01/23/2020
January 23, 2020 marks 150 years since U.S. Army troops under the command of Major Eugene Baker attacked the sleeping camp of Piikuni Chief Heavy Runner, killing almost 200 people. The murdered included Heavy Runner, who was shot after presenting papers that testified that he was “a friend to the whites.” Many other victims of the attack were sick with smallpox; most were women, children, and the elderly—almost all of the able-bodied men were out hunting. Following the brutal slaughter, the soldiers then burned the Indians’ tepees and other possessions and took their horses, decreasing the likelihood that those who survived the brutal attack would be able to survive the harsh winter weather. Initially, the Montana press hailed Baker as a hero, but gradually reports by both Indians and non-Indians called into question his version of events, exposing the true atrocities that took place on the Marias River—called Bear Creek by the Blackfeet—150 years ago.
To learn more Download “The Pikuni and the U.S. Army’s Piegan Expedition: Competing Narratives of the 1870 Massacre on the Marias River,” by Rodger Henderson, Montana The Magazine of Western History (Spring 2018): 48-70.
Image: Courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian (22-1879). “The War Exploits of Bear Head,” a colorful warrior robe painted in 1927 on an elk skin, shows eight scenes from Bear Head’s life, including a depiction
on the upper right of Baker’s troops massacring Heavy Runner’s camp. The victims of the surprise cavalry attack are represented by legless figures with no weapons. Painting the victims in black conveys that they and their stories were silenced forever. Bear Head did not state the number killed; rather, he preferred to show the circumstances under which the victims fell and that the massacre happened to Heavy Runner’s camp.
