A BIT OF HISTORY - THE KELTNER TAPE
In Memory of Joe Friday and Harold S. Keltner (May 7, 1893 - August 4, 1986)
The following is a transcript from the Harold S. Keltner audio tape which was recently retrieved from the National Indian Guide Center at the Wolaroc Museum and Wildlife Preserve near Bartlesville, Oklahoma. The Indian Guide portion of the museum was closed by its curators several years ago due to lack of support and interest. The history behind Woloroc was featured in our past issue Volume 2, Number 8. The audio tape was part of a working display in which Harold Keltner tells about the creation of Indian Guides (presumably while attending the Center's Dedication Ceremony)
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Narrator:
"This is the story behind the formation of the Y-Indian Guides Center.
Excerpts from a taped interview with Mr. Harold Keltner, it founder and
the longtime worker and director for the YMCA."
Mr. Keltner:
"In the large city of Buffalo, New York, the YMCA found itself a clearing
house of securing speakers for annual father and son banquets. I happened to
have the responsibility for that, and secured . . . I suppose . ..hundreds of
speakers over several years for various churches."
Narrator:
"Having realized the need for a strong father and son relationship in the
family circle, Mr. Keltner was involved in various YMCA youth oriented programs.
Sometimes the results left much to be desired."
Mr. Keltner:
"It was so obvious that the father and son banquet was only a shot in the
arm towards better relationships. It happened only once a year: the fathers came
and told how wonderful the boys were, and the boys said how wonderful the
fathers were. But actually when the meeting was over, they forgot about the
relationship for another year."
Narrator:
"Other programs were tried in addition to the father and son banquets, but
only one proved to be effective: an outdoor program for fathers and sons
including Indian heritage and folklore."
Mr. Keltner:
"This appeal for help, . . . ah . . . was right down my alley because of my
interest in Indians, and I knew that somehow it had to be linked up. Any program
like it that dealt with youth, had to be linked up . . . with their hero worship
. . . of the American Indian. No other interest, it seemed to me, could appeal
to a little boy around seven or eight years of age."
Narrator:
"In addition to being a YMCA director, Mr. Keltner was a lover of the
outdoors. In his travels into Canada, he met an Ojibwa Indian, Joe Friday, who
was later to become instrumental in helping to establish the Y-Indian
Guides."
Mr. Keltner:
"In the early 1900's, when I took my wife on a delayed second honeymoon to
the north country, my father went along and we got off at Temagami Station in
northern Ontario, about three hundred miles north of Toronto. We hired a canoe,
camped on the islands, and had many wonderful fishing trips with copper line
after the lake trout of that region.
One day we decided to make a little trip to visit the southernmost post of the Hudson Bay Fur Company on Bear Island, an Indian village. We started out in fair weather, but half way there, we're met with one of those sudden storms which frequent that part of the country . . . and had quite a time battling the waves. We finally managed to turn around and were cast on a rocky island. It was storming and hailing . . . raining hard . . . and we crawled under the canoe and waited the storm out.
When we got near Bear Island, we noticed a group of Indians and white people gathered together on the dock. Evidently they had seen us, as they had told us later, and had thought that we had gone down in the storm. Some fellow from the crowd hollered out, 'Keltner, what are you doing there?' It turned out to be an old friend of mine from the YMCA in Buffalo, New York. When he introduced me to some of his friends he said, 'I'm a missionary up here now. I want to introduce you to my first church member.' And turning around I was introduced to a big, tall, Ojibwa Indian, whom he called Joe Friday. That was our first meeting.
From that time on, Joe and I spent many hours in the woods. Many a night we
stayed on an island . . . and you could hear the fish . . . splashing in the
water . . . the wolves howl . . . the husky dogs on Bear Island
answering . . . the moose call . . . and far from civilization, a fella gets a
chance to do a little thinking. And there, I had a little idea of what I was
trying to do to organize the first tribe which we later called the Indian
Guides.
When we established a new camp down in St. Louis, in the Ozark Hills of Missour'a, it seemed that it'd be fitting to have a real Indian to teach the boys how to paddle a canoe . . . set traps . . . and learn much of the Indian lore of the forest. So then I called my old friend Joe Friday, from Canada.
We decided that we would use him every summer. . . and he spoke many a time to father and son banquets. On one occasion, when he had finished his talk, so many fathers crowded around him to ask him about fishing and hunting moose, and so on, that the little boys had barely a chance to crowd in at all to talk to the Indian themselves. And it dawned on me that the American father was as interested in Indians as the little fellows were. And that gave me the idea of using the Indian program in this program for fathers and sons.
Joe lived long enough, until 1955, to see the fruits of his work in helping to establish the Indian Guides. How he would have loved to have been here in this place, and seen what the Indian Guides had inspired the white men to do in memory of the American Indian. Very few American Indians probably have done as much for the white men as Joe Friday in helping establish the Indian Guides."