THE “BIG CLAIM” OF BLACKFEET FORCED PATENTS EXTINGUISHED BY WATER COMPACT IF APPROVED BY BLACKFEET VOTERS REFERENDUM

THE “BIG CLAIM” OF BLACKFEET FORCED PATENTS  EXTINGUISHED BY WATER COMPACT IF APPROVED BY BLACKFEET VOTERS REFERENDUM

Origins of Blackfeet Allotted Forced Fee Patents Fraud Conspiracy

Blackfeet Indian Reservation, July 26, 1926  

At the schoolhouse in Browning called to order by Robert Hamilton, Interpreter, and tribal lawyer for Blackfeet Chiefs White Calf, Wolf Plume, Black Weasel, Young Man Chief and others gathered in a general council meeting with Senate Indian Affairs Committee Investigator Mr. Walter W. Liggett with 300 Blackfeet trust landowners in attendance. Mr. Robert Hamilton then enumerated the following complaints, which he urged Mr. Liggett to investigate, 1. The right of the government to issue patent fee deeds to Indians when not requested by the Indians; also the right of state or local governments to tax such patent fees when issued until the trust period of 25 years has expired; the right of the federal government to assess irrigation project costs against Blackfeet Indian allotments. The irrigated lands constructed by $897,000 of tribal land cession money benefitted only white farmers. The Indians had requested the purchase of cattle for Blackfeet ranchers to restock their cattle herds stolen by white ranchers and Indian Bureau officials. 2. The interference of Supt. F. C. Campbell in the election of the Tribal Council and his disregard of recommendations on leasing and other matters made by the tribal council. 3. The Indians desire to know the extent of the tribal fund, how it is derived, and how expended. 4. The Indians desire to know the extent of the tribal herd and have an accounting of funds accruing from its sale of cattle and steers.

REPORT OF WALTER W. LIGGETT ON BLACKFEET INDIAN RESERVATION

            The Blackfeet Indians were allotted in 1912. Allotments were made of 320 acres to each Indian. Later, under the Act of June 30, 1919, each Indian was given an additional allotment of 80 acres to be held as a perpetual homestead, practically all of this was on irrigated lands and allotment was also made to all children born since 1912. This made a total allotment of 400 acres to each Indian in addition to inherited lands. Of the total of 1,486,874 acres on the reservation, 1,440,000 acres have been allotted; 2,634 acres set aside for school, agency, and township purposes; and 44,240 acres remain as tribal timber and grazing reserves. Approximately 760,000 acres still held by living Indians under trust patents; 470,000 acres now consist of deceased Indian lands administered by the Indian Bureau; and approximately 210,000 acres of land formerly owned by Indians has passed into the possession of white men after the Indians were granted fee patents.

INDIANS DEFRAUDED BY DELIBERATED CONSPIRACY:

In this connection it should be pointed out that a large proportion of this patent fee land in question consists of the most valuable acreage in the Blackfeet Reservation; that it was sold to a clique of covetous whites at absurdly low figures; and that furthermore scores of patent fees were issued to Indians without the Indians having made application for the same in clear violation of the law. In other words, I charge that a conspiracy existed between Horace G. Wilson, former superintendant, Stuart Hazlett, former lease clerk, and certain land seeking white men, whereby it was arranged to give patent-in-fees to certain Indians, and afterwards the white land buyers speedily obtained the land by more or less devious means. The principal beneficiary of this deliberate conspiracy was

Joseph L. Sherburne of the Sherburne Mercantile Company of Browning, Montana, who has acquired some 40,000 acres of former Indian owned land since coming to the Blackfeet Reservation. Testimony by at least a dozen reputable Indians is to the affect that former superintendent Horace G. Wilson, who later served a term in the Federal Penitentiary for bigamy the Indians were compelled to accept patents in fee for which they had not applied. Examination of the patents files shows no applications had been made by the Indians and is complete verification of their allegations.

In several cases, as soon as the patents had been issued, the above mentioned J. L. Sherburne induced the Indians to sign promissory notes or to mortgage their land for bills incurred at his general store. In some cases wives were induced to assume the debts incurred by husbands, or minor children were persuaded that the only honorable course was to mortgage their land to discharge obligations of their parents. In other cases the land was purchased outright. Many of the Indians who were given fee patents were ignorant, absolutely illiterate, and wholly incompetent to conduct their own affairs. In at least two cases fee patents were arbitrarily issued to Indians who were known to be mentally deficient by the superintendent when he approved the patent.

