Department of the Interior
Office of Indian Affairs Files
File No.8411-1934-301
Indian Claims Commission
Docket No.279-D
Plaintiff’s Ex. MF-4481
Babb, Montana.
Blackfeet Indian Reservation
February 2, 1934
Honorable John Collier,
Commissioner of Indian Affairs,
United States Department of the Interior,
Washington, D.C.
Dear Sir:
Enclosed are copies of two letters that I wrote to the Blackfeet Indian Office here at
Browning, Montana. Forrest R. Stone is the Agent, and John Dressen is Supervisor of our tribal timber
land and also has charge of grazing permits here lately, and is under the supervision of the agent.
These two men did nothing concerning my damage claim, and they pigeon-holed my registered
letter dated August 26, 1933, until an Inspector from your office (as I am told by Tom Aubrey) by
the name of Mr. Nyce, came here to Browning to inspect sheep damage claims. He came across many
old damage claims that had been pidgeon-holed there for I don’t know how long. As I understand it
Mr. Nyce appointed Tom Aubrey to go out among the people and rewrite the damage claims for your
office. That is how I came to write the second letter, the one witnessed by Tom Aubrey, dated
November 10,1933.
I suppose my first letter was a bit impertinent, but I knew for old experience that Forrest Stone
would take no action against the Frye Sheep Company. I was merely warning him that I would go
over his head if he failed to act, and that is why I took my time about writing your office because
I wanted to give him plenty of time to fall down on the job.
These letters are self explanatory, but that is not what I want to write you about
mostly. I want to tell you about the general damages that have been done to us, by the
big sheep corporations, Joe Sherburne and our last three Indian Agents.
I am one half Blackfeet and one half White. My allotment number is 1641. My
mother was a full-blood Blackfeet.
Not so long ago we were quite well off and contented. We had cattle, horses and
Liveable homes, and had only one natural practical resource, that is the wild grasses that
grow here in abundance during the short summer seasons. Bunch grass grew knee-deep
in places and it made plenty of winter feed for stock. The early and late frosts and short
summer seasons make this country unfit for any thing but stock raising. A garden and small
patches of grain can be grown in a few sheltered spots on each ranch, just enough to keep
each family going, and that is about all that can be done in the way of agriculture. That
means this is not an agricultural country. It is semi-arid in most places, that means
that it takes a lot of land to support each family by stock raising.
White wheat farmers just off the reservation are all broke. They cannot raise
enough to get back their seed. How can Indians accomplish what trained white farmers
fail to accomplish under bad weather conditions. So that wild hay and stock raising our
only resource. (this does not include oil which has amounted to nothing so far yet in
spite of all the noise made about it.) There was no sheep.
Then there came a killing winter in 1919, 1920. Stock all over the state of
Montana froze to death, and big cattle kings all over the state went broke. We Blackfeet
Indians were no exceptions and we all went broke too. Even the horses died in clusters.
There! That was the beginning of our disaster. At the same time a new Indian
Agent came in to run our affairs. Horace G. Wilson, was the culprit. He immediately
laid us open to the mercy of the big out side Sheep Corporations by putting our land up
for rent, allotted and unallotted at ten cents an acre.
Sheep from all over the country came here on a dogtrot, because they could get
cheap grazing, cheaper than stealing it as they call it, and renting good grazing land was
certainly cheaper than owning the land, when rent is “only” ten cents an acre. We were
broke, hard up and many of us had to accept the ten cents an acre to keep from immediate
starvation, others protested for a higher rate, but Horace Wilson said we could not expect
higher rent as the U.S. Department of the Interior had set a value and made a “ruling
of ten cents an acre”, on our land, and we ought to be satisfied with that. Let me say
right here that if the Interior Department is guilty of such a “ruling”, of setting such a
low value on our grazing rent, it is guilty of a gross injustice and a nice systematic way
of reducing us to poverty and rags.
But we do not believe the Interior Department is guilty of such ruling, because,
we like to believe that the Chief had more heart than that. What we really do believe is
that the big sheepmen, Joe Sherburne, and Horace Wilson brought pressure to bear
against the Department for the ruling of ten cents and they got it.
A few years previous to this time, in 1910 to be exact, our land was allotted
to us, and one far seeing Congressman kindly had a law passed, where by we were
not to receive patents to our land until twenty-five years had expired, or where one
was eligible a patent could be procured by a written application with the consent of
the Agent. This I guess he had in mind would give us poor ignorant savages time to
learn the whitemans complex way of living, something about law, how to pay our taxes
and why, and how to make a living from the soil, which is something new to us. This
Congressman’s intentions were good if they had been carried out as intended. But
like most laws it was full of loop-holes, and it had no teeth for loop-hole “crawlers”.
About 1918 and 1919 Cato Sells was Commissioner of Indian Affairs. He
was from Texas and had no use for Indians. He conceived the brilliant idea of forcing
all Indians on their own as soon as possible. A Commission of six men, called The
Competency Commission, was appointed to pass on the competency of each individual
Indian. How can strangers in Washington judge our competency? In our case those
who owned valuable land, or owed Joe Sherburne a debt were pronounced eligible.
Many received patents that never should have been called eligible. Illiterate old
Indians, and some half-wits, who could not read, write, nor speak the English language,
much less know any thing about White man’s land laws, were picked as competent to
receive patents to their land. One man told me here not long ago, that he received his
while yet a minor.
A Commission of Chinese Laundry men picked to judge competency could have
done as well.
Many of us protested against getting our patents, but Horace Wilson told us
that we had to accept them and no way out. In those days an Agents word was the law.
None of us relished the idea of going to jail, so we grudgingly accepted the patents as
we were sent for. Ninety per cent of us were totally ignorant regarding land laws, and
it was a great calamity for us to have the patents forced on us against our wishes,
because we sensed our short-comings and were left in the dark concerning the working
order of things, until it was too late.
It was not very long until the taxes began to pile up so high that we could not
hope to pay. None of us had jobs, and and most of us was trying to eke out a scant existence
on our ranches, our cattle was gone, there was no work to be had, all jobs were held by white
people. Road work on the reservation and in the park was done by imported help. We Indians
were discriminated against on all sides as far as work was concerned, and still we were expected to
pay taxes and keep body and soul together on nothing. And all this time the outside sheep were
quietly grazing on our lands for nothing – ten cents is “nothing” to receive for an acre of pasturage
of the finest grazing in the world, and we will call it “Nothing” for convenience.
