History trip
Re-enactors visit area senior center

By Johna Strickland
Argus Observer
Friday, August 15, 2008 10:37 AM PDT

Sonny James, played by William Tyner, 14, Nyssa, tells his audience at the Nyssa Senior Center about his life as a cowhand in the 1800s. James is a composite character William Tyner’s father, Michael Tyner, crafted from stories real people lived. The Tyner family did a series of impressions during its show Wednesday.

Nyssa — Horatio “Sonny” Armbrewster James quit his job with Pete French after a week.

“I told Mr. French that I was a cowboy and not a sailor,” Sonny James, played by William Tyner, 14, told the audience gathered in the Nyssa Senior Center Wednesday.

With the state of Oregon selling swamp land for $1.25 under the swamp and overflow act of 1870, rancher French set out to claim the “soggy” ground.

“If you could row a boat across the land, it qualified for sale under the new act. ... He sat there (in the row boat) all week smokin’ a big cigar while I rowed. He said it wasn’t legal unless I rowed. So I rowed ... I didn’t mind him figgerrin’ how to get around the government, I just hated the rowin’. Ya see, the ol’ cuss had mounted his boat on a wagon,” James told the audience.

In his land-grabbing schemes, French also dammed streams to create “swamp” land, Michael Tyner, 50, Nyssa, said.

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Wednesday morning James met up with William Tyner’s parents, Michael and April; his brothers, Jake and Benjamin; and friend Donovan Durfee as they portrayed characters in Oregon and Idaho history to about 25 people at the center.

While Jake Tyner, 17, and Durfee, 14, filled in the backdrop of Fort Boise’s trading post as the company clerk and harness repairer, respectively, the other Tyners took to the stage to deliver memorized monologues as their characters. All dressed in costumes similar to what the people portrayed would have worn.

Though each character was a composite of stories and laced with a little historically accurate fiction, the people who lived — and rowed with French — were real.

“Like, Jo Monahan that girl who went out west and changed her identity, she was a real person,” William Tyner said. Monahan ran a ranch that employed James for a month. James was the finale for a performance that began with Michael Tyner, or Francois Payette, who managed the Hudson’s Bay Company at Fort Boise in the mid-1800s. Payette told the audience about his career with the trading company and the people who passed through Fort Boise. John C. Freemont came by as he mapped the Oregon Trail for the government and missionary Narcissa Whitman traveled through in the 1830s as she headed to Oregon to minister to Native Americans.

He also talked about the currency of his time: beavers. Furs brought to trade at the post and items sold by the company were assigned values in terms of beaver pelts. A striped wool blanket was worth 31⁄2 beavers, he said, showing the price tag — 31⁄2 stripes lines embroidered with thick black yarn on the cream-colored wool.

Benjamin Tyner, 14, and William’s twin, arrived on stage next as Wells Fargo Special Agent A.J. Sheppard.

“I track down blaggards of all sorts that have done the company wrong,” Sheppard declared before telling about the time he foiled would-be stage robbers.

“I took all the cash and notes out of the strong box and wrapped ’em up in Seth’s (the stage driver) coat. He sat on it like it was his seat cushion,” he said, adding he filled the box with rocks.

“I’ll betcha they was surprised to find the rocks in the box, but even more surprised at the hornets’ nest we put in there,” he said.

Oregon Trail traveler Ginny Tanner, played by April Tyner, 44, followed Sheppard to the fort, seeking help for her husband who had broken his leg. At the fort, the fictional Tanner found a letter from her cousin, the real Amelia Stewart Knight.

Compiled from diaries Knight kept as her family journeyed the Oregon Trail, Tanner interjected her own historically-based memories of life on the trail.

“Some of the other women snicker at me because I make such a fuss when we cross these rivers, but I do not want one of my children to become a bump in the road,” Tanner read from Knight’s letter.

After the program, Michael Tyner said casualties of the westward movement were often buried in the trail ahead of the wagon train. The next day the wagons and animals would pack the dirt down to keep animals from raiding the grave, he said.

The Tyners, who recently formed Tyner Historical Enterprises, or THE, gather the information they present from books, Web sites, diaries, signboards along the highway and from talking to people about their family’s story. After six years of sharing their knowledge and artifacts at Ontario’s global village festival, they formed THE.

“We envision this becoming a program that would be invited into classrooms, doing school assemblies, performing for other civic organizations,” Michael Tyner said. “Eventually, I hope to see us doing shows for museums and other events across the area. The boys are hoping that we can travel a lot doing what we do.”

To prepare for Wednesday’s performance — their first doing character impressions — Michael and April Tyner called the twins A.J. and Sonny, scripts were rehearsed and the family went on a series of field trips, Michael Tyner said. One to Keeney Pass to walk in the ruts of the Oregon Trail. Another to Parma’s replica of Fort Boise and a stop at Starvation Camp south of Nyssa. William and April Tyner said they plan to add more stories to their current scripts and develop new characters. Their next stop will be Museum Alive Day Sept. 27 at Four Rivers Cultural Center.