THE ROBBING OF A MENTALLY DEFICIENT YOUTH BY JOE SHERBURNE   

I refer specifically to the case of Peter Tail Feathers who was given a patent on June 15, 1920. At that time there was on file in the office of Supt. Wilson a report signed by the agency physician which showed that Peter Tail Feathers was crippled in one hand, partly paralyzed, had tuberculosis, was a chronic sufferer from epilepsy, and was officially classified on the reservation as an imbecile [feebleness of body and mind].

This unfortunate youth had land which had been appraised at $3,200. Soon after his patent was issued, he sold this land which was believed to contain oil and was exceptionally good hay land. This whole deal smells to high heaven and steps should be taken to prosecute those responsible for defrauding this youth, or, if that is impossible, the deed to the land should be cancelled. Certainly, some restitution should be made to this feeble-minded boy who was robbed by his sworn protectors. Every step of this transaction was conceived in fraud and carried out deliberately by men who were paid on the supposition they were guardians of this government ward.  

Interview of Peter Tail Feathers by Mr. Walter W. Liggett,  (He is crippled, practically paralyzed, subject to epileptic fits, cannot read or write and quite obviously is mentally defective. His speech and answers were so confused it was almost impossible to get a verbatim report of his testimony, but I summarized his story as I got it with the aid of several interpreters.). Peter Tail Feathers statement, “Mr. Campbell (Red Hair) forced me to accept a patent fee in 1919. I had an allotment near Heart Butte agency. I didn’t want the patent but they forced me to take it. They told me I had to accept it.”

It developed from questioning of others present that the [Pondera] county attorney, Horace W. Judson, prepared the papers and handed $300 in cash to this feebleminded boy and got his mark on a deed of sale. Joe Tatsey was a witness. It also appears that the land in question is located in township 20, range 9 and is not only exceptionally good hay land but is almost in the center of the oil pool revealed by geological survey maps of the Blackfeet Reservation. After the land was sold it was then purchased by a Kalispell banker named Johnson. One glance at Peter Tail Feathers is sufficient to reveal that he is on the border of imbecility and the very fact that that this boy was given a patent soon after his majority is proof positive that responsible agency officials were party to the plot to defraud him of his land. Most of these patents were issued from the period of 1918-1921 when F.C. Campbell, Horace G. Wilson and Thomas Powers acted as superintendents in rapid succession. Both Powers and Wilson were later dismissed from the Indian Service. Mr. Campbell is now superintendent at the Blackfeet Reservation. Stuart Hazlett, the lease clerk who made up the list of Indians recommended for patents by “Competency Commission” members Joe Sherburne, agency trader and Glacier county attorney C. E. Frisbee was dismissed from the Indian service. There is not doubt at all that scores of these patents were issued illegally to Indians incompetent in fact as well as in the eyes of the law. In nearly every case, the issuance of the patent meant that the Indian was defrauded of his land. It would seem that in all these cases where it is not possible to cancel the patents, that lieu land allotments be made to the Indians.”

METHODOLOGY OF FORCED PATENTS APPROVAL CONSPIRACY

Commissioner of Indian Affairs J. Scattergood letter, to Hon. Lynn Frazier, Chairman, Senate Committee to Investigate Indian Affairs, United States Senate, October 11, 1929:

My dear Senator:

            The receipt is acknowledged of your letter of October 5, 1929, asking that you be furnished with the names of the Supervisor and other officers who were responsible for the issuance of a patent in fee to Peter Tail Feathers, allottee No. 367 of the Blackfeet Reservation. Our records show that the report on the application of Peter Tail Feathers, recommending the issuance of the patent in fee to him was signed by H. G. Wilson, Supervisor in charge of the Blackfeet agency; that the papers in the case were forwarded to the Secretary of the Interior, with the recommendation that the application be approved, over the signature of C. F. Hauke, Chief Clerk of the Indian Service; and that the application was approved and the matter referred to the Commissioner of the General Land Office for issuance of patent in fee by S. G. Hopkins, Assistant Secretary of the Interior. Sincerely yours, J. Scattergood, Assistant Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

ROBBERY OF A BLACKFEET DEAD MAN BY PONDERA COUNTY AND BIA,

SECRETARIAL SALE OF LAND OF RICHARD AND ROSE GRANT’S SON, PATENT NO. 810 ½, PERRY GRANT, DECEASED BLACKFEET ALLOTTEE:

Blackfeet Agency, Browning, Montana, May 22, 1928,

Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Washington D.C.

