( – promoted by Meteor Blades) Chase Iron Eyes needs your support! We must all demand that the treaties be honored and the Lakota foster children be returned home! “The rate and manner of removal of Indian children is tantamount to genocide; it accomplishes the same results as forced transferal of our children to boarding … Continued
Chase Iron Eyes needs your support! We must all demand that the treaties be honored and the Lakota foster children be returned home! “The rate and manner of removal of Indian children is tantamount to genocide; it accomplishes the same results as forced transferal of our children to boarding schools in the past. It leads … Continued
All humans have a cognitive map which provides them with a spatial analysis of their world, both natural and human-made. Traditionally, the cognitive maps of American Indians have been carried in the stories. Indian stories, particularly the spiritual stories and the stories of creation, focus on geography, telling what happened where and describing different places … Continued
Alexander Culbertson joined the American Fur Company in 1833 and for the next 30 years served as the company’s principal trader with the Blackfoot. His success in dealing with the Blackfoot was due in part to the fact that he had married Natawista, the daughter of a prominent Blood chief (the Blood are a part … Continued
While the common stereotype of Plains Indians brings up images of tipis and horse-mounted warriors hunting buffalo, not all of the Plains tribes fit this image. The Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara, whose home is on the Missouri River in what is now North Dakota, were a farming people who lived in permanent villages with substantial … Continued
Fort Benton was originally established as a trading post in 1846. It traded with the Blackfoot Indians primarily for buffalo robes which were then sent by boat down the Missouri River to St. Louis. While the fort was originally made from timbers, it was soon reconstructed using adobe brick. Typical of trading posts, it … Continued
The Territory of Montana came into existence in 1864 with the passage of the Organic Act. Section 1 of the act states: “That nothing in this act contained shall be construed to impair the rights of person or property now pertaining to the Indians in said territory so long as such rights remain unextinguished by … Continued
In 1864, gold was discovered in Montana. Ignoring a treaty, the gold seekers invaded the Blackfoot country north of the Missouri River. The illegal invasion upset the Blackfoot, and the American government, instead of stopping the prospectors, attempted to transfer this mineral wealth from the Indians to non-Indians. The illegal squatters had little respect for … Continued
In 1855, Washington Territorial Governor Isaac I. Stevens set out to negotiate-or rather, impose-a series of treaties on the Indian nations of the region which would free land for non-Indian settlement and place Indians on less valuable land, out of the way of American settlement. Stevens knew very little about Indians and assumed that all … Continued
American Indians were involved in trade for thousands of years prior to the arrival of the European and American fur traders. Traditional Indian trade was about relationships as much as it was about the material which was traded. In order to trade, a person needed to have trading partners, primarily relatives. An individual gained these … Continued
