Plains Indian Studies - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

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and daring on horse-stealing raids, as well as a
display of generosity toward the less successful.
No leader held real power over the members of
the band. Social control was a function of the
entire society. Ridicule and ostracism functioned
as a principal means of maintaining order. A
leader retained his position only so long as he
displayed those characteristics that had propelled
him to leadership and so long as he correctly read
the temper of the band. A headman who
thwarted the desires of his followers would soon
find himself without anyone to lead. It was an
efficient fluid society well suited to the Plains
environment of the mid-nineteenth century.
In the 1880s, when Robert Hamilton was in his
early teens, the age when a Blackfoot boy entered
manhood, the buffalo days came to a sudden end.
In 1882, the Blackfeet had made a successful
hunt. In 1883, the hunt had been very poor. In
1884, the Blackfeet found no buffalo and endured
a two-year starving time when as many as 25
percent of the tribe died of malnutrition and
associated diseases. Dependent on the largess of
the federal government for bare subsistence, the
bands huddled near the government agency in
shock and despair (FRC, 1883; Ewers, 1958:290-
294; McFee, 1972).
An erosion of traditional tribal society began
almost at once. The reservation agent's control
over food supplies struck at the heart of Blackfoot
pride and independence. Further, the relationship
of traditional leaders to the federal establishment
altered their position in the tribe. Rivalries between
band leaders, such as Three Suns who
sought to retain the old way of life and the more
accommodating White Calf, created social divisions
never completely healed. Although the
Blackfeet had organized a kind of police force
and established a law code under the direction of
Agent John Wood as early as 1878, the system
had supplemented rather than replaced traditional
methods of social control. After 1885, federal
Indian agents used the older leaders as a
means of enforcing order on the reservation. The
elders presided over the distribution of rations
and acted as judges meting out punishment for
infractions of reservation rules. With the estab­
lishment of courts and judges, social control became
institutionalized and divorced from the participation
of tribal membership. Individual discipline
that in the past could be lax except at
critical times of the hunt or war no longer was
tolerated. Leadership, rather than identifying
merit became frozen without a method of identification
for the future (Ewers, 1958:273-274;
Hagan, 1966).
As tribal elders, such as Three Suns, died, the
reservation agent appointed replacements generally
from among close relatives of the deceased,
introducing a hereditary bias to tribal leadership.
By the turn of the century a number of men
whose only claim to leadership was the status of
the position they occupied dominated the tribal
council. Absence of traditional means of achievement
closed avenues of leadership for most of
Hamilton's generation. So long as some of the
traditional leaders, such as White Calf, remained
on the tribal council the appointed members
possessed a certain amount of immunity. With
the death of White Calf in 1903, the last of the
active band leaders, a council that defined leadership
by status rather than merit became vulnerable.
Men of Hamilton's generation moved to
challenge the hereditary council and in the process
constructed a foundation for the preservation
of the Blackfoot community.
Hamilton worked for the next thirty years to
fill the leadership void left by White Calf and the
old band leaders. Unable to achieve leadership
by traditional means, Hamilton perceived the
change from a meritorious to a status society that
was already underway on the reservation. He
sought a new premise for determining leadership
that brought him to adopt Anglo political methods
in an effort to become identified as a spokesman
for Blackfoot interests and to attract a constituency.
With status alone as the measure of
leadership, Hamilton saw no reason why he could
not assert his own claim, and he persistently
strove to restore a measure of autonomy for the
Blackfeet and to forge a modern economy on the
reservation. His adaptiveness often appeared opportunistic,
although his expediency was more
often than not designed to achieve a larger goal