The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau pg.76

Monteath now proposed that irrigation become the major source of employment for the Indians, who would be paid in cash from the treaty funds, and those who would not work should be treated as “idlers” and he thought it might be necessary to start a chain gang. The fundamental threat to the Piegan’s economic future was Monteath’s doomed farm program that would become a major social and economic disaster engineered by the agency ring and white stockmen to destroy the Indian’s heretofore successful tribal cattle industry economy, and to make room for their cattle herds.

 Monteath recommended that irrigated farming was to become the major industry, to devote the land primarily to raising of grains and roots and let stock raising be a side issue; “I would advise and insist upon these people being agriculturists instead of stock men for the reason that they could be located upon a comparatively small scope of country, where they could be visited daily and their acts supervised. Their cattle would be taken from them in the spring and placed in the hands of herders during the grazing season, and returned after the Indians had harvested their crops.”

He admitted it might take a troop of cavalry to get the Indians onto the farms, which Monteath described as “this Utopian Colony of mine” but then the agent felt that those who did not get in, could get out of the reservation entirely. The “progressive” half-breeds, who had made valuable improvements on scattered sections of the reservation, would not be expected to move to Monteath’s farming colony, but his plan applied to all able-bodied full bloods, the main target of his ration reforms. Conscious of his earlier reports that stressed the utter failure of farming on the reservation Monteath proclaimed, “It would be a daring man, indeed, who would lightly go on record with the statement that agriculture was impracticable here” but the Indians pointed out it would be an equally stupid man to ignore the killing frosts in July and blizzards in August which occurred regularly to make farming an impossibility even for “experts.”
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau  
pg.76 

The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau pg.75

Agent Monteath was “heartily in accord” with the commissioners effort to reduce the Indian’s ration rolls, and exulted “The way to resume is to resume,” and he compiled an agency ration roll that included 63 white men who had family dependents totaling 295 women and children; 211 “part bloods” with 481 dependents; and 885 full blood men, women and children. He admitted the Indians had to be retained on the ration roll as there was no work for them, and reported “Too much money and labor have already been wasted on impractical and expensive irrigation work. However, ways to accomplish the desired end will naturally suggest themselves to the man who wants to accomplish the end, and I doubt not, that I will find a way if it is deemed best to reward work for merely personal improvement.” He told Commissioner Jones that he had discussed his work plan for personal improvement with the Indians, but their response was rather mixed when they pointed out “our rations are not a gratuity-they are bought with our own money, the people can’t find work, there is no work for them to do” and they requested cash payments from their treaty funds in lieu of food rations, which were over priced at the agency store. The chief’s requested a tribal delegation to go to Washington, but Monteath was unsure of the benefits of such a trip.

Commissioner Jones was ecstatic over Monteath’s plan to terminate the rations and implement the work plan purely for the personal development of the Piegans: “It is a novel experience to receive such a letter from an Indian Agent, and I can assure you that it is very gratifying for me to read it. It contains so much sound, common sense, and a dispassionate state of conditions existing at Blackfeet, that I cannot resist the temptation of writing you personally, and thanking you for the suggestions. I sincerely wish we had more Agents of this character.”
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau    
pg.75

The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau pg.74-75

The Inspector said no records were kept on punishments at Indian schools, but he described one instance at the Blackfeet Agency School in February when several boys were confined in that small cell every day for one week being fed on bread and water during that time, as they could not lie down they were permitted to sleep in their dormitories and returned in the morning. Their “offense” was riding calves.

The inspector reported, “Four years ago they were prosperous ranchers with good bunches of cattle. Everybody had cattle then, and today it is an exception to find a full blooded Indian with any left. What the traders have not got and shipped to the Chicago market the white men living upon the reserve have been allowed to buy at their own price. They have just issued some three thousand head of heifers to the Indians, but it would be better to give these people their money. Political debts have been a costly affair to the Blackfeet.” The Sheriff of Teton County came upon the reservation and removed Indian cattle for what he called “bad debts” on a regular basis, which the agent was unwilling to interfere with, or to protect the Indian’s cattle herds.

