Someone tribal asked on Twitter, "Why did no one tell me about the Baker Massacre?" True enough, this event was kept quiet in terms of the oral literature of the Blackfeet. But it was always present in the written literature that was rarely read by Blackfeet or Blackfoot, each in their own version of Siksika. James Willard Schultz was said to be married to Natahki, a survivor of the dawn raid. I attended the burial of his son's ashes. Lone Wolf's burial is not far from his father on a bluff near the Mad Plume allotment. Veterinarian and author Sid Gustafson keeps on eye on the place.
Possibly the most impassioned book about this event is "Death, Too,for the Heavy Runner," by Ben Bennett (1982). At the same time, it is carefully researched, helped by the Montana Historical Society and published by Mountain Press. It was not read across the country but sometimes turns up on the rez.
"Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown (1970) was a summary of all the major massacres of indigenous people in the USA. This book came late in the Peace Corps era and made people suddenly aware of how much work there was to do "at home." Some dedicated careers in response to the book. It includes the Baker Massacre, as it was called at the time, and only has a few points of argument. There were so many massacres. The book was a true tour d'force.
"Fools Crow"by James Welch (1986) was the popular book version that caught on widely. It was the first written by a well-known enrolled person. It was Welch and friends who researched and provisionally located the actual location of the pre-dawn attack on vulnerable people. The annual memorial service is based on this place, the reality of it.
"The Red and the White, A Family Saga of the American West" by Andrew Graybill (2013) explores the basics of Malcolm Clarke's family. It was as retaliation for his death that the massacre was ordered. He was an overbearing, ambitious man who was murdered on his ranch by a relative of his Blackfeet wife. Her family is hard to trace except for her daughter, Helen Clarke, who became a government representative, an actress, and an important Blackfeet who lived on her allotment behind the Big Hotel in East Glacier, on the Blackfeet rez. Graybill is an academic historian.
The newest version of the event is "Blood on the Marias: The Baker Massacre" by Paul R.Wylie (2019). Wylie is a Billings attorney.
Most of the people who write histories of the Blackfeet do not dwell on the tragedy because it is one bloody event in a long string of starvations, injustices, and irrationality. The wish is to show the totality of a people who are far richer and more significant than just the bad stuff. Besides, they are almost all written by white people. Or lately written by enrolled people who have college degrees and may see themselves as victimized, but also as overcoming hardship.
The time of this attack in 1870 was much enabled by the dregs of the Civil War (1861-65), men who had been brutalized, had no place to go, were in the habit of drinking, and had seen ghastly bloodshed. Baker was alcoholic, on the edge of disgrace and dismissal, and knew it. These were not the handsome men of Hollywood depictions. In the 1970's we were meeting one centennial of massacre after another, though the major prairie treaties were signed in 1850.
The two scouts for Baker were Kipp and Cobell, who had been an Italian sailor on sea-going ships until he came up the Mississippi/Missouri complex that guided many early explorers deep into Blackfeet country where the tribe's back was protected by the Rockies. The camps along the Marias moved occasionally and they said that when they guided Baker's company the one that contained Clarke's murderers had left, replaced by the camp of Heavyrunner. They tried to get that across to Baker, who was enflamed by this time, but failed. Afterwards, they were so ashamed that they went back to gather children and adopt them.
Distinguishing protections to separate bands who were peaceful from those who were troublemakers were ineffective. Heavyrunner came out of his lodge waving his paper proving he was a peace chief. He was carrying his daughter and it was said that the same bullet went through the paper, through the child, and into Heavyrunner's heart. The soldiers could barely distinguish between who was Blackfeet and who was white. They themselves undoubtedly included Blacks, the "Buffalo Soldiers". Washington DC thought they were very clever to involve a different "race." As far as I know, no Chinese were present.
In some ways, this event was a "perfect storm". There was smallpox in the camp which scared whites and sometimes killed them as well as tribal people. The armed men of the camp had gone hunting in the profound cold. The US soldiers were convinced that this kind of ambush was an "Indian" invention, a kind of guerrilla warfare justified by an otherwise elusive enemy. It was imitated in Vietnam, which was called "Indian Country." This particular murder of Clarke was the climax of a long sequence of transgression, banditry, and unjust hangings that had persisted for years around Fort Benton, the main center of other scattered forts.
The pitiful sentimentality of "Wounded Knee" which was fought near enough to a town for the people to come out to witness the body-strewn battlefield, bringing cameras and discovering one baby beneath the protective body of her mother. They raised her as something between a servant and a toy. But the worst was when the first barrage had killed most of the surrendered and peaceful people, the soldiers called out to the children who had scattered into the brush to hide, "It's all over now. It's safe. Come out and we'll feed you and protect you." When the children came out, they killed them as well.
And then there is the Industrial Revolution which moved troupes by railroad and provided mortars and gatling guns to mow down the Nez Perce of Chief Joseph in the Bear's Paw Hills, just short of safety in Canada.
If only they had had predator drones, eh? We haven't stopped doing it, We're still mafia. saying, "Take her out." The fire and fury are just below the surface and some have always worshipped it.
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