Separation of the Races in Blackfoot Confederacy Lands

SEPARATION OF THE RACES (WHITE AND INDIAN) IN BLACKFOOT CONFEDERACY LANDS BY U.S. TREATY:
AGENT WRIGHT RECOMMENDED SEPARATION OF THE RACES OVER EXTERMINATION OF THE BLACKFEET INDIANS BY THE BORDER-WHITES OF MONTANA TERRITORY IN 1867.

In 1867 Agent Wright outlined the terms of the new order of things by recommending separation of the races, so that in the new order of things the Indian could progress along his own lines of reckoning and the white man could have his land [Montana] unfettered by Indians. The border white man wanted to exterminate the Indians and take all of the Indian lands, but the agent said there would no longer be a need for agents or agencies if the Indians are exterminated, and then what shall we agents do? There will be no Indian annuities for the merchants in Fort Benton to steal. There will be no Indians for the Christian churches to fight over to tame the wild Indians and get government money. Way back at America’s birth the founding fathers of America were sure the nation would suffer the wrath of God if the Indians were killed off or defrauded of their properties. Agent Wright supposed the Old World [Europe} had to be taught a lesson that the United States was acquiring Indian lands by treaty rather than by force. The Civil War confederate border-whites were having no such qualms about killing Indians on sight or taking their lands by force in Montana Territory. They had just lost their war to keep African slaves and needed some fast cash and wished to fill their pockets with Blackfeet gold.
The compromise arranged in the treaty followed the formula of separation of the races so each can progress according to his merit and character in his own lands free of oppression. These treaty provisions were agreed to by the Territory and State of Montana, the United States of America and the Blackfoot Nation. In 1870 the border whites and their hero Governor Meagher of Montana Territory caused the massacre of Heavy Runner’s band in Blackfoot Confederacy lands as a last attempt to exterminate the Indians and take all of the land. Governor Meagher, a well known drunkard, fell off of his floating command post on a steamboat on the Missouri River and drowned. Agent Wright called his “War on the Black-Feet” the biggest humbug of the age, got up to make a raid on the national treasury for the bummers who hang onto to him. He reported no hostile Indians in the territory, but the army was called in anyway to massacre the Indians. The Priests or Black Robes, as the Blackfeet named them, testified to the murders and outrages of the border whites against the Blackfeet in their own lands. It is always the border white man who has violated these sacred words and agreements and caused a conflict on the reservation over control and jurisdiction of the Blackfeet land and economy, both clearly the domain of the Blackfeet Nation and the United States Congress. The root of the conflict today is the crimes of the border-whites and state in encroaching upon the reservation via forced patent frauds and conspiracies with crooked Indian Service employees manipulating the vested powers of the Interior Department to commit conspiracies by the thousands against Blackfeet treaty Indians, and wards of the government. It is very insulting to have the federal trustee of the national government to conduct the conspiracy to defraud the trust Indian of his trust property for the benefit of the state emigrant land grafters. Complicity is at the bottom of these crimes in every form and at every level of government. It is as though the American Government went mad for a time and descended into fascism and genocide. In 1913 the border-whites and Indian Service employees caused the deaths of over 100 Blackfeet Indians by starvation related disease because the Indians would not agree to cede the reservation lands coveted by border-whites. It was greed plain and simple that was at issue.

