300127 - Rising Wolf

The program originally scheduled to appear on this date was a dramatic presentation about the real-life adventures of Major Ralph Royce of the U.S. Army Air Corps’ 1^st Pursuit Group and this unit’s “Arctic Patrol” flight from Michigan to Spokane and return. The flight set out from Selfridge Field in Michigan on January 10^th, but suffered numerous delays due to worse than expected weather and also some mechanical and maintenance issues. The majority of the flight group made it back to Michigan on January 29^th. The plan was to include Major Royce and another member of the flight crew in the live Empire Builders broadcast on the 27^th, so this broadcast topic was postponed for one week. As of January 27^th, most of the scattered aircraft of the 1^st Pursuit Group (including Major Royce and his P-1) were working their way from Fargo, North Dakota, to Minneapolis.

Instead of focusing on Major Royce and his Arctic Patrol, Empire Builders substituted a story about one of the earliest white settlers in the Glacier Park country. The story of Hugh Monroe (or Rising Wolf, as the Blackfeet named him) was written by an NBC Continuity Editor out of their Chicago office. The man’s name was George Redman.

 

George Redman, NBC Continuity Editor and author of the Rising Wolf story broadcast on January 27, 1930.  Author's collection

Hugh Monroe (1798-1896) was one of the first people of European descent to spend any appreciable time in the area of Montana that would one day become Glacier National Park. As a very young man, he hired on with the Hudson’s Bay Company and was soon tasked by his superiors with living among the Blackfeet Indians to learn their language and customs, and to earn their trust to a point that he could influence them to begin trading furs with HBC. Up to that time, the Blackfeet had mostly kept their distance from the HBC men, and none of the HBC factors (outpost managers or agents) had yet learned the Blackfeet language fluently. Monroe was eager for adventure, so he jumped at this challenge and put all his energy and effort into it.

A 1919 book about Hugh Monroe, written by James Willard Schultz. You can download the entire contents of the book as a (very large) PDF copy - it's about 12 MB, so only click the link if you really want to see the entire book!  LINK: Rising Wolf

As the radio play began, the Old Timer was once again travelling aboard a westbound Empire Builder train, and he got to talking with a fellow passenger. With the train approaching the eastern boundary of Glacier National Park, the woman speaking with the Old Timer remarked at all the high peaks coming into view on the western horizon. The Old Timer expressed mild amusement at the reaction of so many of the train’s passengers as the Rocky Mountains revealed themselves. The two of them began chatting about the mountains.

WOMAN:             Well, you’re an Old Timer out here, but it’s a new experience to most of us. In fact, I’ve been straining my own eyes for an hour. You know, it’s rather surprising to me, the way these mountains rise right up out of the plains. From this distance, you can’t hardly tell them from clouds.

PIONEER:            Oh, I reckon we all get about the same sort of a kick out of our first sight of the mountains. Sort of the feeling old Christopher Columbus got when somebody yelled “Land” … I tell you the country along this Great Northern just keeps you lookin’ out the windows the whole way from Chicago to the Coast – mighty interesting country.

The Old Timer described some of the geologic history of the Glacier Park country, and the woman admitted she had never before visited Glacier National Park. This afforded the Old Timer with another convenient opportunity to slip in a little Great Northern-style advertising copy:

PIONEER:            It ain’t like nothing you’ve ever saw before, even if you’ve seen the Alps in Switzerland. Some people call this Glacier park country the American Alps.

As only a character in a radio play can do with such a smooth delivery, the woman prompted the Old Timer for more information:

WOMAN:             Really? Well – er – what do people do when they go there – besides looking at the mountains and glaciers?

Naturally, this set the Old Timer off on an enthusiastic and detailed narrative about Glacier National Park and all the wonderful things a person could do there. He spent the next few minutes enumerating all the activities available to tourists, as well as the nicely appointed lodging options. He was a veritable travel brochure personified.

At this point, the woman asked him about a mountain peak she spotted in the distance. The Old Timer told her it was Rising Wolf Mountain, named for Hugh Monroe.

Rising Wolf Mountain in Glacier National Park, Montana

Now, I’m not as expert at such details as perhaps I ought to be, but I’m not so sure you can actually see Rising Wolf Mountain from a westbound train approaching Glacier Park. The mountain is over 9,500 feet in elevation, so perhaps it pokes above some of the surrounding peaks, but I’m not convinced. Rising Wolf Mountain is located in the western part of the Two Medicine valley – quite a few miles from the railroad line as it rolls out of the Montana towns of Shelby and Browning, and up along the southern boundary of the park. I’m trying to maintain a routine of posting something to this blog every week, so for each offering I’m pulling together the material I need within only a few days for each posting. If I had a little more time, I suspect I could research this and find a definitive answer. Perhaps you know if Rising Wolf Mountain can be seen from a railroad passenger car approaching Glacier Park from the east. If so, please leave a comment below. For now, I’m inclined to think it might be story-telling hyperbole.

