Mille Lacs Ojibwe Social History Project - Interviewed by Dr. Anthony Godfrey, August 28, 1992
Begin Tape One, Side One
Godfrey: Okay. Today I'm talking with Jim or James Clark?
Clark: Jim. James or Jim.
Godfrey: Jim. Okay. We're at the Mille Lacs Indian Museum, and today's date is, I think, August 26th.
Clark: Right.
Godfrey: That sounds about right. What I'd like to talk to you about is growing up in the Lake Lena area, and perhaps you can just sort of give me an outline of maybe your life when you were in lake Lena and when you weren't and things like that, to start off with.
Clark: Well, I wasn't born in Lake Lena. I was born here.
Godfrey: You were born here?
Clark: South shore of Shakopee Lake. You know where that camp is out there, that boys' camp. Lutheran boys' camp.
Godfrey: Lutheran camp? Yes.
Clark: Yeah, right in that area.
Godfrey: Right in that area.
Clark: Yeah, I don't know, east end of that camp is where we were camped.
Godfrey: And that's closer to Isle?
Clark: No, it's right over here by - it's between here and Onamia. It's on the south shore of Shakopee Lake.
Godfrey: Okay.
Clark: Yeah. My dad took me over there one time, and well, he was always talking about different things. We went by there one day, and he says, "That's where you were born."
Godfrey: Oh.
Clark: Yeah, so, it was on - it was kind of interesting to find out, 'cause a lot of people don't know where they were born.
Godfrey: Do you remember the year that you were born?
Clark: 1918.
Godfrey: 1918. Oh.
Clark: September 18th.
Godfrey: September 18th.
Clark: So it'll be, God, in another - well, in a month it's going to be seventy-four years.
Godfrey: Seventy-four years. You certainly don't look it. You look very young.
Clark: I feel it. I feel it a lot of times, though. [Laughter.]
Godfrey: You do?
Clark: So I was born here. We were here. Well, we were seasonally. We were kind of, I would say, nomadic in the sense that my dad had to work, you know. So we were here most summers, and in the wintertime our home was over there. But I think that first year, the first few years, that we were growing up, we lived here during the winter because my sister, my oldest sister, went to school over at the government school that was here. And then we moved out there permanently. And we had a - Dad built a house over there.
Godfrey: Mm-hmm. this was over in Hinckley?
Clark: Yeah. It's in Lake Lena.
Godfrey: Lake Lena?
Clark: Yeah. It's almost on the state line.
Godfrey: Okay.
Clark: Just a few miles from - anyway, we stayed there during the winter, and he worked for himself during the winter. But summertimes he came back here, and he worked for Mr. Ayers.
Godfrey: Oh. I didn't know that.
Clark: Yeah. See all the -
Godfrey: Did he work in the boat factory?
Clark: He worked in the boat factory. He was a carpenter. He was very good with tools, wood, you know. He built a lot of these cabins that were around here. Yeah, he built a lot of cabins around the lake, 'cause I remember, you know, if you go - in those days, if you go three miles from home, you move over there and you camp over there. You didn't go every day. you went and camped over there. So I remember camping over towards Isle or Wahkon, somewhere in there, and he had built some cabins. I think they built - well, it seemed like a lot of them, but there were two or three cabins for somebody out there.
Godfrey: Were these for tourists?
Clark: Yeah - just little cabins, you know, rent cabins. He did a lot of that. I watched. You know, I do a lot of lecturing to people, you know, trying to make them understand Indian people. I do a lot of that in the Cities. I live in the Cities right now. And I always tell people, you know, there's a belief that - well, story goes, a man teaches his sons, you know. A mother teaches her daughters. I would say my dad never said, "We're going to do this thing and here's how you do this." All he told me was to come along with him, and I went along with him - never said a word. All I'd do was watch him, and I learned a lot that way. Things that are - so I guess that was his way of teaching.
Godfrey: By example, then?
Clark: Example, yeah. Of course, that's the way Indian kids learn anyway, you know - or all kids, I think - just by watching.
Godfrey: Well, what is your earliest memories as a child? Where were you living? Were you at Lake Lena?
Clark: Just - yeah. You know, I've been trying to get some things together on paper, and the earliest one I got in that is I was sitting in somebody's arms. We were - whoever it was, I was sitting on - they were holding me. I could see our house, just a frame, the two-by-fours, sticking up, you know. That was our house that they wre building. So I was pretty young when they - I think they built that house maybe 1920, '21.
Godfrey: Oh. You were pretty young then.
Clark: Yeah. So I remember that. So that's where we lived, right by the river.
Godfrey: Well, what was it like growing up by the St. Croix there?
Clark: Standards today, it would be pretty dull. [Laughter.] There was - we lived out in the woods. You know, out here, people are, we wish we could - jeez, those people out there are lucky, you know, right by the highway, right by a big lake. Of course, we lived by a river, and everywhere we went, we had to walk. We had one road that ran out there. I remember my dad had gotten a Model T from someplace - bought a new one and drove out there. I guess they were still furnishing the house because we were - I think it was my oldest sister and the one next to me and me. I think there were just three of us. We were living out there, and my dad was gone. He had gone somewheres.
One time my mother says, "This must be your dad coming." So we started walking down the road. We went and met him. You know, these old roads, you couldn't drive, maybe five miles an hour. You know, it's just a set of ruts out in the woods. And went out there and we met him, and he had boughten a new car, a new Model T. Of course it was a touring car. But I remember he had a table in there, a new table, and some new chairs, all tied around that new car. I can see that. And he didn't have room for - he had even something sitting in the front seat. So we jsut met him, and he stopped, and we looked at the car. That was new stuff that he brought for the house. I guess.
Godfrey: Was this a village that you lived in? Were there other people around?
Clark: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. the village now is owned by the Wilder Foundation of Minneap- or St. Paul. You know - what do you call, Amherst-Wilder? The Foundation. They own that land now, where we lived. It's a river - it's on the Tamarack River. Right where we lived, there used to be a you know, they drove logs on that river.
Godfrey: On the Tamarack?
Clark: Yeah. Tamarack River. And right where we lived is a place they called Dam ???. There was a dam there - dammed up the river, you know, and backed up the water so they could get those logs in. Funny, a lot of humor there. We were referred to - you know, when people start - you know, people my age start learning English and using English more than anything else. We were referred to as the "dam" people. [Laughter.]
Godfrey: The dam people, 'cause you lived near the dam.
Clark: Going up to the dam, the dam people. And like I say, there was only road that went through, went up to there. But I guess there was another road that went out east of us. See, this road came in from the other village, what we called the south village, which is A-sho-mok, you know, over in Lake Lena. So that road came from there, and the other one went out to - there's a road out there that goes out to Markville. That road - that was passable, too, during the summer, but spring and fall you couldn't get through there for mud. Like I say, it's just a set of ruts out in the woods.
Godfrey: Mm-hmm. Was there a bridge over the river at this time, the St. Croix?
Clark: St. Croix River?
Godfrey: Yeah.
Clark: Yeah. We used to go Danbury.
Godfrey: Danbury.
Clark: Danbury's across the river from where we lived, you know. But we had to go down to 48; 48's the highway from Hinckley.
Godfrey: Right.
Clark: East goes to Danbury. We used to go down there and go across the river. The other one, the other crossing, was up in the Riverside area. There wasn't much to do there because we were kind of - I think we were kind of isolated back up in there because we were a couple miles from the village, from the other village. And I think that village we were in was just a family group more than anything else because these villages were - around lake Lena I'd say were kind of familiy groups because -
Godfrey: Do you remember which families were with your group in there?
