Great Plains Studies, Center for
Nowhere Left to go: Montana's Crees, Metis, and Chippewas and the Creation of Rocky Boy's Resevation
Date of this Version
1987
Abstract
In the last third of the nineteenth century, the federal governments of Canada and the United States asserted their jurisdiction over the Great Plains through a series of treaties that established reservations for the various Indian tribes of the area. By the turn of the century, three small native groups found themselves homeless relics of a distant past long after other peoples had moved to their reservations. Several bands of Cree Indians and a number of mixed-bloods, who called themselves Metis, had used lands on both sides of the line that had become the border between the state of Montana and the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The confusion over the national identity and governmental responsibility for these two groups was exacerbated when members of both joined a rebellion against the Canadian government. At about the same time a band of Chippewa Indians migrated into Montana from the Dakotas after they had failed to conclude satisfactory treaty arrangements with the United States. Many members of these three groups were united in a prolonged struggle for a place to live and for a life to be lived as much on their own terms as possible.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly [GPQ 7 (Summer 1987): 195-209].Copyright 1987 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.