Horace Wilson was here about two years, not very long but before he left we found
out much to our surprise and grief that he was a dope fiend. We were grieved to know that
such a wreck had been appointed to be our guardian..Not long after he gone an article appeared
in the Great Falls Tribune, where Horace G. Wilson, formly of this country, was sentenced to
ten years in the penitentiary in California for the Man-Act………
F.C. Campbell now came to be our Agent. He had no personal bad habits but he was
worse, because he was a political grafter and he became involved in Joe Sherburne’s political
machine for by this time the latter was secretly running the county and the Office too. Who
is Joe Sherburne, he is our local merchant for the last thirty-five years, and owns the First
National Bank here. (that explains it.) All the money for the Office goes through his bank,
that is how he comes to exert so much influence over the Office. They are linked up like
a log chain – Joe Sherburne, the Office, and the Two Big Sheep Corporations: Long and
Clary Sheep Company, and the Frye Sheep Company, the latter is owned (so I am told)
by Swift and Armour and the Great Northern Railway. Results they have built up a nice
little Tammany Hall Clique at Browning. Graft is a hard thing to prove where members are
handy at padding up accounts, one can always put 2 and 2 together. Sometimes Joe
Sherburne does not even stop to put on a mask.
The sheep continued to graze on our land for nothing. Other sheepmen came in
and tried to run the grazing bid up, but the Office always closed the bids one day ahead of
the scheduled time. The unfavored bidders would arrive just one day too late. The bidders
were supposed to appear in person, that means that higher grazing rent was not wanted
by the Office and the two sheep companies named above.
By this time Campbell inaugurated a policy what he called the Five-Year-Program. He
tried to make us sheep-minded and encouraged a few of his pets to buy sheep on the
Reimberseable Loan, no doubt the Fryes and the Long and clary had some old toothless
ewes they wanted to get rid of and conceived the idea of us buying them. We protested
against sheep and said we wanted cattle, but he told us that his program consisted of
sheep and milch goats. A nice thing to wish upon us buffalo chasers, just imagine a dignified
old former warrior herding sheep and pailing a milch goat, it cannot be done. The Blackfeet
temperament does not run that way. Why force a mode of life on him that he despises. He
cares nothing for mutton and he never would quit running in the other direction if he saw
a sheep tick. He shakes his head, no good for a Blackfeet, too dirty, smell too bad, wool
full of bugs. He dreams of the old buffalo days but they are gone forever. Cattle satisfy
him because they are nearly the image of his dear beloved buffalo, they are clean, easily
managed and one does not have to stoop to the ways of a buzzard to care for cattle.
The Navahoes make a success of sheep, but their climate is milder in winter, and
their temperament is different from ours if we must make rugs, we would rather buy the
yarn. But why train us to make rugs, we have our own arts. Beads, horse hair, quill work
and painting, prettier than any thing the Navahoes ever made. Our teepees and indoor
trimmings they cannot hope to compare. Our festive regalia is a perfect work of art to
our way of thinking.
A few took sheep because they could not get cattle, but after a few years the
sheep urge was discontinued, and one or two cows were sold to a very select few –
the same was true of machinery. Want force us to sell our hay for one, two and three
dollars a ton delivered, which does not even pay the expense of cutting it, let alone
delivering it. White farmers off the reservation get nine dollars a ton in the stack for the
same quality of hay. Indians don’t know any better any way so why pay them more.
According to the purpose of the program our resources gradually dwindled away.
We could not replace or repair old machinery, our pennyless condition prevented us from
acquiring new herds of cattle, or even one cow, our clothes became so ragged that the
wind nearly whip us to death when ever we step out into the wind.
Many members began to get hungry. Small credit bills were run at Joe
Sherburne store and when the bill amounted to two or three hundred dollars, the
Indian would lose his land. Joe Sherburne would own it but hook or crook to satisfy
a small debt. Results, the Sherburne Mercantile Company owns much of the land on
the reservation and if conditions continue as they are, it will not be very long till they
will own most of our land, and the sheepmen will own the rest. Campbell’s Five-
Year-Starvation-Program was doing it’s work well.
Kicks were made to Washington, D.C., an inspector would be sent from there
to Browning. This Inspector would be met at the depot by the Agency care and he
would be dined and toasted by Campbell and his pets. Mr. Inspector would be
motored out to see a prosperous looking rancher on Milk River (a handy toole of the
sheep men) but Mr. Inspector does not know that this ranch is mortgaged beyond
redemption, that the cattle and sheep seen grazing on the hill sides belongs to the
Fryes, but Mr. Inspector does not have to know that. The next day he motores out
to Heart Butte district to look at the ranch of another pet, who has new machinery,
ten or fifteen head dirty looking sheep laying around the door yard, a five acre field
of froasted wheat, and plenty of grub (Sent by the Office the day before). A picnic
would be held by the visiting crowd on the banks of a mountain stream covered with a
luxurious growth of wild grasses and flowers, the result of long cold winters and deep
snows, but the Inspector does not think of that. He is delighted to find himself the center
of interest, a special entertainer is at his side chanting soothing bite of rhyme, bite of old
Indian legends. A musical band of small boys would furnish music and song, what could
be more perfect than a picnic like this. The next day a trip thro Glacier Park would complete
the tour of inspection. What an inchanting time he has had. Why the Blackfeets are well off,
they live in a beautiful. Who can be hungry with so much beautiful scenery to gaze
upon? Marvelous! And he reports the same to Washington. The Great Falls
Tribune take it up and tells how well we are prospering under Campbell’s
Five-Year-Program.
Inspectors like this are no good. What is needed is an intelligent, practical man,
who can herd sheep a year for the big companies. He would find out lots of things along
the lines I have written, an Inspector incognito.
Another feature of the Program about this time was the framing of innocent
people in the courts. If the Fryes wanted a valuable piece of land and the owner
refused to lease or sell, that person would be framed to get him into legal difficulty.
He’d hire a lawyer to defend him and after the case is over, the land would be
attached for legal debts, and the Fryes would step in and buy it for a small sum.
Many were sent to the penitentiary on flimsy pretexts. Some of us sensed that a
Secret prosecuter existed, but it took us quite a while to figure out that this was
part of the Program – it kept the public eye off the main issue. We broke that
gang up some what, but it made us feel pretty bad to think that our Agent is
secretly prosecuting us, when in reality he ought to be our protector. Exploiting
us.
Still another feature of the Program was the Government money paid
thro this office for educating Indian children in the public school at Browning,
children that had been dead and gone or married for the last twenty-one years.
The discovery was made two years ago. But I will not go into this as I am sure
someone else will take up this matter with your office. I just mentioned it
because it was a part of the Program.
Another part of the Program was the encouraging us to sell what few head
of horses we had at canners prices, to clear the range for more sheep. Most of us
have no more horses, but what few is left is chased from pillar to post by sheep herders. One herder chased my six head out of the valley shooting at them with a high powered rifle and it cost me lots of time and trouble to get them back. Another herder of the same company cut my garden fence and allowed his flock to eat up my vegetables and grain hay that I planed to carry me thro the winter. This company never returned, the bank got it.
Why do we not sue these trespassing sheep companies in the civil courts? Because we are broke and cannot pay the price against an organized racket. We make our complaint to the Office but what is the use. We cannot support these parasites much longer without going under ourselves.
