Plains Indian Studies - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

NUMBER 30 63
the incident led to his firing as an interpreter, but
it also marked him as a spokesman for the Blackfeet
(Federal Records Center (FRC), 1898).
White Calf in death gave Hamilton an opportunity
to assert his claim to leadership. Along
with several other tribal members, Hamilton requested
a meeting room from newly arrived
Agent James Monteath shortly after the chief
died. Monteath obliged but was appalled when
the assembled Blackfeet announced that they
were the newly elected Blackfoot Council and
informed the agent that they were ready to take
over much of the administrative duties of the
agency office. The outraged agent refused to recognize
any such election and insisted that the
council remain an appointed body that would
meet only at his call. Most agents probably would
have preferred to do without a tribal council at
all, but legal requirements of tribal approval of
grazing leases on the reservation necessitated the
existence of some such organization. An elected
council, however, was more than the agent and
some Blackfeet would tolerate (Monteath, 1903a).
Agent Monteath prevailed, but his strong denunciation
of the action and particularly of Hamilton
tended to increase his adversary's visibility.
Over the next two years, Hamilton used every
opportunity to challenge the tribal council. He
attended every meeting questioning the council's
right to conduct Blackfoot business. He denounced
a government program that resulted in
cutting the ration roll on the reservation and
protested a plan by Agent Monteath to separate
the full-blooded members of the tribe and place
them in a subsistence farming program isolated
from the centers of the Blackfoot population.
In 1905, an exasperated Agent Monteath tried
to silence his outspoken critic by having Hamilton
arrested for horse stealing. That year Hamilton's
foster father, A.B. Hamilton, died. Hamilton took
possession of the older Hamilton's horses. Other
members of the tribe and some White traders
made a claim for the horses; since Hamilton had
nothing to prove his own right to the animals.
Agent Monteath saw an opportunity to confine
his adversary in the agency jail. No trial was ever
held over the incident, and many Blackfeet were
ready to believe that Hamilton was in jail for his
political activity rather than for a dispute over
the ownership of some horses. Ironically, the
horse-stealing charge probably enhanced Hamilton's
standing among the full-bloods. Particularly
among the older members of the tribe, horse
stealing kindled fond memories of a happier day.
In any event, after sitting in the reservation jail
for a few weeks, Hamilton was released after the
charges were dropped. (NA, 1902a; 1915c).
Possibly fearing for his safety, Hamilton left
the reservation for the next two years to work in
the law office of a former agent, Mark Baldwin.
Congressional passage of an allotment act for the
Blackfeet in 1907 brought him home. Once again
he took up the cause of an elected council, pointing
out that allotment endangered the very existence
of the tribe. He insisted that an unrepresentative
council could not be expected to protect
Blackfoot interests. His persistent challenge to the
authority of the council and the reservation agent
led to his jailing once again. In 1910, another new
agent, C.H. Churchill, without pretense for his
action, made allegations of criminal activity
against Hamilton and declared him a menace to
Blackfoot social order. Churchill later suggested
that Hamilton's efforts to gain enrollment for
absentee Blackfeet, for which he charged a fee,
had prompted the agent's action. Whatever the
reason, Hamilton remained in the reservation jail
until the arrival of still another federal official
several months later.
Superintendent Arthur McFatridge, the first
nonpatronage appointee on the Blackfoot Reservation,
released Hamilton from confinement.
McFatridge's appointment resulted from efforts
to remove reservation agents from the patronage
system. Past proposals to cover agents under Civil
Service regulations failed to gain Congressional
approval. Beginning in 1906, President Theodore
Roosevelt introduced the expedient of not appointing
agents to Indian reservations; instead he
placed the reservations under the authority of
government school superintendents who were
subject to Civil Service selection. Superintendents
were generally highly critical of their political
predecessors and made some effort to ingratiate