FOUNDING FATHER’S PROTECTION OF PROPERTY RIGHTS

It was Thomas Jefferson, founding father, who said a man needs to own property to create wealth; it can be done no other way. It is as critical for the American Indians as it is for the Euro-Americans in the American economy to own and control one’s own property to become self-sufficient. This tribal property right is written into the Blackfeet Agreement of 1896/Article Five. This is important because a treaty right can only be changed by Congress with the prior consent of the Indians, and that stipulation is written into the treaty and state constitution. What the founding fathers guaranteed in the Constitution, the Interior Department took away in the BIA forced patents land frauds. These crimes are treaty violations and need the attention of Congress. I could never understand why our leader Old Person always ran to the BIA in Washington D.C. and the Governor of Montana. Our traditional tribal chiefs always went to Washington D.C. to testify before Congress on the land frauds and peculations of the BIA and Interior Department. They understood the tribal powers contained in the treaty and agreement to mean that our land and person was sovereign from the whites and State of Montana. We have to get that attitude back before the county takes us over in every way. One of the benefits of tribal sovereignty was to free the Blackfeet Indians from white rule of the border-whites of Montana [Cut Bank}. Do we want to be ruled by whites in Cut Bank and white ranchers and farmers out north and Seville where the land grafters roam on stolen Blackfeet allotments? When our tribal council does not even understand tribal sovereignty or is too lazy to collect our own taxes or run tribal law enforcement properly, we cannot be seen as sovereign. We need to zone the reservation and annex the reservation lands in every way. I mean tribal towns, tribal roads, tribal schools, tribal police, and tribal everything on the reservation. But not the IHS. The state/county was only called in to run roads and schools until the Indians could get assimilated enough to run their own government and social services. It should be tribal-federal partnership in everything we do, for the federal government is our treaty partner, not the state or county government’s, who only must abide by the treaty.
We need our property returned with compensation. That is the bottom line. If not we will continue to suffer tribal poverty. There is a lot of suffering going on the reservation, and if you don’t believe it live there in low rent. It also comes down to courage of the tribal leaders to confront the border-whites and State of Montana in Congress. Congress is our advocate and will support our treaty right to tribal sovereignty and separation of the races. Agent Wright said so long ago, that each race would then be able to go on with their business free of conflict with the other, and allow progress and destiny of each race in their own lands. It sounds almost Biblical doesn’t it? It is wisdom itself, to separate warring races, so the world may have peace.

PSYCHOLOGICAL RAMIFICATIONS TO SEPARATION

Congress is ultimately responsible for the treaty goal of advancement of the Blackfeet Indians into cattle ranching using their treaty lands for pasturage and feed production to create a self-sufficient tribal cattle industry upon the reserved tribal grazing tracts. In other words, the Blackfeet tribal cattle ranchers are singled out and given tribal treaty rights to develop the tribal cattle industry on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation to bring the Blackfeet Indians to self-sufficiency in the new economy. Mission accomplished! The Blackfeet cattle ranchers were written up in 1896 as possessing 25,000, cattle and shipping steers to Chicago, raising livestock, and selling beef to the government. Think of how valuable those government beef contracts would be worth today. Think of how successful tribal ranch families were in 1896. I know the Blackfeet have many ranch families left, but not everybody can raise cattle. The tribal cattle herds would provide product for a tribal processing facility and sales to government and international markets of Blackfeet beef products. There would be jobs for tribal members in the packing plant and distribution and sales and marketing of those products. The most important thing for the Blackfeet ranchers is to be made whole from the land frauds and cattle rustling and conspiracy to ruin the Blackfeet cattle industry by the white stockmen and Interior Department. These tribal ranch families still exist and need justice for the crimes committed against their forefathers that deprived them of their inheritance. But we have been taught over the past one hundred years that the Indians can expect no consistency in federal policy that follows the treaty, and that the interests of the state and border whites and corporations will take precedence over the interests of the Blackfeet Indians, and that the Indians can do little to affect those crimes committed against him, and he might even be told that it was for his own good. It is these negative thoughts and actions that must be exorcised from the tribal and federal body politic as the only avenues of communication. The tribal declaration of stop the thief will do wonders to get the attention of the Congress. It is a cry of war, in the sense that you cannot genocide me anymore and I want my land back! Such is the experience of the Congress, who has learned to negotiate those problems that would threaten the treaty or the Union. The psychological direction of the Indians is to assume their positions in society as if you had not been so rudely separated from your position and property in your own land. It is kind of embarrassing to have to tell someone to go home when they won’t leave, but it must be done to the whites sitting on stolen Blackfeet lands. Congress will do this very nicely with compensation to the whites. That much is good, for some of them purchased their property absent the knowledge of the thefts, but is charged with knowledge thereof. The rest is up to us to go to Congress and request the changes as we see fit. We are close to victory. But, what is the fly in the honey? We need to be unified in our claims. Our chairman Old Person called us a bureau problem and taught the tribal council to stay out of the fight to get our lands back. That is wrong on so many fronts. We are still a tribe and still all under the treaty, and all recognized as members of the Blackfeet Tribe. Why separate the Blackfeet crime victims from the protection of their own tribal government and tribal leadership? I believe that is the visible tail of the conspiracy, a last gasp of the conspirators to bury the Blackfeet crime victims in a mass unmarked grave like massacre victims of genocide. It is a trick to separate the tribe into factions instead of communal lands owned by the Blackfeet Indians set aside by treaty with the United States. It reaches the highest levels of Government in its inception by manipulating the plenary powers of Congress for their constituents benefit and to further the conspiracy. We are demanding return of Blackfeet Title, and Just Compensation for the families, and for tribal cattle industry restoration. We have offers of help from the tribal council.

