FORT PECK INDIAN RESERVATION

The history begins in 1851 at Fort Laramie in Wyoming where the tribes of the Montana and Dakota Territories treated with the United States. The Assiniboines claimed lands south of the Missouri River. The Sioux territory comprised most of present day North and South Dakota. In 1855, the Blackfoot Indians were assigned a territory north of the Missouri River which extended east from the Rocky Mountains to an area that would become the western boundaries of the Fort Peck Reservation. Later the Sioux Indians began a migration into Montana Territory as political exiles from the Minnesota wars of 1862 and other bands moved into the area which was prime buffalo country.

Meanwhile the Sioux Indians signed another treaty in 1868 creating the "greater Sioux Reservation" in the Dakotas. The treaty included unceded territory which adjoined Assiniboine territory on it's western boundary. Conflict over the 1851 treaty and the discovery of gold in the Black Hills precipitated the wars surrounding the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876.

The Fort Peck Reservation was created in the aftermath of wars. In 1886 at the Fort Peck Agency in Poplar and Wolf Point, Montana, the Sioux and Assiniboine Tribes agreed with the United States government to the creation of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation. The tribes ceded some 20 million acres of land to the United States. The Fort Peck Reservation lands of two million acres were retained by the Assiniboine and Sioux. In 1888 the Congress of the United States ratified the agreement. For Montana it was the last step in the opening of the west. The Great Northern railroad came through in 1889 and statehood followed. For more information on Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes, call 1-406-768-5155