The Indian Office suggested that the licensed traders seemed to end up with large numbers of Indian cattle and had rather high priced goods in their agency stores. The agency traders were conducting an illicit whiskey trade in their stores with the impoverished Indians selling their cattle at below market prices to the traders. The agent reported “I believe I am doing all that can be done to preserve the cattle to the Indian who is inclined to be shiftless.”

Commissioner of Indian Affairs William Jones concentrated on cutting the Indians long hair which he considered a barbaric reminder of Indian customs that the government was trying to eradicate and reduced the Indian’s rations. The agency ration rolls were a grievous problem to Commissioner Jones, viewed as a government welfare system which undermined the goals of the United States Indian Service to make the individual Indians self-supporting, though the Indians reminded him the rations were paid for by land cessions to the United States. Commissioner Jones proclaimed “The ration system and the reservation system are doomed. Let them go. Take away the incentive to idleness and obliterate the boundary between ancient prejudice and modern progress.”
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau  
pg.74-75 

The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau pg.73-74

The Blackfeet population was down to 2,085 from approximately 7,800 at contact, with a total of 50 births and 33 deaths in the preceding year. Agency traders had exchanged food rations for Indian cattle, while the basic cause of failure of the Indian cattle program was the Indians’ lack of “subsidy” of food and cash. The agent reported, “Their rations are properly being reduced, yet they must have something to eat, and must have it now and soon. If cattle are issued to them this summer, they will either eat them or sell them to the traders, or if they keep them and take good care of them, they will receive no return for three or four years. What do they do for food in the meantime?”

White stockmen had unloaded three trainloads of cattle just east of the reservation, which cattle the agent reported “were headed this way” to join the large number of white stockmen’s cattle herds already grazing the reservation.

Another small pox outbreak was reported in 1903 on the eastern part of the reserve, spread by the Great Northern Railroad train passengers for the past three years throughout Montana, while Inspector McConnell reported conditions at the unheated agency jail were appalling, where Indian prisoners had recently died from exposure.  

The Government Inspector described “places of confinement for refractory students” at the government boarding school. One such “cell” was an old meat refrigerator, with air holes, which was stored in the open shed where the boy’s bathed all year long. The second “place of confinement” was located in the cellar of the Willow Creek School itself, “It is approximately 3 ft. wide by 7 ft. long and 6 ft. high. The floor of this cell is raised about one foot or perhaps 18 inches above the cellar floor to prevent being flooded by water which much of the year stands to a depth sufficient to float dead mice, decayed vegetables, cabbage, potatoes, etc. Of course the place emits an odor which sometimes permeates even to the dormitories in the second story.”
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau
pg.73-74 

The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau pg.72-73

George Bird Grinnell wrote the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1904: “For the last few years the Indians have made no progress. Their money is being expended; they are not being handled so as to become self-supporting or industrious. Something is radically wrong with the way in which the reservation is handled. For several years now these Indians have been unfortunate in their agents, having men who have held office for comparatively short terms. A few years ago these Indians had accumulated between 20,000 and 25,000 cattle of which by this time they have lost three fifths or more, largely through the fault of their agents. Shortly before the removal of Agent Steell he took steps to scatter the Indian’s cattle so that they never recovered more than one fifth of them. The fault lies with the employees of the agency and the agents, they will be found with the expiration of the present treaty with nothing to show for all the money that they have received except a few cattle and the agency buildings.”

White stockmen were building cattle ranches along the border of the Blackfeet reservation “not for their legitimate value as ranches, but by reason of their added value on account of their proximity to the valuable grazing lands of the reservation.”

