I’ve thought about Indians my entire life. I grew up with the vague knowledge my father’s side of the family was Indian — Chippewa, specifically — as my grandmother would speak of it at times. I have a dim memory of being 4 years old and sitting on the faded linoleum kitchen floor of our little farmhouse in Huson, Montana, assaulting a coloring book with crayons. When asked why I depict a pair of children with red skin, I say it’s because they’re Indians. My visiting grandmother, Ruby Katherine (Doney) La Tray, sitting at the table, asks, “Is my skin red? No? But I am an Indian. And so are you.”
I was very young, and now I’m not, but the memory has stuck with me.
It wasn’t until my grandfather, Leo Stanley La Tray, died just shy of 83 years of age in late September 1996 that pieces started falling into place. I was 29 years old. When I arrived at the small Catholic church in Plains, Montana for his funeral service, I was amazed to find the nave crowded with Indians. I took my seat in the front row, beside my dad, and stared around in a state of puzzled awe. During the service, which I barely remember, Dad kept poking me in the ribs and trying to make me laugh. When we exited the church and prepared to join the procession to the cemetery, Dad leaned in and asked, “So, what did you think about all those Indians?”
“There were a lot of them,” I said, for lack of a better answer. What I didn’t say was how astounded I was.
Dad didn’t talk about my grandfather very much, and when he did it wasn’t flattering. Something my dad and his father had in common was the denial of any Indigenous heritage. Suggesting my dad was Native made him angry. I could never understand why. I was the opposite. I wanted to be Indian. I wanted that identity, and I took it for myself, even if it had to be largely locked up. To me it was cool. Who wouldn’t want to be an Indian? Who wouldn’t want to be Chippewa? Growing up, if there was anything I knew about the answers to those questions, it was this: Don’t ask Dad for them.
When he passed away in 2014, Dad left me with a lifetime of questions about who he was and where he came from. No, who we are, where we come from. I’m certain he had the answers to many of these questions, but he chose to take them with him to his grave. I decided I would do what I could to find them on my own. If not from him, then through people who lived a similar experience. Through the story of our people.
I’ve attempted to answer some of those questions, to tell the story of my own family heritage, certainly, and why my dad felt the way he did about his heritage. If I’ve learned anything at all, it’s that I’m not the only one to grow up in these kinds of circumstances. I’m also not alone in trying to find my way back to who I was all along: a proud Indian.
I’m not a scholar. I’m not a historian. I don’t have an academic bone in my body. I’m a storyteller, and this is a story that needs telling. I feel compelled to share the story of the Little Shell Tribe, the longtime landless Indians of Montana. Because it’s clear we’re largely unknown, not just to the wider world, but even in Montana, the first state to recognize us as a legitimate tribe, despite our centuries-old association with a larger Indigenous family.
Like the stories of all Indigenous tribes of the Americas, it’s a sad story. Yet it’s a story brimming with grit and determination, a story full of facts and dates shared as best as I’ve come to learn them. Other storytellers may unearth different versions. This version of the story is mine. It is a story still unfolding.
I wanted to be Indian. I wanted that identity, and I took it for myself, even if it had to be largely locked up. To me it was cool. Who wouldn’t want to be an Indian?
MY INITIATION in the history of the Little Shell begins in 2013 with a talk by Nicholas Vrooman, a historian from Helena. The vast majority of what I know about the Little Shell I owe to Vrooman. I’ve picked up more bits and pieces in talking to other tribal members, visiting with other historians and scholars — armchair and professional — and reading books, but I stand on Vrooman’s shoulders when I share what I know.
In the months and years that followed my accepted enrollment application in the Little Shell Tribe, I stepped up my interest in learning all I could about it. I attended quarterly meetings and spent a small fortune on books for research purposes. I also began a steady correspondence with Vrooman via email and the occasional phone call. I recall sitting with him in his second-floor office in an old building on the corner of Placer Avenue and historic Last Chance Gulch, my view the outer wall of the post office opposite the street my chair by the window faces.
I chuckle to myself when I recall how I asked him for a short answer to this question: Why are we called the “Little Shell” Chippewa people? I laugh because there isn’t a short answer, and even if there was, I don’t think Vrooman would be capable of providing it. Yet I’m going to try.
