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Official Website
The county is located in northwestern Montana between the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, known to the Blackfeet as the "Backbone of the World". The county is geographically and culturally diverse and includes the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Glacier National Park, and Lewis and Clark National Forest.
Adjacent Counties & Provinces
Cities, Towns & Other Communities
Babb | Big Sky Colony | Bison | Blackfoot | Browning | Cut Bank (County Seat) | East Glacier Park Village | False Summit | Fort Piegan | Glacier Colony | Gunsight | Hidden Lake Colony | Kiowa | Little Browning | Meriwether | North Browning | Piegan | Rising Sun | Saint Mary | Santa Rita | South Browning | Star | Starr School | Summit | Sundance | Swift Current
Links
National Register of Historic Places
Glacier County Chief Newspaper Archives (1934-1940)
The Blackfeet Reservation
Location and boundary Blackfeet Indian Reservation
They commonly called themselves saokí•tap•ksi meaning ‘prairie people.’ The meaning ‘people with black feet’ comes from exonyms—the names given by other, external tribes. Historically, several related groups comprise the Blackfoot or Blackfeet people:
- Siksika (Blackfoot)
- Kainai or Kainah (Blood)
- Piikani (Piegan Blackfeet)
Before European contact, the Blackfeet had traded for horses via the Eastern Shoshone to the south and weapons and tools via the Cree to the East. The horse dramatically increased travel distance. Central to their traditional economy, the Blackfoot relentlessly followed the enormous herds of buffalo. In the time before the horse and firearms, commonly known as the "Dog Days," the Blackfoot used arrows and lances in wars with traditional enemies, including the Shoshone, the Plains Cree, the Sioux, the Flathead, and the Assiniboin. Often, they allied in battle with their neighbors the Gros Ventre and the Sarcee. Domesticated dogs carried Blackfoot belongings by pulling a loaded travois consisting of two long poles attached to the dog's sides. After acquiring horses and firearms around the middle of the eighteenth century, the Blackfoot became the most powerful tribe of the Northern Plains.
Photo by Arthur Rafton-Canning. Courtesy Library and Archives Canada PA-029769.
Historians believe the Blackfeet, forced out of their ancestral grounds in today’s upper Great Lakes region by white advancement, were one of the first Native American tribes to head West. Though there are several stories on how they received their name, the most plausible is that their moccasins were blackened from the long journey across the prairie to reach what would become Montana.
Three mounted Piegan chiefs on the prairie. Photographed by Edward S. Curtis c. 1910
The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 created the Blackfeet Reservation but subsequent agreements with the government reduced their land.. In 1855, the Blackfoot signed their first treaty, known as Lame Bull's Treaty, after the powerful Piegan chief who signed it. This treaty ceded most of the 26 million acres composing traditional Blackfoot territory within U.S. borders. A reserve was left for their exclusive use.
New treaties in 1865 and 1868 significantly decreased the size of their territory along the southern boundary. In 1874, an executive order further reduced the Blackfoot territory in Montana and formally established a reservation on the east flanks of the Rocky Mountains next to the Canadian border. To the north, the Canadian government established reservations in Alberta for the Blackfoot in 1877 through Treaty No. 7, which ceded much of their traditional Native territory. The Bloods reserved almost 350,000 acres, the North Blackfoot over 178,000 acres, and the North Piegan over 113,000 acres. Additional land in the United States was relinquished through agreements in 1887 and 1896. In 1888 the Sweetgrass Hills Treaty introduced the allotment system of private land ownership. The 1896 a land sale agreement for $1.5 million sold an area that soon became part of Glacier National Park in 1910. The conditions of that agreement continue to be at issue for tribal use of park lands. The modern-day reservation boundaries were essentially set by this time. Lands within the reservation were allotted to individual tribal members between 1907 and 1911 under the General Allotment Act of 1887. This process led to so-called "excess" lands falling into non-Indian ownership.
Sources and Recommended Reading:
1. Wikipedia contributors. "Blackfeet Nation." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 10 Jan. 2024. Web. 3 Feb. 2024.
2. Wikipedia contributors. "Blackfoot Confederacy." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 8 Nov. 2023. Web. 3 Feb. 2024.
3. Wikipedia contributors. "Piegan Blackfeet." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 28 Jan. 2024. Web. 3 Feb. 2024.
4. Sheets, Cassie, "The Sweet Grass Hills and Blackfeet Indians: Sacredness, Land, and Institutional Discrimination" (2013). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 1091. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/1091
5. Farr, William E., ""When We Were First Paid" The Blackfoot Treaty, The Western Tribes, And The Creation Of The Common Hunting Ground, 1855" (2001). Great Plains Quarterly. 2226. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2226