Blackfeet History Quotes about Scientific Racism and Ranching

Blackfeet History Quotes about Scientific Racism and Ranching
One 1892 account of rainy night grave robbing of fifteen Blackfeet Indian graves is chilling:
I collected them in a way somewhat unusual: the burial place is in plain sight of many Indian houses and very near frequent roads. I had to visit the country at night when not
even the dogs were stirring…after securing one [skull] I had to pass the Indian sentry at
the stockade gate which I never attempted with more than one [skull], for fear of detection.
-Repatriation Reader edited by Devon A. Mihesuah

So despite protestations the government would have issued to the contrary, there can be no escaping one conclusion: Washington did more to hinder than to help the evolution of Indian cattle ranching. To the west on the Blackfeet Reservation, a comparable drama was played out. Although the government introduced cattle by the early 1880s, the overall pattern mirrored a preference for farming over ranching. As it would on many reservations during the era, federal officials persisted with the dream of irrigated farming. Veteran agent James H. Monteath knew futility when he saw it, labeling irrigation projects at Blackfeet in 1900”monuments of misdirected energy, being utterly impracticable.” Either planning was inadequate, or the Indians did not want the irrigation, or if they did, so did intruding whites.
Not all Blackfeet had an equal chance at getting a start in the cattle business. Washington preferred that cattle be given to “deserving Indians,” and not all, apparently, fell into that category. Those who obtained the federally bestowed animals, which bore the “ID” (Indian Department) brand, had other offers. Non-Indians waved cash, marriage proposals, and other enticements to lure Blackfeet into providing pasturage. As of 1903, of the 20,000 head of cattle, only 5,000 had “full-blood” owners.
Moreover, while advocating Indian farming and ranching, government officials did not back away from a continuing program of land allotment. Even though by 1917 it had been a demonstrable disaster on reservations all over the western United States, such overwhelming evidence did not stop the onrushing engine of allotment. Allotment by definition mitigated against successful cattle ranching. How could a rancher survive in western Montana on 160 acres? Bureau employees dutifully bought 1,880 head of cattle for the Blackfeet in 1915, and that number had grown to 4,300 two years later. But allotment followed by drought and bitter winters from 1917 to 1920 made for a mean combination that decimated tribal ranching. Efforts to revive the industry in the 1920s and 1930s would face long odds.

-from When Indians became Cowboys Native peoples and cattle ranching in the American West by Peter Iverson

Mabel H. Monroe Bonds File No.8411-1934-301

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

Indianz.com

For anybody who wants to read them you can now read my 2 letters I wrote and got published in Indian Country Today called Pennies on the dollar for Trust Fund Settlement and Offering Morsels for starving Indians at Indianz.com. You can also print them out there.

Quotes of the day

Quotes of the day Ask the powerful Five questions 1.What power have you got? 2.Where did you get it from? 3.In whose interests do you exercise it? 4.To whom are you accountable? 5.How can we get rid of you? Only Democracy gives us that right. That is why no-one with power likes Democracy. And that is why every generation must struggle to win it and keep it. Including you and me here and now. -Tony Benn 2005 British MP from Michael Moore’s Sicko A desire to resist oppression is Implanted in the nature of man. -Tacitus A riot is the language of the unheard. -Martin Luther King Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted. -Martin Luther King Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. -Martin Luther King Social justice, in relation to poverty, means an equitable distribution of wealth, opportunity, and other social resources to all groups within the society. And in relation to race, social justice means eliminating prejudice and discrimination against those who differ racially or culturally from the dominant majority. -from Mission Among The Blackfeet by Harold L. Harrod