We could as easily still be called Pembina Chippewa — named for the Ojibwe word for what we call the “high cranberry,” a bitter little fruit from the honeysuckle family that grows in small, bright red clusters on thick, bushy shrubs — or Turtle Mountain Chippewa, or even Rocky Boy Chippewa Cree, who are our close relatives. We’re called “Little Shell” because of a man called Little Shell who led these related people during a tumultuous time that, for all the decades stacked up before his arrival, truly began to unravel in the 1850s, and rapidly fell apart in the wake of the Old Crossing Treaty of 1863, just as it did for all the related Indigenous people of the region.
His name was Ayabe-way-we-tung, which means “He Who Rests on His Way.” He was the third hereditary chief of the Pembina Chippewa to be called Little Shell, so he’s sometimes referred to as Little Shell III. But for my purposes, when I refer to Little Shell the person, it’s this man.
Little Shell never led his people into great battles against the settlers in defense of his homelands in the way more recognizable Plains Indian leaders — like Red Cloud, Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse — did. Nor was the Pembina peoples’ forced exodus away from their homeland as dramatic as that of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce. But it was no less harrowing; the same rifles that were aimed at Nez Perce women and children in 1877 under the charge of Gen. Nelson A. Miles were directed our way too. His name should be spoken with at least as much reverence as these other guys. Perhaps it’s because in America we tend to exalt our historical figures as much by the body counts they achieved as anything else; I don’t know. I contend Little Shell’s efforts on behalf of his people are no less significant than these other leaders.
Little Shell, the man the tribe is named after, became hereditary chief of the Pembina Chippewa when his father, Weesh-e-damo, died around 1872. Weesh-e-damo (aka Little Shell II) was the tribe’s leader starting in 1815, after his father, Aisance, the first of this Little Shell line, was killed in battle with the Dakota near what’s now Devil’s Lake in Minnesota. Aisance’s leadership began around 1770.
I’ll pick up the story when Ayabe-way-we-tung becomes Little Shell.
Little Shell’s influence depended entirely on his ability to suggest reasonable decisions and lead with integrity.
ANOTHER HISTORIAN who helped me figure all this out is Les LaFountain. LaFountain is a Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribal historian and former North Dakota state senator. He teaches at Turtle Mountain Community College in Belcourt, North Dakota, where the Turtle Mountain Chippewa are headquartered. He’s probably a decade older than me but doesn’t look it. His face is lined, and his short hair is dark and streaked with silver. The smile he flashes from beneath an impressive mustache is wide and features a narrow gap between his front teeth.
LaFountain and I met in person for the first time in Huot, Minnesota. I had joined a small delegation of Little Shell Tribe members — four of us, including my cousin (and tribal council member) Kim McKeehan and two other women, plus an attending entourage of two husbands and a couple grandchildren — who have made a similar trip all the way from Montana. A few months of organizational meetings online have led to this: We Little Shell are dignitaries from our “lost” tribe invited to participate in this commemoration of 158 years since the signing of the 1863 Treaty of Old Crossing. It’s an honor, and my excitement to have been invited is overflowing. It’s a first for us to be included, and though our delegation is small we are hopeful that in coming years our participation will be much larger. The roots of our tribal connection to this event are deep; more than 94% of our present membership can be traced back to signers of this treaty. I’m eager to visit the location where it all went down nearly 160 years ago.
What exactly is the 1863 Treaty of Old Crossing? David Treuer, an Ojibwe author from Leech Lake who likely had relatives here same as me, writes in his book, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, “In 1863, the Red Lake Band and Pembina Band of Ojibwe were induced by Alexander Ramsey, governor of Minnesota, to sign a treaty ceding roughly eleven million acres of prime wood lands and prairie on either side of the Red River. The Treaty of Old Crossing promised them considerable annuities and the right to hunt, fish, and travel in the ceded area in exchange for what Ramsey described as the ‘right of passage’ for oxcarts and wagon trains headed west.”
The gotcha here is this idea of “right of passage.” This is what the assembled chiefs thought they were negotiating, what they were led to believe they were negotiating. But it wasn’t. It was another land grab. Ramsey deliberately misrepresented the language of the treaty in an effort to yank all that beautiful land out from under the Ojibwe people who already lived there.
Fourteen days of lowball offers and arguments and grand speeches and threats and mistranslations across languages finally led to a confused agreement. On Oct. 2, 1863, the Pembina and Red Lake Treaty — the Old Crossing Treaty — was signed. Six Indian chiefs and nine warriors signed it. Pembina chiefs Red Bear and Little Shell both signed the treaty. Of the handful of Pembina warriors who signed it, at least two of them represent direct ancestors of members of today’s Little Shell Tribe.