Clark: Yeah. See, my family - we were living up at the dam. My grandfather had built there, you know. Of course, I don't remember him. But I guess I must have been about two years old when he passed on. 'Cause people talking about him way that I was around. Maybe I was a couple years old then when he passed on. And he had a business out there. There were a lot of people, and this was mostly our people that were living there, like my dad, his brothers, and my aunt, you know, my dad's sisters. But they were all - those were all the ones that were living there. Then the other - see, there were two families. There was a Mr. Stevens. Jim Stevens lived down that south village, what we call A-sho-mok. He was brother to my grandfather. They were brothers, and he had his - most of his family is in that A-sho-mok area, A-sho-mok, what they call crossroads. And ours was up the - you know, the Clark people were up on the dam. There was another village down on the St. Croix they called Tamarack, in the Tamarack area, and most of those were Matrous.
Godfrey: Matrous.
Clark: Matrous families, and they lived - so these villages were kind of a group, you know, family groups.
Godfrey: Was there a leader of all these villages?
Clark: Well, we had - the leader I remember was Jim Stevens. He was my grand uncle, my dad's uncle, his dad's brother. And we kind of - he was kind of a leader. He was - he had a lot of good ideas. He had - you know, he was a smart man. He had horses, couple of cows, and some chickens, and he was about the only one that did any of that. He planted a lot. He was -
Godfrey: Corn?
Clark: Yeah. Always planted a garden. He was a kind old man, too. I remember him. He used to have - you know, we used to do move down there. That was a cultural area, right in that A-sho-mok area, that crossroad area where they were. They had ceremonies, and we'd move down there. We'd go camp down there, which is only about two or three miles from our home. But we'd move down there, and we'd camp down there. Most of the summers we stayed around that area.
This old man - he used to plant. He'd have gardens around his house, and then there was an old road that ran kind of around by the lake there. And he'd plant a little garden down there. He'd have carrots, maybe, cucumbers, and some, maybe a couple of plants of watermelons or muskmelons or something. We used to go down there, and we'd steal from him, you know. I think he did that on purpose.
Godfrey: Really?
Clark: You know, for kids. I think he planted that down there, and he took care of it. Of course, it was out of sight from his house, and I think that was - I think he had - I think he planted that for the kids that was around there. You know, I like to think, because he never - he'd go down there, and he'd pick up what was left during the fall. There wasn't much left. There'd be - of course, we used to go down there. Like I say, we'd swipe carrots and whatever from the garden.
Godfrey: Did you have more like a seasonal life there? Was it like certain things you did in the spring and certain things in the fall?
Clark: Like I was saying before, I lecture to people. A lot of people ask me - we work with kids and they like to go camping. Kids like to camp, you know. So sometimes we'd go along. Anyway, do you want to go camping? Nah, I don't want to go camping. You guys go. Always turn down a camping trip. And a lot of people wonder why I don't like to camp. I say, "You know, you live in your home in the wintertime, and in the spring, when the sap starts running, maple sap, we'd move away from home." They'd go build a wigwam out in the woods by the sugar bush, and we'd camp there. We'd stay out in the woods, you know, camp out in the sugar bush. That would only be maybe a mile from home, but we still went and camped out there.
Well, after sugar bush they'd come home. It would be warm by that time, and maybe the people'd go out and work someplace for maybe a couple weeks. There were no steady jobs, but they'd go out and work for farmers, and they'd come home. I remember my dad and them used to plant. You know, we had gardens around the house. They'd plant. That's about - the extent of our stay at home would be maybe a couple weeks. Then they had ceremonial things going on in the village below us, so we'd pack up right after they'd get done planting their garden. We'd pack up, move down there. We'd go camp down there a couple, three weeks.
Godfrey: What kind of ceremonial things?
Clark: You know, religious ceremonies that we had. You know, our religion, our Midewiwin religion, and then they carried that on real - of course, that old Jim Stevens, he knew all about that stuff. He's the one that led those things. We'd go camp down there a couple, three weeks, and by that time it was geting pretty warm. We'd move out. They'd go out and cut pulp, and we'd camp out there. So we weren't home. We'd go out and cut pulp, and we'd camp out there.
Godfrey: And the pulp was for logging companies?
Clark: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And soon as - they'd cut pulp till blueberries got ripe. Then we'd move out to blueberry camp. We'd go out and camp in blueberries - pick blueberries, maybe, gee, sometimes maybe last two or three weeks, go from one area to another, you know. You know, they ripen one place, and these people knew where these blueberries ripe at what time. So they'd go camp in one place; then they'd move another. And so you were gone maybe two, three weeks, out to blueberries. Well, they'd go home once. They'd go home maybe once or twice during that time, you know, to go take care of, maybe go weed gardens or something. I remember going home.
Godfrey: Did you collect these blueberries for yourself or to sell them?
Clark: No. These were sold.
Godfrey: These were sold?
Clark: Yeah. I remember getting ten cents a quart for those blueberries picking them. [Laughter.]
Godfrey: Hmm. Okay.
Clark: Thirty-two quarts, two cases of blueberries - three dollars and twenty cents. They made a living that way. but anyway, we'd move from there, from blueberrires. They'd go home, maybe for a couple of weeks. And these guys, they would start - if somebody had a car, they'd take off, and they'd go out and start looking at rice beds. you know, right after blueberry season. See, it's about this time. And they'd take a car, somebody's car. Maybe three, four guys in different groups would take off. They'd go look at rice beds, you know. They'd see where -
Godfrey: So they were far away, then? You had to drive to them?
Clark: Yeah. Well, from where we lived, we had to go to Princeton, maybe Mora. Of course, there were rice lakes around there, but with that many people, they didn't - the little ones that were around home wouldn't take care of all the people that were there. Anyway, they'd go out and look at rice beds, and they'd come back and they'd say, "Well, we have to move over there." We'd have to move, so we were gone again. You know, after a couple weeks at home, we'd be gone again. We'd be camping during ricing time. From there, they went out and worked for farmers, harvesting potatoes, whatever. They'd work for these farmers, and by that time, it was late September or early October. That's when we started school. We'd go home and start school. So we were camped out all summer, and people wonder why we don't like to camp! [Laughter.]
Godfrey: Well, was there a school at Lake Lena, then?
Clark: There was one at Lake Lena, not in the village. There was a public school, and there was one north of there, east of where we were living, about a mile and a half from where we lived. That was way out in the woods, and that's where we went to school. We walked out there, you know. The funny thing about going to school, remember going to school - in the fall, you know, when it's still warm, I started going to school. We'd have to walk through the woods, mile and a half out there. Yeah, it's about a mile. Just thinking about it now, measuring distance, it's about a mile and a half. And you walked through the woods. There's no road out there, and we walked through there. About the time - the older - my aunt used to go along with us, used to stay out there with us.
My older sister and then a couple of us kids started going to school, take off, go out in the woods, and stay out in the woods all day, and start going home about the time school was out, you know. I guess the teacher complained to my dad or somebody about us not going to school. There was nobody around there that could read. You know, my dad couldn't read. He never went to school. But he'd look at books, and he'd tell us, "Each one of you bring a different book." We'd have to go in the library. "You get a different book every day to bring home." So we had to go to school to get that different book. [Laughter.]
Godfrey: Pretty tricky.
