The June rise: the apocryphal letters of Joseph Antoine Janis

357 Pages·1994·0.8 MB·English

by  William Tremblay

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The June Rise
The Apocryphal Letters of Joseph Antoine Janis
William Tremblay
Utah State University Press
Logan, Utah
Copyright © 1994 by William Tremblay
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tremblay, William, 1940
The June rise: the apocryphal letters of Joseph Antoine Janis / by
William Tremblay.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-87421-176-X
1. Janis, Joseph Antoine, b. 1824Fiction. 2. Indians of North
AmericaGovernment RelationsFiction. 3. Indians of North
AmericaGreat PlainsWarsFiction. 4. French
AmericansColoradoFiction. 5. TrappersColoradoFiction. I.
Janis,Joseph Antoine, b. 1824. II. Title.
PS3570.R386J86 1994
813'.54dc20 94-16723
CIP
Cover photograph of Antoine Janis and Oglala men, 1877. Photograph
courtesy of Fort Collins Public Library, Fort Collins, Colorado.
Book and cover design by Richard A. Firmage
Utah State University Press
Logan, Utah 84322-7800
Page v
Preface
It began one morning as I was walking around Warren Lake near my
home in Fort Collins, Colorado. When I got to the WPA spillway on
the eastern shore, I sat down, staring at a length of rope coiled like a
chromosome chain deep in the ice. I found myself back in my
childhood Massachusetts at the kitchen table where my parents were
squaring off en français, their language for secrets.
A landlocked seagull shrieked. I looked up, and outwith a tremor like
those just before sleepwest to the Arapaho Range where huge sheets
of snow were slowly swirling off Horsetooth Ridge. I was surrounded
by the immense distances of the Colorado high plains and the foothills
of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Silver clouds floated
above bare cottonwoods, taking the eye west in steps, risingStorm
Mountain, Mummy Mountain, and beyond that a Wedgewood sky.
Winds I had ignored were sighing, as if to seduce me. I had been
living in a beautiful place for many years, and it hadn't sunk in until
that moment.
A desire began to grow in me to pay whatever different attentions of
scale this place asked. It was then that I remembered the French
trapper Antoine Janis. I had known about him for years; it was as
though he had been standing quietly in a corner waiting for me to turn
to him. Learning about his life might prove a guide through which I
could learn
Page vi
more about the Rocky Mountain West. To retrieve not only his life but
a way of life much closer to those of the beginnings of this country's
historyto repossess a set of wilderness skills involving not only
observation but observancewould mean to reclaim a small portion of
an almost forgotten immigrant experience in North America.
The log cabin Janis originally built in 1859 at Laporte, Colorado, has
been reassembled behind the Fort Collins Pioneer Museum by the
Daughters of the American Revolution. I remembered a curator telling
me that Janis had been the first white man to receive a legal deed, as
provided by the Homestead Act, for 160 acres in Larimer County.
What the sketchy and sometimes contradictory historical sources
record is that Joseph Antoine Janis was born in 1824 in St. Charles,
Missouri, and was educated in parochial schools there. Sometime
around 1840 his father took him down the Santa Fe Trail and taught
him the ways of a mountain man. After his wilderness apprenticeship
was completed, his father presented him to the Arapaho, Cheyenne,
and Oglala at their tribal council grounds in what is now Laportethe
very land Janis homesteaded.
Antoine Janis acquired the skills and knowledge of a fur trapper, a
packmule trader, a horse rancher, a guide, a scout, and an interpreter
for the United States Army. He married an Indian woman and
homesteaded land. However, in the 1870s the federal government
issued him an ultimatum: either divorce his Lakota wife, First Elk
Woman, and keep the land, or stay married to her and share her fate at
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He chose to remain with her.
I read The History of Larimer County by Ansel Watrous and found a
letter reproduced in it from Antoine Janis dated March 17, 1883, and
posted at Pine Ridge Agency. Watrous apparently had written Janis
requesting information about early settlement

Page vii
in the Cache La Poudre River Valley. Janis responded with but brief
reference to his having founded Laporte along with his brother
Nicholas and a dozen others. He closed the letter by saying: "It would
consume a great deal of time to give to you in full detail, and my
health has been such this winter that I dare not undertake the task."
What would Antoine Janis have written, I wondered, if his health had
disposed him to answer Watrous's inquiries in all the particulars?
Page viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Grateful acknowledgement is due (and happily given) to the following
individuals and institutions: Sandra Lowry, Librarian, Fort Laramie
National Historic Site; Sharron G. Uhler, Museum Archivist,
Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum; Karen McWilliams, formerly
Local History Archivist at the Fort Collins Public Library; the Fort
Collins Pioneer Museum; the staff of the Denver Public Library;
Denis Ledoux; Lilianne Labbé; and Lucie Therrien. Thanks also go to
the Corporation of Yaddo and the College of Liberal Arts, Colorado
State University, for grants of precious time and financial assistance.
For their inspiration and encouragement, I wish to thank, as ever,
Cynthia Tremblay, James Work, James Galvin, and Ken Brewer.
Thanks also to Jim Foster, Phil Turetzky, Waldo Jones, and Doug Ishi,
compañeros of the trail. Most special thanks go to Bill Nies,
rechercheur extraordinaire, who shared his visions of the subtle
beauties of Rawhide Flats, Round Butte, Box Elder Canyon, and the
Cheyenne Rim.
The "Preface" and "My Lookout" [Chapter 1] first appeared in Green
Mountains Review (New Series: Vol. VI, #2, Summer/Fall 1993).
Page ix
Contents
Preface v
Acknowledgements viii
Letter I. "My Lookout," (March 18, 1884) 1
Letter II. "In The Wilderness," (April 16, 1884) 15
Letter III. "Where Your Own Stick Floats," (April 23, 43
1884)
Letter IV. "Sign Talker," (June 9, 1884) 53
Letter V. "Roots or Claws," (July 14, 1884) 65
Letter VI. "Saves the Peace," (September 2, 1884) 85
Letter VII. "Locusts Singing," (September 16, 1884) 97
Letter VIII. "Le Semblance," (October 6, 1884) 107
Letter IX. "He Conjures the Whirlwind," (October 12, 121
1884)
Letter X. "Small Fish," (November 18, 1884) 133
Letter XI. "Rumors Aplenty," (December 9, 1884) 149
Letter XII. "Washed Out," (February 26, 1885) 173
Letter XIII. "Mocassin Posse," (March 1, 1885) 179
Page x
Letter XIV. "Denizens of the Wilderness," (April 2, 1885) 189
Letter XV. "The Circus Comes to Town," (April 12, 1885) 197
Letter XVI. " Un Regard Foudroyant," (May 1, 1885) 211
Letter XVII. "Ghost Dance," (June 6, 1889) 219