The Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association, an organization of tribal chairmen of 16 Sioux tribes from the Dakotas and Nebraska, demanded that Mount Doane be renamed in 2018. We all agreed on ''First Peoples' Mountain'' as an appropriate name to honor the victims of such inhumane acts of genocide, and to also remind people of the 10,000-year-plus connection tribal peoples have to this sacred place now called Yellowstone,' Piikani Nation Chief Stan Grier said in a statement Wednesday. Gustavus Doane was an Army Calvary and explorer born in 1840 in Illinois. In the winter of 1870, Doane led a bloody massacre resulting in the killing of 175 members from the Blackfoot tribes.Īccoridng to the National Park Service, Doane led the massacre in retaliation for the alleged murder of a white fur trader, on a band of Piegan Blackfeet. Many of those killed were women, elderly members of the tribe and children who suffered from smallpox. Years after the attack, Doane went on to brag about the massacre, even attempting to impress Montana Senator Wilbur Sanders with his role in it. Twenty-one years after the massacre, superintendent hopeful Doane wrote a letter to Montana Sen.

Wilbur Sanders that said: 'I remember the day when we slaughtered the Piegans, and how it occurred to me, as I sat down on the bank of the Marias and watched the stream of their blood, which ran down on the surface of the frozen river over half a mile, that the work we were then doing would be rewarded, as it has been.' The attack in response to the alleged slaying of a white fur trader killed at least 173 American Indians, including many women, elders and children suffering from smallpox, Yellowstone officials said in a statement. 'We're not against certain names,' William Snell, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council, said in 2018. 'But we're not for names where individuals have been involved with genocide, where elders and children have been killed and there have been some traumatic events in our history that don't meet standards of honor.'īesides being a leader of the massacre, Doane was a key member of a Yellowstone expedition the same year. Yellowstone became the world's first national park in 1872. Officials consulted with other tribes on the name change, according to the statement. The decision came after an unanimous 15-0 vote by the government panel.

The Piikani Nation's traditional territory covers much of Montana, including the site of the Marias Massacre, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The National Park Service said that the name change will be reflected in The Domestic Names Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) in the coming days. 'Yellowstone conducted outreach to all 27 associated Tribes over the past several months and received no opposition to the change nor concerns,' the agency said.

Since the early 1990s, the US Board on Geographic Names has had numerous requests for the word 'squaw' and other pejorative terms against Native Americans to be removed. The US Board on Geographic Names has rename a plethora of places that had used the offensive terms.

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