Dear Sir: I desire to refer to patent No. 723579, issued December 11, 1919, to Richard and Rose Grant, covering the lands of Perry Grant, allottee No. 810 ½. The Office is advised that Richard and Rose Grant are the parents of Perry Grant, and each inherited a one-half interest in this estate. The records do not show the history of why this fee patent was issued to Richard and Rose Grant. No copy of an application filed by them appears in the records of either of these people, and Mr. Grant states that he did not make application for a fee patent to these lands. However, in this connection, I desire to call to the attention of the Commissioner, to a letter that was issued by the Indian Office under date of August 29, 1919, file reference L-S 64636-19 E.S.S., addressed to Superintendent Wilson, who was in charge of this reservation and which communication reads in part as follows, “This refers to your report on the application of Richard Grant, Blackfeet Reservation for a patent in fee covering the allotment of Perry Grant, deceased.” As stated above, I do not find a record which would show that Mr. Grant ever applied for a patent in fee, and do not find a copy of any report made by Supervisor Wilson. What makes these matters important at this time is the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Grant have never mortgaged these lands, have never sold them, or received any benefit from them whatsoever. They have failed, however, to pay taxes that are due, and the County Attorney is now asking for a tax deed. If the Office will kindly furnish me the information requested above as to whether or not the Office Records show any history of an application having been made, it will then be our plan to submit affidavits and other information necessary with the purpose in mind of obtaining the cancellation of this fee patent and the restoration of the land to a trust status. In the event that an application is found in the records, it is requested that the Indian Office furnish us with a photostatic copy of such application. Very respectfully, Forrest Stone, Acting Superintendent, Blackfeet Agency.

CUT BANK WHITES AND BIA STARVE 200 TRUST LANDOWNERS 1913-1922

Senator Lane of Oregon testified in 1915 to the Joint Commission to Investigate Indian Affairs, that, “with me it has been merely a matter of securing justice for a class of people whose affairs were, in a measure, intrusted to me to take care of for them. A while ago, Senator Walsh of Montana implied that the effort on the part of senators from other states to correct this injustice was intended as a personal affront to him. The lands of the Seville Unit are no doubt the most valuable on the reservation and could be made the basis for the self-support of many Blackfeet Indians for a long time to come if properly and wisely managed with that sole object in view. As it is now is, however, the Indians cannot use them and they do them no good, and because they do not use them, their non-use is used as an argument by whites to secure the consent of Congress to sell them to white people. There has been expended up to October 31, 1904, the sum of $942,413.58 on the Blackfeet irrigation project out of tribal funds, and it has been estimated by the Reclamation Service that $2,000,000 additional funds will be required to complete this irrigation project. The benefits derived to the Indians from this large expenditure of tribal money have been practically nil. The Indians asked me if I would protest against passage of this surplus land sale bill of Senator Walsh and the Commercial Clubs surrounding the reservation. They said if their lands had to be sold to keep them from starving, rather than starve to death, they would sell their lands, but they would prefer not to sell their lands if they could hold onto them. They were starving and were eating prairie dogs and skunks, if you please. Did you ever eat a skunk? It will keep you alive, but it is not good to eat. I said I would object to the bill for them, and that I would do so without prejudice to Senator Walsh of Montana. I would be a dog if I did not voice the objections of these poor folk. The senator from Montana had been on the reservation but a short time before I was there, but he did not go into the Indians homes, look into their grub boxes, or see how they lived. I did and that is the different point from which we view the subject. He has said that I hurt his feelings that I reported the awful conditions and that I objected to his bill; and the fact that I deemed it my duty to report the awful conditions of these 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 and does it with no hope of reward. That is what has become of the cattle of the Blackfeet Indians. They are eating one another’s cattle and are now poor because they have been feeding their starving friends. Helen Clark, the well known Blackfoot woman, well educated, one of the finest women anywhere, told me that she had about forty head of cattle left and was feeding her fellow tribesmen who were starving. She could not bear to see them go that way while she had a hoof left. It takes a good woman to do that. What an example for us! The Indians held a council-Indians who were cold and destitute-and they objected to this bill. They asked that this bill not be allowed to pass. The effects of a starvation diet upon these Indians and the fact that they have been starved in the past and are still being starved has been called to the attention of this commission and the Indian Commissioner many times and that starvation is the primary though indirect cause of many deaths among them. Many little children are wearing old and worn out shoes, their bare feet seen through holes in the soles in the snow. The Indians fear they will be subjected to cruel treatment if they dare to make such complaints. The agency police threatened the Indians who testify on the conditions. They claim that afterwards they are blacklisted and discriminated against by government officials if they do so. All these poor fellows are trying to do is to make Congress understand their poor pitiable conditions.”  

