Thunder Over the Ochoco Volume V-And The Juniper Trees Bore Fruit

Volume V, the final volume of Thunder Over the Ochoco covers ther period of 1880 and 1916. Rifle shots echoed the length and breadth of the Deschutes canyon as the Hill-Harriman railroad giants battled to link central Oregon to the outside world.

The birth of industry would give vent to new bloodshed in the Ochoco. Six-shooters roared in the night, ranchers disappeared never to be seen again... and the juniper trees bore fruit: the dangling bullet-ridden bodies of men whose only crime was to oppose the land barons who ruled old Crook County with a Winchester rifle and a rawhide rope. As the 19th century staggered to a close, a Shoshoni visionary born in the Ochoco foretold the rebirth of Indian supremacy. His wondrous dream was buried in a common grave at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. By the time the 20th century blundered onto the scene, saddle-blanket blazes hacked into the Ochoco pines marked the deadlines between sheep and cattle range and woe unto him who crossed these barriers.

Ironically, the last Indian war fought in the United States would explode on the Oregon-Nevada border in 1911 when a Shoshoni chief led his followers, armed only with bows and arrows, in a suicidal charge against a group of stockmen. Thus ended the Thunder Over the Ochoco.

Would the new owners do a better job of managing the land they had wrenched from the Shoshoni? I leave that to other writers to decide.

Mix together equal portions of the intellectual curiosity and organizational abilities of Benjamin Franklin and the steely determination of Ulysses S. Grant, let simmer in the Ochocos of Central Oregon for nearly seven decades and the product is Gale Ontko, the writer of Thunder Over the Ochoco.

In most respects this is a man who became an author because of circumstances rather than desire. He grew up in the Ochoco Valley area east of Prineville and unlike most Oregonians has spent his life on the land. His employment as a BLM fire management supervisor took him into back country for long stretches of time and the Indians of the area got to know him so well they finally gave him an Indian name of his own.

It all began innocently enough when he realized that native Americans—except for brief reports of an encounter on the Little Big Horn—had been ignored in the writing of American history as totally as our other non-European minorities. He began to talk with Indians, take notes and enter the world of historical research until one day he felt he was able to add something to what had been written about early days in the Northwest. His other motivation was an increasing belief that the rather desolate land mass of the Ochoco had itself profoundly influenced the history of the region and had an interesting story of its own to be told, if someone was willing to do the work of putting it in proper order.

To a greater extent than is usually the case his writing is a mirror reflection of the man himself. It is said that only the very rich and/or those who live alone can afford the luxury of very strong attitudes and convictions. Gale has lived by himself for many years and the two special gifts of that experience which he brings to his writing are an iron-willed determination to be sure that he has the facts right and an incredible degree of patience. The first has led him to an extraordinary depth of research. There was no solid backlog of Indian data, because the Shoshoni had no written language. So he listened carefully to the oral histories of all the principal tribes and then sought verification by crosschecking contemporary written materials. He has known that his writing breaks new ground and has been determined that regardless of the amount of research required that it stand solid against all inquiry. His remarkable patience has let him continue for years the assembling of his facts before doing the writing.

His book has the refreshing directness and, when necessary, the bluntness that back country people still retain and which their urban cousins have largely abandoned. He has made every effort possible to learn the truth about the people who made the history about which he writes and then to state it. Hudson’s Bay Company is not likely to send him a thank-you note, genteel readers may feel they could get along with fewer details of the way the trapper brigades lived and any descendants of Protestant missionaries to Oregon might well consider putting out a contract on this man. The good news is that when most readers finish this book they are very likely to say, “I had no idea non-fiction could be so interesting.”