Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A • S U M M E R 2 0 1 8 44 Walking the streets of Missoula, these three elderly Indians and their Anglo advocates must have made an arresting group, for Andrew Garcia, then a 72-year-old rancher and outfit- ter, appears to have engaged them in conversation. Gar- cia maintained that, like McWhorter's Indian informants, he could contribute inside information concerning the Nez Perce campaign. For example, he maintained that, contrary to what others had written about the looting and pillaging by the Nez Perce as they traveled through the Bitterroot Valley, in at least one instance the Indians left horses and branded them with the rancher's own iron to document their intended payment. is chance meeting on the streets of Missoula led to a lengthy correspondence between the two men. It also resulted in Garcia sitting down to write his life story. Born in El Paso, Texas, on September 13, 1855, Andrew Garcia first came to Montana in 1868 with his uncle, Alvino Ortez, who was married to Garcia's father's sister. Ortez operated a pack train between Walla Walla, Washington, and Virginia City and trav- eled to El Paso to purchase Spanish mules to sell in Montana Territory, convincing Garcia's parents to let the 13-year-old Andrew travel with him as far as Socorro, New Mexico, where Ortez planned to recruit a new group of herders and send his nephew home. Once they arrived in New Mexico, however, Ortez kept Andrew with him, traveling on to ree Forks and Bozeman, where Garcia briefly attended school. He then worked as a night herder making runs between Bozeman and Corinne, Utah, before being sent back to his parents in Texas. Garcia returned to Montana in the fall of 1876, this time working as a civilian packer and herder for the Seventh Cavalry at Fort Ellis outside of Boze- man, where he watched at least one key event in Montana history unfold—the pursuit and subse- quent surrender of the Nez Perce. In 1878, Garcia left his job with the army to establish the "Beaver Tom Trading Company Limited," living for nine years, mostly with the Pend d'Oreille, "in a tepee, following Indian customs and observing their rules of living." Tough Trip through Paradise picks up Andrew Garcia's story in the summer of 1878, when he is about to turn twenty-three, the age "when a fellow thinks he knows it all, and in reality he doesn't. is is the time in life when a fellow ought to have a guardian—one of the good old-fashioned, short-arm kind that will kick or pound the conceit out of him." Garcia relates how, in spite of good advice to the contrary, he threw his lot (and savings) in with the trapper Beaver Tom, who promised to repay him in furs. Beaver Tom also offered Garcia the added benefit of buying "blankets and other stuff dear to the Indian's heart, and trad[ing] this stuff to them for furs and buffalo robes. Because I had to buy the stuff, the profit from trading would be mine." While on the trail, Garcia met an 18-year-old Nez Perce woman living with a group of Pend d'Oreille. e Pend d'Oreille called her In-who-lise, or Broken Tooth, though her Nez Perce name was White Feather and she had been christened Susan. In-who-lise "was not so beautiful, but her eyes and face had truth and honesty in them," Garcia recalled. In-who-lise had been with Chief Joseph and his followers when the Seventh Infantry opened fire on the sleeping Nez Perce encampment. e soldiers shot In-who-lise through the shoulder and killed her sister as the two young women tried to escape. Garcia convinced In-who-lise to marry him in part by promising to locate a priest to perform the ceremony and by agreeing to help her return to her family's land in Idaho. He also offered to help her locate the grave of her father, Gray Eagle, buried where he had died on a trail leading away from the Big Hole battlefield. One key point, however, Garcia neglected to share with his prospective bride: "I knew better than to tell her that I was at the Bear Paws the day Chief Joseph had surrendered. I had been with them when they went to Fort Keogh and helped to drive their large band of horses along with them; the horses the Nez Perce never got back. I had seen her people driven on flatboats in the cold like cattle to be floated down the Yel- lowstone to Fort Buford without any shelter from the storms." warted in their attempts to return to In-who-lise's native land and dogged repeatedly by whites who mistook Garcia for a renegade, the couple joined another group of Pend d'Oreille. After a horse raid gone bad, a revenging Blackfeet struck In-who-lise in the face with his coup stick, and she died the fol- lowing day. Garcia buried his "beloved Susie, my In-who-lise among the blizzard-swept crags of the wild Marias Mountains, where the summer skies often are darkened by swirling snowstorms. " With such a powerful and entertaining story to tell, why did Andrew Garcia fail to pursue publica- tion during his lifetime? L. V. McWhorter often pressed Garcia on just this point. When McWhorter's letters arrived, Andrew Garcia was living on a small ranch near Fish Creek, where he and his fourth wife, Barbara Voll Garcia, had raised their four sons, along with winter wheat, fall rye, fruit, and cattle—anything to scratch out a living. He also ran, according to his stationery, "Garcia Brothers: Guides, Packers and Outfitters of Hunting Parties to all Parts of Fish Creek, Montana, and the Clearwater Country of Idaho, the home of the elk." FROM THE INTRODUCTION BY BENNETT STEIN, EDITOR OF TOUGH TRIP: GARCIA TELLS A MANY-FACETED STORY. HE WAS NOT MERELY A SYMPATHETIC OBSERVER HE DID NOT GLOSS OVER HIS OWN POSITION AS AN INTERLOPER— A WHITE MAN WITH GOOD GUNS, BAD WHISKEY AND FAKE JEWELRY TO TRADE. GARCIA SAW HIMSELF AS AN ADVENTUROUS SPANISH KID FROM THE RIO GRANDE, AND HE REMAINED A WHITE MAN, DRIFT- ING INTO INDIAN WAYS. GARCIA'S LAST PARAGRAPH: IT HAS BEEN MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY SINCE I LAID MY BELOVED SUSIE, MY IN-WHO-LISE, TO REST AMONG THE BLIZZARD-SWEPT CRAGS OF THE WILD MARIAS MOUNTAINS, WHERE THE SUMMER SKIES OFTEN ARE DARKENED BY SWIRLING SNOWSTORMS. ALL OF MY ASSOCIATES OF THOSE ROUGH AND READY YEARS HAVE CROSSED THE GREAT DIVIDE, AND THE SQUAW KID WANDERER AWAITS THE FINAL JOURNEY. Andrew's first wife, In-who-lise, whose original name was White Feather. Photo belonging to the Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pc85b1num1-217

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