Proclamation of war on the Blackfeet by Governor Thomas Meagher

PROCLAMATIONCALL FORVOLUNTEERS!Expedition to Fort Benton!The Indians on the WarPath.Whereas, it has been representedto me, by reliable persons, one of them Acting-Indian Agent for the Black-Feet nation, that the Piegans and Bloods, tribes of that nation, have recently been, and are still, committing grevious depredations, in the neighborhood of Fort Benton, on the property of white settlers residentat that place- And whereas, it has been alleged, on the same authority, that murdershave been perpetrated in the vicinity of that place, as also in other localities,by the said Piegans and Bloods, and facts as well as fair and lawful inferences sustain these allegations-And whereas, it appears that the people living in and about Fort Bentonare in grave apprehension of their property and lives, and that they are barely strong enough in numbers to defend themselves from anticipated attacks from these enemies of our Government and civilization-And whereas, no military force being as yet dispatched to this Territory by the National Governmentto protect the people to whom the Territory owes its existence and great Promise- Therefore, I Thomas Francis Meagher,Acting-Governor of the Territory of Montana, do hereby call for at least 500 Volunteers to meet me and form an expedition at Helena, which shall march against these marauders and murderers, so that the guilty parties shall be demanded of the Tribes, and put to death. Of the Piegans there are now 500 young warriors, bold and desperate, under the leadership of Little Dog’s Son, upon the war-path, and the number of Volunteers asked for, if required to ensure the success of the expedition in the speediest and most decisive manner. There being no Appropriations outstanding to meet the expenses of this expedition, and no Legislatureat present in session to vote supplies, it is respectfully but most earnestlysuggested that the merchants of Virginia City and Helena, advance such Stores as may be needed, and for the proper estimates of which a Quartermasterand Commissary of Subsistence will be commissioned who will give receipts for the same. The names of these and other officers, as well as the name of the officer commanding the expedition, will appear in a subsequent proclamation from Helena. The expedition must be mountedto a man. Every Volunteer should, therefore, mount himself, or get his friends to mount him, and bring his arms, ammunition, and blankets with him to the general rendezvous and Head-Quarters of the expedition, which from this date will be established at Helena, that being, by one hundred and thirty miles, a nearer point to the scene of the proposed action than Virginia City. I have in my possession thirty-nine Serviceable Springfield muskets eight thousand rounds of ball-cart-ridge, bayonets, cartridge-boxes, and other accoutrements. This is all I have it in my power to contribute personally to the expedition. But I consider it the duty of all those who live in the more secure settlements of the Territory-all those who can freely do so –to go to the rescue or protection of those who are at its outposts, and exposed to such risks and perils as inevitably attend life in the neighborhood of the Indians. The conduct of the Bloods and Piegans all through the negotiation of the Fort Benton treaty, the distribution of the annuities and from that out up to the present date,has been that of the most ill-conditioned vagabonds. It is true this treaty remains to be ratified by the Senate and President of the United States, and it cannot be properly said that these predatory and murderous Indians have violated its stipulations until it be so ratified. But they have violated the property and lives of our people, and their rascalities and crimes will be checked alone by the infliction of the heaviest retribution. We owe it to our noble Territory to inflict the retribution as soon as possible, otherwise its development and progress, its occupation in full by an enterprising and intrepid people, and in lawful reduction to their dominion will be signalized by the frequent assassination of our pioneers, the invasion of their homesteads, and the destruction of their property.By order, THOS. FRANCIS MEAGHERActing Governor, Montana Terr.(illegible) Hopkins, Private Sec’ryNote from Bob Juneau: This proclamation is the general attitude of the border-whites at Fort Benton and the Territory of Montana, who used any pretext at all to kill Indians, not only for bounties for scalps, but to cause the removal of the Blackfeet further into the interior and make more land for the whites. General Meagher’s War upon the Blackfeet is generally derided by the agent and the army, but it was ultimately to lead to the Baker massacre of Heavy Runner’s band. The Montana border-whites were also pointed to by President Grant as the biggest obstacle to the peace between the Blackfeet and the settlers, and their constant cries for killing the Blackfeet Indians finally bore fruit in the massacre, and the removal of the Blackfeet Agency from Fort Benton to Choteau, and finally to the reservation boundaries drawn in the 1896 Agreement. The Montana border-whites were not finished with the Blackfeet Indians as they followed the Indians onto the reservation and conspired with the BIA to defraud hundreds of Blackfeet Indians of their allotments in the BIA forced patent conspiracies. We are still fighting to get our stolen lands returned and the whites thrown off the reservation. I see the Blackfeet Chief on television singing for the governor at his banquet instead of helping us to fight for our stolen lands. He is a white-oriented Indian brainwashed to think the white man is superior to the Indians, but my attitude is that the white man is the biggest thief and murderer of Indians known to the world. President Grant appointed the Board of Indian Commissioners in 1870 to investigate the white man’s claims of Indian depredations and they came to the conclusion that the border-white man is the murderer and robber of the Indians, and all the Indians did was to get revenge for the murders of their people: Blackfeet old people, little kids, girls and women.