ROBERT HAMILTON, WOLF PLUME, AND YOUNG MAN CHIEF ARRESTED

            Robert Hamilton, tribal interpreter and lawyer, testified to the Joint Commission to Investigate Indian Affairs. “On the 28^th of January, 1913, Oliver Sanderville, Young Man Chief, Wolf Plume and I were at the train station at Browning, which is on the reservation, ready to take the train to Washington D.C. when the agency police came and told us we could not go; that we were under arrest. I then stepped to the phone and asked Supt. McFatridge what he meant, and if we were under arrest by the agency police he had sent. He said we were under arrest. We were held at the agency office by McFatridge and his agency police until after the eastbound train had passed Browning. He told us repeatedly, “You fellows can’t go; I won’t let you go!” Once again, on January 30, 1913, Superintendent McFatridge had me arrested and returned to the reservation along with interpreter Oliver Sanderville, Chief Wolf Plume and Young Man Chief, upon the telegraphic order of Arthur E. McFatridge, at Cut Bank, a railroad town off the reservation. We were arrested by Deputy Sheriff Richards and agency employee Joseph W.  Brown; that this occurred on the night of January 30, 1913; that the Sheriff stopped us from boarding the eastbound train to Washington D.C. and told us we could not go any further and held us in jail overnight. The next morning McFatridge with the agency police and Joe Brown, took Blackfeet Chiefs Wolf Plume and Young Man Chief back to the agency, where he held them in custody in the agency jail and under the guard of the agency police; and that Oliver Sanderville and I were left to the deputy sheriff who did not bother us any longer. Wolf Plume, who is the Blackfeet Chief, sold his cattle and provided credit at the stores to meet their necessities. He wished to go to Washington to tell of the condition of his people; how poor they were, and what their necessities were and how he would, in a time, be poor also if his people were not given an opportunity for something. This man has given of his means for the care of his people and wished at his own expense to tell the Congress what their condition was. Wolf Plume will tell this Commission to Investigate Indian Affairs, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and the President, that his people are getting worse off each year and have been since McFatridge became superintendent; that he is mean, untruthful, immoral, dishonest, and brutal; and that he does not wish any Indians who are independent of him to come to Washington. The Blackfeet people are in a starving condition and many will starve this winter if no changes are made in the administration of the Blackfeet agency under McFatridge.”

