JOSEPH KINSEY HOWARD: MONTANA’S CONSCIENCE
This is a story I’m going to sneak up on, but it is about the heart of Great Falls culture and the community that surrounded Joseph Kinsey Howard, just as vital a figure as Paris Gibson or Charlie Russell.
Many years ago I stopped in Browning to say hello to Bob Scriver, but he was gone somewhere. A gentlemanly grandfather and his young grandson were house-sitting so I visited with them a bit. The grandfather, clearly indigenous, commented that he hardly knew “what” he was but that he was not Blackfeet. He was left out of most programs, and I soon deduced he was what locals called “Cree” but he was more accurately Métis, which wasn’t a category considered at all by most people. He said he wished for the sake of the boy that he could come up with more history. He was a descendant of “landless” indigenous people who were shoved in with the Blackfeet, which didn’t make them any friends.
At the time the only book I had about the Red River Métis was in French, a book I’d bought in Lethbridge. But it was a picture book, so the next time I went through, I gave it to him. In those days I didn’t know much. I should have bought a copy of “Strange Empire” and given him that. It is a definitive book about a specific place and people vital to understanding northern Montana and southern Canada. These people were shaped by the ecosystem and history, survived in spite of being hunted and hanged, and still today play their fiddles in our East Front parades. But history passes over them, never explains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWvSwIzJVGs
This video is an introduction to the man who is sharply relevant to our times, Joseph Kinsey Howard, (1906–1951) This “old” story turns out to be what we’ve forgotten despite his best efforts in speeches and writing as a journalist traveling around the state. It is a pleasure to watch, no better antidote to the invading cyber-Easterners raiding our resources.
“By the time Joseph Kinsey Howard died, he came closer to being the spokesman of the West than any other writer has ever been.” — Bernard De Voto, 1952
But he has a modern side that was judiciously kept secret in those days. Of course, being Métis was a bit risky, as the speakers in the video say, so that “Strange Empire” had to be sold under the counter as a political threat. Beyond that I suspect that he was a particular kind of gay, a gentleman who enjoys the company and friendship of beautiful sophisticated women, a bit like Oscar Wilde as rendered by Masterpiece Theatre.
I have no evidence to prove this, but I suspect one could find it. And this would be an ideal time for someone to do the research to frame his life in a book. Howard was very close to his mother and lived with her in a two-room apartment across from the GF library until she died. As an alternative explanation for this and his close relationship to Ferdinand Ripley Schemm, a cardiologist, it might be that Howard was born with a heart problem that required his mother to monitor his health. He died of a heart attack at age 45 while driving.
I can find no evidence of a biography of Howard, maybe because of the above aspects, but being gay or Métis is no longer forbidden, nor is a heart problem any longer considered weak or shameful. Of course, Wikipedia has a good entry. Archives exist but may not be so much personal as records of the production of his three foundational books: “Montana High Wide and Handsome,” “Montana Margins”, and “Strange Empire.” If a person were to move to Montana and wish to understand the state, these three books would be an excellent place to start.
Because Howard was central to several influential writers, connecting them with each other is tantalizing. He had built a little cabin up one of the foothill canyons close to Choteau and the family of that prominent cardiologist named Ferdinand Ripley Schemm had done the same, so that in summer there was much socializing. It’s ironic that Howard died of a heart attack with a cardiologist so close, but he was a hard drinker in the journalist style of the times and drove himself relentlessly in his work.
Dr. Schemm’s daughter, Ripley Schemm, a notable poet, married in 1977 to Richard Hugo (1923 -1982) who was integral to the Missoula-based idea of Montana writers. Hugo was the mentor of Jimmie Welch (1940–2003) who was such a key to the Seventies “renaissance” of Native American writers. His books have become recent films.
Margaret Ripley Schemm Hansen Hugo (1929–2012) was born on April 18, 1929, in Ispheming [Ishpeming], Mich., the daughter of cardiologist Ferdinand Ripley Schemm (1899–1955) and his wife, celebrated novelist Mildred Walker Schemm. (1905–1998) The family moved to Great Falls in 1933, where Dr. Schemm founded and ran the Western Foundation for Clinical Research and traveled throughout Montana consulting on complex cardiology cases.
Dr. Schemm’s wife, Mildred, wrote half of her 13 novels while raising Ripley and her brothers, George Walker Schemm and Christopher Merrifield Schemm, both of whom became physicians. In her last years she lived in Portland where a son looked after her, but she is buried in Michigan, presumably with her husband. Maybe that’s why Montana has failed to celebrate Mildred Walker, though her many books were often Book of the Month choices and she won prizes.
A.B. Guthrie Jr (1901–1991) lived in Choteau and was close to Howard. I don’t know of a biography of him, either. His father was the superintendent of schools in Choteau and the generational ties, even with his son have been fraught. “Bud” Guthrie was very much aware of the indigenous people and wrote about them warmly. Ripley Schemm spent weeks in Heart Butte to teach the writing of poetry. There must be records someplace.
This complex of brilliant and contributing people is an example of a strand of Montana history that both is and is not like the overwhelming legends of Charlie Russell, who was a bit earlier. People from back east came in order to build, strongly driven by principles. They weren’t involved with the resource kings of copper and fossil fuel who often came directly from New England businesses. Paris Gibson founded Great Falls because he recognized a magnificent source of power in the waterfalls and he personally remained a source of energy, but he was not a writer.
Great Falls has been in declined as the economic landscape has changed in the last half-century. It is not considered an intellectual or literary center. Joseph Kinsey Howard, his ideas, his conscience and his friends, are ready to be reinstated. We have never been more in need of his influence.
Millie, the owner of Cassiopeia Books in Great Falls, has said she is willing to find some of these books that still have so much value. Online: cassiopeiabooks.com
