream from there that’s where they came from that’s for my ancestors started there and went down river and they ended up in independents are in call it a lone Hill is what they call it they ended up camping around there and then my grandpa or my uncle Arnie he said the saddest day of my life he said was I seen when I seen they’re flooding us and water was slapping up against people’s house he says they had already gotten theirs out so when they moved him up to the higher ground they would have to go farther to get hay and things like that one time my uncle Emory was went across to white shield you could cross the river to white shield that’s another community on the reservation he was coming back with his team of horses he had a full slate of hay and his horses went through back then and when you lose a horse or you lost the horse or something that did work for you it was a great loss so my mom said she remembered when he came walking in he was really crying he was all wet and he said went through but he made it he made it home so it was the older men you know like it the thing the things that I know of how life was at one time has really changed today there were times when there was a meeting if gathering they were gonna have a gathering the men went into the left and the woman went to the right and they sat like that they never sat together there are so many more I’m sure Charlie could tell you way more than I can but what I’m telling you is first-hand accounts from my mother some of it is reading in books there’s a lot of four books I know of about my great-great grandpa ed and then one of my grandma my great-great-great his mother well he D we are there’s one about her and uh they talk about their lives here and what it was like