Clark: Yeah. But you know, funny thing about him, remembering my dad - I know there was a lot of times that he would hear, when he was building some of these cabins here. I remember him and must have been Mr. Ayers setting out on a kind of a table out in the woods or someplace out here, setting a big sheet of paper, big blue sheet of paper. They'd sit there and they'd - or they'd stand there and they'd look at it. Just thinking back, remembering those things, those were blueprints. He used to work on blueprints, work by blueprints. For not going to school, I don't know how he ever did that.
Godfrey: Do you know what his job was here, I mean, what part of the boatmaking he did?
Clark: No, I don't. But in more recent times, he worked around the yard here. In fact, he helped when they built this Four Seasons place. He was around here then, and he used to work around the yard. He's got a second family here. See, my mother died when we were young, and my dad was single for about eight or nine years. Then he started a second family. My half-brother was out here one time, and they had a water pump out here, run by a little gas engine. It must have been a sump pump 'cause they were using it - my brother stuck his finger in there, was watching those little wheels going around with those belts, you know, stuck his finger and cut his finger off. [Laughter.]
Godfrey: Ouch!
Clark: But Dad was out there. He was - Norman was crying, and Dad said he was out there, looking. Norman was looking around there. He was crying; he was holding his hand. I asked him what he was looking for. He said he'd lost his finger, couldn't find his finger. [Laughter.] He was running around there looking for that. So we - there wasn't that much. Like I say, the whole season was taken up by camping and different things.
Godfrey: What about winter activities, come wintertime? Did you put up wood and then -
Clark: They did that daily. There was no - well, a lot of time in the fall, they would put up a lot of wood, but towards spring, they'd get short. That was kind of a major job, keeping warm. Food wasn't that bad to get. I remember - I think we fared out a lot better during the Depression than most people did because we had our own gardens and they'd put up stuff, you know, vegetables and stuff. Of course, keeping away from the game warden wasn't too bad then. We ate rabbit, deer, and whatever else was, you know -
Godfrey: Did you do much fishing at all?
Clark: No. Not in the wintertime.
Godfrey: Not in the wintertime.
Clark: In the summertime - that's another thing, too. I got into fishing again here just within the last twnety years. Before that I never thought about it. You know, when I was growing up, I never thought about fishing because Grandma put up and give us a stick with a fish line. They always fish line and hooks. Get out there and get something to eat. You know, go fish and get some fish. You know, we had - it was a chore to go out and fish, so kind of got away from that. Now, gone back, and I do a lot of it. Around here I like to fish. Like I say, after we grew up, we kind of got away from that because like I say, it was kind of a chore to go out and fish.
Godfrey: Well, when you did fish, was it like at the St. Croix?
Clark: No. There were little lakes on the -
Godfrey: Little lakes. Okay.
Clark: Tamarack Lake. We used to - that's where we did most of our fishing. There were two Tamarack. There were two Tamaracks, there was the Lower Tamarack and Upper Tamarack, and we fished there. And there was a river, the Tamarack River. Grandma used to build a fish trap. A fish trap was - this was after, well, during the Depression, when CCC camps were around. A lot of these CCC boys were around, and they worked on rivers. Everything was dry in those years, and they used to go around and they'd build rock dams along these rivers, to back up old water. They'd build rock dams. So right along the Tamarack River where we lived was maybe three or four of these dams, rock dams that they'd go down the river. Where it was shallow enough, they'd pile rocks across the river, kind of hold the water back.
Godfrey: Where was the CCC camp?
Clark: There was a CCC camp right, oh, maybe a mile or so west of where we lived. There was a small camp there, and those guys used to come out there. They used to wander around back in the woods, you know, during off hours.
Godfrey: Did - were Indians in the CCC camp?
Clark: Not in those, no. You know, Indians had their own CCC outfit during that time. A lot of people went from here, and I was in the CCCs - CCCI, what they call Indian Division.
Godfrey: Sure. Which camp were you at?
Clark: I was up in Grand Portage for awhile, and I was over at Nett Lake.
Godfrey: Nett Lake. That's pretty far from home.
Clark: Yeah. I spent a year in Grand Portage, and then I went from - I was home for maybe one summer. Next fall I went up to - spent maybe eight months up at Nett Lake. Interesting, too - I met a lot of guys, and today you run around, you see them. you can't hardly recognize them, but you see, you recognize guys that you worked with years ago - going from here to there. Of course, travel now is easier than those days.
Godfrey: Well, before you enrolled in the CCC, did you have a job around the Lake Lena area?
Clark: Cutting pulp.
Godfrey: Cutting pulp?
Clark: Mm-hmm. Mostly. I did - I worked for a farmer. He had a store, ??? store. I worked for him for about three years off and on. And a lot of times I went and lived right at his farm, lived at his farm, and a couple of years I lived at the store. I worked around there for- well, this was after CCCs.
And there was one time - it's like, driving was cool, you know. So they had a ad in the paper, a sign down there. Somebody to drive in and out. I tried driving out there, and off and on I used to go out there. They had a van - they called them panel trucks then - which they used for an ambulance. There was a couple of times there, they needed some help. Somebody would come after us - go, maybe stay there a couple a days, so in case somebody, like their regular driver was sick or something. Well, they came after me and told me to do go down there. So I went and stayed over there for a couple days. This happened two or three times. If somebody had to go after something, somebody, with the ambulance - what they used for an ambulance, that panel truck - I got stuck with that a couple times, driving that. I was on a kind of an on-call deal.
Godfrey: What years would this have been?
Clark: Like about '38 or '39.
Godfrey: Okay. So this was after you were in the CCC?
Clark: Yeah.
Godfrey: Okay. Well, before you were in the CCC, you said you did some pulpwood cutting?
Clark: Yeah.
Godfrey: Was there a particular logging company? Were they just jobbers?
Clark: Just jobbers, mostly. There was an old fellow there in Danbury. His name was Charlie Wester. He took a lot of contracts from a guy by the name of Frizzel (?), financed all of his stuff around Danbury. We worked for Charlie Wester, and he went from different places here and there. You know, he'd go - that's another thing. We were camped all summer, pulling pulp. Yeah, he had people cutting up in here, points at Pine River.
Godfrey: Pine River?
Clark: Yeah, around Brainerd.
Godfrey: Oh. Well he got pretty far, then.
Clark: Oh, yeah. He went - we went and camped out in Michigan a couple of summers and northern Wisconsin.
Godfrey: Do you remember whereabouts in Michigan? I've talked to some Indians there about jobbing there.
Clark: Well, we didn't camp in Michigan. We were camped in Land O'Lakes, which is north of Rhinelander.
Godfrey: Oh, okay. Sure.
Clark: &nnbsp; And the Indians - they're called Land O'Lakes of state line 'cause Land O'Lakes is right on the state line of Michigan and Wisconsin. We were camped right below that.
Godfrey: Oh, Okay.
Clark: Then we went - he bought some timber across the state line there. We used to go out there and cut. We were out there, and then up in northern Wisconsin up around - I always talk about being out in the woods by myself for a couple weeks. I think that's - people come.
Godfrey: Okay.
Clark: Where were we?
Godfrey: We were talking about jobbing and cutting pulpwood.
Clark: It was an experience I had. We were a group of guys at this place up in northern Wisconsin they call Drummond. And we were camped out there one spring, early June, through June. Then July 4th all the people that were camped - there was a pretty good-sized camp out there, and all the people were going home for the weekend for July 4th celebration. you know, they all took off.