At last Campbell was removed and promoted by the powers that “were” to that of Supervisor of this district. Promoted because of work “well done.”
Forrest R. Stone who worked under Campbell first as stock inspector, chief clerk, and then as Assistant Agent, now became the real Agent. He carried Campbell’s policies as before, so in reality Campbell was still our Agent. Stone is a weak man, a buck passer.
When problems become too perplexing he goes away on “business” to sooth his shattered nerves.
We are told the Five-Year-Program does not exist anymore. Well may be not in theory, but in spirit and in practice it does still exist, and is now running in it’s fourteenth year, and it’s purpose in full will soon be realized - - and then what?
The big sheepmen here on the reservation do not follow any rules. They do not have to, because they make laws. The State Legislature is over stocked with them and laws are made in their favor. Most western senators to Washington are elected by sheepmen.
As result they have their way here. Our forest reserves lie adjacent to Glacier National Park on the east, and in the summer time great bands come flocking in “here” to eat up the feed for nothing. I say “here” because I live near to both lines, and have a chance to observe their conduct at first hand.
The herders secretly hunt, fish and trap, most herders are foreigners, but they all carry high powered rifles. At mid-day when the sheep are bedded down in the shade, from four to five hours the herders get out and hunt down big game in their native haunts.
Little cubs are accused of killing sheep.
One Frye herder built great big bon-fires on the west shores of lower St. Mary’s Lake at night and told us that he did that to scare aways bears that were molesting his sheep “night and day.” Propaganda – They know that Blackfeet are afraid of bear. Three days later a party of us went into his vicinity to pick berries. We found the sheep bedded down quietly during the hot part of the day but no herder to be found as we looked for him, we stayed until late in the afternoon and still no herder to be found as we went all over the place picking berries. The next day we saw the packer and told him about the missing herder. “Oh that herder, I never can find him myself, but one day I found him sitting up under Flat-Top Mountain,” was his reply. What was the herder doing under
Flat-Top Mountain miles away from his flock when the bears are supposed to be molesting his sheep night and day. Was he up there waiting for game at the wild sheep licks, or was he patrolling the park line for bear? Because this same herder killed four big bears and six cubs..As we understand it a herder is supposed to protect his flock from
Killing beasts, but he is not supposed to go out of his way to hunt them down. This happened the summer of 1932, and in fact it happens every summer. This same herder a few weeks later shot down fifty head of his sheep that had the rotten hoof and use them for bear bait by piling them up near the bedding grounds and allowing them to rot on the
place and also to contaminate the waters of St. Marys Lake. Arthur Best, Assistant Chief Ranger of Glacier National Park, could tell you something about sheep eating out the feed on and near the Park line. There is plent of wild game in our tribal forest for our
need, the feed is tramped into dust by over stocking it. Wild game and domestic animals will not feed where sheep have been ranging. That means that wild game will gradually disappear from our forest reserve, and fur bearing animals trapped out.
But this is not all the damage they do us. They tried to burn up our best timberland, last summer and from all appearances it looks like a deliberate act to destroy what little we have left, although I might be mistaken.
On July 26, 1933, Wednesday four oclock in the afternoon a fire broke out up in
Boulder country, between St. Marys and Swift-Current valley near Flat-Top Mountain. John Dressen and Amsbough arrived on the scene in less than an hour afterward and discovered that the fire started at the Frye sheep camp. No one can prove that they started it but the circumstantial evidence looks bad, when viewed as a whole. Forces were out at once to stop it, but the Fryes never lifted a finger to help. The air was dead calm that afternoon and all night, and yet the fire burned in a straight line, jumped two miles across Boulder Creek 2 oclock at night in a bee-line for my home and eighty acres of land. We all know that fires jumpin the wind, but puzzled every one to have it jump two miles across Boulder on a dead calm night. By morning the fire looked like it was on me, as I looked again another fire broke out just a few hundred yards from my camp. I threw my ragged luggage into boat and escaped across lower St. Marys Lake. My horses I drove to the four winds to escape the flames. When the main body of the fire hit my land it died out due to the tall green grass and flowers, this heavy green under growth put the fire out. I kept the sheep off and the vegetation was not tramped into chaff. In the
days to come it threatened to burn out Glacier National Park but the direction of the wind switched is what saved it.
The last two summers I have refused to lease to the Fryes, because I wanted to build my home here – but later on they did sneak in and tramped my winters feed into dust, the subject is covered in the damage claim letters enclosed herewith.
It is an old trick of sheepmen to burn out a country where the people refuse to lease, my two neighbors to south of me also refused. May be we have no right to refuse the high and mighty Fryes, they have to live, we don’t .
The people they have working for them are just tramps and will do anything.
As result my work horses are without feed now, the sheep got it all, what shall I do, shall I buy some feed on credit, no never. Credit is like paying for a dead horse, and I do not intend to panhandle the government for my living. I will pay for my way as I go or starve to death. I live miles away from town, out in a lonely country side, minding my own business, trying to eke out an existence on a ranch, digging my living out of the rough. I cannot stand to have the sheepmen walk over me ruthlessly every summer, there’s a limit to all things. How can anyone get ahead under such conditions.
Now about the damage the fire did on our timberland. Our finest timber went up in smoke, worth thousands. Trees that will take a century to replace, yet the Great Falls Tribune said that it was nothing but stunted over timberland. Wonder who had that put in the paper – the Program?
The Office here sued the Frye Sheep Company for Eighty thousands dollars on behalf of the tribe. But the Fryes are resourceful. They immediately sold out most of their live stock reorganized their company and came out with a brand “new” name – the Poplar Sheep Company or something like that. They declared that the Fryes Sheep Company existed no more, and that they were broke and could pay no damages. If big companies are allowed to do this, it will soon become fashionable for small individuals to change their names in order to beat their debts………
As to the methods that Joe Sherburne uses to acquire land for “nothing”, will give as an example my own case. The patent was forced on me by Horace Wilson, without my applying for it. I was young and ignorant. A command by the Agent of that day was a law not to be disregarded without disgrace and jail sentence, so I accepted the patent for the same reason that the rest of my people did.
Soon the taxes began to pile up, I could not pay, as, I had no paying job, just keeping house for my widowed father on a ranch, and helping him to raise his motherless children. The unpaid taxes made me frantic and no one made any effort to advise me, least of all my father. Staying home and washing baby clothes and scrubbing floors when I should have been in school as a child did not make me eligible to receive my patent at that time.
Ten years previous to this time my mother had died and she left a debt contracted by her and my father. I do not know the exact sum, but about twenty-one hundred dollars, that my parents owed Joe Sherburne. I was sixteen years old at the time of mothers death. She was faithful about paying her debts every fall after the annual shipment of beef steers would be made. She left plenty of cattle and horses to have paid the debt many times, but it was never paid by her mate.