PARTIAL LIST OF BLACKFEET INDIANS WHO DIED DURING WINTER OF 1913

 John Calf Tail’s son, Morning Eagle, Tearing Lodge, Spotted Eagle, Louis Champine, Joseph Everes, Mrs. Bear Leggings, Big Crow, Charles Iron Breast’s little girl, Big Crow’s son, Mrs. Head Carrier, Bad Old Man, Medicine Singer, Mrs. Peter Champine’s two children, Gambler, Coat, his wife and child, all died within a week, James White Calf’s son, Peter After Buffalo’s four children and mother-in-law, Night Shoot’s two children, Orrie Sheriff’s child, Big Woman, Bad Marriage’s little child, Antoine Big Brave’s daughter, Three Calve’s little daughter, Running Back’s daughter, Henry No Bear’s daughter, Blackfoot’s child, Bear Paw’s son, Mrs. Paul Double Runner, Louis Champine, Bad Marriage, Joe Shorty White Grass, George Pablo, Dog Ears, Sam Middle Calf, John Kicking Woman, John Croft, Johnny Morgan, Lazy Boy, Day Rider, Mike Day Rider, Elmer Butterfly, Albert Wolf Robe, William Bear’s child, Come in the Night, John Ear Rings, Phillip Arrow Top Knot, Silas Arrow Top Knot, George Bull Child, Eddy Double Runner, New Breast, Black Bear, Tom Jackson, Many Tail Feathers, Boss Ribs, Lodge Pole, John Head Carrier, Richard Calf Robe, Iron Eater, Flint Smoking, Moves Out, Big Wolf Medicine, Many Guns, Tom Vielle, Pete Vielle, Charley Dust Bull, Thomas Bear, James Pambrun, Black Sarcee, Louis Ell, Mrs. Richard Rutherford, William Croff, Weasel Head, Double Runner, War Bonnet, Mike Little Dog, Stabs by Mistake, Joe Head Carry, George West Wolf, Richard Roundine, Fish Wolf Robe, Arrow Top Knot, Perry Bull Child, Eagle’s child, Fred Big Top, Blackfoot’s child, James Spotted Eagle, Edgar Many Guns, Eagle, Nicodemus Green, Paul Boss Ribs, Aims Back, Calf Look In, Turtle, Jim Kidney, James Bad Marriage, John Shorty, Red Fox, Charles New Breast, William Buffalo Hide, Henry No Bear, Running Rabbit, Ground, Iron Little Plume, Frank Monroe, Big Plume, Mrs. West Wolf, Antoine Mountain Chief, Yellow Wolf, Mrs. Bear Skin, Mrs. Iron, John Ground, Steve Mad Man, Mud Head, Sam Scabby Robe, Levi Rider, Peter Grant, Peter Weasel Head, Stabs Down, Bear Head, John Black Bear, James Ground, Wolf Chief, Lone Mouse, Thomas Little Bear, Buffalo Hide, Tallow Ashley, Alex Guardipee, Cree Medicine, James Eagle Head, Medicine Stab, Heavy Gun, Mike Bad Old Man, Shorty White Grass, Under Bear, Joe Bear Paw, Wolf Eagle, Sam Rondin, Fine Bull, Fox Old Man, Mrs. Weasel Fat, Mrs. Turn Lodge, Mrs. Catch on Top Gambler, Two Bear Woman, Henry Hungry, Charles Weasel Head, Mike Berry’s child, Oscar Boyd, Shoot First, Charley White Swan, Paul White Grass, The Boy, Lewis Monroe, Baptiste West Wolf, John Running Crane, Myles Running Wolf, New Breast, Theodore Last Star, Tim No Runner, Dan Lone Chief, Many Tail Feather’s daughter, Victoria Kicking Woman, Mrs. Yellow Wolf’s daughter, Joe Bull Child’s daughter. The list of semi-self-supporting full blood Indian population of the reservation, who are feeding their cattle to the poor and destitute and will soon be in destitute circumstances are Chief Wolf Plume, Young Man Chief, Black Weasel, Big Spring, Dog Taking Gun, E. Rattler, John White Man, John White Calf, John Night Gun, Wolf Plume, Running Fisher, Joe Bull Shoe, Owl Child, Heavy Runner, Black Weasel, John Kipp.

The Indians have no more horses or cattle to sell and are in destitute circumstances and almost the whole population of full blooded Indians are suffering the pangs of hunger and an effort has been made by the superintendent to discredit our complaints and his reports convey the idea that we are not in a starving condition, but prosperous.”

Robert J. Hamilton, tribal interpreter for the Blackfeet Chiefs, Washington D.C., Before the Joint Commission of Congress to Investigate Indian Affairs, 1913.

BLACKFEET VETERANS “DOUGHBOYS” STARVED TO DEATH IN 1921

            The National American Indian Memorial Association, Harbor of New York, December 10, 1921, Secretary Joseph K. Dixon wrote General John J. Pershing, General of the Armies, Washington D.C.; that a letter from Mr. A. Hecksher, 50 East 42^nd St. New York in which he states that, “150 Indians from the Blackfeet Reservation fought on the fields of France, and that only about 20 of them came back, not one of them sound and many of them wounded; that these Indians 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.” He states all this in his appeal to you that he may make drafts upon your sympathy and influence to seek an early remedy for this deplorable condition. You were kind enough to ask me to give you a line upon the subject. In the first place, all that Lone Wolf says in his interview in the New York Evening Post, November 17, 1921, is true, pathetically true. When Mr. Rodman Wanamaker had his Indian Exhibit in the Palace of Education and Social Economy at the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in 1915, a little leaflet was circulated with the title: “Do You Know?” One of the paragraphs in that circular reads: “DO YOU KNOW THAT THE FAMOUS OLD BLACKFEET TRIBE IN MONTANA IS IN DIRE STRAITS THROUGH THE FAILURE OF CROPS AND PILLAGE BY GRAFTERS? THAT MANY OF THEM LITERALLY STARVED TO DEATH LAST WINTER, 1913-1914, AND THAT HUNDREDS OF THEM WILL BE IN SERIOUS WANT AGAIN THIS YEAR?”