Of course, I think my dad and them were over here, and I didn't want to come home. So I said, "I'll stay here and kind of watch things." They left their camp and Charlie said he'd be back; a lot of the guys said they'd be back after the weekend. And of course, blueberries are getting ripe about that time, too. So I stayed and worked right on through by myself out there. I was the only one out there, way out in the woods. I think the nearest store was about four miles from where we were camped. So when we went and got paid out there, we went out and got some - I went out and got some groceries to hold me for a couple days and stayed out there. Everybody left. I was out there all by myself, way out there. You know, a week went by. Nobody came back. God, another week went by. I was out there, out in the woods, all by myself for about two weeks.
Godfrey: Is that right?
Clark: Yeah. It was getting kind of boring.
Godfrey: Were you cutting?
Clark: I ran out of - you know, we used to roll our own cigarettes, and I ran out of tobacco, so I took off. The highway was about, maybe a mile from where we camped. I got out there, and I got a ride out to Drummond, went and got some tobacco and some other groceries.
That was kind of a - I had a lot of time to think by myself and being alone out there. I used to sit out there. There was a partridge hatched her eggs. They used to come around where I - I found a place out by the - where they haul pulp there by the road. I'd sit out there evenings, and I got so them little chicks never even bothered me. They never bothered; they weren't even scared. They'd run around me, and I used to take bread out there and sprinkle it around. They'd come out and eat, and they'd walk right over my feet and everything.
Godfrey: Well, were these mixed camps, or were they all Indian camps?
Clark: Most of them were Indian camps.
Godfrey: Indian camps that you worked with.
Clark: Yeah. There weren't too many people that - non-Indian people that wanted, that went out and did that. There were some.
Godfrey: Mm-hmm. And you did hauling and cutting or just about everything?
Clark: They - just about everything. We - well, after a couple years, he - we worked from - I used to haul his pulp instead of cutting it, maybe by the hour, and haul from the woods out to a landing where the big trucks would pick up the stuff, you know. And we did that.
Godfrey: What years would this have been?
Clark: This was during like, '39, '40.
Godfrey: '39, '40. Okay. So this was trucking logging? You weren't talking about horse logging at this time?
Clark: No.
Godfrey: Did you ever do any horse logging?
Clark: In 1951 and '52.
Godfrey: Hmm. That late?
Clark: Mm-hmm. I went out to - this wasn't for Charlie Wester. This was for a fellow by the name of - what was the name? I went out to Land O'Lakes, Wisconsin and worked out there for a couple years for this guy. He had a bunch of people cutting pulp out there, and they didn't cut it in eight-foot lengths. They'd cut it and pull. They'd cut a whole tree, and then they'd peel the whole tree and leave it lay. I used to drive for him and hauled logs for - God, I can't think of his name.
Anyway, during the winter there wasn't too much to do. And he says, "How would you like to go out and cut up all that stuff that the people cut during the summer?" It was still laying out in the woods. He says, "How would you like to go out and cut that up? Bring it out to the road where we can pick it up." He hired another guy, a Finlander from Phelps, and him and I went out there. And of course we had chain saws. They were kind of new. They were just coming out; they were kind of big. But we used chain saws, and we'd go out. Before the snow came, we went out, and we cut up all these poles into eight-foot lengths. He brought two horses out there and brought some hay. We built a barn for the horses, and then we kept the horses out there. That's what we did. We cut up all these things, and all winter when we felt like working we'd haul a bunch of them and skid them off with the horses, during the winter, so that was kind of fun.
Godfrey: But when you were at Lake Lena area, you didn't do any horse skidding or anything?
Clark: No. My dad used to have horses, but he never used them for anything like that. Of course, he used to haul logs. He'd log during the winter, when we were very young. I know he went out in the woods, and he logged and he'd haul logs out to Markville. That's the way he made his living during the winters.
Godfrey: How long did you live in Lake Lena? From when to when? From when you were born to - ?
Clark: From the time I was born, I was there about eighteen, nineteen years. After that time, then we went out, came home occasionally during the summer. During the winter I'd come home. But I worked out different places. In 1940 I moved to the Cities - 1948 - right after the war. I was in the service from '42 into '46 - World War Two.
Godfrey: Mm-hmm. Which area? Which theater were you?
Clark: - European. I was over in Europe. Then right after that, I worked for a guy. Right after the war, I worked for a guy up in Sturgeon Lake for a couple of years. Then from there, I went down to the Cities - been there ever since.
Godfrey: Okay.
Clark: Prior to World War Two, we moved around there quite a bit, worked around. Of course my dad - he was moving back and forth here. My stepmother's from here. In fact, she's my aunt, my mother's sister. He married her and started a second family here.
Godfrey: So you came to the Mille Lacs area quite often or just your dad?
Clark: Not quite often. My dad did, you know. But I used to come out and visit him, you know. A lot of - most of these people are my relatives here, so I get around here pretty good. But I grew up there up until after the war and started coming out here. Then I moved down to Cities. My wife's got a piece of land up here, and we thought we'd build up here. I bought a mobile home, a big house trailer, moved it out there, and that's what we're staying in now.
Godfrey: Oh, over by Joyce and Don?
Clark: Yeah. In fact, I think we were about the first ones that moved out there. Jessie and I did. We moved out there, and then her brother Ray moved out there. Well, Don and Joyce has just moved out there recently, you know.
Godfrey: Okay. I'm going to stop the tape so I can turn it over here.
Begin Tape One, Side Two
Godfrey: Okay. Perhaps an area we can move to next is - you said that you were in World War Two?
Clark: Mm-hmm.
Godfrey: How did you end up joining and going over?
Clark: I was drafted.
Godfrey: You were drafted? Okay.
Clark: I got into the medical department. I was a medic. Yeah, I was a medic for four years, and I learned a lot from that. I wasn't drafted. I was dragged into it. Anyway, I was in the service for four years, in medics all that time. In fact, I worked in a hospital as a technician, and if I'd had any brains, I could have ended up as a nurse, because I learned all that stuff. We worked right in the hospital as nurses. Of course, our basic training was taken up by - instead of physical basic training, we worked in a hospital and trained in there. That was here in the States. I was down in Camp Robinson, Arkansas for about a year and ??? all that. When I came out - I left Berlin on the twenty-seventh of November in '45.
Godfrey: Well, before getting drafted, your life had been fairly isolated, I would assume.
Clark: Yeah.
Godfrey: It must have been quite a change to suddenly be packed off to Arkansas and then go overseas.
Clark: No, it really wasn't that bad. You know, they refer to cultural trauma? They talk about that, going from one culture into another. That didn't bother me because when I went to school, I went to government school, boarding school.
Godfrey: Oh. Which one?
Clark: Hayward, and then went out to Wahpeton, North Dakota. So for about six years I was in the boarding school, all-Indian boarding schools.
Godfrey: That must have affected you pretty much.
Clark: Yeah. That has - it's affected me both ways. You know, when we were talking about starting an Indian school here in Minneapolis, which they have started now, people wonder, "How are kids going to adapt from going to an all-Indian school and going on into the public schools?" Well, we started out in public schools, and there were very few Indian kids there. Most of them were white kids around, the farmers around there. So I was with non-Indian people pretty near all my life. And we went to boarding school. When I came out, I went back into public school. And they wonder, "How are kids going to adapt going from an all-Indian environment to going on to public?"