The minute I got my patent my father started in to make me pay his debts, after two years he and Joe Sherburne succeeded in their conspiracy to beat me out of my land, two hundred and eighty acres. Did the two exert any influence to have the patent forced on me in the first place? Did I owe Joe Sherburne any thing? “Not a penny.” I never bought anything on credit at this store in all my life. A few years later he kicked me out of my home by force in the dead of winter the 2nd day of February. I could do nothing my father refused to pay. Had no money to fight with in the civil courts, latter on a lawyer told me it was out lawed.
There, that completes The Campbell’s Five-Year-Starvation-Program. When sifted down it amounts to this. Starve us out, burn us out, kick us out, ………
Most of our land is gone and it will not be long till the “owners” of this reservation will demand us to get “out”. Where shall we go from here, what can we do? Will there be a wholesale exodus of the Children of the Sun into the strange land of the White man to stand in bread lines, begging for bread, pennyless, homeless, permanent objects of charity?.. …
If some thing is not done to change conditions here this will be our ultimate fate-
Of course all of these wrongs were committed under the Old Order of things – under the Waste-Paper-basket-Regime.
But with the New Order coming in we have hope, because President Roosevelt promised every one, some thing New, some thing Better, and we have faith in his promises, and faith in Those he picks to help him run the government.
We watched with interest the spirit of Fair-Play you showed in solving the Navajo problems.
Our Senator B.K. Wheeler knows our conditions, but question is will he talk.
Wish we had a real principled man to be head of the public schools in Browning where most of the little Indian boys and girls are being educated for future citizens. The government pays for their tuition and what does it get in return? Douglas Gold is a henchman of Joe Sherburne, a man who has corrupted some of our little Indian girls and is protected under the “Program”. At one time they controlled all of the schools on the reservation but we are breaking up their play house. We are given the impression that Douglas Gold is the only real well educated teacher in this country to be had, and if we lose him we will never get another. True he plays jazz well and teaches the band and the orchestra. Music is all right and quite a necessary part of education but we would rather have our children learn music from some one else, rather than that pedagogical snake and rag-time clown called Douglas Gold. Wish we had a real teacher who would instill in our boys and girls with real purpose and character.
Agency letter no.3 is an answer to my letter of January 13, 1934. I have no doubt that the fund is exhausted now, But this looks questionable to me, because, on
September 15, 1933 I asked Mr. Dressen verbally about a loan to build up my ranch home. He said the fund was exhausted and I believed him. However, two months later in November another woman asked for the same kind of a loan and she got the promise of one, just as soon as the amount of material needed could be figured out. Mrs. Gertrude Arneaux Jackson is the womans name. Was the fund exhausted both in September and January conveniently just because my vote is not for sale and do not support the Program? Why is it those who have more White blood than Indian can always get a loan? These the ones who do us the most mischief. They are eligible without a doubt. Or is the fund needed at the bank to meet appearances when the examiner comes? I am sure I do not know, but such things have happened before.
We are tired of Indian Agents who come here for the sole purpose of exploiting us. Give us a man who has his nest egg some where besides Indian reservations, A man with noble purposes, who has some insight, some principle, a teacher who will look after the interest of the ignorant and the illiterate one. Some of us can read and write fairly well, but legal jargon goes way over our heads, such lingo we cannot hope to understand, and we cannot afford to hire lawyers to untangle such mystic wording. That is why we need an Agent with some ability and few “scruples”.
I am going to ask of you a favor or call it a suggestion if you like. Give us a chance to but cattle on the long time loan plan, say 5, 8 to 10 Years at not more than 5 per cent. 3 or 5 head of cows to each family is enough, with restrictions on the sale of young female stock, a dual purpose cow like the milking short horn would be best because it’s ruggedness could stand our harsh climate. This would give us a chance to get on our feet and to use the grazing for our own benefit, raise the grazing rent on sheep from twenty-five cents to two dollars an acre, according to the grade of hay land, and raise the price of hay to nine dollars a ton in the stack. This will give us a chance to live. There are some few members of our tribe who may want sheep, but they can be counted on the fingers of two hands, full bloods care nothing about sheep. Let those who want sheep have them. We are not against members of our tribe who want sheep – but we are against large out side sheep corporations who come in here with purpose of squeezing us out. This is our reservation and not a sheep reservation, it is supposed to be set aside for our benefit and “not” for the house of Morgan or to be managed according to the whims of Tammany Hall at New York or the Little Tammany Hall at Browning.
Or maybe you have in mind a better plan and if so, hope it will not require us to run a foot race with a milch goat.
I told the Office that I would write to Secretary Ickes also, but I do not think that will be necessary with New Deal in Order.
With very best wishes from all of us and may you live to see your moccasin tracks thro many snows.
Respectfully yours,
Mabel H. Monroe Bonds
Babb, Montana
February 14, 1933
Honorable B. K. Wheeler
United States Senator
Washington, D. C.
Dear Senator Wheeler:
Your friend Dr. Harry J. McGregor of Great Falls drove in to spend a day or two at his summer cabin. He had to abandon his car on Swift Current and walked in over three feet of snow. He and his friends were worn out packing in their luggage on their backs just like in pioneers days. He is my nearest neighbor.
He asked me what the people here thought of you. I told him we were earnest boosters of you, but here lately a rumor is circulating that you were secretly hobnobbing with our Agent Forest Stone and his gang. The Doctor shook his head and said “no that is not true.” He asked me to write you and tell you about it.
I wrote Commissioner Collier a twenty-one page typewritten letter (have an old portable typewriter of my own) about the general damages that have been done to us by the big sheep corporations, Joe Sherburne and the Office.
I was forced to do it because the Fryes and the Long-Clary Sheep Company are becoming unbearable in their treatment of us. The local office here ignores our trespassing claims, so I thought it was time the Commissioner knew what was going on. We Blackfeets hate sheep any way, and things cannot go on much longer as they have existed. We are backed up against the wall and cannot back up any more—you know what that means—it means we have had enough—if law and order cannot save us, then what?
But we are sure something will be done, because the big Chief President Roosevelt promised every one a New Deal. We are keeping close tab on the changes for the better that are going on in the White mans country and waiting patiently for a change to come our way.
Dr. McGregor said that maybe a word or two from you to the Commissioner might help a little. The Dr. mailed the letter I wrote to the Commissioner in Great Falls, because he knew I did not want it to clear thro the Browning post office, where Joe Sherburne would have a chance to ram-sack its contents. Ever since the latter stole 280 acres of land from me it gives him the Jitters whenever my letters pass thro his post office, and have reasons to be suspicious, two of my business letters were held up a week getting thro Browning, the Dr. can tell you about one of the letters as it was written to him. I do not have to tell you about that gang in Browning you already know.
The Doctor was quite anxious to have me write to you and promised him I would. With every good wish from us both, I am very respectfully yours.
