Ft. Belknap Grinnell Agreement

The description below is quoted from the book, Montana's Indians.

"In the early 1890s, prospectors roaming the Little Rockies found gold, and paid little attention that their strikes where within the Fort Belknap reservation. In 1894, Fort Belknap's acting Indian agent admitted to the BIA commissioner that illegal mining was taking place. He estimated that, in that year alone, $75,000 worth of gold had been taken out by non-Indian prospectors.

In 1895, President Cleveland appointed three Commissioners to negotiate with Fort Belknap tribes for the gold country. They were W.C. Pollock, W.M. Clements and George Bird Grinnell, the famous naturalist, originator of the idea for Glacier National Park and later and author of several books on the Northern Cheyenne and Blackfeet.

When the Assiniboine and Gros Ventres sat down with Grinnell, Clements and Pollock, most were not in favor of another land sale. They had seen their reservation shrink substantially in the previous ten years. Therefore, in spite of their people's destitute condition, the chief said they didn't want to trade more of their precious land for money. The commissioners had a different idea. An example of their hard-nosed attitude is Grinnell's initial negotiating statement:

'I see that some of you are pretty blind, you can't see far. You see the things that are close to your face, but the things that are further off you can't see at all. You are like people looking through a fog, you see things nearby, but the things far off are hidden. You think that because for seven or eight years you have had plenty to eat and lived well, for the next year or two you're going to have plenty to eat, that will it will always go on like that. That is not true, it is not going to last. I go about among different people and see them, how they are fixed, how many cattle they've got, how they farm; I don't see anybody as poor as you people.'"