I worked for the hospitals for thirty years, and there weren't that many Indian people working around me. So just how did I adapt? Just take me for an example. I adapted from an allIndian school, being in an all-Indian school for so many years and going on into public and working with non-Indian people. It hasn't affected me. In fact, it did me a lot of good.
So going into the all-Indian CCC camp, too - that was all Indian. When I came out and went into service, these guys mix. I don't have any problem making friends. I got along. In fact, I got along real good, 'cause I - prior to going into the service and right after school I worked for Archie out there. In fact, I lived with his family off and on. You know, they're non-Indian people - white people. They had a store, and they had a farm.
Godfrey: Archie?
Clark: Schmidt.
Godfrey: Schmidt.
Clark: Yeah. At Duxbury.
Godfrey: At Duxbury.
Clark: Yeah. so I worked with him, and I worked with a lot of white people, non-Indian people. Transition didn't affect me in any way. I had no problem.
Godfrey: Well, was cultural heritage an important thing? Language?
Clark: The language I've kept.
Godfrey: You've kept the language?
Clark: I've kept the language. I think the reason I tried to keep that was, when we first started in Hayward, when I first went to Hayward, they wouldn't let us speak Ojibwe. They wouldn't let us speak our language.
Godfrey: What year would this have been?
Clark: This was in 193 - I think I first went there in 1931 - no, 1929 'cause my mother was still living then.
Godfrey: This was before the New Deal, then?
Clark: Yeah. Prior to that, I didn't have much - you know, I grew up with Swedish kids. They didn't speak in Swedish. They spoke English, so I learned a little English, enough to get by. But I still stuck to Ojibwe, speaking Ojibwe.
And when we went to Hayward and they wouldn't let us use our language, it was kind of hard on me because I couldn't speak the English as well as the other kids. And I used to wonder. I used to hear those kids talk. I guess I thought maybe, "One of these days, I'm going to speak just like they do. I'm going to learn English. I'm going to learn it the way it's supposed to be spoken."
But then, the negative part of it is - I guess maybe it stuck in my - why did they want to take the language away from us? And maybe that stuck way in the back of my mind. Maybe I got angry because they were trying to take that away from us. So when we'd come home, I'd speak nothing but Ojibwe all summer long. We were home three months. Then we'd go back. But after the first two school years that I was there, then they didn't care whether we spoke in Ojibwe or not. So that was alright. We used to speak our language in school when we were out playing.
Godfrey: Did they explain why they changed?
Clark: No - never said a word. And I think back in my mind, that's - I wanted to learn English, and I still wanted to keep Ojibwe. Maybe that was - maybe I was kind of mad at them for trying to take that language away from us. It stuck way back in my - now I teach Ojibwe.
Godfrey: Oh, is that right? Well, maybe I'll have to take some lessons from you sometime.
Clark: You should do that. It's a lot of fun 'cause we've got a lot of - we started Indian education in Minneapolis. In fact, Jessie and I were the first ones got into a public school to teach Ojibwe and culture.
Godfrey: Where's this?
Clark: In Minneapolis.
Godfrey: Yeah. What school?
Clark: The first school we went to was Barton, Clara Barton School down in south Minneapolis, down by Calhoun area. So we started there. Now they're getting Indian people to teach language in different public schools. But her and I were the only ones in Barton that first year.
Godfrey: Is that right? That's neat.
Clark: And we've - I've tried to hang onto the language, tried to hang onto everything that our people did years ago. Keep our culture, keep our traditions and our beliefs. In fact, I preach a lot about beliefs. I do some speaking to our people here when we have ceremonies.
Godfrey: Do you get back to Lake Lena very often?
Clark: Not as much as I'd like to. "Course, the people I grew up with there, the people that I knew, have all grown up. They've all moved out. You go back there and see a bunch of kids, you don't even know who they are.
Godfrey: Who they are.
Clark: No. you have to ask them, "Who's your dad? Who's your grandfather?". Then we'd know who they are.
Godfrey: So life there has changed quite a bit since you were young?
Clark: It has. You know, part of the time we spent over here, too. Camping again - we used to camp out to - do you know where the halfway house is up here, back of the casino?
Godfrey: Uh-huh.
Clark: We used to - that's where my grandmothers and my uncles and aunts had their land back there.
Godfrey: What was their name?
Clark: Kegg.
Godfrey: Kegg? Okay.
Clark: We'd come here in the summertime. My dad was working here, and we'd pitch up a tent. He'd build a - he got a big tent, and he'd build sides, wooden sides, and would put the tent over the wooden sides. We lived in there all summer. We had a floor and everything, and we lived there all summer long. That was almost every year.
Godfrey: From when to when, do you think?
Clark: From - oh, God, it's - we moved around so much, it's kind of hard to put that together. I have this thing I've been writing. I've been collecting stuff that I writing. I got it down from when I was growing up, not in chronological order, just -
Godfrey: Just bits and pieces.
Clark: - bits and pieces as I remember them. But remembering back, what was happened that year, I can just about pinpoint what year they would be. So I've been kind of putting that stuff together, writing that down. Anyway, we had - and we used to camp right across the road here, when - some summers we'd camp out here. The whole family would move. That's only a half a mile back there, but we'd move out here and camp out here. They'd hang baskets out on the highway. You've probably heard about those.
Godfrey: Mm-hmm. Do you remember the trading post very well?
Clark: Yeah - not very well, but bits and pieces. The trading post store used to be up there where the government center is.
Godfrey: Mm-hmm. You remember?
Clark: I remember that, yeah. My dad was working there then.
Godfrey: Oh. Okay.
Clark: Yeah, he - I know a lot of things. When he was getting alot of stuff from different places - Mr. Ayers - he'd unpacked. He had a lot of toys come in - wooden souvenir toys that he sold. I saw a lot of those. Sometimes he'd let me play with some of that stuff, you know. So I remember that little store that was up there on the hill.
Godfrey: Mm-hmm. That was the Robbins' house, right? Do you -
Clark: I think so, yeah. It was a little bitty store. And then we thought - everybody thought this was going to be a big, huge store then, when they built this place here, you know.
Godfrey: Did your dad help build this?
Clark: Yeah. Yeah, he was - and they worked back here where that boathouse is out here. I used to go out and play there. They had that big dock, you know. I remember sometimes he used to run boats. He used to run motor - he'd have one of these little three-horse engines, a little three-horse.
Godfrey: Horsepower?
Clark: Outboard motors - they'd tie ten, fifteen boats onto one behind those and pull them out.
Godfrey: Pull them out there. Did he do guiding, fish guiding?
Clark: He didn't do guiding. He'd just take those out, you know. Of course, there was two or three of them that did that. There was another old man that used to work around here quite a bit. Old man, Moqua, used to work here.
Godfrey: Moqua?
Clark: Yeah. And I guess when he wasn't around, my dad had to be around. Of course my dad was doing most of the carpenter work around here. They had people working here. It was kind of funny. We'd hear that - in the morning we'd hear that little engine going out. We'd be - you know, we were half a mile back in the woods there. in the afternoon you'd hear that thing going again. A little while after that I remember my mother used to start cooking about that time. She'd hear that engine, and she'd start cooking. And when you hear that loud noise, all those boats are coming in. Pretty soon he'd be home 'cause he'd go pick them up in the evening and bring them in. Then just about the end of the day, and then he'd come home. [Laughter.]
Godfrey: Well, do you remember what happened to the boat factory? We can't figure out what happened - when it closed down, what happened to the building. It was a pretty big building, I understand.