Mabel H. Monroe Bonds
Office of Indian Affairs Files
File No.8411-1934-301
Indian Claims Commission
Docket No.279-D
Plaintiff’s Ex. MF-4481
Babb, Montana.
Blackfeet Indian Reservation
February 2, 1934
Honorable John Collier,
Commissioner of Indian Affairs,
United States Department of the Interior,
Washington, D.C.
Dear Sir:
Enclosed are copies of two letters that I wrote to the Blackfeet Indian Office here at
Browning, Montana. Forrest R. Stone is the Agent, and John Dressen is Supervisor of our tribal timber
land and also has charge of grazing permits here lately, and is under the supervision of the agent.
These two men did nothing concerning my damage claim, and they pigeon-holed my registered
letter dated August 26, 1933, until an Inspector from your office (as I am told by Tom Aubrey) by
the name of Mr. Nyce, came here to Browning to inspect sheep damage claims. He came across many
old damage claims that had been pidgeon-holed there for I don’t know how long. As I understand it
Mr. Nyce appointed Tom Aubrey to go out among the people and rewrite the damage claims for your
office. That is how I came to write the second letter, the one witnessed by Tom Aubrey, dated
November 10,1933.
I suppose my first letter was a bit impertinent, but I knew for old experience that Forrest Stone
would take no action against the Frye Sheep Company. I was merely warning him that I would go
over his head if he failed to act, and that is why I took my time about writing your office because
I wanted to give him plenty of time to fall down on the job.
These letters are self explanatory, but that is not what I want to write you about
mostly. I want to tell you about the general damages that have been done to us, by the
big sheep corporations, Joe Sherburne and our last three Indian Agents.
I am one half Blackfeet and one half White. My allotment number is 1641. My
mother was a full-blood Blackfeet.
Not so long ago we were quite well off and contented. We had cattle, horses and
Liveable homes, and had only one natural practical resource, that is the wild grasses that
grow here in abundance during the short summer seasons. Bunch grass grew knee-deep
in places and it made plenty of winter feed for stock. The early and late frosts and short
summer seasons make this country unfit for any thing but stock raising. A garden and small
patches of grain can be grown in a few sheltered spots on each ranch, just enough to keep
each family going, and that is about all that can be done in the way of agriculture. That
means this is not an agricultural country. It is semi-arid in most places, that means
that it takes a lot of land to support each family by stock raising.
White wheat farmers just off the reservation are all broke. They cannot raise
enough to get back their seed. How can Indians accomplish what trained white farmers
fail to accomplish under bad weather conditions. So that wild hay and stock raising our
only resource. (this does not include oil which has amounted to nothing so far yet in
spite of all the noise made about it.) There was no sheep.
Then there came a killing winter in 1919, 1920. Stock all over the state of
Montana froze to death, and big cattle kings all over the state went broke. We Blackfeet
Indians were no exceptions and we all went broke too. Even the horses died in clusters.
There! That was the beginning of our disaster. At the same time a new Indian
Agent came in to run our affairs. Horace G. Wilson, was the culprit. He immediately
laid us open to the mercy of the big out side Sheep Corporations by putting our land up
for rent, allotted and unallotted at ten cents an acre.
Sheep from all over the country came here on a dogtrot, because they could get
cheap grazing, cheaper than stealing it as they call it, and renting good grazing land was
certainly cheaper than owning the land, when rent is “only” ten cents an acre. We were
broke, hard up and many of us had to accept the ten cents an acre to keep from immediate
starvation, others protested for a higher rate, but Horace Wilson said we could not expect
higher rent as the U.S. Department of the Interior had set a value and made a “ruling
of ten cents an acre”, on our land, and we ought to be satisfied with that. Let me say
right here that if the Interior Department is guilty of such a “ruling”, of setting such a
low value on our grazing rent, it is guilty of a gross injustice and a nice systematic way
of reducing us to poverty and rags.
But we do not believe the Interior Department is guilty of such ruling, because,
we like to believe that the Chief had more heart than that. What we really do believe is
that the big sheepmen, Joe Sherburne, and Horace Wilson brought pressure to bear
against the Department for the ruling of ten cents and they got it.
A few years previous to this time, in 1910 to be exact, our land was allotted
to us, and one far seeing Congressman kindly had a law passed, where by we were
not to receive patents to our land until twenty-five years had expired, or where one
was eligible a patent could be procured by a written application with the consent of
the Agent. This I guess he had in mind would give us poor ignorant savages time to
learn the whitemans complex way of living, something about law, how to pay our taxes
and why, and how to make a living from the soil, which is something new to us. This
Congressman’s intentions were good if they had been carried out as intended. But
like most laws it was full of loop-holes, and it had no teeth for loop-hole “crawlers”.
About 1918 and 1919 Cato Sells was Commissioner of Indian Affairs. He
was from Texas and had no use for Indians. He conceived the brilliant idea of forcing
all Indians on their own as soon as possible. A Commission of six men, called The
Competency Commission, was appointed to pass on the competency of each individual
Indian. How can strangers in Washington judge our competency? In our case those
who owned valuable land, or owed Joe Sherburne a debt were pronounced eligible.
Many received patents that never should have been called eligible. Illiterate old
Indians, and some half-wits, who could not read, write, nor speak the English language,
much less know any thing about White man’s land laws, were picked as competent to
receive patents to their land. One man told me here not long ago, that he received his
while yet a minor.
A Commission of Chinese Laundry men picked to judge competency could have
done as well.
Many of us protested against getting our patents, but Horace Wilson told us
that we had to accept them and no way out. In those days an Agents word was the law.
None of us relished the idea of going to jail, so we grudgingly accepted the patents as
we were sent for. Ninety per cent of us were totally ignorant regarding land laws, and
it was a great calamity for us to have the patents forced on us against our wishes,
because we sensed our short-comings and were left in the dark concerning the working
order of things, until it was too late.
It was not very long until the taxes began to pile up so high that we could not
hope to pay. None of us had jobs, and and most of us was trying to eke out a scant existence
on our ranches, our cattle was gone, there was no work to be had, all jobs were held by white
people. Road work on the reservation and in the park was done by imported help. We Indians
were discriminated against on all sides as far as work was concerned, and still we were expected to
pay taxes and keep body and soul together on nothing. And all this time the outside sheep were
quietly grazing on our lands for nothing – ten cents is “nothing” to receive for an acre of pasturage
of the finest grazing in the world, and we will call it “Nothing” for convenience.