In any event, the questions about Rising Wolf Mountain provided the obvious and critical segue for the Old Timer and the cast of Empire Builders to launch into a dramatic sketch about Hugh Monroe. George Redman, the author of the Rising Wolf radio story, stitched together a few elements of historical fact (Hugh Monroe really lived among the Blackfeet as an HBC agent) and then he fictionalized pretty much everything else. As with many Empire Builders playlets, the story of Rising Wolf contained elements of danger, tension, and romance. Monroe met up with the Blackfeet and managed to ingratiate himself with them sufficiently enough that he soon became a member of the tribe. Still, there were those among the tribe who clearly distinguished Monroe as a white man – it was not a perfect assimilation.

In the radio story, it was said that Bear Chief, a fictional leader of the Blackfeet, was the man who bestowed upon Monroe the name of Rising Wolf. Bear Chief’s daughter was named Moon Woman, and (wouldn’t you know it) she was exceptionally beautiful.

One day Rising Wolf stated to Moon Woman that he must strike out with his Blackfeet brothers to fight a band of Snake Indians who had been stealing the Blackfeet’s horses and causing other such mischief. Moon Woman protested, in part because she could not fully accept Monroe as her “kin,” and she felt that their fight need not be his fight. Monroe felt strongly that he had become assimilated among the Blackfeet, and that he did indeed have a duty to fight with them side by side.

Soon the party of Snake Indians came near, and as they did, Monroe realized there were white men among them – in fact, he thought he recognized one of them. It turned out to be the acclaimed mountain man and explorer Jim Bridger (1804-1881). Accepting the input of their brother, Rising Wolf, the Blackfeet heeded Monroe's pleas and spared Bridger and his party. [In real life, Monroe may have actually crossed paths with Bridger, but that’s unclear]

Bridger and his men stayed long enough to share a meal with Monroe. Bridger’s talk of the fur company, and Monroe’s expected prospects for advancement, tugged at him to return to his old life with the fur traders. When he announced his plans to depart, Bear Chief and his daughter Moon Woman were quite dismayed. They had grown not only accustomed to Rising Wolf, but also fond of him. Monroe felt compelled to express his gratitude to the chief by presenting him with a pocket mirror that Bridger gave him. This was great magic to the Blackfeet, who until then (according to the story, at least) had never seen such a thing. Overcome with his own sense of gratitude, Bear Chief tried to reciprocate by offering Monroe a gift of several horses. Note: What little I think I know about Blackfeet culture suggests to me this response was unlikely – it seems to me I’ve read that the Blackfeet have traditionally viewed the gracious acceptance of a gift as being every bit as important as the giving, thus making immediate reciprocation less than ideal. Monroe tried to protest the chief’s generous gift as being way out of scale with the value of a small pocket mirror, explaining that the white people have many mirrors – they were common and of small value. Bear Chief, still marveling at the incredible magic of the mirror, decided Monroe protested because the gift of horses was inadequate. Instead he offered up his daughter, Moon Woman, to be Monroe’s wife.

Well, wouldn’t you know it (seems I have cause to say that a lot in these posts), Hugh Monroe and Moon Woman had true feelings for one another, but after some awkward protesting and weighing of the options, Monroe left Moon Woman behind and rejoined his old pals in the trapping industry.

Funny thing, though – when Monroe met up again with the HBC folks, he explained that a life among the fur trappers was not what would make him happy. He declared that he would resign from the Hudson’s Bay Company so he could return to the “Land of Shining Mountains.” The trading post factor laughed at him and insisted he need not resign. He told Monroe what they really needed was for him to return to the Blackfeet and represent the company there as a fur trading agent. Monroe liked that idea just fine.

With a little fiddle music as a bridge, the scene shifted back aboard the Empire Builder train:

WOMAN:             Well! And so that’s the ending? Monroe and Moon Woman got married I suppose and lived happily ever after.

PIONEER:            (CHUCKLING) That’s just it. They raised one of the finest families of warriors in Blackfeet history, and you’ll find some of their descendants in Glacier Park to this day. And Monroe himself became such a prominent man in the tribe that they named that peak back there Rising Wolf, in his honor – it stands right at the entrance to the Two-Medicine country – one of the prettiest valleys you ever laid eyes upon.

A man on the train piped in just then and suggested Moon Woman must have levied a mighty strong attraction on Monroe to entice him to go back and live out his life among the Blackfeet.

PIONEER:         Well, I reckon she was pretty enough to put on a calendar, but that was only half of it. I heard one of these housekeepin’ ladies on the radio the other day sayin’ that any woman could land the man she wanted if she had the proper environment. Well, Moon Woman had what is now Glacier Park for her front parlor.

