Understanding the Little Shell Band of Montana

Following the failed negotiations of the 1892 McCumber Agreement the Little Shell Band of the Pembina Chippewa Tribe led by Chief Little Shell III and the Red Bear Band of the Pembina Chippewa Tribe led by Chief Red Bear II, removed themselves with the Grand Council of the Pembina Chippewa Tribe from the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation and camped westward in what is called Dunseith today.

Chief Red Bear and his family would travel to Wahalla in northeastern North Dakota, where ancestrally they had always lived extending eastward to the Lake of the Woods.

Chief Little Shell would travel south to Spirit Lake in central North Dakota where his ancestors were buried at Grahams Island, the ancestral capital of the Pembina Chippewa Tribe. However, a large group of approximately 1400 members of his band remained north of present day Dunseith.

In 1895 Chief Little Shell directed half of the group to relocate to hunting grounds in Montana to establish a supply line and trade route to ensure the people of the Pembina Chippewa tribe in North Dakota could remain fed during the incursion of thousands of Americans looking for land in order to obtain voting rights in the United States. At this time only white men had the right to vote and they had to own land in order to exercise that right to vote, this fostered an aggressive expansion westward into indian nations.

In early 1896 700 members of the Little Shell Band, led by Chief Little Shell’s cousin Joseph Paul, began the journey to Montana at the request of their Chief and to save the people from starvation in North Dakota. Near the border with Canada a Colonel named John Pershing was managing border security and captured them. The Little Shell were placed onto train box cars and shipped into Canada, as even at this time the 1892 McCumber Agreement had not been ratified due to the rejection of Chief Little Shell and his protest letter as well as that his people still outnumbered those at Turtle Mountain. To send the Indians into Canada would thereby reduce Little Shell’s regional influence.

However, following their Chief despite arriving in southern Saskatchewan, the Little Shell walked south into Montana and occupied their hunting grounds. Unfortunately they had no ability to transfer any logistical support back to their parent tribe in North Dakota due to the strong presence of the United States Army in the Blackfoot territories between the two areas. These families remained in Montana until this day.

The Little Shell Band remaining in North Dakota were starved mercilessly in the first two decades of the twentieth century with their children forcibly taken to boarding schools. As a result the vast majority migrated onto the Turtle Mountain Reservation for food that in some years was simply eating grass that grew on the land, as the Indian agent declared: “let them eat grass”, so they did.

Understanding the Turtle Mountain Region

The Turtle Mountain region was occupied by a sub-band within the Pembina Chippewa Tribe called the Turtle Mountain Band which was governed regionally by the Little Thunder Chiefs, the first being Joseph Gourneau the half brother of Chief Little Shell I. His son Kaispaw Gourneau became Little Thunder II and negotiated the 1882 Treaty with the Executive Branch while Chief Little Shell III and Grand Council were at Wood Mountain in Saskatchewan.

The Metis Rebellions of the 1870s and 1880s as well as the extension of the Jay Border of 1794 westward to the Pacific in 1871 merging with the prior established Oregon territory border with British Columbia resulted in a large group of Metis fleeing south into the American side of the border and into the Turtle Mountain region. The population influx changed the dynamic of the region and community.

The Little Shell Band and Pembina Band of Red Bear were found in the 1964/1965 United States Court of Claims to be a distinct and separate entity from the Turtle Mountain Band. However, the Little Shell Band was split, with portions living in North Dakota, on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation and Spirit Lake Indian Reservations and the others, being in Montana via the aforementioned journey in the late 1890s.

Confusion on Recognition

The United States Federal Government has three co-equal branches of government. The Little Shell Band was recognized by the United States Congress in 1863 at the Pembina Treaty at Old Crossing. No subsequent treaty or agreement was signed to remove that. Title and Occupancy cannot be divested, take away, except through a willful Congressional treaty agreement.

While the Little Shell band in Montana was “re”recognized in 2019 for Executive Branch services via the Bureau of Indian Affairs, this did not replace or remove the Little Shell Band of North Dakota, who with the Red Bear Pembina Band had filed the initial Court of Claims filings in the 1960s with Lawyer Lawrence Wells.

The Pembina Chippewa Tribe and the Little Shell Band was additionally recognized in the 1899 Supreme Court ruling of Jones v. Meehan related to the disposition of the lands allocated to Chief Moosedung in the 1863 Treaty. Furthermore the Indian Claims Commission as well as the U.S. Court of Claims in 1864/1865 as well as subsequent cases related all recognize the rights of the Little Shell Band.

It is the Executive Branch who lacks the ability to divest rights who governs the Interior Department and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, an agency that ONLY has jurisdiction over those tribes who have divested themselves of rights and entered into willful reservation agreements and federal executive branch governance.