The result? Just under 10 million acres of land ceded to the United States. The agreement included annual payments of $20,000, divided equally as per capita payments to enrolled tribal members, for 20 years; funds set aside for farming and education; money specifically for chiefs, and even houses built for them. Land, 160 acres, for “each male adult half-breed or mixed-blood who adopted the customs of civilized life or became a citizen of the United States and homesteaded the claim for five years.”
The Indians understood that they could stay where they were, continue to use the territory as they always had, but would leave the settlers alone. That’s what they agreed to. But it isn’t what the document actually says.
Of course, it doesn’t end here. Once the treaty went to Washington for ratification, changes were made, some significant. This led to a revised treaty being signed in Washington on April 12, 1864. Little Shell didn’t make the trip to D.C. and didn’t sign the revised treaty. (Red Bear did, however.) He’d had enough with the doublespeak and betrayals of the United States government and determined to never negotiate again.
This is why, while many people refer to the McCumber Agreement of 1892 as the blow that left the Little Shell people landless, I set the true beginning 30 years earlier to this treaty, Old Crossing, in 1863, and Little Shell’s refusal to sign the remade document. While the treaty itself had greater consequences to the Ojibwe people still in Minnesota, its ripple effects were the beginning of the end for the related Pembina Chippewa north and west of the Red River.
WHEN I ARRIVE at the Turtle Mountain Community College, LaFountain greets me with a smile and a firm handshake. He wears a beautiful beaded turtle medallion around his neck. He gives me a tour of the institution, and it’s beautiful, surrounded by forest and hills. The Turtle Mountains — more rolling hills than what we in Montana might call mountains — are gorgeous in the fall light. We begin a deep discussion of who Little Shell really was, and what he represents to our people.
“Little Shell III is probably the most significant leader at Turtle Mountain,” LaFountain says, pointing at a portrait of the Pembina chief, “and the reason for that is he was challenged at a time when the land base was being taken away or being threatened.”
Consider the state of the world Little Shell became chief in. The Old Crossing treaty was signed just under a decade earlier, an interaction his father walked away from in disgust, vowing never to make treaty with the Americans again. But encroachments on Chippewa land were gaining steam, and the region was crawling with homesteaders looking for land, regardless of what any treaty said about who it belonged to.
This land the Pembina Chippewa occupied at the time, about 10 million acres worth, had been established in an agreement signed in 1858 that came to be known as the Sweet Corn Treaty. The agreement was “forged between the chiefs and headmen of the (Pembina) band and the Sisseton and Yankton Dakota” and “sought to establish peace and to define hunting and territorial boundaries so that there was no cause for warfare and so that resources would be shared without animosity.”
By the 1870s, that language was meaningless. Agreement or not, settlers wanted the land, and the government was determined to see they got it.
Little Shell would spend the rest of his life trying to preserve a people and culture that was threatened on all sides. By 1872, the buffalo, and the centuries-old cultures that revolved around them, were largely gone. Many of the Turtle Mountain people who used to travel out of the region to hunt buffalo were still out and staying away longer. By the 1880s, the buffalo were essentially eradicated. There was more and more pressure on Little Shell to turn this land over to the Americans, but he was steadfast in retaining the Turtle Mountains for his people.
“There was no reservation,” LaFountain says of the still-unceded land. “He resisted the removal of the Turtle Mountain people from the Turtle Mountains. That was all the doings of Little Shell.”
“Little Shell III is probably the most significant leader at Turtle Mountain. And the reason for that is he was challenged at a time when the land base was being taken away or being threatened.”
IT SHOULD BE NOTED that even as chief, Little Shell didn’t enjoy the kind of “my way or the highway” leadership one might expect. So he wasn’t just negotiating with settlers. He had to accommodate all the factions and concerns of his own people, a task that was certainly daunting as well. He couldn’t force anyone to do anything; he had to lobby and convince and lead through wisdom. His influence depended entirely on his ability to suggest reasonable decisions and lead with integrity. This leadership included presiding over councils, making general day-to-day decisions related to his band, and mediating disputes. He represented his people when it came to interacting with the Americans or even with gatherings of other tribes.