WOMAN:         The Land of Shining Mountains. Is it really as pretty as all that?

PIONEER:         You just take my word for it. There’s real, genuine beauty there, an’ there’s more’n that. Every mountain and valley, every lake an’ stream, is rich in legend, an’ th’ whole place just breathes romance.

WOMAN:         Well, I’m just going to bring my husband out here next summer.

PIONEER:         Ma’am, I’ll tell you it’ll be a second honeymoon.

It was generally about this point in the history of the Empire Builders radio series that the railroads officials in the St. Paul headquarters began to gather intel from their agents in earnest. One document I’ve located includes capsulized reports from station and ticket agents from across the country for the early months of 1930. The feedback ran the gamut from brief to lengthy. Some commented mostly about radio reception for the show in their community. Some commented on impacts on the railroad’s overall business due to the radio advertising campaign. Others shared specific comments about the content of a particular evening’s program – sometimes their own, and sometimes shared by customers with whom they came in contact.

Here is a sampling of the comments collected:

M.M. Hubbert, New York, N.Y.   “The Empire Builders program came over WJZ very clearly last night and impressed me as being one of the best we have had for some time. There was sufficient sales argument in the sketch to please the outside representative who is endeavoring to sell Glacier National Park and the Great Northern Railway, which, after all, is something we have to bear in mind in order to get our money’s worth from the expenditure we are making in connection with our radio publicity. The majority of the New York newspapers are carrying our program in the “Features for Today” column, which I think is very important , and hope that our radio program will be kept up to such a standard that they will demand this courtesy of the radio editors.”

J. H. Binkman, Cincinnati, Ohio     “Our radio programs are still creating a good bit of favorable comment among the ticket sellers, railroad representatives, and also the shipping public in general. We have had several letters, one or two commenting on the January 27th program. Most of the listeners are following up these programs each week and arrange their engagements so that they can be near a radio on Monday evening. We also find a number of radio fans who would tune in on these programs of ours but claim the lateness in Eastern Time zone prohibits them from doing so.”

F. L. Salisbury, Louisville & Nashville R.R., Jacksonville, Fla.     “The Great Northern Goat is always read with interest, and I appreciate your having put my name on your mailing list. The January issue called attention to the Empire Builders, and as I was at home last night, I tuned in on W.L.W. The whistling of Mr. MacGimsey was very good. I certainly enjoyed the sketch of “Rising Wolf.” It was splendid. In fact, I enjoyed the whole program immensely. After the program was over, I sat for a while and lived over some of my trips in the great Northwest. I naturally thought of you and want to take this means of telling you how I enjoyed the Great Northern program."

B.C. Culbertson, 502 Majestic Bldg., Milwaukee, Wis.         “We have had several favorable comments on this broadcast, and our own opinion also bears out the fact that this was an enjoyable and entertaining program. We have the pleasure of reporting two round trip Seattle tickets, both ways GN, sold to Mr. W. E. Richter, Waukesha, Wisconsin, and two one-way tickets via GN to Los Angeles, sold to Mrs. A. L. Gridley, Milwaukee. Both of these parties have been sold as a result of our broadcasts.”

G. W. Noffsinger, Park Saddle Horse Co., Kalispell, Mont.      “Want to write you and let you know how much I enjoyed your radio program last Monday night. It came in good and was fine. I have heard quite a little favorable comment on it here. This is the sort of publicity Glacier Park needs and was pleased with the reference to the pleasures of trail riding and especially happy to have them refer to the park as a “Glorified Dude Ranch.” If we can get that thought over it should be worth a great deal. I think the last program is the type especially enjoyed by the public, the Indian feature carrying a special appeal.”

One last noteworthy element of this night’s broadcast was that a high school drama department used this continuity to perform the story of Rising Wolf sometime in the following months. An article appeared in the July, 1930, issue of the Great Northern Goat magazine, telling this story. The author was given as “R. Armstrong.” Although the date or dates of the high school performance are not stated, this description was provided:

A rather unusual use for a radio program was made this spring when the members of the First Period English Six Class of the Danbury (Mass.) High School selected one of the Empire Builder’s dramas for their annual play. The students of the English Class at Danbury High School adapted the play from the radio continuity, which was sent to them by the Great Northern Railway, and all the roles were taken by the students themselves.

I don’t profess to be a geography whiz, but I’ll be darned if I can find evidence of a Danbury High School in Massachusetts. There’s a Danbury High School in Connecticut, Ohio, and Texas. Then there’s a Danvers in Massachusetts . . . so it seems to me the author may have muddled up the location of the school a little. I have yet to find corroborating information about the school and the performance of Rising Wolf, so this remains something of a mystery. (Here’s your big chance again to contribute! Let me know if you have any details about the correct school and the performance of this play.)