University of Idaho. Library. Special Collections Dept.

The Conservation Reports and Publications manuscript group is a collection of reports and publications from environmental and conservation groups in the Northwest region of the United States as well as from state and federal government departments.

Dizzy (John Birks) Gillespie was born in Cheraw, South Carolina in 1917. His father, a local bandleader, had him playing the piano at age four. The elder Gillespie, however, died when his son was ten, leaving John to learn music on his own. At twelve he was playing trombone; at thirteen, trumpet. A music (and sports) scholarship enabled him to attend the Laurinburg Institute, in Laurinburg, North Carolina, but he left the school in 1935. He soon joined the Frankie Fairfax Band in Philadelphia, and there picked up his nickname “Dizzy” for his on stage clowning. Through a succession of other jobs in other bands he began developing his own distinctive style of play, finally finding a place to express this style, christened “bebop,” when, with Charlie Parker, he joined the Earl Hines band in 1942. He moved on to other bands and bebop followed. Quickly accepted by some fans and musicians, and just as quickly rejected by others, bebop nonetheless helped define post-war jazz in the U.S. and in Europe. At the time of his death, in January of 1993, Dizzy was one of the most widely recognized and admired jazz musicians both within the jazz community and in wider culture.

H. L. Bridgman, a mining engineer, was born in 1854 in Keokuk, Iowa. He studied at the School of Mines of Clausthal, Germany. After his return to the United States, he was employed at the Iron Silver mine, in Leadville, Colorado. In 1883 he moved to Chicago, where he was one of the first engineers to introduce and perfect the electrolytic refining of copper. He was for several years superintendent of the Works of the Chicago Copper Refining Co. at Blue Island, Illinois, where he was instrumental in the organizing and implementation of this method. While superintendent, he invented a machine for the mechanical sampling of ores, which he described in a paper presented in 1891 to the American Institute of Mining Engineers, of which he was a member since 1879. In 1898 he moved to Mexico to conduct explorations and mining operations in the State of Nuevo Leon. He died at Blue Island on September 20, 1900.

According to the 1930 University of Idaho yearbook, freshman J. Morris O’Donnell wrote the words and music of Go, Vandals, Go as the freshmen class entry in the annual student music and spirit competition. The song, explained the yearbook editors, was performed by a male chorus accompanied by a 14-piece orchestra and was a “decided hit.”

Intercollegiate athletics at the University of Idaho began less than one year after the University opened its doors in 1892. On June 6, 1893, Idaho students competed against those from nearby Washington Agricultural College in various track and field events. A year later, Idaho and the same opponent met on the gridiron where Idaho won with a score of 10-0. Idaho’s first basketball game was played in 1906; as with football, the opposing team was from Washington’s land-grant university in Pullman, Washington State College. By 1921, the nickname “Vandals,” which originally had been applied to the basketball team only, was used to describe all of Idaho’s sports teams.

In 1911, the U.S. Forest Service set aside the Priest River Experimental Forest as a forestry research center. The forest served as the headquarters for the Priest River Forest Experiment Station until 1930 when the forest was incorporated into the Northern Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. The Rocky Mountain Research Station from the Moscow, Idaho, Forestry Sciences Laboratory, currently administers the forest.

Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, on April 25, 1917 and raised in Yonkers, New York. In 1934 Benny Carter and Bardu Ali heard Ms. Fitzgerald singing at the Apollo Theatre and introduced her to Chick Webb who hired Ella as a singer with his orchestra. One of the major hits of her career was a version of the nursery rhyme "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," recorded in 1938, with Webb's orchestra. After his death in 1939, she assumed the leadership of the orchestra for some years. By 1946 she was well into her solo career touring the world with Norman Granz' Jazz at the Philharmonic. In 1955 Granz became Ms. Fitzgerald's personal manager and she began recording for his label, Verve. Throughout her career Ella recorded with jazz greats including Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Ray Brown, Count Basie, Al Grey, and others. Worth mentioning are eight "Song Book" albums Ms. Fitzgerald produced for Verve from 1956 to 1964. In this series she sang compositions of Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, George and Ira Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Harold Arlen, and Johnny Mercer. She was the recipient of several awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1992), the French medal of Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters (Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres)(1990), the NAACP Image award for Lifetime Achievement (1988), U.S. National Medal of Arts (1987), the first ASCAP award in recognition of an artist (1965), and several Grammy and Down Beat magazine awards. She also received awards and honorary degrees from several universities, including Princeton University (1990) and Dartmouth College (1976). Ella Fitzgerald died in Beverly Hills, California, on June 15, 1996.

Pete Candoli was a jazz trumpeter, born Walter Joseph Candoli in Mishawaka, Indiana, on June 28, 1923. He played with the top bands and orchestras led by Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, and Gordon Jenkins among others. Pete was a member of the Woody Herman band in the world premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s “Ebony Concerto,” at Carnegie Hall in 1946. He and his brother Conte, also a trumpeter, formed the Candoli Brothers band in 1957. The brothers were inducted into "The International Jazz Hall of Fame" in 1997. Pete died in Studio City, California, on January 11, 2008.

