The Sydney morning Herald
Wednesday, May 16, 2007 Hubbard!
Curiously, officials of the Blackfoot Nation, who never practiced the act of blood brotherhood, do not recall anyone called "Old Tom", the name appearing nowhere in the tribal scriptures.
http://blogs.smh.com.au/thedailytruth/a ... bbard.html

Staking a Claim to Blood Brotherhood (Sunday, 24 June 1990, page A38:5)
As L. Ron Hubbard told it, he was 4 years old when a medicine man named "Old Tom" made him a "blood brother" of the Blackfeet Indians of Montana, providing the inspiration for the Scientology founder's first novel, "Buckskin Brigades." But one expert on the tribe doesn't buy Hubbard's account. Historian Hugh Dempsey is associate director of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Canada. He has extensively researched the tribe, of which his wife is a member. He said that blood brothers are "an old Hollywood idea" and that the act was "never done among the Blackfeet." As for "Old Tom," Dempsey has informed doubts. For one thing, he said, the name does not appear in a 1907 Blackfeet enrollment register containing the names of hundreds of tribal members. For another, "It's the kind of name, for that period (1915), that would practically not exist among the Blackfeet," he said. "At that time, Blackfeet did not have Christian names."
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shel ... 90-1e.html



Soderqvist1: isn’t strange that this picture is in The Glenbow Museum?

Alouette Canada
http://recherche.alouettecanada.ca/resu ... +desc&&p=4

Soderqvist1: if you scroll-down here below you will find a Picture on the Old Tom, and a new picture on Commander Thompson, which I haven’t seen before!

ERBzine
http://www.erbzine.com/mag23/2342.html

Old Tom appears to have been an "imaginary friend" of four year old Ron. Perhaps "Old Tom" was actually one of Ron's BT's that he learned to communicate with? Many children have and communicate with imaginary friends. Scientology could explain this by saying these are all friendly BT's who live in their stomachs.

****
Soderqvist2: Why does the ERB Fanzine Peter has cited omit any mention of LRH's second marriage to Sara Northrup? http://www.erbzine.com/mag23/2344.html

She accused him of being insane and violent in the divorce papers. LRH reportedly asked Sara to kill herself. This news made the L.A. Times and other papers. The ERB Fanzine is obviously a Cult project as it borrows extensively from a CoS website and has not been given a Cease & Desist. It is noteworthy that Scientology is working to purge Ron's marriage to Sara Northrup when there is an abundance of legal evidence to show that the two were married and then endured an ugly divorce.

As for Old Tom: LRH never pursued the matter of proving his "Blood Brother" claim during his own lifetime. By 1952, Ron had the means and motive to go to the Blackfeet Tribe and establish his claim. He never chose to do so at any time during his life. Ron died in 1986 and so had decades to establish the "Old Tom" claim or have his staff do so. LRH had his staff petition the US Navy to award LRH ~22 WWII combat medals. The US Navy denied the request. This shows that LRH tried to get unearned medals in order to establish his patently false WWII claims. However, Ron never sent his staff to get his Blood Brother claim established. IMO, this means that he knew the Black Feet would not so honor him because they knew it was a false claim -- as did the Navy when it came to Ron's claim for war medals.

Long after Ron's death, in 2008 in fact, Galaxy Press appears to have paid a member of the tribe to get LRH a Blackfeet war bonnet, an act that was denounced as fraudulent by senior members of the Tribe.


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Soderqvist1: I don’t have to say anything about what you have said above!
Except that Old Tom seems at least to have existed as evinced in the Alouette Canada link to the Glenbow Museum, the picture is documented there. Hubbard has probably seen him there in Montana back then, but it doesn’t prove their alleged friendship!
For God’s sake, it requires more evidence than photography on an old Indian medicine man in order to prove such a claim as Hubbard has made!

Dear me no. One webpage that has Hubbard on it is an unlikely reason for diligently producing over thirteen years nine thousand (!) others that do not! It is an 'official' Burroughs website, approved by ERB, Inc.

Yes, out of ignorance they reprint material from the Hubbard hagiography with permission. It is unfortunate, but there are still some SF writers and fans in denial over Hubbard's other career as a cult leader.

Old Hubbs lied all the time and was crazy as f@ck

Relevant here would be the stories about how Hubbard was not really a Hubbard, his father was adopted by a family named Hubbard. Also, Hubbard told some stories about his mother killing a (his?) dog with a shovel, and his sad, neglected and lonely childhood.

I think little Lafayette lived in his imagination, and read a lot and made the stories he read his own. "Make it your own!" is a recurring theme in scientology.

Remember that novel where several adopted children were found to be clones and were all subjected to the same life events that Hitler experienced in a "scientific" experiment to recreate another Hitler? I think it was a movie too.

Wish I had time right now, but I will do the research later if there isn't any one else here who did it or has it at hand.

Hubbard made up most of his stories about himself, and the Blackfoot story is a very good example.

There are many other well documented LRH lies about himself here on http://www.clambake.org and in several well researched books.

I suggest starting with: http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/bfm/bfmconte.htm

You are referring to "The Boys From Brazil" by Ira Levin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_from_Brazil_(novel)

The movie in '76 had the incredible cast of Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Mason plus some other excellent actors!