This wasn’t top-down leadership like we see in tribal governments today. There weren’t any Robert’s Rules of Order protocols in place like what I suffer through whenever I attend a tribal council meeting. That’s a colonial form of leadership. The Pembina Chippewa didn’t operate like that. In his role as chief, Little Shell had a number of subchiefs called “headmen” to advise and assist in leading the Pembina people and hearing their opinions and grievances. These included a number of leaders in the Métis community as well, who were a large part of the population. Little Shell even had a lawyer working on the tribe’s behalf, Jean Baptiste “J.B.” Bottineau, the Métis son of notable guide and fur trader Pierre Bottineau, who represented the interests of the people of Turtle Mountain until his death in Washington, D.C., in 1911.
Yes, a lawyer. Because by now these negotiations were largely being waged by bureaucrats, not soldiers. Between the time Little Shell began his tenure as leader of the Pembina Chippewa and the McCumber Agreement of 1892, he and his representatives made several trips to D.C. to make a case for where they should be allowed to stay. Most of their efforts fell on deaf ears. If there’s an upside to all this, it’s that these visits are largely where the photographs we have of Little Shell come from.
Little Shell’s tenure can be described largely as one of resistance in an effort to preserve as much as he could for his people. He rejected early efforts to move the Pembina Chippewa to what’s now the White Earth reservation in north-central Minnesota, created in 1867 and one of seven Chippewa/Ojibwe reservations in that state. He also rejected an attempt to move them to the Fort Berthold reservation, which, while on Pembina land, would’ve forced them from the Turtle Mountains and onto land to be shared with the three affiliated Sioux tribes of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara nations.
Little Shell could see the writing on the wall as his people clashed with more and more settlers. He wanted a reservation, but it had to include the Turtle Mountains. He finally got one in 1882. It was roughly 450,000 acres. Two years later, two executive orders by United States President Chester Arthur reduced the reservation by 90%, to 46,000 acres, where it remains today. Little Shell spent the rest of his life trying to restore the original boundaries. These tireless efforts directly resulted in the fateful McCumber Agreement in 1892, which Little Shell refused to cooperate with, that led ultimately to him and all his followers off-reservation being disenrolled, creating the ludicrous situation of any Indigenous North Americans being described as “landless.”
“This reservation really is here because of Little Shell,” Les LaFountain says of the people who became the Turtle Mountain Chippewa. “We would not be here if not for Chief Little Shell.”
We’re Little Shell Chippewa because we are the people who were shut out, driven, essentially, into exile. When the U.S. government established means for unrecognized Indians to gain federal recognition in 1978, the official “Little Shell” tribe came into existence as a unique entity splintered off from a larger people. During my time in Minnesota for the Old Crossing event, I spoke with several members from the Minnesota Ojibwe tribes — a couple even in positions of leadership — who told me they didn’t even know we were out there.
“This reservation really is here because of Little Shell. We would not be here if not for Chief Little Shell.”
WHEN OUR LUNCH IS OVER, I give my friend LaFountain two bags of tobacco in exchange for his hospitality and knowledge. I drive around a little more after leaving and decide to spend another night at the Skydancer. In the morning, I rise before dawn and walk maybe half a mile out onto the prairie. I want to get clear of the floodlights around the casino parking lot. It’s cool, maybe 50 degrees, and a slight breeze is blowing. I climb up onto a hill that looks out over the dark rolling landscape below and sit down. The moon is to the east, just a sliver, but the light of her reflection is so bright I can see her fullness even in shadow. Such fullness, and so beautiful. And the stars, oh, the stars, brighter than they ever are where I live.
I wish I could say it’s quiet. The hulking, brightly lit casino where I am staying is just yonder, and big buildings are noisy for all their immobility. A few cars pass on the highway below. I don’t get to hear the rustle of any relatives who might be up and moving in the grass. I hope coyote might happen by, give me a sniff, a wink. I’ve not seen him since I was in Montana several days ago.
If I could stand, arms wide in my best shaman’s pose, and cast my vision out for miles and miles, across the plains to east, south and west, and up north through the rolling hills and forests that comprise the Turtle Mountains, I would place my loving gaze on Chippewa land. But the reservation is small; at 6 by 12miles, it encompasses a mere 72 square miles. It’s all the United States allowed the Turtle Mountain people to keep after stealing everything else.