Quotes about the Baker Massacre

Quotes about the Baker Massacre by Bob Juneau“Will the Indians remain quiet now, do you think?” Asked an anxious settler of Lieutenant Doane, of the Cavalry, when the expedition was returningfrom the Marias. “Well, I can’t say,”returned the Lieutenant,”but there are certainly one hundred and seventy-three very good arguments in favor of their remaining quiet, lying out on the Marias!”-Death, Too, For The-Heavy-RunnerBy Ben Bennett “The people of the European race in coming into the New World have not really sought to make friends of the native population, or to make adequate use of the plants, or the animals indigenous to this continent, but rather to exterminate everything they found here and to supplant it with plants and animals to which they were accustomed. -Ethnobiologist Melvin Gilmore, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire “This world here belongs to us, they add. God, in refusing the first inhabitants the capacity to become civilized, has destined them in advance to inevitable destruction. The true owners of this continent are those who know how to take advantage of its riches. Satisfied with this reasoning, the American goes to church, where he hears a minister of the Gospel repeat to him that men are brothers, and that the Eternal Being, who has made them all in the same mould, has imposed on them the duty to help one another.” -Alexis de Tocqueville, Flyboys by James Bradley “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races willalmost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world.” -Charles Darwin, Flyboys by James Bradley “Of course our whole national history has been one of expansion….That the barbarians recede or are conquered, with the attendant fact that peace follows their retrogression or conquest, is due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway.” -Teddy Roosevelt, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hatingand Empire Building by Richard Drinnon “In spite of certain most objectionable details….it was on the whole as righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier.” -Teddy Roosevelt, commenting on the Sand Creek Massacre from Flyboys by James Bradley “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.” -Teddy Roosevelt, from Flyboys by James Bradley“What has miserable, inefficient Mexico-with her superstitution, her burlesque upon freedom, her actual tyranny by the few over the many-what has she to do with the great mission of peopling the new world with a noble race? Be it ours, to achieve that mission!” -Walt Whitman, from Flyboys by James Bradley By the time of Ieyasu Tokugawa’s ascension as Shogun, Portuguese and Spanish missionaries had made more than 300,000 converts in Japan. But Tokugawa noticed something was very Different about this barbarian religion from the West. Shintoism, the native animist religion of Japan, and Buddhism, which had been imported from India via China, were inclusionary faiths. Christianity excluded other beliefs. Tokugawa soon became suspicious of a religion whose very First Commandment required loyalty to one jealous, non-Japanese god. Tokugawa has also heard stories of how other Countries had been subjugated after allowing missionaries in. As one Japanese writer observed, “When those barbarians plan to subdue a country they start by opening commerce and watch for a sign of weakness. If an opportunity is presented they will preach their alien religionto captivate the people’s hearts. Once the People’s allegiance has been shifted, they can be manipulated and nothing can be done to stop it.” Convinced that he could not establish a stable peace if the people’s allegiance was to a gaizin god, in 1614, Tokugawa ordered all missionaries banished. -from Flyboys by James Bradley George Combe, who was the most influential Phrenologist in the United States as well as Great Britain, stressed the importance of Genetic inheritance.,Combe said at the end of the 1830s that the Existing races of native American Indians show skulls inferior in their moral and intellectual development to those of the Anglo-Saxon race, and that, morally and intellectually, these Indians are inferior to their Anglo-Saxon invaders, and have receded before them.-from Race And Manifest Destiny By Reginald Horsman The German Friedrich Tiedemann (as well as the American Samuel George Morton) used millet seed and shot to demonstrate the differences or similarities between the skull capacities of the different races. From this brain size and intelligence were deduced. -from Race And Manifest Destiny by Reginald Horsman To calculate brain size he sealed all but oneof a skull’s openings and filled it with mustard seed, then weighed the seed. He then correlated the amount of mustard seed with intelligence, morality, cultural development, and national character. Morton’s experiments proved that “eighty-four cubic inches of Indian brain had to compete against, and would eventually succumb before, ninety-six cubic inches of Teuton brain [which] comforted many Americans, for now they could find God’s hand and not their own directing the extinction of the Indian.” In fact, the White skulls Morton examined “nearly all belonged to White Men who had been hanged as felons.”