USK, Wash. – Louise Bowman has achieved regional notoriety for her beadwork, especially beaded baby boards. Bowman is a Kalispel elder living in the northwest corner of Washington state. Without her, and now her daughters, the art of beading would have nearly disappeared from this tribe.
Bowman and her daughter Wilma Cullooyah recently sat down to talk about beading, Kalispel history and to show some of her baby boards.
At the age of 78, Bowman still remembers the first baby board she made.
”I started beading about 3 months before Christy [one of her eight daughters] was born.” ”I had to rush, but I got it done in time,” she laughed. That was over 40 years ago.
She learned to bead by watching her aunt and her sister Rose, now deceased. ”I just watched them. Then when I started, they sort of showed me. They probably thought I was a pest,” she said.
She will bead most anything and makes coin purses, medallions, moccasins and other items, but it’s the baby boards for which she’s best known. When asked if she had any idea the number she had made, she responded, ”Gee, I don’t know,” but Cullooyah commented it had to be over 100. ”I made one for each of my kids,” Bowman noted. She gets lots of orders from friends, but also many orders from people who have heard of her and seen her work.
She recently sold one to the Museum of American Culture in Spokane which has an outstanding collection of Indian items. A second baby board is now finished and ready to go to the MAC as well.
Bowman ties down every second bead, something she says few beaders in the area still do. She normally uses size 10 or 11 beads on the baby boards and utilizes both cut beads and the round seed beads. She also does her own designs, creating a vast array of different images including flowers, birds and butterflies or even a teddy bear. If she’s really working steadily, she can finish one in about two months. It generally takes three months, though. Laughing, she added, ”I’m getting slower now I think.”
Much of her work is on commercial leather due to both price and availability. A young man in the community is now doing brain tanning again, so she’s starting to use more of that.
Bowman taught beading classes many years ago and Cullooyah recently found a newspaper article about that beading class. Cullooyah, who is now 45, was just a small child at that time. Thankfully, all of Bowman’s daughters took up beading and all bead a little bit. Only one other woman on the reservation, Darlene Auld, does a lot of beading, but has only done a few baby boards.
Cullooyah noted that she and some of her sisters recently got together.
”We were talking about how mom is so famous for her baby boards, so we’d better pick up on it. You know, it’s our responsibility. Mom’s been teaching us how to put the baby boards together. Christy is now making her first one. Karen is going to make her first one.”
She is now teaching beading and brings her mother in to assist, keeping the art form in good shape. Cullooyah’s daughter is now doing a lot of beading and getting orders as well.
Bowman can remember her early years on the reservation, how travel was mostly by wagon to town or church. There were just a few families after they’d been divided with some going to Montana.
She didn’t know any English when she started in school, speaking only the Kalispel language. Now she’s one of only six remaining Kalispel people who are completely fluent in the language. It’s now being taught and more people are learning, but they don’t have the fluency of those few elders.
Bowman also remembers that small children were wrapped in cradleboards. ”They were all wrapped tight when they were small, till they were 5 or 6 months old.”
Cullooyah added, ”Not a lot of people wrap their babies tight any more. They don’t wrap them the way we were taught by mom. She taught us to wrap and that’s how I wrap. When I baby-sit my grandchildren, they get wrapped!”
They get wrapped in a baby board made by Bowman. And thanks to Bowman and her daughters, more cradle boards will be made in the Kalispel style for future generations.