Clark: Yeah, it was. It was. no, I really couldn't say. I really wouldn't be able to say what happened to that. Anyway, it was there at one time. When I came back afer the service, we used to come down here. The factory was gone. A lot of guys worked in there that - now a lot of the old fellas have passed on. They worked in there.
Godfrey: I see. Okay. What year did you move to the Twin Cities?
Clark: 1948.
Godfrey: '48. This was right after the war then? And did you work war-related industry then?
Clark: No, I went down there. Right after the war I went to work for a fellow by the name of Rafael Denasky (?) up in Sturgeon Lake, doing logging. He wasn't in the pulp business. He was logging. They were working for a fellow up in Duluth. I worked out in the woods there for, oh, I think that first three or four months I was there. I started hauling lumber for - every day I used to go up to Duluth, haul lumber up there, you know. I drove for him the last couple years that I was there.
I finally decided I was going down to the Cities, so we moved from there. He was kind of short of help, too - funny thing. They were paying - I think it was ninety-five cents an hour. I told Ray - I said, "Ray, I want to move. I'm going to quit. I'm going to be leaving about the end of September." He said, "Where are you going?" I said, "I'm going down to the Cities." He says, "Well, we're going to have a lot of - we'll be working through the winter." Jeez, I got a nickel raise first week. I had decided I was going to move, you know. By the time I ended up there, I was getting a buck and a quarter an hour. he needed help 'cause he didn't have any drivers there.
So I went down to the Cities and been there ever since '48 - 1948. I went down there and got a - worked for a building materials place. They called it Landers, ??? and Company then. They handled cement and brick - I was there for three years.
Godfrey: Were you married at this time?
Clark: Yeah.
Godfrey: When did you get married?
Clark: Well, Jessie and I just got married here just - I was married prior to this. That's when - but now we're divorced. I worked Landers for three years, and I left there. Then finally I had to go back. There wasn't any work around, so I went back. I came back in 1953. I wanted hospital work 'cause I had learned a lot about hospital stuff in the -
Godfrey: In the service?
Clark: - in the service. So I got a job at Fairview Hospital, handling supplies. That was it, you know.
Godfrey: And you worked there for a long time?
Clark: Worked there thirty years.
Godfrey: Thirty years. Okay. Well, did you - what made you decide to move to the Cities in the first place - just better jobs?
Clark: Better jobs, better living conditions, and work was steadier. When I was working for Rafeal, sometimes there'd be maybe two or three weeks we wouldn't be able to work. So I wanted to look for something that was steady. That building materials job - that was seasonal, too. They built during the summer, and winter you're off. I drove truck for Landers when I was there. And when building was off, I went to work for a coal company. That was when they were burning coal yet. I went to work for a coal company and hauled coal, you know, drove. Finally decided I wanted to go back in the hospital and went back in. It's - hospital work didn't pay much, but it was steady. There were times - I had a friend down there - he was a terrazzo finisher. Jeez, he'd make good money.
Godfrey: Terrazzo finishing?
Clark: Yeah. He says, "Come on out. I'll show you how to finish that stuff, and then you can go to work. You make good money." He says, "God, your job don't pay much." Jeez, after I knew him a couple years, he'd be gone; then he'd be home. He'd be gone; he'd be home. One night he come over. He says, "I'm going to go get my tax thing done. You want to go along?" I said, "Yea, I'll take mine along, too." So we went over. I made more money than he did in a year. I worked staedy, and he was off and then on. So that hospital work didn't pay much, but it was -
Godfrey: Steady.
Clark: - steady and clean. In 1983 I turned sixty-five - got my thirty years in. That was about the end of it. That's been - almost nine years.
Godfrey: Mm-hmm. Well, when you first moved to the city, did you find it difficult at all, living in the city?
Clark: No, I didn't. A lot of people did, though. You know, I went down there. I had no inkling of what I was going to do when I got down there. I was going to go look for a - I had a chauffeur's license - was going to go down there to look see if I could find a job driving truck or something. I went down there, moved down there on a Friday night from Sturgeon Lake. I got down there, and my sister and them were living down there. We moved in with them for - when we got down there, they said to come in.
Godfrey: Whereabouts did they live?
Clark: South Minneapolis.
Godfrey: South Minneapolis.
Clark: I got down there, and I got to talking to a guy that next day, Saturday. I had an old car, and I didn't want to drive that old car around. So I went and sold the car to - just to get rid of it. I was talking to a guy that night, and he says, "There's a place down there, building materials place, where they want somebody to work on stuff that comes back, work around the warehouse." So Monday morning I went down there and got the job Monday morning. I went down on Friday, and I was working Monday morning.
Godfrey: That's pretty fortunate.
Clark: Yeah. I worked there for three years.
Godfrey: So you never went through any relocation program with the BIA or any of that stuff?
Clark: No. I've been on my own, without any help from anybody. No - I've been very, very lucky, I think. I've never had to go on welfare, never had to have any help from any kind. We've been pretty lucky, I think.
Godfrey: Did you live in what was considered an Indian neighborhood at all, or did you live elsewhere?
Clark: Yeah. There was some people around there. We got an apartment near where there was some - well, my sister and them were living in an apartment building. We got a room in the same place, the same building. We stayed there for, oh, maybe a year and then finally got moved out to Fridley and rented a house out there ??? Minneapolis rented a house. So we haven't - what they call the all-tribes place. We didn't try to get in there, either. That all-Indian place they got in Minneapolis - never tried to get in there. We've always had our own.
Godfrey: I don't know about this place.
Clark: We've always been able to rent a house or a duplex, anyway, which we're living in now. We have a place down there now. So we've been - I think we've been pretty lucky that way.
Godfrey: Well, when you were in the Cities, did you participate in any Indian activities, urban Indian centers?
Clark: Not really. We used to go to them - never got involved in anything.
Godfrey: All-Indian powwows, things like that?
Clark: Yeah, we used to go and watch - not like here. We help here. We're part of the ceremonies here. We take part in those. But down there, we don't. We go and watch and get into any way we can help. Just lately now, I've been able to - learned how to speak in public, so this past year gathering people, I started to talk to them about - we were not organized. There's a lot of Mille Lacs-ers down there, you know.
We had no organization. So last winter we got all the people together to talk to them about organizing an area for our own down there, so we can have a representative that come up here. Lake Lena has a rep comes over here, and East Lake has a rep, and then we've got the local one here. Now we - I talked to those people about there, and I told them there's people here that know how to organize things. I said, "Why don't you go ahead and do that? Get an organization going so you can be heard, so we can be heard up in Mille Lacs." They finally got that. So we have a rep now from Minneapolis.
Godfrey: Oh, like a district rep?
Clark: Yeah. We call him the urban rep. [Laughter.]
Godfrey: The urban rep, huh? Oh. Okay. Is that like a voting position like the other districts?
Clark: No. We still have to come up here to vote or absentee. But we do have - we are represented now. So that worked out pretty good.
Godfrey: That's a recent development, then?
Clark: Yeah, just this past year.
Godfrey: Past year.
Clark: Well, they had one - they had an ongoing thing, but it never amounted to much. Now we have this one guy that's really active in with the reservation.
Godfrey: Okay. Who's the rep, then?
Clark: Ole Thomas.
Godfrey: Ole Thompson?
Clark: Yeah. Thomas.
Godfrey: Thomas.
Clark: Yeah. He's from Lake Lena.