Agent James Monteath, this “Utopian Colony” of mine

Blackfeet Agent Monteath reported on cattle trespass; “Prosecutions under these Sections would most likely come before a jury of cattlemen. I would not presume to say that exact justice would not result, but I believe that good judgment would seek to avoid, if possible, such a course. I venture the assertion that if a tract of land, situated as is this reservation, were in the hands of a private individual or a corporation, not one moment would be lost in throwing a fence around it. The Indians upon this reservation are unanimous in the opinion that a fence would save them stock, and have come to me repeatedly and asked the necessary steps to that end be taken. I believe a fence upon the north, east and south sides of this reservation to be a primal necessity to that proper care. Four agents in less than three years is a heavy load for any tribe to pack.”
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau  
pg.72-73 

The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau pg.71-72

Blackfeet economic progress was retarded by government graft and party politics at the local, state, and national levels of government. The Indians attempted to build homes and establish a tribal cattle industry on their reserved treaty lands in an attempt to adapt to the new economic order of things after the buffalo were destroyed. The Blackfeet Indians were to be helped by the 1896 Agreement/Article Five land cession funds to develop the tribal stock raising economy in the tradition of American capitalism.

The Blackfeet Indian Reservation boundary between the ceded lands in the 1896 Agreement and the western reservation lands remains in question as Interior Department Engineers, N.E. Jenkins and A.F. Dunnington notified the Commissioner of the General Land Office of the United States that the survey of the boundary was impossible to complete due to heavy smoke from forest fires and the inability of the survey crew to ascend the tops of the mountains to complete the survey of the Boundary line of the 1896 Blackfeet Indian Cession. The creation of Glacier National Park in 1910 further complicated the boundary line as the National Park Service placed their monuments on the east slopes of the Rocky Mountains instead of the summit of the Rocky Mountains as agreed in the 1896 Agreement, thus placing approximately 43,000 acres of tribal lands within boundaries of Glacier National Park and the Lewis & Clark National Forest, which boundary lines followed the tracks of James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railroad.

Inspector Gould concluded that the Blackfeet Indians were worse off than convicted felons sentenced to a penitentiary with a corrupt warden; “But these Indians are not felons either. Their case is hard. The short years during which Congress has provided ample means for their equipment and training are fast passing. They know it. They feel that they are not sliding but being pushed towards a pit of helplessness. Their revenues are stolen, their rights are insolently disregarded, and even their feelings are needlessly wronged. And Secretary Vilas is personally responsible for this corruption and misrule.”
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau  
pg.71-72

The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau pg.71

Public demand generated by James J. Hill and Montana High Society led to the opening of the Blackfeet “mineral strip” discovered by Chief Clerk E.C. Garrett, James Willard Schultz and reservation squaw men that caused the demise of the Indian’s successful cattle industry. United States Treaty Commissioner George Bird Grinnell talked the Indians out of their initial asking price for the mineral strip from $3,000,000 down to $1,500,000 and ceding more land that the Indians wanted in saving the timber and grazing lands for their tribal cattle industry.

Grinnell and J. W. Schultz had guided rich sportsmen to shoot trophy mountain goats and fish the lakes and streams of the western reservation mountain lands which Grinnell wrote about in his magazine of outdoor adventures and Schultz’s Blackfoot War Party stories gave them the genuine sportsmen and frontiersmen images they cultivated among the Easterners, who would later become Glacier National Park tourists after gold, copper and silver were not discovered in paying quantities. The Indians treaty money would be stolen by 1904 and their successful cattle industry usurped by whites.  

In the 1896 Agreement/Article Five, Congress reserved all of the Blackfeet Reservation grazing lands for the exclusive use of the Blackfeet cattle ranchers and exempted the Blackfeet Tribe from the 1887 Indian Allotment Act. By 1899 the Indian cattle ranchers had not recovered from the cattle trespass of white stockmen on their treaty reserved grazing lands and the on-going waste of tribal funds by the agency employees. The Indian agents and the agency ring wasted tribal land cession funds on bloated agency payrolls in employing an entourage of relatives and political cronies, purchasing useless annuity goods sent by Fort Benton contractors, costly and inefficient agency buildings and construction projects, and over $900,000 on the Blackfeet Irrigation Project that ultimately carried tribal waters to border-whites and border-towns.
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau  
pg.71