Horace Wilson was here about two years, not very long but before he left we found
out much to our surprise and grief that he was a dope fiend. We were grieved to know that
such a wreck had been appointed to be our guardian..Not long after he gone an article appeared
in the Great Falls Tribune, where Horace G. Wilson, formly of this country, was sentenced to
ten years in the penitentiary in California for the Man-Act………
F.C. Campbell now came to be our Agent. He had no personal bad habits but he was
worse, because he was a political grafter and he became involved in Joe Sherburne’s political
machine for by this time the latter was secretly running the county and the Office too. Who
is Joe Sherburne, he is our local merchant for the last thirty-five years, and owns the First
National Bank here. (that explains it.) All the money for the Office goes through his bank,
that is how he comes to exert so much influence over the Office. They are linked up like
a log chain – Joe Sherburne, the Office, and the Two Big Sheep Corporations: Long and
Clary Sheep Company, and the Frye Sheep Company, the latter is owned (so I am told)
by Swift and Armour and the Great Northern Railway. Results they have built up a nice
little Tammany Hall Clique at Browning. Graft is a hard thing to prove where members are
handy at padding up accounts, one can always put 2 and 2 together. Sometimes Joe
Sherburne does not even stop to put on a mask.
The sheep continued to graze on our land for nothing. Other sheepmen came in
and tried to run the grazing bid up, but the Office always closed the bids one day ahead of
the scheduled time. The unfavored bidders would arrive just one day too late. The bidders
were supposed to appear in person, that means that higher grazing rent was not wanted
by the Office and the two sheep companies named above.
By this time Campbell inaugurated a policy what he called the Five-Year-Program. He
tried to make us sheep-minded and encouraged a few of his pets to buy sheep on the
Reimberseable Loan, no doubt the Fryes and the Long and clary had some old toothless
ewes they wanted to get rid of and conceived the idea of us buying them. We protested
against sheep and said we wanted cattle, but he told us that his program consisted of
sheep and milch goats. A nice thing to wish upon us buffalo chasers, just imagine a dignified
old former warrior herding sheep and pailing a milch goat, it cannot be done. The Blackfeet
temperament does not run that way. Why force a mode of life on him that he despises. He
cares nothing for mutton and he never would quit running in the other direction if he saw
a sheep tick. He shakes his head, no good for a Blackfeet, too dirty, smell too bad, wool
full of bugs. He dreams of the old buffalo days but they are gone forever. Cattle satisfy
him because they are nearly the image of his dear beloved buffalo, they are clean, easily
managed and one does not have to stoop to the ways of a buzzard to care for cattle.
The Navahoes make a success of sheep, but their climate is milder in winter, and
their temperament is different from ours if we must make rugs, we would rather buy the
yarn. But why train us to make rugs, we have our own arts. Beads, horse hair, quill work
and painting, prettier than any thing the Navahoes ever made. Our teepees and indoor
trimmings they cannot hope to compare. Our festive regalia is a perfect work of art to
our way of thinking.
A few took sheep because they could not get cattle, but after a few years the
sheep urge was discontinued, and one or two cows were sold to a very select few –
the same was true of machinery. Want force us to sell our hay for one, two and three
dollars a ton delivered, which does not even pay the expense of cutting it, let alone
delivering it. White farmers off the reservation get nine dollars a ton in the stack for the
same quality of hay. Indians don’t know any better any way so why pay them more.
According to the purpose of the program our resources gradually dwindled away.
We could not replace or repair old machinery, our pennyless condition prevented us from
acquiring new herds of cattle, or even one cow, our clothes became so ragged that the
wind nearly whip us to death when ever we step out into the wind.
Many members began to get hungry. Small credit bills were run at Joe
Sherburne store and when the bill amounted to two or three hundred dollars, the
Indian would lose his land. Joe Sherburne would own it but hook or crook to satisfy
a small debt. Results, the Sherburne Mercantile Company owns much of the land on
the reservation and if conditions continue as they are, it will not be very long till they
will own most of our land, and the sheepmen will own the rest. Campbell’s Five-
Year-Starvation-Program was doing it’s work well.
Kicks were made to Washington, D.C., an inspector would be sent from there
to Browning. This Inspector would be met at the depot by the Agency care and he
would be dined and toasted by Campbell and his pets. Mr. Inspector would be
motored out to see a prosperous looking rancher on Milk River (a handy toole of the
sheep men) but Mr. Inspector does not know that this ranch is mortgaged beyond
redemption, that the cattle and sheep seen grazing on the hill sides belongs to the
Fryes, but Mr. Inspector does not have to know that. The next day he motores out
to Heart Butte district to look at the ranch of another pet, who has new machinery,
ten or fifteen head dirty looking sheep laying around the door yard, a five acre field
of froasted wheat, and plenty of grub (Sent by the Office the day before). A picnic
would be held by the visiting crowd on the banks of a mountain stream covered with a
luxurious growth of wild grasses and flowers, the result of long cold winters and deep
snows, but the Inspector does not think of that. He is delighted to find himself the center
of interest, a special entertainer is at his side chanting soothing bite of rhyme, bite of old
Indian legends. A musical band of small boys would furnish music and song, what could
be more perfect than a picnic like this. The next day a trip thro Glacier Park would complete
the tour of inspection. What an inchanting time he has had. Why the Blackfeets are well off,
they live in a beautiful. Who can be hungry with so much beautiful scenery to gaze
upon? Marvelous! And he reports the same to Washington. The Great Falls
Tribune take it up and tells how well we are prospering under Campbell’s
Five-Year-Program.
Inspectors like this are no good. What is needed is an intelligent, practical man,
who can herd sheep a year for the big companies. He would find out lots of things along
the lines I have written, an Inspector incognito.
Another feature of the Program about this time was the framing of innocent
people in the courts. If the Fryes wanted a valuable piece of land and the owner
refused to lease or sell, that person would be framed to get him into legal difficulty.
He’d hire a lawyer to defend him and after the case is over, the land would be
attached for legal debts, and the Fryes would step in and buy it for a small sum.
Many were sent to the penitentiary on flimsy pretexts. Some of us sensed that a
Secret prosecuter existed, but it took us quite a while to figure out that this was
part of the Program – it kept the public eye off the main issue. We broke that
gang up some what, but it made us feel pretty bad to think that our Agent is
secretly prosecuting us, when in reality he ought to be our protector. Exploiting
us.
Still another feature of the Program was the Government money paid
thro this office for educating Indian children in the public school at Browning,
children that had been dead and gone or married for the last twenty-one years.
The discovery was made two years ago. But I will not go into this as I am sure
someone else will take up this matter with your office. I just mentioned it
because it was a part of the Program.
Another part of the Program was the encouraging us to sell what few head
of horses we had at canners prices, to clear the range for more sheep. Most of us
have no more horses, but what few is left is chased from pillar to post by sheep herders. One herder chased my six head out of the valley shooting at them with a high powered rifle and it cost me lots of time and trouble to get them back. Another herder of the same company cut my garden fence and allowed his flock to eat up my vegetables and grain hay that I planed to carry me thro the winter. This company never returned, the bank got it.
Why do we not sue these trespassing sheep companies in the civil courts? Because we are broke and cannot pay the price against an organized racket. We make our complaint to the Office but what is the use. We cannot support these parasites much longer without going under ourselves.
