The Blackfeet Indians “sell the rocks”

The Blackfeet Chiefs held out for the reservation of timber and grazing lands in the 1896 Agreement, and “sold the rocks’ according to tribal oral history, but even this treaty concession would be taken from them in 1910 by the creation of Glacier National Park and the Lewis & Clark National Forest on the reserved lands which fenced them out.

The Agreement between the United States and the Blackfeet Indians was ratified by Congress on June 10, 1896 and Article Five provided “Since the situation of the Blackfeet Reservation renders it wholly unfit for agriculture, and since these Indians have shown within the past four years that they can successfully raise horned cattle, and there is every probability that they will become self-supporting by attention to this industry, it is agreed that during the existence of this agreement no allotments of land in severalty shall be made to them, but that this whole reservation shall continue to be held by these Indians as a communal grazing tract upon which their herds may feed undisturbed; and that after the expiration of this agreement the lands shall continue to be held until such time as a majority the adult males of the tribe shall request in writing that allotment in severalty shall be made of their lands; Provided, That any member of the tribe may, with the approval of the agent in charge, fence in such area of land as he and the members of the family would be entitled to under the allotment act, and may file with the agent a description of such land and of the improvements that he has made on the same, and the filing of such description shall give the said members of the tribe the right to take such land when allotments of the land in severalty shall be made.”
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau  
pg.70