I spend the day driving back across land that was free for us to roam, all across North Dakota toward my home in Montana. There are more oil wells than people, it seems. I reach the Montana border at the town of Plentywood, in the extreme upper-northeast corner of the state, in the waning moments of sunset. Darkness falls quickly, and driving at night I get a taste of what it might’ve been like before market hunters decimated indigenous animal populations; there’s so much damn wildlife beside and on the highway that it’s white-knuckle driving for hours until I find a place to stop for the night. I average a top speed of maybe 40 to 45 miles per hour. At one point, I come to a full stop in the middle of the highway, my headlights shining on the still form of a slain porcupine. Here is a coyote beside the animal, laughing at me, and not that swift in retreating from my approach. Just beyond the reach of my high beams is a cluster of deer, at least a dozen or so, also watching me. By the time I find a room at the La Casa Motel in Glasgow, I’m emotionally exhausted, and my voice is raw from yelling, “Stay off the fucking road!” out the window at all my unwary four-legged relatives.
It’s still dark in the morning when I set out again, this time on the more traveled Highway 2 heading west. I plan to stop at Cree Crossing, near Malta. At the turnoff there’s a brown sign — or “brown board,” as I’ve since learned they are called — indicating a site of historical significance. I pull off and stop in front of a three-walled structure encasing two large rocks, both with faded petroglyphs carved into them. The sign indicates the larger rock is called “Sleeping Buffalo Rock,” and it reads:
Montana’s native people revere this boulder that once perched high atop a wind-swept ridge overlooking the Cree Crossing on the Milk River. The ancient, weather-worn effigy resembled the leader of a herd of reclining buffalo in an outcrop of gray granite. Ancient markings define its horns, eyes, backbone, and ribs. Since late prehistoric times, native peoples of the Northern Plains have revered the Sleeping Buffalo’s spiritual power. Oral traditions passed down among the Cree, Chippewa, Sioux, Assiniboine, and Gros Ventre as well as the more distant Blackfeet, Crow, and Northern Cheyenne tell how the “herd” fooled buffalo-hunting parties. While each tribe has its own culture and beliefs, all Montana tribes share worldviews. A Chippewa-Cree elder explained, “These rocks are sacred, just like our old people.” Locals claim the Sleeping Buffalo, relocated to Malta’s City Park in 1932, was restless, changing position and bellowing in the night. The Sleeping Buffalo found this final resting place in 1967 where the smaller “Medicine Rock,” also collected near Cree Crossing, rejoined it in 1987. These timeless objects continue to figure prominently in traditional ceremonies, linking the present with the past when the power of the prairie was the buffalo.
I follow a dirt road back off the highway for a couple miles past Nelson State Recreation Area to get to Cree Crossing. It’s now an officially designated state wildlife management area. This location was a point where the Milk River could be safely crossed even during periods of higher water. Everybody who needed to ford the river used it, but it bears the name of my Cree-named relatives.
I arrive just at sunrise, an indescribable red glow stretching all across the eastern horizon. I park and walk out onto the bridge that spans the low, slow flow of the Milk River at the end of what has been a hot, dry summer. It’s incredibly stirring; whitetail deer start and rustle and retreat into the willows and cottonwoods on the southern bank. In the distance, I hear magpies rasping out their greeting to the morning. In my mind’s eye, I imagine people queued up here, laughing and cursing, urging their animals and two-wheeled carts across the river. I take some photos and wipe tears from the corner of my eye.
This place, this prairie, this sweeping landscape I’ve crossed that was the territory of people so many now know so little of.
Chief Little Shell died in 1901 (or possibly 1903, according to some records), “unsuccessful in his quest to bring his Montana brethren into Turtle Mountain.” A July 4, 1901, article on his death in the Minneapolis Journal said Little Shell was prominent in the “Indian troubles” of 1895 that could have led to “the sacrifice of many lives.” Finally, it said, “The chief was eloquent and never could forgive his race for surrendering title to a foot of land or leaving it without making a fight.”
“The chief was eloquent and never could forgive his race for surrendering title to a foot of land or leaving it without making a fight.”
Until my trip to Minnesota and my brief time at Turtle Mountain, I’d never felt a connection to Little Shell beyond the idea he was a man whose name our people chose to identify ourselves. But now I sense his presence as an individual, a person who faced more difficult choices than anyone should have to, all in service to his people. More than ever, I feel a sense of pride and duty to live up to this name, Ayabe-way-we-tung or Little Shell.
“Great leaders around the world,” Les LaFountain told me, “we think of them as people who gave of themselves for the people. Little Shell was one of those individuals.”
Excerpted from Becoming Little Shell: Returning Home to the Landless Indians of Montana, by Chris La Tray. Copyright © 2024 by Chris La Tray. Used by permission of Milkweed Editions.
We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
This article appeared in the August 2024 print edition of the magazine with the headline “The vision of Little Shell.”
