1966 Shane Pictorial Historical Map of Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, Montana

Struggling for Land Rights in the Little Rockies.

This is a 1974 Ralph M. Shane pictorial historical map of Montana's Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, combining an illustrated regional history with an explicit notice of tribal efforts to recover land in the Little Rocky Mountains. The reservation is the homeland of the Gros Ventre, or Aaniiih, and Assiniboine, or Nakoda, peoples. Shane places treaty boundaries, allotment, tribal government, and sacred geography alongside buffalo hunting, military encounters, mining, and railroad expansion. Its account extends beyond the frontier past up to the 1970s, including the community's continuing efforts to restore the reservation boundaries established in 1888.

A Closer Look

The map extends from Chinook and the old Fort Belknap site eastward along the Milk River to Malta, and south through the reservation to the Little Rocky Mountains, Hays, Lodgepole, Zortman, and Landusky. A township-and-range grid underlies a network of streams, roads, and settlements. U.S. Highway 2 and the Burlington Northern Railway cross the northern portion, while historical annotations explain earlier transportation corridors and trading posts.

Rendered throughout in blue, the sheet alternates densely lettered historical passages with pictorial vignettes. A Métis freighter stands beside a Red River cart at upper left; elsewhere, mounted soldiers, Native American riders, buffalo, game birds, deer, and pronghorn are depicted. Views of old Fort Belknap, the burning Fort Browning, St. Paul's Mission, and the Ruby Mine give architectural form to the institutions and industries discussed in the text. Four large arrows frame the sides, and a log-supported signboard forms the title cartouche.

Land tenure receives unusually sustained attention. Passages describe the territorial arrangements of 1851 and 1855, subsequent reductions, the reservation boundaries established in 1888, individual allotments, and land purchases west of the reservation during 1937 - 1938. Other annotations record agricultural acreage, grazing, settlement distribution, and the use of lease income to support tribal government. These subjects make the map an explanation of how the reservation functioned as well as an illustrated account of its past.

The Little Rocky Mountains bring these themes together. Beside an illustration of the Ruby Mine, Shane discusses the mineral-bearing lands relinquished under the act of June 10, 1896. The underlying agreement, signed October 9, 1895, provided $360,000 for the ceded tract. Immediately adjacent, the map reports that the Fort Belknap Community Council was working to recover the land and restore the 1888 boundaries.

Historical Context

Shane's professional connection to Fort Belknap preceded this map by decades; he had worked at Fort Belknap in 1941 - 1942 as a Bureau of Indian Affairs area road engineer, among his earliest postings with the Bureau (see biography below). This map appeared at a time when Native American activism was helping the wider American public gain a greater understanding of the enduring issues present on reservations. With regard to the Fort Belknap Reservation, the peoples resident there had in recent decades endured intense federal assimilation pressures while fighting to overcome acute economic distress and the legacy of land allotment. Amid the national push for urban relocation, tribal leaders vigorously guarded their federal trust status and grappled with a severely 'checkerboarded' land base that complicated cattle ranching and dryland farming between the Milk River and the sacred Little Rocky Mountains. A pivotal turning point arrived in the mid-1960s with the rollout of the federal War on Poverty; Fort Belknap leveraged Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) grants to fund Community Action Programs, new housing, and early childhood education. By channeling these non-BIA resources directly into tribal hands, Aaniiih and Nakoda leaders bypassed traditional Bureau of Indian Affairs paternalism, cultivating a new era of grassroots administrative self-determination and fortifying legal vigilance over tribal water rights that would shield the community during later battles against open-pit gold mining along their southern border.

Publication History

This map was prepared by Ralph M. Shane and published in 1974. It is held by the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection and five other institutions, listed in the OCLC: the FamilySearch Library, the University of Arizona, the Montana Historical Society, Denison University, and Pennsylvania State University.

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, 13656.000. OCLC 866747493. 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, p. 31630.