How did the white man get land on the Blackfeet Reservation? Joseph K. Dixon, President of the National Indian Memorial Association wrote General John J. Pershing, General of the Armies in World War One in 1921, that, "One hundred fifty Blackfeet Indians fought in World War One on the fields of France and only about twenty came back, and not one of them sound and many of them wounded; that these Indian veterans are now 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. I want to know General Pershing, if you are able to find anywhere, in the annals of the deplorable conditions obtaining in starving Russia and hunger-ridden Armenia, anything more heart rending or deplorable than this condition on the Blackfeet Reservation-denied absolutely by Cato Sells, Indian Commissioner, unheeded by Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane, and why it is and how it is that this nation will pour out its treasures of food and clothing and sympathy on the children of foreign lands while they leave destitute and dying Indians under the control of a merciless bureaucracy. There is no speech, there is no language, there is no heart-rending cry that will in any fashion become adequate to the description of such a state of affairs. Please use your influence and great heart to strike a blow somewhere, somehow, that will rouse the people to a realization of the horrors that exist at their own door, and that the spirit of mercy and of good-will clustering about the manger and cradle in Bethlehem will bring gifts of food and clothing to these dependent, oppressed, and damaged Indians, old and blind, who lived to rear boys whom they sent to fight under your swords in France, who are likewise wounded, helpless and suffering with their fathers whom they cannot help. God have mercy on us if we do not do something and do it soon." Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior immediately protested, going so far as to send a special messenger to Mr. Rodman Wannamaker in New York stating that I am "abusing the United Stats Government." Not many weeks later the Women's Club of San Francisco wrote a letter to Senator W.P. Dillingham of Vermont detailing the awful conditions obtaining on the Blackfeet Reservation. Senator Dillingham sent the letter to Cato Sells, Commissioner of Indian Affairs who stated "No reports have been received by me of Indians starving to death under the jurisdiction of the Federal Government suffering from want of food." That statement was made in the face of the fact that the Joint Commission of Congress to Investigate Indian Affairs, serial no. two, part 6-A, by Senator Harry Lane of Oregon, and in it you will find hunger, neglect, oppression, failure, injustice and horror personified. Cato Sells was in possession of that report at the very moment he wrote to Senator Dillingham." James Willard Schultz wrote, "I, myself saw that the rations doled out to the few families that had ration tickets could not possibly last them more than three days which would leave them nine days to starve. The bacon given out was not fit for a dog to eat; it was so rotten that it made a stench in the great building." Hart Merriam Schultz, son of James Willard Schultz,who had a Blackfeet mother, wrote, "Well the Blackfeet are about finished. Excepting a few old people they get no rations. They have no grain crops and very little hay and the dreadful winter is yet to come. Yesterday Many Guns and Dog Gun came to see me and said they were so hungry they had to ask for help. Unless you all help they will all die off this winter. An old woman came to see me, walking all the way from Two Medicine. She was in rags and starving, I gave her a meal and bought coffee, sugar, and meat for her and she was so affected by this, she broke down and cried. I tell you, by God, it makes me so mad to see the condition these Indians are in, they are plumb out of food and their faces have turned grey from hunger. It serves well the interests of the purposes of those who are after this big grass country of the Blackfeet Reservation, now practically all taken by agents of the big meat trust Swift & Co. through its subsidiary the Portland Land & Cattle Co. The patents issued by Cato Sells resulted in the traders at Browning where one trader had 212 of the land allotments and other real estate sharks has hundreds more."
Note by Bob Juneau: The Forced Fee Patents Cases on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation have sat in the Senate Indian Affairs Committee for a century now, and the water compact will hand over Patent-in-Fee titles to the white ranchers living on those stolen Blackfeet lands forever. I have fought for these claims since 1980 when the Blackfeet Chiefs asked me to help the people with their "land problems", which turned out to be these claims. I am at the end of my life and I fear I have failed to win our claims and the restoration of 1,200 Blackfeet Indian Allotted lands leaving us with poverty forever. Please, if you have any humanity, E-Mail President Obama to protest this century old historic injustice to a loyal ally of the United States since the 1855 Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Amity. The Blackfeet Tribe has an 80% unemployment rate due to border-whites occupation of the productive lands and usurpation of the cattle industry and economic rights of the Blackfeet Indians and the incorporation of Glacier and Pondera Counties on the stolen lands of the Blackfeet Indians.
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