Pete Camino

The Billings Gazette published an excellent article on Pete Camino, sort of an icon for the Basque community in the USA, here it is:

Basque sheep rancher clings to tradition

By ED KEMMICK
Of The Gazette Staff

BUFFALO - Any way you look at it, Pete Camino is an unusual man. He is one of a dwindling number of people in the U.S. who still speak Basque, the language of the fiercely independent people of mysterious origin who inhabit the western Pyrenees of France and Spain.

He is also a Wyoming sheep rancher at a time when they are becoming as rare as Basque speakers.

And he is something of a movie star. A showing of "The Last Link," which chronicles Camino's journey back to the land of his parents, will be a highlight of the Sheep Wagon Festival in Buffalo this weekend.

The Bighorn Basque Club will host the event, which is the annual convention and festival of the North American Basque Organization. There will be dances, concerts, a bike race, a sheep-wagon parade, Basque athletic competitions and lots of Basque food.

Camino is aware of the role he'll play during the festival.

"I'm the grand old man," he said. "It's hell getting old."

Camino was born in Buffalo in 1918 to John and Marie Camino, both natives of Basque country, sometimes called Basqueland. Pete Camino's wife, Genevieve, said Pete's father, like so many other Basques, was brought over to Wyoming by John Esponda, who used to be known locally as "King of the Basques." Esponda's brother, Jean, was actually the first Basque to settle in the Buffalo area, but Jean soon returned to the old country and Esponda stayed on to help build what would be a thriving Basque community.

The Camino ranch was on Sand Creek, about four miles northwest of Buffalo. Like all the other sheep ranchers then, in Buffalo and the old country, the Caminos took their flocks into the mountains during the summer, trailing them on foot and on horseback.

Pete Camino said his family used to take 1,200 head of sheep up into the Bighorn National Forest in what is now the Cloud Peak Wilderness. His father usually hired relatives of his - old bachelors for the most part - to work as herders. Camino's job as camp tender was to deliver supplies to the sheepherders. He'd go into the mountains by pickup and then ride the last 10 miles or so on horseback.

He'd go back and forth all summer, helping out on the ranch most of the time and going up to the mountains once or twice a week. He spoke Basque with the herders, tough men who, with .30-30 rifles at their sides, "just shot the hell out of" coyotes and any other predators that came after the sheep, Camino said.

Basque spoken here

Camino's family moved into Buffalo when he was 7 so he and his younger sister, Anita, could go to school. Genevieve said her husband spoke only Basque at home and that when he started school, "he couldn't talk English, so he spent two years in first grade." Camino tells his own story about Genevieve, who is not Basque. Years ago, a Basque sheepherder who was working for Pete Camino said he'd teach Genevieve Basque if she'd teach him English.

"He got to talking English," Camino said, "but she never learned Basquo. That's quite a lingo." Around Buffalo, "Basquo" (pronounced "bask-o") is commonly used to denote both the language and Basque people.

In 1948, Camino and his father became partners on a ranch on what is known as the Tisdale Divide, about six miles south of Buffalo. Camino has been there ever since, with children and grandchildren now scattered around the area on neighboring ranches.

There was a steady influx of Basques to the U.S. in the 1940s and '50s, many of them escaping the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War (1937-39) and World War II and the collapsed economy that followed the war. But as the sheep industry declined in the U.S. and the economy of the Basque provinces became one of the strongest in Europe, immigration slowly dwindled.

A combination of factors hammered the sheep industry over the years, Camino said. Prices for lamb and wool declined steadily, and at the same time it became more difficult to deal with predators, some of which were listed as threatened or endangered species.

Then, with the drop in immigration, herders became harder and harder to find. Camino said the last shepherd from the old country probably came to Buffalo 30 years ago. A huge blow to the industry was the late-spring blizzard of 1984. It killed thousands of ewes and newborn lambs, and few sheep ranchers in Johnson County, of which Buffalo is the county seat, survived the disaster.

"I'm about the only one in Johnson County running sheep," Camino said.

That combination - Camino's Basque heritage and his status as a dying breed of agriculturalist - is what led Tim Kahn to make a movie about him.

In love with the land

Kahn, a native of Northern California who has taught French in Vermont for more than 30 years, discovered Basqueland, as well as the closely related culture of the Bearn region of France, as a college junior studying abroad in 1964-65. He fell in love with the landscape and the people and hoped to write a book about the region someday.

He and his wife lived there one summer, and they returned to France at least once a year for many years, amassing hundreds of photographs and hours and hours of interviews. The book never got written, but six years ago, Tim Kahn's son Ben, a budding filmmaker, suggested creating a documentary on the Basque and Bearn. The movie was going to focus only on the old country until, by chance, Tim Kahn learned there were a lot of Basque and Bearnaise immigrants in the wine country of Northern California.

He started asking around, wondering whether there were any Basques still following the sheepherding culture, when he was told about an old sheepman in the mountains of northern Wyoming. Things moved quickly after that. Tim Kahn talked to Pete Camino by phone and then traveled to Buffalo, where Camino took him around town, introducing him to many of Buffalo's Basque elders.

"I called Ben that day and said, 'Oh, my Lord, I can see these people on the screen,' " Tim Kahn said.

They decided the movie would look at loss - the loss of a culture and a way of life here and in the old country. The film opens with scenes of one of the last movements of sheep on foot in a valley of the Pyrenees, while Pete Camino represents one of the last of a breed in the U.S.

The movie took another twist when Camino expressed an interest in finally going back to see the land where his parents were born. Kahn raised the money for the trip, and in 2001 Pete and Genevieve, accompanied by several children and grandchildren, went to Basque country for the first time.

It was all the more poignant that their trip coincided with a mass reunion of Caminos in Arneguy, the village in southern France where Camino's mother was born. They also traveled to the birthplace of Camino's father, on the other side of the mountains in Spain.

Sheep for milk, horses for meat

Camino, ever the practical sheepman, was most interested to find that in the old country, the Basques raised sheep almost exclusively for their milk, which they used to make cheese. He was also surprised to learn that they raised horses for their meat.

Through Tim Kahn's connection with Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, Kahn got in touch with Willie Nelson, the country music star and longtime advocate of family farms. Nelson ended up narrating the film, free of charge, and "The Last Link" was completed in 2003. The movie premiered in Buffalo that year and had its European premiere in the Parliament chambers of Navarre, France.

Kahn and Camino will be on hand for another showing of it this weekend during the festival, Friday at 4 p.m. in the Buffalo Theatre.

Camino's opinion on the movie is characteristically matter of fact. "I was real surprised," he said. "I didn't think it would work out that damn good."

Camino said he wouldn't mind going back to Basque country one more time, but meanwhile he does his small part to maintain some aspects of Basque culture in Buffalo. He still speaks Basque with a few old friends - "When they get to talking Basquo, they're just showing off," Genevieve says - and he still makes lukanka, a Basque sausage that Genevieve described as "hotter than blazes and full of garlic."

And of course he still raises sheep, though no shepherds watch over them in the mountains anymore. They are hauled by semitrailer to fenced-in pastures in the Bighorns.

It's not a bad time to be a sheep rancher, Camino said. Although the land around Buffalo is drier than he's ever seen it, prices for lambs and wool are strong, and two of his sons are in line to carry on the family tradition.

"We had some cows, but I sold 'em," Camino said. "I'm not a cowboy. I just like sheep, I guess."

I strongly recomend viewing the documentary "The Last Link", it is an amazing labour of love by the film makers involved in the project.

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