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Blackfoot/Siksika Medicine Man, Performing His Mysteries Over a Dying Man, 1832

By 1780, there were as many as 15,000 members of the Blackfeet Nation. Their hunting grounds had shrunk somewhat, since other tribes also had obtained guns and horses, which made it difficult to maintain such large territorial borders. Nevertheless, the Blackfeet, the premier wayfaring tribe of the northern plains, were battling almost everyone on the prairies by the 1800s. Their large numbers, horse skills and marksmanship enabled them to continue to be the dominant tribe on Montana's northern plains.

Stu-mick-o-sucks, Buffalo Bull's Back Fat, Head Chief, Blood Tribe, 1832

   The Blackfeet didn't particularly like American fur trappers, by their hostility toward the Missouri Fur Company, which tried to open a trading post in Blackfeet Country during the year of 1810 and immediately had to close down. It was re-opened in 1821, only to close again. Finally, in 1832, the American Fur Company opened an outpost, called Fort Piegan, on the Missouri River near the mouth of the Marias River. By then the Blackfeet had tempered their dislike for these intruders because the Indians enjoyed the goods that traders brought with them. Besides, the American trappers had adopted the British trade systems the Indians knew in Canada. This was far more palatable to the Blackfeet then the "Big Knife" American trappers of a few years before who were interested in only trapping and ignored a viable trade relationship with Indians.

   From 1840 to 1860, the three Blackfeet Tribes became more distinct and their home regions better defined. The Bloods and North Blackfeet stayed north of the Canadian border and the Piegan lived south of the Border. Although the Piegan Blackfeet were not involved directly in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, the federal government named them as one of the tribes authorized to use the huge part of Montana north of the Missouri River and east of the Continental Divide. This treaty formed the eventual Blackfeet Reservation.

   In 1855, the hostility between the Blackfeet and the U.S. government culminated in the Baker Massacre. This incident was precipitated by a band of Piegans having killed a prominent settler, Malcolm Clark, outside of Helena in the Fall of 1869. The army decided to retaliate that winter, so Colonel E.M. Baker departed from Fort Shaw and went north to the Marias River and in a surprise attack on January 23, 1870, killed almost all of Heavy Runner's band--mostly women and children who were ill with smallpox.

   Grant's executive orders of 1873 and 1874, removing the land between Marias River on the north and Sun River on the south from the Blackfeet. In 1877, the Bloods and the north Blackfeet signed a Treaty Number Seven with the Canadian government, restricting them to designated reservations in Alberta. The Piegan Blackfeet remained south of the 49th parallel, occupying part of the vast reservation north of the Missouri and Marias rivers. Even though, in 1880-1881, the Blackfeet still had some successful buffalo hunts, their staff of like had been virtually eliminated. By the winter of 1882, the Blackfeet were destitute. They were forced suddenly to rely on their enemy, the U.S. government. That winter more than 600 Blackfeet died of starvation.

Sweetgrass Hills

   It was this desperate situation that led the Piegan leaders, White Calf and Three Suns to sit down with a United States treaty commission in 1887 to again sell part of the Reservation for survival needs. The Sweetgrass Hills Treaty was agreed to and was ratified by Congress in 1888. This land agreement broke up the big northern Montana Indian reservation and set up the reservations of Fort Peck, Fort Belknap and Blackfeet with more or less their present day borders.

   From a reservation that once took in almost two-thirds of Eastern Montana, the Blackfeet now found themselves on a small piece of land in the northwestern corner of Montana's Great Plains. In return the Blackfeet got tools, equipment and cattle to help them become self-sufficient as farmers and ranchers. However, the nearly nomadic hunters did not take to farming nor was it a lucrative occupation on the marginal land of the reservation. Once again, in 1885, the federal government offered a treaty; and took more Blackfeet land, seeking valuable minerals in the western portion of the reservation in what is now Glacier National Park.

   By the time the Great Northern Railroad was built across the reservation in 1890-1891, the Blackfeet bore little resemblance to the fiercely proud and majestic tribe that had dominated the Montana plains only a few decades before. With no buffalo, a reduced land base, the iron horse cutting the reservation in two and non-Indian trespass for cattle grazing, mining and timber cutting, the Blackfeet at the turn of the century were in a sad state of affairs.

   Even though most Blackfeet and non-Indian observers recognized that the reservation lands were far more conducive to raising cattle than to farming, Indian agents continued to try to turn the Blackfeet into farming people. Agents argued that sedentary family farm-life was the Blackfeet individuals way to self-sufficiency and that, with irrigation, the arid plains could be made productive. In 1907, the U.S. government gave the Blackfeet the authority to allot lands to individual families on the reservation, and a year later, it started building a large irrigation project. The allotment process was completed in 1911 and bitterly contested by recalcitrant tribal members. Finally in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation repealing the 1907 Blackfeet allotment act, returning all surplus lands to the tribe. Without Wilson's intervention the tribe and its members would have very little of the Blackfeet reservation today. Allottees were selling land to Non-Indians just to survive.

   Although big irrigation projects were proposed and allotment took place, by 1915 the federal government changed its farming policy on Blackfeet toward an emphasis on ranching. But by 1919, a drought eliminated any economic progress that had been started with reservation farming and ranching. By the early 1920's, the Blackfeet's fragile economy was in shambles with more than two thirds of their members directly reliant on federal handouts. A succession of Indian Agents tried to farming and ranching started again in ensuing years. This included a Five-Year Industrial Plan begun in 1921, based on farming, the produced some positive results, oil was discovered also in 1921, but it was not seen as a great new economic self-sufficiency opportunity at the time. Timber harvesting also began, but provided little employment and income to the Blackfeet. Widespread poverty continued throughout the 1920's and when Montana Senator Burton Wheeler visited the Blackfeet reservation in 1928, he found deplorable conditions.

   Vocational training programs and job placement efforts for Blackfeet tribal members who wanted to live off-reservation were promoted and instituted in the 1940's and early 1950's. There was some talk of federal termination of the reservation, but no real action occurred because the tribe continued to be in dreadful economic state despite the fact that oil leasing and farming was beginning to bring in some revenue for tribal needs.

   The Community Action Program, Neighborhood Youth Corps, VISTA and Senior Citizen Programs provided assistance to the tribe, as did a series of Economic Development Administration projects. All of this, plus the increasing economic impact of oil and gas revenues, have provided hope for the Blackfeet. Today, the Blackfeet still face severe unemployment problems and fundamental issues regarding treaty and water rights.

   As of December 1, 2001, Blackfeet tribal enrollment figures showed that there are 15, 441 tribal members with approximately 8,000 living of the reservation.

   The reservation encompasses 1,462,640 acres with a little more than 555,000 acres being owned by non-Indians. The rest is either allotted to tribal members or is owned by the Tribe.

   Because the reservation includes both mountains and high plains, there is a great diversity in wildlife populations, elk, deer antelope, mountain goat, black and grizzly bear, mountain lion and some bighorn sheep are found on the reservation.

    Oil was discovered on the reservation in 1921, but did not become a major economic factor until after World War II. There is more than 3 million tons of sub-bituminous coal estimated to be located on the reservation. Although, this is adequate for domestic use, it is not enough for any sizeable commercial mine.

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