At last Campbell was removed and promoted by the powers that “were” to that of Supervisor of this district. Promoted because of work “well done.”
Forrest R. Stone who worked under Campbell first as stock inspector, chief clerk, and then as Assistant Agent, now became the real Agent. He carried Campbell’s policies as before, so in reality Campbell was still our Agent. Stone is a weak man, a buck passer.
When problems become too perplexing he goes away on “business” to sooth his shattered nerves.
We are told the Five-Year-Program does not exist anymore. Well may be not in theory, but in spirit and in practice it does still exist, and is now running in it’s fourteenth year, and it’s purpose in full will soon be realized - - and then what?
The big sheepmen here on the reservation do not follow any rules. They do not have to, because they make laws. The State Legislature is over stocked with them and laws are made in their favor. Most western senators to Washington are elected by sheepmen.
As result they have their way here. Our forest reserves lie adjacent to Glacier National Park on the east, and in the summer time great bands come flocking in “here” to eat up the feed for nothing. I say “here” because I live near to both lines, and have a chance to observe their conduct at first hand.
The herders secretly hunt, fish and trap, most herders are foreigners, but they all carry high powered rifles. At mid-day when the sheep are bedded down in the shade, from four to five hours the herders get out and hunt down big game in their native haunts.
Little cubs are accused of killing sheep.
One Frye herder built great big bon-fires on the west shores of lower St. Mary’s Lake at night and told us that he did that to scare aways bears that were molesting his sheep “night and day.” Propaganda – They know that Blackfeet are afraid of bear. Three days later a party of us went into his vicinity to pick berries. We found the sheep bedded down quietly during the hot part of the day but no herder to be found as we looked for him, we stayed until late in the afternoon and still no herder to be found as we went all over the place picking berries. The next day we saw the packer and told him about the missing herder. “Oh that herder, I never can find him myself, but one day I found him sitting up under Flat-Top Mountain,” was his reply. What was the herder doing under
Flat-Top Mountain miles away from his flock when the bears are supposed to be molesting his sheep night and day. Was he up there waiting for game at the wild sheep licks, or was he patrolling the park line for bear? Because this same herder killed four big bears and six cubs..As we understand it a herder is supposed to protect his flock from
Killing beasts, but he is not supposed to go out of his way to hunt them down. This happened the summer of 1932, and in fact it happens every summer. This same herder a few weeks later shot down fifty head of his sheep that had the rotten hoof and use them for bear bait by piling them up near the bedding grounds and allowing them to rot on the
place and also to contaminate the waters of St. Marys Lake. Arthur Best, Assistant Chief Ranger of Glacier National Park, could tell you something about sheep eating out the feed on and near the Park line. There is plent of wild game in our tribal forest for our
need, the feed is tramped into dust by over stocking it. Wild game and domestic animals will not feed where sheep have been ranging. That means that wild game will gradually disappear from our forest reserve, and fur bearing animals trapped out.
But this is not all the damage they do us. They tried to burn up our best timberland, last summer and from all appearances it looks like a deliberate act to destroy what little we have left, although I might be mistaken.
On July 26, 1933, Wednesday four oclock in the afternoon a fire broke out up in
Boulder country, between St. Marys and Swift-Current valley near Flat-Top Mountain. John Dressen and Amsbough arrived on the scene in less than an hour afterward and discovered that the fire started at the Frye sheep camp. No one can prove that they started it but the circumstantial evidence looks bad, when viewed as a whole. Forces were out at once to stop it, but the Fryes never lifted a finger to help. The air was dead calm that afternoon and all night, and yet the fire burned in a straight line, jumped two miles across Boulder Creek 2 oclock at night in a bee-line for my home and eighty acres of land. We all know that fires jumpin the wind, but puzzled every one to have it jump two miles across Boulder on a dead calm night. By morning the fire looked like it was on me, as I looked again another fire broke out just a few hundred yards from my camp. I threw my ragged luggage into boat and escaped across lower St. Marys Lake. My horses I drove to the four winds to escape the flames. When the main body of the fire hit my land it died out due to the tall green grass and flowers, this heavy green under growth put the fire out. I kept the sheep off and the vegetation was not tramped into chaff. In the
days to come it threatened to burn out Glacier National Park but the direction of the wind switched is what saved it.
The last two summers I have refused to lease to the Fryes, because I wanted to build my home here – but later on they did sneak in and tramped my winters feed into dust, the subject is covered in the damage claim letters enclosed herewith.
It is an old trick of sheepmen to burn out a country where the people refuse to lease, my two neighbors to south of me also refused. May be we have no right to refuse the high and mighty Fryes, they have to live, we don’t .
The people they have working for them are just tramps and will do anything.
As result my work horses are without feed now, the sheep got it all, what shall I do, shall I buy some feed on credit, no never. Credit is like paying for a dead horse, and I do not intend to panhandle the government for my living. I will pay for my way as I go or starve to death. I live miles away from town, out in a lonely country side, minding my own business, trying to eke out an existence on a ranch, digging my living out of the rough. I cannot stand to have the sheepmen walk over me ruthlessly every summer, there’s a limit to all things. How can anyone get ahead under such conditions.
Now about the damage the fire did on our timberland. Our finest timber went up in smoke, worth thousands. Trees that will take a century to replace, yet the Great Falls Tribune said that it was nothing but stunted over timberland. Wonder who had that put in the paper – the Program?
The Office here sued the Frye Sheep Company for Eighty thousands dollars on behalf of the tribe. But the Fryes are resourceful. They immediately sold out most of their live stock reorganized their company and came out with a brand “new” name – the Poplar Sheep Company or something like that. They declared that the Fryes Sheep Company existed no more, and that they were broke and could pay no damages. If big companies are allowed to do this, it will soon become fashionable for small individuals to change their names in order to beat their debts………
As to the methods that Joe Sherburne uses to acquire land for “nothing”, will give as an example my own case. The patent was forced on me by Horace Wilson, without my applying for it. I was young and ignorant. A command by the Agent of that day was a law not to be disregarded without disgrace and jail sentence, so I accepted the patent for the same reason that the rest of my people did.
Soon the taxes began to pile up, I could not pay, as, I had no paying job, just keeping house for my widowed father on a ranch, and helping him to raise his motherless children. The unpaid taxes made me frantic and no one made any effort to advise me, least of all my father. Staying home and washing baby clothes and scrubbing floors when I should have been in school as a child did not make me eligible to receive my patent at that time.
Ten years previous to this time my mother had died and she left a debt contracted by her and my father. I do not know the exact sum, but about twenty-one hundred dollars, that my parents owed Joe Sherburne. I was sixteen years old at the time of mothers death. She was faithful about paying her debts every fall after the annual shipment of beef steers would be made. She left plenty of cattle and horses to have paid the debt many times, but it was never paid by her mate.