            That statement reached the eye of Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior, he immediately protested, going so far as to send a special messenger to Mr. Rodman Wanamaker in New York stating, I was “abusing the United States Government.”

            Not many weeks following, the California Women’s Club of San Francisco wrote a letter to Senator W.P. Dillingham of Vermont-a personal friend of the president of the club—detailing the awful conditions obtaining on the Blackfeet Reservation. Senator Dillingham sent the letter to Cato Sells, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and the reply of Mr. Sells to Mr. Dillingham states as follows: “NO REPORTS HAVE BEEN RECEIVED BY ME OF INDIANS STARVING TO DEATH.” That statement was made in the face of the fact that a Joint Commission of Congress to Investigate Indian Affairs had reported on the Blackfeet Indians by Senator Harry Lane, of Oregon. This report was given to Mr. Sells, on every page of it will find hunger, and neglect, and, oppression and failure, and injustice, and horror personified. Cato Sells had that report in his possession at that very moment when he wrote that letter to Senator Dillingham. This letter describes a shack where full blood Indians live by Senator Lane: At this time I found that a mother of a family of six  children had given birth to a baby the day before and was up and around, but she fled to her bed of old rags on the floor on our arrival; there was no food in this house, and how the family sustained itself I do not know. Two of the small children from 4 to 6 years of age were almost entirely without clothing, one little boy had nothing but man’s sack coat. There is no game in this country to afford subsistence and I was informed that to keep from starving they had killed and eaten all the prairie dogs and had resorted to eating skunks. The Indians said they are being starved by whites in order to compel them from necessity to consent to the sale of their irrigable lands.”

James Willard Schultz wrote, “When I was on the reservation last summer the trader at Browning, Joe Sherburne had 212 patents of Blackfeet allotted lands. It serves well the interests of the big meat trust, Swift & Co., operating through its subsidiary the Portland Land & Cattle Company, who are after this big grass country of the Blackfeet Reservation and the interests of the Great Northern Railway through its subsidiary the Park Saddle Horse Company, who leased the entire St. Mary Valley from the Indian Bureau for ten cents an acre, removing Blackfeet cattlemen to the eastern portion of the reservation. James J. Hill is operating tourist hotels at East Glacier Park and St. Mary Village for Glacier Park tourists hotels located on the Reservation.”

Joe Sherburne robbed teenage Monroe sisters of their allotments located at St. Mary that make up the town site of St. Mary Village, and provide a right-of-way from the highway to the eastern entrance to Glacier Park without crossing tribal land. James J. Hill got a bill in Congress to take the land in East Glacier for his hotel and paid $150 for the land. Robert Hamilton, upon the request of the Blackfeet chiefs, filed a lawsuit to recover the land since there was no consent of the tribe. These tribal claims are extinguished in the water compact settlement approved by the Blackfeet tribal council in 2009.  

                 

BLACKFEET COUNCIL EXTINGUISHES ALL BLACKFEET ALLOTTED CLAIMS

The major categories of Blackfeet claims set to be extinguished in the water compact if Blackfeet voters approve the tribal referendum are 605 “Forced Fee Patents Cases on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.” The trust titles of Blackfeet allottees were scheduled to be restored to the heirs by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in 1980 with just compensation estimated at $300 million to be paid to legal heirs of the 605 forced patents allottees. Chairman Earl Old Person refused to allow the senate committee to hold hearings on the reservation, and he has delayed our claims up until today, despite tribal resolution #224-2001 passed unanimously requesting a senate investigation of our claims.

