BLACKFEET SOLDIERS "DOUGHBOYS" MURDERED FOR LAND UPON RETURN TO THE RESERVATION

In July, 1921 the National Indian Memorial Association appealed to General of the Armies John J. Pershing to help his Blackfeet soldiers. The Blackfeet veterans of World War One had fought on the fields of France in World War One and of 150 Blackfeet soldiers "doughboys" who went to war only about 20 returned to the reservation, wounded and in a bad way, only to find their aged parents starving by the roadside. Blackfeet veterans became victims of a genocidal attack by Montana border-whites to starve the Indians into selling land to whites in complicity with Commissioner of Indian Affairs Cato Sells, and Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane, who both denied the Indians were in a starving condition. The National Indian Memorial Association appealed to General Pershing to use his influence to seek a remedy for this deplorable condition: "One hundred and fifty Blackfeet Indians had fought on the fields of France and only about twenty came back, not one of them sound, and many of them wounded; that these Indian veterans are dying by the roadside, and so are many of their other tribal members, from sheer hunger; that the tribe is being decimated by the pangs of hunger; that their hunting grounds have been pre-empted and their land filched." The Honorable Senator Harry Lane of Oregon, Chair of the Joint Commission of Congress to Investigate Indian Affairs had issued a Report of the starving conditions of the Blackfeet Indians in 1916; that the Indians told him they were being starved by border-whites to force a land cession of 156,000 acres of their irrigable lands and newly discovered oil fields, and that the Indians were starved into eating skunks and prairie dogs to keep alive and that over one hundred Blackfeet people of all ages were starved to death during the winter of 1913 although there was plenty of food available at the agency paid for with Blackfeet land cessions to the United States. Senator Lane held a tribal council and only eight of the Indians voted to sell their lands which contained the irrigation system built with $942,413.58 of tribal dollars. The Commercial Clubs usurped Blackfeet reclamation projects after construction and operation and maintenance were charged to the Blackfeet accounts in Washington D.C. Senator Lane reported, "The Indians asked me if I would protest against the passage of the surplus land sale bill of Senator Walsh of Montana, supported by the Commercial Clubs surrounding the reservation. I said I would object to the bill for them, and the senator from Montana has said I have hurt his feelings that I reported the awful conditions of the Indians. These Indians are human beings. The white man might take a lesson in kindness from the Blackfeet Indians, he is a man who divides his food with you to the last bite of food, but I say that as long as I am in the Senate I am going to keep on protesting every time there is an opportunity, without fear of God, man or the devil, for I will not stand for that kind of game." We lost a battle but not the war, thanks to patriotic and Christian legislators like Senator Harry Lane, Oregon can be proud of this man of integrity.Thanks also to the National Indian Memorial Association and all of the white people who played roles in saving Indians from genocides of the greedy, who have no bounds in their pursuit of dollars. The descendants of the victims carry on the fight to get their grandma's lands back in the family homesteads. We love our homelands too. Please read the Sacred Buffalo Vision. Bob Juneau Sr.