50 years ago in Expo history: Native groups celebrate Indigenous culture on Columbus Day with Aztec dance troup

Expo ’74’s celebration of Columbus Day was ignored in one area of the fair: the Native American Earth exhibit.

A Gros Ventre and Assiniboine tribal member said Natives don’t exactly hold anything against Columbus.

“If it hadn’t been him, it had to be somebody,” he said.

But neither were they inclined to celebrate. Instead, they staged a well-attended performance by the Xochigetzal Dancers, an Aztec dance troupe from Mexico.

In other Expo news, the jumping-frog demonstration at the Folklife Festival area was postponed a few days.

The reason: Blll Steed, the “frog professor” from Sacramento, had to move his trip to Spokane back to the next weekend.

The Spokesman-Review quashed rumors that the delay was because “some of Steed’s frogs croaked.”

From 100 years ago: Mica Peak was “the moonshine manufacturing center of the Inland Empire.”

All night long, officers said, cars from all over the region converge on the mountain to carry off moonshine loads and later “drive into Spokane and right down Main Avenue in broad daylight.”

“Riflemen guard the trails” on the mountain, and women “sit guard on the porches of their cabins with shotguns on their knees,” the Spokane Chronicle wrote.

Law-abiding farmers at the foot of the mountain were threatened with mayhem and arson if they complained.