The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, death, and graphic violence. 

A significant portion of the novel revolves around the Marias Massacre, a racist mass murder that took place in Montana Territory in 1870, which had violent repercussions on the Blackfeet Pikuni people. In the years after the American Civil War, tensions remained high between the European American settlers and the Amskapi Pikuni, who made up the largest contingent of the Blackfoot Confederacy and resided in Montana Territory. For their safety, the Pikuni were forced to resettle to the north of the Marias River.

In 1869, Owl Chief, a young Pikuni man with whom Clarke had a history of personal conflict, killed a rancher named Malcolm Clarke. Clarke’s death drove outrage from the white settlers, who turned to the US government for intervention. After Owl Chief was determined to have fled to Pikuni leader Mountain Chief for protection, US Army General Philip Sheridan dispatched Major Eugene Baker to launch a brutal strike on Mountain Chief’s band.

On January 23, 1870, Baker and his troops stationed themselves on a bluff overlooking a Pikuni camp. The camp was not led by Mountain Chief but by Chief Heavy Runner, who had documents attesting that his band was on peaceful terms with the US government and therefore under their protection. Joe Kipp, a scout familiar with the Pikuni bands in the area, immediately recognized the error and tried to convince Baker not to attack the camp. Kipp was then placed under arrest and threatened with death if he alerted the Pikuni to their presence. 

Heavy Runner emerged from the camp to show the soldiers his band’s protection papers. Among the 300 Pikuni residents of his camp, many were ill with smallpox. With the male hunting party away, this mostly left the sick, the elderly, and women and children present on the morning of the massacre. A second scout, Joseph Cobell, fired upon Heavy Runner, which kicked off the massacre. The US Army murdered over 200 Pikuni people in their sleep. Following the massacre, soldiers destroyed and burned Pikuni possessions and stole their horses; this decreased those who survived the attack’s ability to survive the harsh winter (Henderson, Rodger. “The Pikuni and the US Army’s Piegan Expedition: Competing Narratives of the 1870 Massacre on the Marias River.” Montana The Magazine of Western History, Spring 2018: 48-70). 

The massacre drew an outraged response from the public, which the US Army tried to defend with false reports of survival rates and murder among the Pikuni. In response to the massacre and subsequent investigation, President Ulysses S. Grant was compelled to pursue a long-term peace policy with Indigenous American tribes, blocking the military from seizing control of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. However, Grant also reduced the territory of the Blackfeet Reservation, ensuring that the territory fell under the control of the settlers (“Blackfeet Reservation Timeline.” Montana Office of Public Instruction, 2017).