-from The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley The history of the border white man’s connection with the Indians is a sickening record of murder, outrage, robbery, and wrongs committed by the former as the rule, and occasional savage outbreaks and unspeakably barbarous deeds of retaliation by the latter as the exception….The testimony of some of the highest military officers of the United States is on the record to the effect that, in our Indian Wars, almost without exception, the first aggressions have been made by the white man, and the assertion is supported by every civilianof reputation who has studied the subject. -Board of Indian Commissioners, Nov. 23, 1869 Report, from Celluloid Indians by Jacquelyn Kilpatrick In addition to the class of robbersand outlaws who find impunity in their nefarious pursuits upon the frontiers, there is a large class of professedly reputable men who use every means in their power to bring on Indian Wars, for the sake of the profit to be realized from the presence of troops and the expenditure of government funds in their midst. They proclaim death to the Indians at all times, in words and publications, making no distinction between the innocent and the guilty. They incite the lowest class of men to the perpetration of the darkest deeds against their victums, and, as judges and jurymen, shield them from the justice of their crimes. Every crime committed by a white man against an Indian is concealed or palliated; every offense committed by an Indian against a white man is borne on the wings of the post or the telegraph to the remotest corner of the land, clothed with all the horrors which the reality or imagination can throw around it….In his most savage vices the worst Indian is but the imitator of bad white men on the border. -Board of Indian Commissioners, Nov.23, 1869 Report from Celluloid Indians by Jacquelyn Kilpatrick “The white man does not understand the Indian for the reason that he does not understand America. He is too far removed from its formative processes. …The man from Europe is still a foreigner and an alien. And he still hates the man who questioned his path across the continent. But in the Indian the spirit of the land is still vested; it will be until other men are able to divine and meet its rhythm.” -Standing Bear of the Sioux from Celluloid Indians by Jacquelyn Kilpatrick Two days later, on March 5, the Chicago Tribune further reported that General Sully had written to the Indian Bureau “expressing grave doubt Whether the band surprised and murdered had taken any part in the late depredations,” and adding new figures from Lt. Pease to the effect that “the lives of eighteen women and nineteen children, none of them more than three years of age, and many of them much younger, some of whom were wounded, were not spared by the soldiers.” Wrote the paper:”The affair is looked on at the Interior Department as the most disgraceful butchery in the annals of our dealings with the Indians.” -from Death, Too, For the-Heavy-Runner By Bill Bennett “I endorse the order of General Phil Sheridan,” he told the House. “I endorse the act of General Hancock. I endorse the conduct of Colonel Baker.” “I desire to ask the gentleman,” interrupted Congressman George Hoar of Massachusetts,”if he means to say that he approves the killing of these women and children in cold blood, when there were no arms in their hands.” “I will answer the question fairly and squarely,” replied Cavanaugh, “in the words of General Harney after the battle of Ash Hollow, years ago…they are nits, and will become lice. I endorse…the act of Colonel Baker.” -Montana Congressman James T. Cavanaugh,from Death, Too, For The-Heavy-RunnerOn January 23, 1870, Maj. Eugene M. Baker and two squadrons of the Second Cavalry attacked and all but obliterated a Piegan village on Montana’s Marias River. Humanitarians branded the affair a deliberate and unprovoked massacre of peaceful Indians, women and children as well as men. Sherman and Sheridan defended Baker, pointing out that these Peigans were demonstrably guilty of depredations and that the casualty figures belied the charge of massacre. Of 173 killed, 120 were men and 53 were women and children, while 140 women and children were taken captive and later released. The army’s protestations, however, were overwhelmed by columns of sensationalism that filled eastern newspapers, and Baker stood convicted by public opinion of unspeakable barbarism. -from Frontier Regulars by Robert M. Utley