Godfrey: Were you ever involved in tribal government in any way?
Clark: No. I did belong to a commission here at one time, but I had to resign from that because at the time, things were in a kind of a turmoil. That commission at that time was supposed to handle all the finances. But we found out the finances were going from one place to another without the knowledge of that commission. So we weren't doing any good. I didn't think I was doing any good, so I just resigned. But that was only maybe about a year and a half or two years. I used to come up here, drive up here when they had meetings. But I finally had to - I wasn't doing the commission any good, so I just resigned. I never ran for anything here.
Godfrey: Well, looking back, you can probably see all the changes over time here and at Lake Lena. What do you think about the changes? Do you think there have been good changes, or things have gotten worse here?
Clark: Well, there have been - I think it's good because the government - and I think is moving. It's moving slow. But it's - I think if they go and take everything into their hands, I think they'll do a lot of good here. I'm afraid of this casino business. I feel kind of - I have kind of a negative feeling about that. How long is this casino going to be here, and when are the people going to start getting benefits other than what they're doing?
They're all - what they're building around here is around the casino. They said they were going to improve - the rooms were improved before they came in, you know. And they said they were going to - now they're putting that water tank up here. That's the only thing I've seen so far. They're clearing off a lot of - they're taking up a lot of land back there. I don't think the band members - the band members at large don't know what's going on.
I think the casino is moving a little too fast for them. People, the way they've been moving here - it's just that slow move, getting better. All of a sudden, this casino comes along with all this money, and they're going to do all of this. I don't know how long the casino's going to be around, and these people are kind of frustrated. People as a whole are frustrated, you know. I think a lot of these people - the good part of this is, people - here, nobody ever had a steady job. Very few people had steady work. They were either seasonal, or they were working different places and just making things here.
Now this casino comes around, which is the good part of it is people came to work. They got a steady job. They've got work. A lot of these people were losing their jobs because they're used to working a few weeks here and a few weeks there, and they wander off, you know. Now they're learning they can stay on the job for as long as they want, and they're learning that. I think a lot of people are learning how to handle money, which would be good.
Godfrey: Well, over all do you see it as positive or a negative thing for the tribe?
Clark: It's a positive thing in the long future, but I think the casino is moving a little too fast for them.
Godfrey: What about the one at Hinckley?
Clark: That's the same thing here. Of course those people over - the people in the Lake Lena area aren't too involved in that. They have people working there, sure, but it's mostly non-Indian people that work in there. It's doing - it's helping the Indian people. There again, the casino's buying up a lot of land out there, and I don't think the band members at large know where they're buying, why they're buying, and when.
Godfrey: So they're being kept in the dark or not being informed?
Clark: I think so. Yeah, because we didn't hear about the piece of land they bought over there. We didn't know about that. They're buying different places. I didn't know - nobody knew about - they bought this area just below here along the lake, down by around Cash's where Rolling Lodge is.
Godfrey: Oh. Okay.
Clark: See, and the Indians own that now - never heard about why they were going to buy it or when.
Godfrey: Are there any improvements planned for Lake Lena out of this casino? I mean, here they're getting a new clinic and school and water tower and government building
Clark: When is the school?
Godfrey: I don't know when - sometime in the future. I saw the drawings out there.
Clark: See, there again - see, I don't know about that. I don't think - I think if you go out there and ask them what - you ask any people out there, see what they say. See how many of them knows about it.
Godfrey: Okay.
Clark: And same thing with Lake Lena. Of course, they're - it's all represented from Hinckley to here, Lake Lena. But I don't think they're any better off than these people are here about learning about what or knowing what the future is going to be, what plans are.
Godfrey: Well, what do you -
Clark: I've been told - we've been talking. I live down in the Cities, and they come up here and try to tell people - we know what's going on. I don't mean we know what's going on. We know what's happening here. We see what's happening, and things should be done different ways. But there's no way that I can get up here, you know. I don't want to intrude on these people, because I live down the Cities. And if I come up here and start saying something, they'll say, "He's a city guy. Why's he come up here, trying to run our business?"
Godfrey: Mm-hmm. you see yourself that way, or they see you that way, as a - ?
Clark: You know, it's nature, I think, because the thing that really got me going was, we used to go to this - they have a lunch placed here now for seniors. We turned seniors, and sometimes we'd come up to visit here during the day, and during the week when they feed people, we'd go over there and eat. We heard, thought we heard, "The only time city people come up here is to eat." [Laughter.] So that kind of cut us off there. We don't participate in that, either. So it's human nature.
Godfrey: But you are involved with the powwows here?
Clark: Yeah - the cultural things we are.
Godfrey: And they just had, what, their twenty-sixth annual powwow?
Clark: Yeah. That one we don't. We don't - in fact, I didn't even see this one. I completely missed it - didn't even get out there. I was busy doing thigns. What we participate in is this cultural, the ceremonial powwows. We have them - starting in October, we have them every weekend, different areas. We participate in those as much as we can. Other than that, we pretty well, pretty much stay away from, I would say, the politicss of the place.
Godfrey: But you're -
Clark: Try to.
Godfrey: - member of drum societies?
Clark: Yeah. I kind of wonder about this casino business. It's kind of scary, you know. The one at Hinckley I don't worry too much about, because it's in an area where people will be going, no, now what I'm thinking about, how long is this going to last, when the newness wears off. I hope it stays because it's - like I say, in the long run it'll do a lot of good. People here will have things that I don't think the BIA would have been able to furnish them, like that water tower here. I think that's going to be a central water system for the reservation. That's going to be good.
Godfrey: And you have, what, well water now?
Clark: Yeah. We have our own well.
Godfrey: You have your own well.
Clark: And the water's not the best around here. It's mostly hard water, so you spend a lot of money getting a water softener. We don't have one. We aren't here, only summers.
Godfrey: That's true. Well, let's see what other areas we can talk about. I'm very interested in your CCC stuff. We haven't really talked about that very much. Were you about eighteen or so? No. How old were you when you went into the CCs?
Clark: I must have been twenty - no, yeah, about nineteen.
Godfrey: Nineteen?
Clark: Yeah. That was a good thing. They - you had to furnish most of your own clothes. They gave you some clothes, the work clothes, you know. You were - they had good food, and you were paid. Of course, we were paid. If you lived in the CCC, in the camp, you [were] paid a dollar a day.
Godfrey: Did you have to send money home when you were there?
Clark: Yeah. I did.
Godfrey: I know at some camps, they made them send money home.
Clark: Yeah. That was - at the time I was in, that was voluntary. I got that thirty, yeah, twenty-two dollars that went home. Of course, we had everything in the camp. You could get whatever - you never needed any money.
Godfrey: Did you get any education or vocational training when you were there?
Clark: No. We did a lot of work around - I know when I was in Nett Lake, we had to go work at the Itasca Park.
Godfrey: Oh. Is that right?
Clark: You know, kind of improve the roads and the facilities around there. Some of the park areas - we had to go out and work there, and planted trees and thinned out in the woods, worked on some roads.
Godfrey: Was this mostly on reservation
Begin Tape Two, Side One
Godfrey: Okay.
Clark: I think the Indian Division did a lot of, most of their work on reservations. Of course, we did some - they cooperated with the state, the U.S. government. We did a lot of work outside of reservations. There was a CCC program even here on the reservation, but they lived at home. And they got, I think, a buck and a half a day. You lived at home, you get forty-five dollars a month.
