1966 Shane Pictorial Historical Map of Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Montana

Comprehensive History of the Blackfeet Nation.

This 1966 pictorial historical map of Montana's Blackfeet Indian Reservation was prepared by Ralph M. Shane. It combines an illustrated account of Blackfeet life with a pointed examination of dispossession, commercial exploitation, and dependence on government rations. A Bureau of Indian Affairs road engineer, Shane developed his reservation maps as a personal educational project intended to encourage understanding of Native American history. Here, buffalo drives, former agency sites, and historic trails share the landscape with modern highways and annotations recording the devastating floods of June 1964. The result presents the reservation as both a historical homeland and a contemporary community.

A Closer Look

The map extends south from the Canadian border to Birch Creek. Glacier National Park and the Rocky Mountains form the map's western boundary. Blue linework distinguishes mountains, waterways, roads (including modern highways), railways, and historical routes, including the Old North Trail and the route Meriwether Lewis took in 1806. (Lewis and his companions are depicted at right.) The township-and-range grid provides a useful, historically informed framework for locating places, as most 19th-century maps included such an overlay. Historical locations such as buffalo drive sites, former Indian agencies, mission grounds, graves, and surviving traces of older trails are indicated throughout.

The surrounding illustrations and text relate to historical events associated with these places. Vignettes depict a buffalo drive, hide preparation, camp life, mounted hunting, and the 'counting coup,' that is, demonstrating courage through close contact with an enemy. The historical coverage is comprehensive and objective, stretching from the 18th century up to the time of publication (see more below). Additional blocks of text and illustrations refer to subsequent efforts by the U.S. government, which were perhaps well-intended but also rested on the destruction of the Blackfeet traditional way of life.

Despite its title, the map's history reaches almost to its publication date. Labels at Two Medicine Dam and Swift Dam record their failure on June 8, 1964, which caused the death of 28 people. An adjacent account describes flooding across the reservation, loss of life, destruction of homes, and damage to farms, irrigation systems, roads, and bridges.

Dispossession and Survival

Shane devotes substantial space to the transformation of Blackfeet land and livelihood. The text discusses the 1855 treaty (also known as the Lame Bull Treaty or Judith River Treaty), subsequent reductions of reserved territory, the land agreement ratified in 1888 (also known as the Sweet Grass Hills Agreement or Sweetgrass Hills Treaty), the western cession associated with what became Glacier National Park, and individual allotments of land to encourage the transformation of the Blackfeet into 'yeoman farmers.' His account of the disappearance of the buffalo leads directly to the starvation winter of 1883-1884 and the burial place known as Ghost Ridge. A separate passage recounts the Baker Massacre of January 23, 1870. Text beneath the title explains the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 and the Blackfeet constitution of 1935, a period often overlooked in historical maps dealing with Native Americans. Overall, it creates a strong sense of continuity and connection between past and present.

The map appeared during a period that saw widening debate over Native sovereignty, treaty rights, and cultural survival. The National Indian Youth Council, founded in 1961, had already helped organize the fishing-rights protests of 1964, and in the following years the American Indian Movement would garner national attention. Shane's work belongs to this broader moment of increased historical attention. However, it still reflects the perspective of an outsider rather than a member of the native nation in question, as would be more common in later decades.

Publication History

Ralph Shane prepared this map in 1966 as part of a series of maps in a similar style on the history of various Native American nations. The present map is held by the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection and is cataloged at roughly ten institutions in the OCLC. It may have been included in, or at least coincided with, the publication of a booklet titled Brief history of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Montana.

Cartographer

Ralph M. Shane (1910 - July 12, 1984) was an artist and U.S. government engineer. Born near Edelstein, Illinois, Shane's parents moved the family to Pipestone, Minnesota, where he attended public school. After high school, Shane attended the University of Colorado before transferring to the South Dakota School of Mines, where he graduated in 1935 with a B.S. in engineering. He found work with the South Dakota State Highway Commission and drafted strip and right-of-way maps. In November 1936, Shane joined the Bureau of Indian Affairs as an engineering draftsman. He was promoted to junior road engineer the following year. The Bureau transferred him to Sacramento, California, in January 1939 to work as chief of a road survey party. Shane worked as a road engineer for the Bureau of Indian Affairs across the western United States through the 1940s and 1950s, except for a four-month furlough in 1943 when he served as a Navy ensign. He left the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1955 and bought a newspaper in New Town, North Dakota, which he edited for two years before returning to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He retired from the Bureau in 1979. Shane was married twice. First to Jeanette Wildman, whom he married in 1936, then to Carolyn Mae Hodgkinson, whom he married on July 14, 1944. He had four children.   Further Details...

Condition

Fine.

References

Rumsey, 13654.000. OCLC 227493619. Gilluly, Dick and Kathryn Wright, 'Indian History on Maps: Doodler's Hobby', Billings Gazette, October 29, 1967, reprinted in Congressional Record, Senate, November 8, 1967, pp. 31629 - 31630.