Congressman Bathrick & Senator Walsh

In 1906 Congressman Bathrick of Ohio rose to protest Montana Senator Walsh’s bill in a Joint Session of Congress that was crafted to allot the Blackfeet Reservation over the protests of the Indians: “ I am convinced that those behind this bill expect to get in on a very profitable land deal, it seems to me that of all of the many cases of robbery and hardship imposed on the American Indians, that the case of the Blackfeet Indians is the darkest and most shameful.”
Senator Walsh’s bill intended to take 156,000 acres of reclamation, coal, and oil lands of the Blackfeet Indians left over after allotment. Senator Walsh’s allotment bill was a land grab hatched in Congress by grafters to steal Indian land. A Government Inspector reported in 1906,
“ these Indians are worse off than being convicts in a penitentiary with a corrupt warden, but these Indians are not convicts either, and know they are being pushed into a pit of helplessness. “
The BIA superintendent and agency traders conspired to steal Indian annuities and sell the Indians their own goods back at high prices through the agency store. Indian goods sold in the trader’s store ran up debts on the starving Indians that were cashed in as liens on Indian allotments or tax deeds issued by county courts. Coercion led to the forced patent conspiracy.
The Indians knew that they would be starved again and be forced to sell more land to keep from starving to death, and the cycle would begin anew. There were hundreds of landless Blackfeet by 1920. Liens filed by traders amounted to over $100,000 in debts on the Indians and tax deeds filed in county courts severed Indian title to 210,000 acres of the reservation.
Senator Lane’s investigation found the agency superintendent & border whites starving the Indians to force them to sell 156,000 acres under the reclamation, coal and oil fields. Superintendent McFatridge hired a hulking, brutal Montana Territorial Prison convict as agency police chief to throw Indians in the medieval jail. Indians died from beatings, pneumonia and diseases in the unheated jail. It was practically a death sentence to be thrown in the agency jail.
History and language needs to agree with available evidence to reach the truth. The Baker Massacre and Starvation Winter’s real purpose was to take 17,000,000 acres of Blackfoot Confederacy lands for Montana stockmen and gold miners. The border-white success is evident.
The ability of the criminals to execute hundreds of land frauds [fee patents] also exposes their political connection to the Montana Senators in manipulating the plenary powers [absolute powers] of Congress over the Indian’s property for their constituents [white stockmen] benefit.
Legal scholars say that without ‘intent’ there can be no genocide and that’ theft” was never the goal of federal Indian policy, but nevertheless, we the Blackfeet, have had massacre, starvation, land frauds disease, and removal. Was it all just by accident or extermination policy?
The Blackfeet Indians have 605 claims concerning stolen Blackfeet lands and minerals today in which the Interior Department admitted complicity [partnership in crime] in the fee patents and tribal claims. The Blackfeet Tribe has never consented to opening up the Blackfeet Reservation to white settlement, the Indians did not give their consent to accept the fee patents, nor did the Secretary of Interior possess the authority to issue unrestricted fee patents.
We have a winning claim to get our land returned with $300,000,000 [1980 estimate] in just compensation. The claims address disinheritance or lost birthright of Blackfeet Indian heirs in the 605 forced patents, 37 secretarial transfers [sales] of heir ship lands, pilfering of deceased Indian trust accounts, trespass to property and illegal rights of way.
Blackfeet heirs lost millions of dollars in their BIA IIM accounts. The past leader did not think of his duty to preserve the Blackfeet lands, and called the thefts a bureau [BIA] problem, even to all of the small allotments that add up to all of the land we will ever possess. Tribal leaders should think of their duty to the Blackfeet Nation, and the debt we owe to our relatives for sufferings and deaths in an ultimate sacrifice to leave their trust lands for their grandchildren.

