Plains Indian Studies - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

Political Assimilation on the Blackfoot Indian
Reservation, 1887-1934: A Study in Survival
ABSTRACT
The life of Robert Hamilton, Sr., reflects many
of the sociopolitical changes that occurred on the
Blackfoot Reservation between 1887 and 1934.
On 27 March 1934, the Superintendent of the
Blackfoot Indian Reservation of Montana, Forrest
Stone, wrote the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs seeking aid for Robert Hamilton, Jr., a
young man suffering from tuberculosis. Stone
justified the request by reminding the Commissioner
that "the father of this boy perhaps did as
much or more for the Blackfeet tribe of Indians
than any one single individual in the history of
the tribe." Robert J. Hamilton, Sr., had not
always received such praise from the officials of
the Office of Indian Affairs. During his lifetime
the government had fired him as a tribal interpreter,
arrested him for horse-stealing, jailed him
as a radical agitator, and had found him generally
an obstruction to the smooth advance of the
Blackfeet toward civilization (National Archives
(NA), 1934).
Robert J. Hamilton, Sr., personified a transitional
generation on the Blackfoot Reservation
(Figure 7). The generation of Blackfeet that
reached maturity at the turn of the century was
the last generation of Native Americans who had
direct contact with the traditional life of a
Thomas R. Wessel, Department of History and Philosophy, Montana
Stale University, Bozeman, Montana 59717.
Thomas R. Wessel
59
mounted hunting culture. They had not, however,
reached an age that allowed them to seek
their place in the tribe by traditional means
before the old way of life ended. In the twentieth
century, members of Hamilton's generation
sought personal advancement and the retention
of a society that recognized their claims to leadership.
In the process, Hamilton and men like
him were instrumental in transforming a tribal
society, organized around personal relationships
and meritorious leaders, into a political community,
bound by shared political interests that commanded
loyalties to new symbols and identified
leadership with status.
Born in the 1870s on the northwestern plains
of Montana, Hamilton's lifetime spanned one of
the most trying periods in Indian history. Like
most Northern Plains tribes, the Blackfeet in the
late nineteenth century were a loose amalgamation
of hunting bands that spent most of the year
in separate camps. The hunting bands were organized
to take best advantage of the Plains
environment. They remained small enough to
feed themselves from the buffalo hunt, but large
enough to afford protection from enemies. The
existence of several such bands provided for individuals
an alternative that relieved tension.
Dissatisfaction with a band's leadership or discontent
with the success of a hunt permitted members
to abandon one group for another. It was a
dynamic system characterized by a constant
grouping and regrouping of families and kin.
Band leadership was based on individual merit
gained through skill as a hunter, courage in war.