Peter Mahnokini, one of the mere 200 full-blooded Blackfoot Native Americans left, kept his culture alive through his creativity.Peter Mahnokini, one of the mere 200 full-blooded Blackfoot Native Americans left in 1998, kept his culture alive through his creativity.

25 YEARS AGO

Sept. 15, 1998

Peter Mahnokini, one of the mere 200 full-blooded Blackfoot Native Americans left, kept his culture alive through his creativity.

Mahnokini, 61, was raised on the Montana Blackfoot Indian Reservation and learned how to make traditional crafts from his relatives.

He had since expanded his artisan range to include dreamcatchers as well as rawhide drums and shields. The dreamcatchers were “an old tradition established by Aztec Indians,” he said. “My people believe that your good dreams flow through the feathers and center bead to be remembered. Trapped in the web are the bad dreams which disappear with the morning light.”

Mahnokini, along with his wife Sandy, owned the Mahnokini’s shop in Irrigon where they sold antiques, Indian crafts and stained glass. The couple also offered hypnosis and would soon be conducting cultural lessons to those interested in Native American traditions.

Mahnokini’s children joined him in celebrating their culture, too. “Two of my daughters are into traditional dance,” he said. “They make their own rawhide drums.”

Not only visually appealing, Mahnokini’s unique crafts carried the significant values of

tradition and identity.

50 YEARS AGO

Sept. 13, 1973

Hermiston’s three-man Wild Horse Race team had their eyes set on back-to-back championships at the Pendleton Round-Up.

Consisting of Roger Bounds, Jim Godier and Gary Kowalski, this team had achieved much success with little experience and time.

“No one but Roger had entered a Wild Horse Race before,” said Godier. “I told him if I ever had the chance, I’d like to give it a try.” His chance came the very next year, when Bounds convinced Godier and Kowalski to form a team to compete in the Pendleton Round-Up.

In this race, participants had to obtain control of a horse released from a chute, saddle and mount it. Once they managed to do that, they raced the horse across the finish line. Despite the event’s difficulty, the men placed second in their first competition together.

The following year, the Hermiston trio won both of their races in the 1972 Round-Up, beating the acclaimed National Canadian Champion Wild Horse Race team.

75 YEARS AGO

Sept. 16, 1948

School officials and students alike were looking forward to the three new courses added to Hermiston High school’s curriculum.

The new speech class was to be taught by Mary S. Ritter, focusing on areas such as debate and oratory. Ritter also planned to have her students enter all speech competitions in the area and join the Oregon High School Speech League.

Walter E. Tanner would head the vocational agriculture course, which included metalwork, studying livestock and crops and a project to be worked on outside of school.

The last new course offered was driving education, with J.R. O’Conner directing classroom work while Mr. Ellingston supervised the actual driving portion. Since this class only had room for 20 students, it was scheduled for just one semester to enable 40 students to become safer drivers.

90 YEARS AGO

Sept. 14, 1933

While fall brings in a multitude of wonderful entities such as pumpkin spice, corn mazes and football games, the season is also notorious for diseases.

In an attempt to reduce the amount of students going home sick, Umatilla County Nurse Mrs. Hinegardener and Dr. A.W. Christopherson, city health officer, made arrangements for the annual diphtheria vaccine at Hermiston schools. Diphtheria is not just like any other common cold, but targets the respiratory system and can lead to swollen neck glands that make breathing very difficult.

Like the previous year, the vaccine would be available to all students with a small accompanying charge to cover material costs. If there was sufficient interest, then tests and vaccines for disease such as smallpox and tuberculosis would be offered later.

All were encouraged to consider the opportunity and reminded that such preventative action would reduce the chances of outbreaks and epidemics, not to mention a great deal of schoolwork to be made up.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been changed to reflect a correction. The original version had all four historical entries with a date of Sept. 8, 1988.]