Plains Indian Studies - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

70 SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY
several private patents along with federally
owned and state-owned land. In 1928, a group of
ranchers in southeastern Montana established the
first grazing district in the nation. Through enabling
legislation from both the state and Congress,
a local board received permission to organize
use of the range containing multiple tenures.
The method became the basis for the Taylor
Grazing Act of 1934 (Schlebecker, 1963:114-115;
NA, 1932, 1936b).
In 1928 as well, the Office of Indian Affairs
created an Agricultural Extension Service for Indian
reservations. One of the service's first efforts
was to use the experience in Montana to rationalize
grazing on Indian reservations. Indian Office
officials attempted to gain powers of attorney
from individual allottees and create the kind of
local grazing districts that proved successful in
southeastern Montana. The program brought
Robert Hamilton out of retirement. Hamilton
was not opposed to the idea, but he saw the
Indian Office's exercise of power of attorney as
further eroding what little authority remained to
the tribal council. He would have probably supported
the effort if the council exercised the power
of attorney, but he could not favor surrendering
any additional power to the Office of Indian
Affairs (NA, 1932).
Hamilton resisted the government's program
and convinced enough allottees to refuse the Indian
Office's request for powers of attorney. The
Office of Indian Affairs, which met similar opposition
on other reservations, called for a conference
in 1932 in Washington to resolve the dispute.
The Blackfeet elected Robert Hamilton as their
representative. The old political fighter, perhaps
mellowed with age, indicated that he would act
as a statesman. Although still adamantly opposed
to approving the Indian Office exercise of powers
of attorney, he suggested a legal document that
Anonymous
1902. Progressive Men of the State of Montana. Chicago:
A.W. Bowen & Co.
Literature Cited
gave the Indian Office the same authority in fact
but not in name. It was perhaps a symbolic
gesture and it was his last contribution to Blackfoot
welfare. After a short illness and before he
could attend the national grazing conference,
Hamilton died. He might have been gratified to
know that the Indian Office adopted his method
of obtaining permission to organize grazing districts
on the Blackfoot Reservation (NA, 1939).
In any context outside of an Indian reservation,
Robert Hamilton would have been known as a
politician. In his long struggle to gain for the
Blackfeet a measure of home rule, the Office of
Indian Affairs described him as a radical agitator,
a horse thief, and a malcontent, but never as a
politician. Unlike many of his followers, Hamilton
was capable of making his way in White
society. On three occasions in his life he left the
reservation but always returned. The reservation
was his forum and the place where he could be
an Indian. He was instrumental in creating on
the Blackfoot Reservation a community based on
shared political aspirations, while maintaining a
spiritual link with the past. He helped educate
his people to use the political process and the
federal courts to establish Blackfoot legal rights.
He tried, perhaps without success, to find the
institutional means to preserve the essence of
Blackfoot culture in the midst of a twentiethcentury
reality. During Hamilton's lifetime, the
Blackfeet changed from a nomadic people dominated
by war and the hunt to a people identified
with a new sense of community. His was of the
last generation that could bridge the gulf between
the traditional and the future. When the Blackfeet
gained a degree of autonomy through the
Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, they owed
much of their ability to exercise that autonomy
and press for further rights of self-determination
to Robert Hamilton.
Ewers, John C
1958. The Blackfeet: Raiders on the Northwestern Plains. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press.