Ida Blackeagle

Ida Blackeagle and Viola Morris demonstrate beading and cornhusk weaving in Spalding Park, 1967.

NPS Photo. NEPE-HI-0165

Article by: Ellie Kaplan

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Ida Blackeagle was a Cultural Demonstrator at the Nez Perce National Historical Park who was instrumental to the revitalization of Nimíipuu cornhusk weaving in the mid-twentieth century. Her efforts showcasing the craft and mentoring the next generations of Nimíipuu weavers has preserved this art form, which uses dried and folded husks to create baskets and other vessels, traditionally used for storing food.

Ida Blackeagle was born Ida Dora Corbett on November 26, 1898. Silas and Ellen Corbett parented Ida and her siblings on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation in Idaho.ⁱ While the reservation was established in 1855, the Nimíipuu people called this and the interior northwest home for thousands of years. They refer to themselves in numerous ways, including Nez Perce, a name originated by French Canadian fur trappers in the eighteenth century, and Nimíipuu, which translates to “we the people” or “the real people.”ⁱⁱ Just shy of her sixteenth birthday on October 12, 1914, Ida Corbett married Joseph Blackeagle.ⁱⁱⁱ Four years her senior, he was the grandnephew of Young Chief Joseph (Hinmátoonyalatkákt), who, along with four other non-treaty band leaders, led his people during the Flight of 1877. Between 1916 and 1939, Blackeagle gave birth to twelve children. However, only two of her children lived past their early twenties and at least five of them died from tuberculosis.^iv

Blackeagle first began weaving cornhusk baskets at the age of twelve. She passed on the craft to her daughters and community through classes at the Lapwai High School.^v In the late 1940s, she taught her friend Rose Frank, who went onto international fame for her craftsmanship and the National Endowment of the Arts named her a National Heritage Fellow in 1991.^vi Blackeagle initially sold her work at “Indian fairs,” a venue for Native Americans to sell produce, crafts, and artwork.^vii In 1966 The National Park Service (NPS) hired Blackeagle and another Nimíipuu woman, Viola Morris, as Cultural Demonstrators at the new Nez Perce National Historic Park; they were the first people to hold that job title across the NPS. They were also two of only a handful of Nimíipuu employees initially hired at the Nez Perce park.^viii As Cultural Demonstrators, Blackeagle and Morris did beadwork, weaving, and other craftwork in front of visitors. Their work asserted a Nimíipuu identity that stressed the resiliency of cultural traditions even in the face of significant ongoing changes.^ix The use of cornhusk to make baskets is itself an example of cultural adaptation from the mid-nineteenth century; when the establishment of reservations and Anglo-American settlement restricted the Nimíipuu’s seasonal movements, weavers replaced their traditional basket fibers of beargrass, cedar, and dogbane with cornhusks. Continuing in this tradition, Blackeagle utilized the Cultural Demonstrator position as another means to mentor other Nimíipuu women as makers of Nimíipuu cultural items.^x

Blackeagle worked at the Nez Perce National Historical Park until her death on February 12, 1976. She shares a gravestone with her daughter Josephine, who died less than two months later, in a cemetery in Kamiah, Idaho.^xi Ida Blackeagle’s legacy lives on in her weaving and beadwork and through the numerous people she taught and inspired.^xii She was one of nine Nimíipuu artists to be featured in an exhibition at the Nez Perce National Historical Park in 1991, which was the first sapatq’ayn (display) of twentieth-century Nimíipuu artists. The exhibit encapsulated how Blackeagle’s weaving bridged past and future generations and traditions.^xiii

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ⁱ - Lynn Erb, “Ida Corbett Blackeagle (1898-1976),” February 27, 2012, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/85838223/ida-blackeagle#source; “Silas Corbett in the U.S., Indian Census Rolls, 1885-1940,” 1910, roll M595_145, line 5, Nez Perce agency, database on-line, Ancestry.com, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75, National Archives, Washington D.C.; “Silas Corbett in the U.S., Indian Census Rolls, 1885-1940,” 1914, roll M595_146, line 14, Nez Perce agency, database on-line, Ancestry.com, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75, National Archives, Washington D.C.

