Plains Indian Studies - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

NUMBER 30 89
and I don't know what to do " (NA, 1895:10,
25).
Religious leaders had little ability to induce
unanimity. Both the Feathered Pipe and the Flat
Pipe keepers. Sitting High and Otter Robe, supported
the cession; yet, the majority opposed it.
Despite the Gros Ventres' belief that ritual authorities
should be in agreement, the elderly leaders
were in conflict with one another. For example,
the Keeper of the Flat Pipe, Otter Robe,
defied Lame Bull, an ex-Keeper of the Flat Pipe.
When the vote was taken, 153 out of 181 adult
male Assiniboines and 37 out of 153 Gros Ventres
voted for the cession. There were just barely
enough votes to satisfy the government that a
majority of the Indians at Belknap favored the
cession. Taking advantage of the remarks of Running
Fisher's group (which were recorded in the
transcript of the council meeting), the commissioners
Pollock and Grinnell claimed to the Indian
Office that the Gros Ventre opposition to
the cession came from "rebellious youth." Not
surprisingly, the loss of the Little Rockies area
aggravated intratribal dissension among the Gros
Ventres. Lame Bull's death in 1908 and the aging
of Running Fisher lessened the conflict and facilitated
the subsequent institutionalization of a
business council, which had the support of the
whole tribe. By this time, the withdrawal of elderly
Gros Ventre ritual authorities from direct
involvement in tribal politics was almost complete.
Conclusions
From accounts of federal officials and social
scientists in the early twentieth century, it would
appear that the Gros Ventres were, at that time,
more biologically and culturally assimilated into
White society than the Northern Arapahoes and
that this accounts for the contrasts in their political
histories. I have argued that the assimilationist
approach is not adequate to explain the tribes'
divergent patterns of political reorganization.
First, conclusions about the supposed cultural
assimilation of the Gros Ventres were based in­
appropriately on statistics that reported the
extent of 6zo/o_^z