I figure a version with little L Ron's would be "The Liars from Uranus" (or "from their anus" could be more appropriate)

Well, Peter, you've done it again!

The comments on the 'Old Tom' photo indicate that it was taken by T.J. Hileman in Montana in 1924.

LRH would have been around twelve years old back then. This doesn't tell us whether he knew old Tom or not, but they were contemporary and both in Montana.

There are two different native American tribes known as Blackfeet, perhaps the confusion stems from this. We do not know whether 'Old Tom' was of the tribe from southern Alberta and Montana, or the Sioux Blackfeet of the Lakota nation, who live in the Dakotas, just east of Montana.

About the photographer; Tomar Jacob Hileman (1882-1945) moved to Kalispell, Montana, in 1911. His earliest photos date from 1924, the year of the 'Old Tom' portrait. He photographed local celebrities, Blood and Piegan (Pikuni) people, and Glacier National Park in Montana.

http://www.hockadaymuseum.org/Permanent ... ileman.htm

Here's a splendid example of you making stuff up.

Please explain how there can be a dated and named photograph of Ron's 'imaginary friend,' taken by a noted photographer (TJ Hileman), of Piegan and Blood Indians, in a museum collection in Canada.

Hugh Dempsey is associate director of the Glenbow Museum, and evidently did not know that there was a photo of Old Tom in the Glenbow archives.

Let's examine some of Dempsey's other claims:

Dempsey maintains that Blackfoot Indians in Montana, circa 1915, would not have had Christian names like Tom.

The Alouette photos include a shot of James White Calf, South Piegan policeman, dated 1900. James is a Christian name.

There is also a pic titled 'Group of Piegan', which shows John English, Johnny Crow Eagle, and Philip Big Swan, dated 1913. All have Christian names.

A photo titled 'Anglican Synod, Calgary Alberta' features Frank Big Old Man, Silas Wolfcollar, and William Bear Chief, among others. It is dated 1914. Silas, Frank and William are all Christian names.

I'm sort of wondering now if there really is such a person as Hugh Dempsey, and if he really is associate director of the Glenbow Museum, how can he make such claims as he does. Did Joel Sappell and Welkos of the LA Times make up the quote from Dempsey? Or does Dempsey know about as much about the Blackfoot as Swift knows about CoS?

A reminder, "ad hoc ergo prompter hoc" is a logical fallacy. Look it up.

Regardless, the the blood brother ceremony, according to many different sources, never existed among the Blackfoot and is the stuff of Hollywood legend. It is still a really cool idea, and would make a great embellishment to a childhood that Ron probably found rather boring.

Ron's mother, emotionally distant. Ron's dad, always moving around. We can be sure that Ron's childhood was emotionally difficult, to say the least. What creates a type of personality that constantly fabricates or exaggerates so many details of his personal life? Why would he feel the need to do such a thing? What makes it even more interesting is the fact that he really did demonstrate some extraordinary things. Would he really need to invent tall tales to impress people? Yet, he did.

Some research showed me that Dr. Hugh Aylmer Dempsey was honored by the American Society of Archivists in 2001 for his work at Glenbow Museum. In 2008 he was referred to as 'Chief Curator Emeritus' of the Glenbow Museum.

http://www.aupress.ca/books/120142/eboo ... butors.pdf

Dempsey was born in 1929, so he is indeed elderly. Emeritus is a title given to a retired professor, bishop or other professional.

Why would he have given misleading info about Old Tom to journalists Sappell and Welkos? Was the LA Times quote even his? Did Dr. Dempsey know that there was a photo of Old Tom in the Glenbow archives all along, that would one day resurface?

It's not exactly a smoking gun, but it is intriguing.

Are we debating the existence of Old Tom here? He seems real enough to me. I'm sure he must have been a fascinating character. I also saw that blood brother thing on TV one time. It was really cool. Too bad so many Blackfoots insist that the tribe had never done it.

I remember the big DM events with the LRH bios and how LRH learned to "tell the lesser tale" because people simply would not believe the truth. Maybe Old Tom was some wise shaman who recognized the child LRH as the reincarnated Buddha and simply could not pass up the opportunity to do the blood brother ceremony, which he had conveniently learned from another tribe. Surely this is possible, just like how LRH tamed a bucking bronco at the age of three. He was just a really powerful being.

All great beings suffer from insecurity from time to time. Hence, we have LRH bravely attempting to cure himself of these negative emotions through the Affirmations.

Dr. Hugh Dempsey, when interviewed in 1990 by LA Times reporters Sappell and Welkos, claimed that the Blackfoot did not do the blood brothers rite, so LRH and Old Tom could not have been blood brothers.

According to the New World Encyclopedia, the Blackfoot consisted of the Piegan [Pikuni], Blood, Sarcee, Bearspaw and other tribes.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Blackfoot

John Laurie was made a blood brother of various Blackfoot tribes including the Blood, Sarcee and Stoneys.

http://www.albertasource.ca/lawcases/co ... laurie.htm

There are other examples of blood brothership among both the Montana Blackfoot and Dakota Blackfoot. So it was never just 'a Hollywood myth.'