The minute I got my patent my father started in to make me pay his debts, after two years he and Joe Sherburne succeeded in their conspiracy to beat me out of my land, two hundred and eighty acres. Did the two exert any influence to have the patent forced on me in the first place? Did I owe Joe Sherburne any thing? “Not a penny.” I never bought anything on credit at this store in all my life. A few years later he kicked me out of my home by force in the dead of winter the 2nd day of February. I could do nothing my father refused to pay. Had no money to fight with in the civil courts, latter on a lawyer told me it was out lawed.
There, that completes The Campbell’s Five-Year-Starvation-Program. When sifted down it amounts to this. Starve us out, burn us out, kick us out, ………
Most of our land is gone and it will not be long till the “owners” of this reservation will demand us to get “out”. Where shall we go from here, what can we do? Will there be a wholesale exodus of the Children of the Sun into the strange land of the White man to stand in bread lines, begging for bread, pennyless, homeless, permanent objects of charity?.. …
If some thing is not done to change conditions here this will be our ultimate fate-
Of course all of these wrongs were committed under the Old Order of things – under the Waste-Paper-basket-Regime.
But with the New Order coming in we have hope, because President Roosevelt promised every one, some thing New, some thing Better, and we have faith in his promises, and faith in Those he picks to help him run the government.
We watched with interest the spirit of Fair-Play you showed in solving the Navajo problems.
Our Senator B.K. Wheeler knows our conditions, but question is will he talk.
Wish we had a real principled man to be head of the public schools in Browning where most of the little Indian boys and girls are being educated for future citizens. The government pays for their tuition and what does it get in return? Douglas Gold is a henchman of Joe Sherburne, a man who has corrupted some of our little Indian girls and is protected under the “Program”. At one time they controlled all of the schools on the reservation but we are breaking up their play house. We are given the impression that Douglas Gold is the only real well educated teacher in this country to be had, and if we lose him we will never get another. True he plays jazz well and teaches the band and the orchestra. Music is all right and quite a necessary part of education but we would rather have our children learn music from some one else, rather than that pedagogical snake and rag-time clown called Douglas Gold. Wish we had a real teacher who would instill in our boys and girls with real purpose and character.
Agency letter no.3 is an answer to my letter of January 13, 1934. I have no doubt that the fund is exhausted now, But this looks questionable to me, because, on
September 15, 1933 I asked Mr. Dressen verbally about a loan to build up my ranch home. He said the fund was exhausted and I believed him. However, two months later in November another woman asked for the same kind of a loan and she got the promise of one, just as soon as the amount of material needed could be figured out. Mrs. Gertrude Arneaux Jackson is the womans name. Was the fund exhausted both in September and January conveniently just because my vote is not for sale and do not support the Program? Why is it those who have more White blood than Indian can always get a loan? These the ones who do us the most mischief. They are eligible without a doubt. Or is the fund needed at the bank to meet appearances when the examiner comes? I am sure I do not know, but such things have happened before.
We are tired of Indian Agents who come here for the sole purpose of exploiting us. Give us a man who has his nest egg some where besides Indian reservations, A man with noble purposes, who has some insight, some principle, a teacher who will look after the interest of the ignorant and the illiterate one. Some of us can read and write fairly well, but legal jargon goes way over our heads, such lingo we cannot hope to understand, and we cannot afford to hire lawyers to untangle such mystic wording. That is why we need an Agent with some ability and few “scruples”.
I am going to ask of you a favor or call it a suggestion if you like. Give us a chance to but cattle on the long time loan plan, say 5, 8 to 10 Years at not more than 5 per cent. 3 or 5 head of cows to each family is enough, with restrictions on the sale of young female stock, a dual purpose cow like the milking short horn would be best because it’s ruggedness could stand our harsh climate. This would give us a chance to get on our feet and to use the grazing for our own benefit, raise the grazing rent on sheep from twenty-five cents to two dollars an acre, according to the grade of hay land, and raise the price of hay to nine dollars a ton in the stack. This will give us a chance to live. There are some few members of our tribe who may want sheep, but they can be counted on the fingers of two hands, full bloods care nothing about sheep. Let those who want sheep have them. We are not against members of our tribe who want sheep – but we are against large out side sheep corporations who come in here with purpose of squeezing us out. This is our reservation and not a sheep reservation, it is supposed to be set aside for our benefit and “not” for the house of Morgan or to be managed according to the whims of Tammany Hall at New York or the Little Tammany Hall at Browning.
Or maybe you have in mind a better plan and if so, hope it will not require us to run a foot race with a milch goat.
I told the Office that I would write to Secretary Ickes also, but I do not think that will be necessary with New Deal in Order.
With very best wishes from all of us and may you live to see your moccasin tracks thro many snows.
Respectfully yours,
Mabel H. Monroe Bonds
Babb, Montana
February 14, 1933
Honorable B. K. Wheeler
United States Senator
Washington, D. C.
Dear Senator Wheeler:
Your friend Dr. Harry J. McGregor of Great Falls drove in to spend a day or two at his summer cabin. He had to abandon his car on Swift Current and walked in over three feet of snow. He and his friends were worn out packing in their luggage on their backs just like in pioneers days. He is my nearest neighbor.
He asked me what the people here thought of you. I told him we were earnest boosters of you, but here lately a rumor is circulating that you were secretly hobnobbing with our Agent Forest Stone and his gang. The Doctor shook his head and said “no that is not true.” He asked me to write you and tell you about it.
I wrote Commissioner Collier a twenty-one page typewritten letter (have an old portable typewriter of my own) about the general damages that have been done to us by the big sheep corporations, Joe Sherburne and the Office.
I was forced to do it because the Fryes and the Long-Clary Sheep Company are becoming unbearable in their treatment of us. The local office here ignores our trespassing claims, so I thought it was time the Commissioner knew what was going on. We Blackfeets hate sheep any way, and things cannot go on much longer as they have existed. We are backed up against the wall and cannot back up any more—you know what that means—it means we have had enough—if law and order cannot save us, then what?
But we are sure something will be done, because the big Chief President Roosevelt promised every one a New Deal. We are keeping close tab on the changes for the better that are going on in the White mans country and waiting patiently for a change to come our way.
Dr. McGregor said that maybe a word or two from you to the Commissioner might help a little. The Dr. mailed the letter I wrote to the Commissioner in Great Falls, because he knew I did not want it to clear thro the Browning post office, where Joe Sherburne would have a chance to ram-sack its contents. Ever since the latter stole 280 acres of land from me it gives him the Jitters whenever my letters pass thro his post office, and have reasons to be suspicious, two of my business letters were held up a week getting thro Browning, the Dr. can tell you about one of the letters as it was written to him. I do not have to tell you about that gang in Browning you already know.
The Doctor was quite anxious to have me write to you and promised him I would. With every good wish from us both, I am very respectfully yours.
Mabel H. Monroe Bonds
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