Godfrey: But the camp here was a non-Indian camp, wasn't it?
Clark: Yeah. The camp that was here - that was a non-Indian camp.
Godfrey: Which seems kind of silly to me. It should have been an Indian camp it seems to me.
Clark: But these guys that worked - the Indian guys that worked here - they worked in different places, like that dam down there, you know, that Buckmore (?) dam. They worked on that, and that was for the state.
Godfrey: Okay.
Clark: So they didn't - it wasn't exclusively on the reservation. They worked different places, you know.
Godfrey: Do you know of other improvements around here that were CCC-improved - roads, maybe, or buildings? I don't know.
Clark: I think a lot of roads were improved by CCCs, both Indian and non-Indian. I don't know too much about what went on here. Those were the years that I didn't come here too much. We used to come here to visit, but - so I didn't know what was going on, what they did. I did hear that they were - a bunch of them were working on the roads and stuff. Of course, they had the same program over in Hinckley, over at Lake Lena.
Godfrey: And what improvements did they do over there? I know you mentioned some stream improvement.
Clark: Yeah. These were non-Indian CCCs that did that, but a lot of the roads were improved by - county roads, by Indian people and some of the lake areas.
Godfrey: Did they do any tree planting over there? Do you know?
Clark: Yeah. They did. They used to go out in the woods, and they planted. It wasn't - they planted a lot of hardwood around there. It wasn't pine like everyplace else. Everyplace else they were planting Norway pine. These were hardwood things that they worked on out in the woods out there.
Godfrey: I wonder why.
Clark: I don't know, because - I wouldn't really know why they did that, but there was a lot of pine around the area. I guess they just wanted to keep it hardwood areas, hardwood areas, and the pine areas they planted pine. They just wanted to keep it what nature had intended. Other than that, there was a - when WPA came out, I was doing that for a little while.
Godfrey: Oh, you did? Whereabouts? Lake Lena?
Clark: Around - yeah.
Godfrey: What WPA projects were there?
Clark: Oh, there was - this was all over. We did just about everything that we got paid. And during the summer, I remember, we worked for the WPA. We worked for the state, and we fought fires.
Godfrey: Oh. Okay. It's pretty dangerous work.
Clark: Yeah. So we went from different places around that area. If there was any fires, we were transported out there. This was through - they said was WPA. So I worked for WPA, too.
It's like my kid was saying one time. She come home from - she was in high school. She said she was going into - they were going into ancient history. "Well, what are you going to take up?" She said, "We're going to start studying about World War Two." [Laughter.] "Ancient history," I says, "Pardon me, I was in World War Two."
Godfrey: Well, do you remember how you heard about the CCC?
Clark: I think the government sent out - the BIA sent out literature on these Indian CCCs. I think we heard it through there.
Godfrey: I see.
Clark: But these non-Indian CCC camps - they just sprang up. We found out they were CCCs and never heard anything about why they were there. But they did do a lot of work. They had kids working out in the woods, doing different things.
Godfrey: Do you remember your first day at camp, arriving at camp?
Clark: The one in Grand Portage.
Godfrey: Grand Portage, huh?
Clark: Yeah. There was four of us from Lake Lena went up there, and they told us to go up to Grand Portage. We went up there on a bus; we had to pay our own fare. From Duluth - we went on a train from Danbury to Duluth, and we took a bus from there. We had to walk the last mile or so.
Godfrey: Into camp? Uh-huh. So it was already established?
Clark: Yeah. It was already there. But we got over there in the evening. They fed us, and they put us in a temporary room, where we slept that night. Then the next day, we were assigned beds in barracks and different groups that we had to go with. The first day was generally getting oriented to what they were doing. I remember that pretty good.
Godfrey: Was it kind of different living in a barracks for the first time with a bunch of other guys?
Clark: For some guys, it was - not to me.
Godfrey: Did you have logging experience where you had bunked-up?
Clark: No, because I went to boarding school.
Godfrey: Oh. That's right.
Clark: I was always with a bunch of guys - lived with, lived among guys - so this was nothing new to me. And even when I was in the service - when we were in boarding school, we had to learn how to march. We had to drill, so we - I was pretty much up on regimentation living.
Godfrey: This was at Hayward?
Clark: Yeah. Regimented living - so I was pretty used to that. When I got into service, too, that helped. Guys wondered why, how come I knew so much drilling. Told them when I went to school I learned about it. So then moving from there and then working out in the woods with guys, then into the CCCs and then into the service, I wasn't -
Godfrey: You were pretty well prepared.
Clark: Yeah.
Godfrey: Were the Indian CCC camps different than the non-Indian ones?
Clark: I wouldn't be able to say that because I'd never been in a non-Indian CCC camp. I wouldn't think there would be that much difference. But education, I think - getting into people like that, getting people together. I think it helped a lot with their - with thinking about guys like me now. A lot of these guys around here, I think, started to think about education, because some guys knew different things that they would talk about different things. You sat there and, "I don't know anything about that. Why don't I learn about that?" So you get a group of guys together, and I think it makes some of these people start thinking about educating themselves, getting some more education or something. I think of lot of them learned a lot of things when they were in the CCCs. So that helped in that way.
Godfrey: Well, do you know - had you ever heard of Camp Marquette over in Michigan? It was an all-Indian CCC camp over there.
Clark: No.
Godfrey: In the past, I've interviewed people from that CCC camp, and they said the food was much better in an Indian camp than in a non-Indian camp. I was just wondering if you had heard that, or if you guys had better food. Non-Indians would go over to Camp Marquette to get something to eat.
Clark: That could be. We had good food.
Godfrey: Did you have good food?
Clark: Yeah - good cooks. Yeah. That's why I don't know. I'd never been in the white CCCs. But when we were - we'd go out and we'd fight fire, like I say. When we worked for WPA - went out and fought fires - they served good food. Jeez, they'd set up camps out in the woods, and they'd bring big stoves out there. Instead of cooking outside, they'd bring big stoves out there, cook on those.
Godfrey: Well, you had no big fires like the Hinckley fire there, did you?
Clark: No. But there was one we went to, what they call the Soo Line fire. That burned a lot of area. They say they call it Soo Line fire. It was right along the Soo Line, from - the one that run through Danbury into Superior. Right along the state line there, there was a lot of low ground there, a lot of pine, and that's where I learned about peat fires. Peat fires - you know, they go underground and they'll burn for years under that peat.
I think my main concern for now is language. See, you go out and talk to these people around here, talk Ojibwe to them. Most of them won't understand it. The older people do. Well, some of the older people don't, either. But you talk to these young people, they don't know what you're talking about. And it - culture and language go together, and we teach language. Some of them say, "We just want to learn about the culture." Okay. you can't teach culture without getting language in there. so if the language goes, the culture goes. I think my main thoughts about the future is I think they should push the language.
Godfrey: Push the language? Do they teach it here now?
Clark: Yeah.
Godfrey: Yeah. They do.
Clark: I have a sister that teaches Ojibwe. See, our whole family speaks Ojibwe 'cause we grew up with it.
Godfrey: I would certainly like to learn some.
Clark: It's a hard language to learn.
Godfrey: I imagine.
Clark: You read - what is that, that record book - the one that keeps records? Guinness?
Godfrey: Oh. The Guinness Book of World Records.
Clark: Guinness Book lists there's a language in Australia that's almost impossible to learn. Next to that is Ojibwe.
Godfrey: I'm changing my mind now. [Laughter.] Well, I want to thank you.