 Old Age Assistance claims of Blackfeet elders cover Glacier and Pondera county government officials prerequisite for serving elderly Blackfeet welfare recipients; forced sale of their trust property to white men in order to receive county welfare assistance in complicity with Bureau of Indian Affairs officials, taking advantage of our tribal elders.

Secretarial Sales of deceased allottees lands to white men without consent of the heirs, such as Perry Grant’s parents cover hundreds of Blackfeet allotted land claims.

There are unresolved water rights claims, oil & gas claims, rights-of-way and trespass environmental damages claims against Glacier and Pondera counties.

Jurisdictional issues involve “disclaimers” in the state constitution disclaiming any jurisdiction over any Indian or Indian land as a condition of obtaining statehood.  

TRIBAL COUNCIL AND BIA GUILTY OF COLLUSION IN LAND LEASE POLICY

            Subordination is “The act or process by which a person’s rights or claims are ranked below those of others, placed in a lower order, class or rank; occupying a lower position, inferior in order, nature, dignity, power, importance; having a lower position in a recognized scale.” The Blackfeet Water Compact Settlement Act places individual allotted water rights under a “communistic style” tribal water right effectively awarding the tribal council discretion and authority to do as they please with trust landowners water supplies on the reservation. It extinguishes Blackfeet trust landowners treaty rights to use the reserved tribal grazing lands and water supplies for the “exclusive use and occupancy” of Blackfeet cattle ranchers and trust landowners contained in the 1896 Agreement/Article 5. The United States Congress agreed to “guarantee” the continued success of the Blackfeet cattle ranchers and to end the leasing of tribal lands to whites and to fence the reservation to keep out white ranchers cattle herds trespassing on the reservation. Chief White Calf testified to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs that the Indian Bureau had turned the Blackfeet Reservation into “a white man’s cow pasture.”  

            Today, the lease policy of the tribal council and BIA turned the reservation into an exclusive reserve for third-party Blackfeet lease holders who sub-lease to white cattle ranchers criminally violating treaty guarantees in the 1896 Agreement/Article 5.

The tribal council and BIA “colluding” in sub-leases to white cattlemen through third-party Blackfeet leaseholders created criminal acts that include holding down the market price of allotted and tribal land leases to $5 per acre for the best grazing lands in Montana. Third-party Blackfeet leaseholders get the cash from leasing tribal and allotted lands and sub-leasing to white cattlemen who in turn profit $67,000,000 on the reservation from sales of cows and crops. There are over 500 white ranchers and farmers in Glacier county but very few Blackfeet cattle ranchers on the Blackfeet Reservation for whom the reservation was created as well as allotted trust landowners.

Collusion means a lease policy executed between tribal and federal governments designed to economically exploit Blackfeet trust landowners and tribal land enacted by the tribal council and BIA lease policy “colluding” to hold down the market price of the best grazing lands in Montana. Collusion is “an agreement between two or more parties to defraud a person of his rights by the forms of law. It implies the existence of fraud of some kind, by the employment of fraudulent means, or of unlawful means for the accomplishment of an unlawful purpose, a secret combination, conspiracy, or concert of action between two or more persons for fraudulent or deceitful purpose.”

The irony of it is that this criminal conspiracy is totally controlled by the Blackfeet Agency Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council. It is a federal crime to steal from a tribal government organization or to steal trust property or Individual Indian Money owned by treaty Indians under the federal trusteeship.

The Trump administration is an Indian hating republican controlled federal executive branch of the federal government. Donald Trump has no use for Indians since Indian casinos put his casino out of business using tribal sovereignty. I wrote to the Trump administration and asked them to come to the Blackfeet Reservation and stop the conspiracy robbing Blackfeet trust landowners by the tribal council and BIA lease policy.

The federal government provides $192,000,000 to the tribal government, BIA, IHS, Public Schools, tribal college and we are getting poorer. A Republican United States Attorney will bring to federal trial dozens of defendants who are elected tribal council members, federal employees, and documentation filling an office full of filing cabinets. Every member of the conspiracy to defraud the Blackfeet trust landowners and Blackfeet Tribe of  individual Indian lease money stolen by the collusion/conspiracy of the tribal council and BIA lease policy will be prosecuted and brought to trial in federal court. A century after the meeting at the schoolhouse of Blackfeet Chiefs, Robert Hamilton and 300 Blackfeet justice may be near for the Blackfeet Indians. I pray to our creator it is so.