Blackfeet Resolution #224-2001

Blackfeet NationP.O. Box 850 Browning, Montana 59417(406) 338-7521 Fax 338-7530 Executive Committee Blackfeet Tribal Business CouncilEarl Old Person – Chairman Earl Old PersonDarrell “Gordo” Horn – Secretary Darrell “Gordo” Horn Gordon Monroe – Secretary Gordon MonroeLeo M. Kennerly, III – Acting Secretary Leo M. Kennerly, III Joe A. Gervais – Treasurer Titius “Titus” UphamClifford Tailfeathers Jimmy St. Goddard Hugh Monroe Ervin C. Carlson R E S O L U T I O NNUMBER: 224-2001WHEREAS: The Blackfeet Tribal Business Council is the Duly Constituted Governing body within the exterior boundaries of the Blackfeet Indian Nation, and WHEREAS: The Blackfeet Tribal Business Council has been organized to represent, develop, protect, and advance the views, interests, education, and resources of the Blackfeet Indian Nation, and WHEREAS: The Blackfeet Tribal Business Council has completed a study on Blackfeet allotted lands, minerals, forced patents, state, county incorporation on the Blackfeet reservation, and WHEREAS: The Blackfeet forced patents are a result of a criminal conspiracy of Indian bureau employees and local whites documented by a United States Senate investigation in 1929, and WHEREAS: The creation of county governments on the Blackfeet reservation by the State of Montana violates the disclaimers contained in the 1889 and 1972 state constitutions, andWHEREAS: These actions by the Indian Bureau [BIA] and State of Montana violate the Blackfeet Treaty with the United States of America, andWHEREAS: The Blackfeet Allottees and the Blackfeet Indian Nation have suffered epic poverty and diminished tribal sovereignty as a result of these actions, and WHEREAS: The Blackfeet Indian Nation enjoys as government to government relationship with the United States, andWHEREAS: The involvement [complicity] of the Federal Trustee and the State of Montana violates the mandate of Congress, nowTHEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED: That the repatriation of allotted Blackfeet lands and reparations be made to affected Blackfeet Allottees, and that the tribal sovereignty be re-established upon the Blackfeet Indian Nation, and that all of the tax monies illegally collected by the State of Montana and Glacier and Pondera Counties be refunded to the Blackfeet Tribal Government, andBE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: That the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council hereby requests that the Senate Indian Affairs Committee of the United States Senate investigate the Blackfeet allottee complaints.ATTEST: THE BLACKFEET TRIBE OF THE BLACKFEET INDIAN RESERVATIONGORDON MONROE, SECRETARY EARL OLD PERSON, CHAIRMANCERTIFICATION I, hereby certify that the foregoing Resolution was adopted by the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council during a duly called, noticed, and convened special session assembled for business the 8th day of August, 2001, with six (6) members present to constitute a quorum, and by a unanimous vote to approve said Resolution. GORDON MONROE, SECRETARYBLACKFEET TRIBAL BUSINESS COUNCILNOTE TO TRIBAL MEMBERS: It took us nine months to convince the tribal council to pass tribal resolution no. 224-2001, calling for a senate investigation of the Blackfeet land frauds, and with the help of council man Jim St. Goddard, it was passed but chairman Old Person was mad at us for bringing up the claims against the BIA and he refused to bring this tribal resolution to the senate Indian committee. He told the senate Indian committee lawyer the Blackfeet Tribe was not interested in pursuing the claims and the claims died there in 2001. We brought up the forced patents [pre-1966] Indian claims during the state-tribal water compact negotiations but we were thrown out of the meetings by Old Person and his goon squad [tribal security]. By my estimation he is a traitor and must be removed from chief, because our old time chiefs brought our claims to Washington D.C. not to the BIA or Governor of Montana-he don’t know anything. Chairman Old Person killed the Blackfeet claims in 1980, 2001, 2008. This will be our fourth assault in 2010 on his beloved BIA masters and white people he loves so much. I hope the new tribal leaders are not brainwashed like Earl Old Person. The governor has a saddle on him. You can get a copy of this Resolution at the Blackfeet Tribal Office in Blackfeet Documents.