Conte Candoli was a jazz trumpeter, born Secondo Candoli in Mishawaka, Indiana, on July 12, 1927. He played with the top bands led by Woody Herman, Charlie Ventura, and Stan Kenton, among others. In 1968, Conte joined Johnny Carson's "The Tonight Show" band as a guest. After Carson moved the show to Burbank in 1972, Candoli became a regular until 1992. Conte and his brother Pete, also a trumpeter, formed the Candoli Brothers band in 1957. The brothers were inducted into "The International Jazz Hall of Fame" in 1997. Conte died in Palm Desert, California, on December 14, 2001.

James Wilson Gwinn attended the University of Idaho in Moscow from 1908 to 1911 when he was graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mining Engineering. As a student, Gwinn participated in extracurricular activities and was a member of Theta Mu Epsilon, a local fraternity.

According to the donor of the shingle, Gwinn’s grandson Bruce E. Perkins, Beta Theta Pi, a national fraternity, awarded membership shingles to members of Theta Mu Epsilon in 1914 when they decided to join the Beta Theta Pi organization.

In February 1887, Congress enacted the General Allotment Act of 1887, providing for the allotment of Indian lands for individual Indians and families. The primary provision of the Allotment Act (known commonly as the Dawes Act, for the bill’s chief advocate Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts) granted 160 acres to each family head, 80 acres to each single person over 18 years of age and to each orphan under 18, and 40 acres to each other single person under 18.

These tracts were called “allotments” and were based on the assumption that the Nez Perce people would all become small farmers, even though (after about 1730) livestock grazing had been a more common agricultural occupation. These allotments, sometimes with changed owners and boundaries, still exist today.

Section 3 of the Allotment Act called for the appointment of special agents appointed by the president of the United States to make the allotments. Ethnologist Alice Fletcher was charged with allotting Nez Perce lands. According to Joan Mark in her book, “A Stranger in Her Native Land: Alice Fletcher and the American Indians,” the full allotting party included Fletcher, surveyor Edson Briggs and his wife, Nez Perce interpreter James Stuart (or Stewart) and his wife, Fletcher’s companion Jane Gay, and an “ever-changing gang of four Nez Perce chainmen who ran out the boundary lines.”

References:

Mark, Joan. A Stranger in Her Native Land: Alice Fletcher and the American Indians . University of Nebraska Press. Lincoln and London. 1988.

Otis, D.S. The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands . University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1973.

Stanton Gilbert Fisher (1840-1915) was an American pioneer best known as a civilian scout for the United States Army during the 1877 Nez Perce War. Fisher was born on July 10, 1840 in Jefferson County, New York. He and his family moved to a farm in Dodge County, Wisconsin in 1850. In 1860, Fisher – a jack of all trades – moved to California to try his hand at his first career, mining.

In 1867, Fisher bought an interest in a trading station at Ross Fork, Idaho, which was absorbed by the Fort Hall reservation the following year. Fisher worked as trader and postmaster for two years before selling the outpost and then participating in the Native Americans’ annual buffalo hunt at the Yellowstone River in Montana. Upon returning to Idaho, he was hired to pursue a band of Indians that had attacked several miners. While tracking the Indians, Fisher contracted typhoid fever, which rendered him partially deaf for the rest of his life. Within a few years, he again sold the Fort Hall trading post and took up ranching. In 1875, he married Sarah A. Peck, with whom he had four children.

The Nez Perce War of 1877 took Fisher away from his ordinary life and swept him into the excitement of war and fame. He put together a company of “civilian scouts,” of which he was appointed chief, and led them across Idaho and Montana in pursuit of the Nez Perce Indians. His experience with Indians aided him greatly in this endeavor – in fact, many of his scouts were Indians themselves. The military relied heavily upon him and his men and for the rest of their lives, the scouts received great honors for the work they did.

Fisher returned to Fort Hall in 1882. In 1883, he purchased his old trading post and moved his family back to Ross Fork, though for some time he retained a trading post he had founded in Pocatello, Idaho. He was once again appointed postmaster. Despite these investments, he continued to travel in pursuit of work; in 1888, he kept a journal of his journey to a mining camp in Custer County, Idaho.

In 1889, Fisher was appointed Indian Agent for the Fort Hall reservation, a responsibility he fulfilled while serving as Deputy Sheriff for Bingham County until 1895, when he was appointed Indian Agent for the Nez Perce Indians at Fort Lapwai. In 1899, he departed again to pursue work as a miner in Grangeville, where he lived for the remainder of his life until his death on July 29, 1915.

Lee Morse was born Lena Corinne Taylor on November 30, 1897 in Portland, Oregon. Raised in Idaho, the ninth of twelve children, she married Elmer Morse in 1915 and gave birth to son Jack one year later. She began her professional performing career in 1918, and was noticed by musical comedy producer Will King after a performance at the 1920 Democratic Convention in San Francisco. Her ensuing career led to separation from her husband. She made her first Broadway appearance in 1923 in the revue “Artists and Models.” One year later, she began her recording career with Pathé Perfect Records. In 1927, she transferred to the prestigious Columbia record label. In 1935, after a case of strep throat which nearly ended her singing career, she and second husband Bob Downey opened up a nightclub in Texas. She kept a low-profile career, appearing occasionally at night clubs through the 1940s. Lee Morse unexpectedly died on December 16, 1954.

Works Cited

1) Lee Morse: Echoes of a Songbird, “Her Story,” Lee Morse.com (accessed January 17, 2012).

2) Larkin, Colin. “Morse, Lee.” Encyclopedia of Popular Music, edited by Colin Larkin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 16.