On a Thursday in the summer of 1947 two visitors called at the Carl Wrensted place on the Crystal route out of Arbon: Mrs. Jeanette Pocatello and Mrs. Margaret Lavatta Calvin. Mrs. Carl Wrensted wrote to "Buzz of the Burg," a column in the Pocatello Tribune whose writer signed as Ing, and the paper printed her letter on Tuesday, August 19. The Thursday she meant was probably August 14.
Her letter is the only account of the visit we have found. Everything below about the two women comes from it, as she heard and wrote it down.
Wheat and high hills
The visit had been a long time coming. Jeanette's promise to make the trip was an old one, the letter says, but she had never before traveled into Arbon Valley or crossed the hills around it. The valley's heavy stand of wheat and its thriving fields won praise from both guests, by Mrs. Wrensted's account. Both had just come back from trips. For Jeanette it had been the Teton country, traveling with Mr. and Mrs. William Lipps to a region the letter calls her ancestors' home; for Mrs. Calvin it had been the Pinedale area of Wyoming. Coming home to Idaho, the letter adds, suited them both.
Stories they told
Much of the talk turned to the old stories and faith of the women's own people. One subject was the Sun Dance; the letter explains it as a ceremony in which people pray to be well and to prosper. They also accounted for the English names that Indians on the reservation carried. The guests laid them to the first census counts there: the enumerators could not put the spoken names on paper, so they settled on English ones that sounded about the same. The example they offered was Gibson Jack, a Shoshoni chieftain, they said, originally called Gub Shan Zhak. Gibson Jack is also the name of a creek near Pocatello, but the letter does not mention the creek.
Then came something closer to home for the valley. Mink Creek, the letter says, took its name from Mink, Jeanette's maternal grandfather. Mink Creek canyon carried the road between Pocatello and the Crystal end of the valley. On this trip Jeanette found that the house Mink had lived in, near the canyon's mouth, had not been lost, and the letter says the sight pleased her. The letter does not name the canyon or say exactly where the house stood, and we have found no other record of Mink or his house.
The letter also gives each woman's father: Chief Pocatello for Jeanette, and Rafael Lavatta for Mrs. Calvin. Mrs. Wrensted gave no more about either family, and we have not checked these statements against other records.
What we do not know
The letter does not say how the women traveled or how long they stayed, and it says nothing more about the Lippses. We do not know whether the visitors ever came back. Mrs. Wrensted ended her letter hoping for another visit and more stories of "how our Indian neighbors lived."
The Wrensteds
The letter writer's husband, Carl Wrensted, had filed on land north of Crystal in 1913. In March 1940 he served on the Arbon-Crystal program planning board, and in April 1950 the Idaho State Journal photographed him as a Power County commissioner from Crystal. The letter does not give Mrs. Wrensted's own first name.
On this site: Carl Wrensted's homestead cabin appears in a valley of log cabins, 1917, and the settlement he lived in is described in Crystal, the hidden settlement up Rattlesnake Creek. The road through Mink Creek is followed in mail, grain and the Mink Creek road. The reservation next to the valley is the subject of the 1898 cession and a borrowed wagon, and tribal names for places along Bannock Creek are in Pasakwa Huude and other names on Bannock Creek.
The story as reported
Pocatello Tribune, August 19, 1947, page 4. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
A letter the Pocatello Tribune printed on August 19, 1947, told of a Thursday call at the Carl Wrensted home on the Crystal route out of Arbon by two Indian women, Mrs. Jeanette Pocatello and Mrs. Margaret Lavatta Calvin. Mrs. Carl Wrensted wrote it from Crystal Route, Arbon, to the paper's "Buzz of the Burg" column.
The visit was unexpected, and the letter writer called it a welcome one. Mrs. Pocatello's promise to come was a long-standing one, yet she had never traveled the valley before this trip. What caught the visitors' eye, the letter said, was the size of the wheat crop and the good shape of the fields generally.
Both women had recently been traveling. Mrs. Calvin had been near Pinedale, Wyoming. Mrs. Pocatello's trip, made with Mr. and Mrs. William Lipps, had taken her to the Teton country, home to her ancestors according to the letter. Each was glad, they said, to have come home to Idaho.
Talk turned to the women's tribal legends and faith. The Sun Dance came up, which Mrs. Wrensted described as a ceremony of praying for good health and good fortune. The English names common on the reservation, the visitors said, were the work of its first census takers: unable to put the spoken names in writing, the enumerators chose English ones that sounded close. Their example was a Shoshoni chieftain, Gub Shan Zhak, who became Gibson Jack on paper.
Mrs. Pocatello's family ties ran close to the valley road. Mink Creek was named for Mink, the letter said, and he was her grandfather through her mother. On this trip she found the house he had lived in near the canyon's lower end still there, and that pleased her. The letter named Chief Pocatello as her father and Rafael Lavatta as Mrs. Calvin's.
Given those families, Mrs. Wrensted judged that the pair had much old lore to share, and the Wrensteds, she wrote, hoped they would come back and tell more.