Amskapi Pikuni: The Blackfeet People

3. Bungling

three Bungling No doubt we shall go on bungling Indian affairs for the simple reason that the problems presented are of no particular economic and social importance to the nation at large. –Clark Wissler, Indian Cavalcade Clark Wissler’s concept of human ecology means more than the interactions of people with their landscape and natural resources: it covers political factors, too. The history of the Blackfeet Reservation is a chronicle of inept administrators pushing misguided policies. Graft and conniving flourished as agent after agent seemed unable to keep accounts straight, or even to keep accounts at all. Without question, the United States failed in—as lawyers put it—its fiduciary responsibility under its treaties with the Piegan. The Blackfeet Agency despoiled the reservation to benefit white stockmen. The politics were simple: white men voted, Indians, for the most part, could not until 1924. Montana’s congressmen, many of whom had mercantile and ranching businesses, favored staunch members of their own political party, while federal government bureaucrats were guided by idealistic programs meant to transform Indian people into working-class Americans. Ironically, Piegan who pursued the American ethic of hard work and capital investment earned distrust from agents as well as from “full-bloods” choosing a more traditional Blackfoot way. The natural ecology of the reservation probably could have sustained a tribal cattle industry providing a modest but decent life for the Amskapi Pikuni; politics in Montana and Washington bungled range management, beggaring the people. Two programs stand out for their disastrous effects: agents’ failure to protect Blackfeet range for Piegan use, and the million dollar irrigation project. Under the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946, the Blackfeet Tribe filed a claim in 1951. Michael Foley compiled the record supporting their case. A component of a case in court, Foley’s report is necessarily biased toward the claimant tribe, but it is meticulously documented, and parallels more recent, scholarly historical studies (Carter 1990; Lux 183 184 AMSKAPI PIKUNI 2001; Shewell 2004; Tough 1996). Foley’s descriptions of the tribe’s agents agrees with Clark Wissler’s memoir, picturing “the Major” as a petty tyrant , arrogant and dictatorial. Wissler said the Indian agent was always called “the Major,” for “locally he was Major” (Wissler 1971[1938]:13). Summing up his observations, Wissler wrote, I suppose that most of my readers have by this time wondered if there ever was a good agent, especially since for a century or more, both official and social Washington have made him the scape-goat. Yes, there have been courageous, honest and lovable men in that office; also there have been rascals and innocent incompetents. . . . On every reservation I visited I heard Indian traditions of one or more great agents, though I doubt if any of these were rated high in Washington. The agent who took a realistic sensible view of the situation and called a spade by its right name, stood a good chance for a place in tribal tradition, but for this very reason would arouse the ire of the idealists in the East. . . . Every realistically minded agent saw himself the imposed head of a tribe of Indians, fenced into a reserve like predatory animals, more for the protection of the white people without, than for the well being of the Indians within. His duty was to keep these Indians from alarming settlers by wandering abroad, and to feed, clothe, and house them upon an inadequate budget. [Wissler 1972[1938]:23] Michael Foley’s report begins with the 1855 treaty and its promises. He quotes one of the first “Majors,” Alfred Vaughn, whose wife was Indian: The gintiuella or sky blue blanket is high-priced, inferior & not desired; fancy list cloths are too fine & too flimsy; worsted yarn supplies no want in the lodge or field; calicoes of all kinds & descriptions are badly adapted for use or comfort on the prairie; Calico shirts are far inferior in durability to the common hickory; the N. W. guns are literally worthless . . . the powder horns are fine and unsubstantial, easily cracked and injured; butcher knives and half axes inferior in material and unreliable in temper. . . . The fire steels furnished are worse than useless, being no more than common iron [quoted in Foley 1974:9]. Throughout the 1860s, treaty annuities were paid in goods that not only were cheap and “worse than useless,” but usually were delayed, Bungling 185 sometimes for more than a year, if and when delivered...