ⁱⁱ - “Nez Perce Tribe,” Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, https://www.critfc.org/member_tribes_overview/nez-perce-tribe/; Ted Catton, Nez Perce National Historical Park Administrative History (Missoula, Montana: USDI National Park Service, 1996), https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/DownloadFile/148669, 1.

ⁱⁱⁱ - “Joseph Blackeagle in the Idaho, County Marriages, 1864-1950,” database on-line, Ancestry.com, Idaho County Marriages, 1864-1950, Salt Lake City, Utah: FamilySearch, 2013.

^iv - “Abraham Aaron Blackeagle in the Idaho, Death Records, 1890-1968”; “Elvira Blackeagle in the Idaho, Death Records, 1890-1968”; “Flora Ruth Blackeagle in the Idaho, Death Records, 1890-1968"; “Wilfred Blackeagle in the Idaho, Death Records, 1890-1968"; “Joseph Blackeagle in the Idaho, Death Records, 1890-1968"; “Goodwin Blackeagle in the Idaho, Death Records, 1890-1968"; “Arnold Roger Blackeagle in the Idaho, Death Records, 1890-1968"; “Leland James Blackeagle in the Idaho, Death Records, 1890-1968"; “J. Norton Blackeagle in the Idaho, Death Records, 1890-1968," database on-line, Ancestry.com, Death Index and Images, 1911-1968, Idaho Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics, Boise, ID; Michal, “Ida Blackeagle (1932-1933),” June 30, 2020, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/211981031/ida-blackeagle; “Ida Blackeagle in the U.S., Indian Census Rolls, 1885-1940,” 1932, database on-line, Ancestry.com, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75, National Archives, Washington, D.C.; “Josephine Grant in the U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014,” database on-line, Ancestry.com, Social Security Death Index, Master File, Social Security Administration, Washington D.C.; “Loretta Collins in the Montana, State Deaths, 1907-2016,” database on-line, Ancestry.com, State of Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, Office of Vital Statistics, Helena, MT.

^v - “People - Peopeotholket,” Nez Perce National Historical Park Museum Collections, National Park Service, Museum Management Program, https://www.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/nepe/people.html.

^vi - “Rosie J. Frank, 86, Nez Perce artisan,” Lewistown Tribune (Lewistown, ID), January 22, 1999, https://lmtribune.com/northwest/rosie-j-frank-86-nez-perce-artisan/article_375f1b99-7f16-51c8-8381-9c1e3e8baa52.html; “NEA National Heritage Fellowships: Rose Frank,” National Endowment for the Arts, 1991, https://www.arts.gov/honors/heritage/fellows/rose-frank.

^vii - “Nevada’s First Indian Fair to Open Tomorrow,” Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV), October 29, 1953, Ancestry.com, on-line database.

^viii - Catton, Nez Perce National Historical Park Administrative History, 31.

^ix - Israel Dominguez, Jesse L. Dutton Kenny, Jade Anne Gutierrez, Arielle M. Myers, Alexander William Penn, and Michael Foster, “Object Histories: Nez Perce Flat Twined Bags,” April 21, 2016, https://artplainsplateau.wordpress.com/2016/04/21/cornhusk-bags/.

^x - Catton, Nez Perce National Historical Park Administrative History, 35.

^xi - Erb, “Ida Corbett Blackeagle (1898-1976).”

^xii - Dominguez, et al., “Object Histories.”

^xiii - Loeffelbein, “Sapatq’ayn: Art of the Nez Perce Nation”; John McCarthy, “Indian Art Indian Artists Gain Recognition,” Lewiston Tribune (Lewiston, ID), December 9, 1991, https://lmtribune.com/northwest/indian-art-indian-artists-gain-recognition-panel-ponders-role-of/article_17ae930f-9ec5-528e-8195-00b52bb20046.html.

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Further Reading:

Ackerman, Lilian A., ed. A Song to the Creator: Traditional Arts of Native American Women of the Plateau. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.

Minthorn, P. sapatq’ayn: Twentieth Century Nez Perce Artists. Seattle, WA: Northwest Interpretive Association, 1991.

DeJong, David H. “If You Knew the Conditions”: A Chronicle of the Indian Medical Service and American Indian Health Care, 1908-1955. Lantham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008.

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Acknowledgements:

This project was made possible in part by a grant from the National Park Foundation.

This project was conducted in Partnership with the University of California Davis History Department through the Californian Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, CA# P20AC00946