Assiniboine History

                 Like many Plains Indians tribes, the origin of the Assiniboine is not in the Plains but in the woodlands of Minnesota near the headwaters of the Mississippi River. About 1660, the Assinboine began their migration from Minnesota to the prairies of Manitoba and Saskatchewan and then to the plains of eastern Montana.

                  The Assiniboine first entered into the European history books in 1679 when the French under the leadership of Daniel Gresolon, Sieur Du Luth held a large multi-tribal council near the present-day city of Duluth. The French held the council because they wanted to make contact with the Sioux and to establish trading relationships with them. Among the tribes which the French recorded at the council were the Assiniboine.

                  A few years later, in 1690, the Europeans, this time in the guise of the Hudson’s Bay Company, again made contact with the Assiniboine. This time the European was Henry Kelsey who went out with a party of Cree to make contact with the “remote” Indians to invite them to come into trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company. Since the Cree were allies with the Assinboine, they put him in touch with the Assiniboine.

                  For the first four or five generations which the Assinboine spent on the Plains their primary beast of burden was the dog. The first appearance of the horse in the Northern Plains was in 1730. A group of horse-mounted Shoshone warriors attacked and quickly defeated the Blackfoot. The Blackfoot, who had not seen horses prior to this battle, sought assistance from the Assiniboine and Cree who had guns but no horses. With the help of ten Assiniboine and Cree warriors armed with European firearms, the Shoshone were defeated and these tribes got their first good look at the horse (which they called the “elk dog”).

                  In 1744, the Assiniboine divided into two groups. One group moved into the Missouri River area and the other moved west and north into the valleys of the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan Rivers. As a result of this split, there are today Assiniboine tribes on two Montana reservations (Fort Peck and Fort Belknap) and on several reserves in Canada.

                  With an increasing number of Indians moving onto the Northern Plains to hunt buffalo and with the ranges of these buffalo-hunting tribes increasing through the acquisition of the horse, there were many conflicts among the tribes. In order to survive, many tribes sought to create alliances with other tribes. For the Assiniboine, one of their earliest alliances was with the Cree. As the Assiniboine and Cree pushed their hunting grounds both westward and south they were often at war with the Sioux and with the tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy. Together these two tribes also played the French and English traders against each other.

                  As the Sioux attempted to move westward from their homelands in the Midwest, they were often attacked by the Assiniboine and their Cree allies. In 1742, for example, a war party composed of about 200 Cree and Asssiniboine warriors attacked the Sioux in Minnesota. In a four-day battle, they defeated the Sioux, killing 70 Sioux warriors and capturing 200 Sioux men, women, and children.

                  During the first part of the 19th century, the Assiniboine and their Cree allies attacked both the Blackfoot and the Gros Ventre on several different occasions. They also attacked some of the Plateau tribes, such as the Pend d’Oreille, who had crossed the Rocky Mountains to hunt buffalo on the Plains.

                  There were times, however, when the close association between the Cree and the Assiniboine had negative consequences for the Assiniboine. In 1873, for example, Cree warriors managed to capture a number of horses from non-Indian “wolfers” (trappers who collected wolf skins). In retaliation, the “wolfers” attacked Little Soldier’s Assiniboine camp and killed 16 people. While the Assiniboine protested to the Indian agent, the killers were not brought to justice in an American court.

                  While Assiniboine warriors raided the Crow to obtain horses and war honors, in 1844 the two tribes came together to establish peace among themselves. In doing this they both declared that the Blackfoot and the Lakota Sioux were their common enemies.

                  In Montana, the Assiniboine sought to strengthen their position among the many tribes who were competing for buffalo by having the Americans establish a trading post for them. In 1829, the American trading post at Fort Union was established at the request of Assiniboine chief Iron Arrow Point. With trade came some deadly consequences. A few years later, in 1836, smallpox brought in by traders struck the Montana and Saskatchewan Assiniboine bands. Out of an estimated 10,000 Assiniboine, smallpox killed 4,000.

                  In 1837, one of the traders at Fort Union came down with smallpox. The clerk, Charles Larpenteur, understood that the disease posed a great peril to the Assiniboine when they returned to trade in the fall. Therefore, all of the personnel at the post who had not had smallpox were inoculated. Using a medical book as a guide, they scraped pus from a ripened smallpox blister. They then made tiny cuts on the inoculees’ arms, dipped the tip of the lancet in the vial of pus, and rubbed a small amount of pus on the wound. In spite of these precautions, smallpox struck the Assiniboine and two-thirds died. Of the 250 lodges camped at Fort Union, only 30 survived. Many of those who did survive owed their lives to the vaccine that the Hudson’s Bay Company had administered to the northern bands in Canada a few years earlier.

                  The first formal treaty council with the United States in which the Assiniboine participated was in 1851 at Fort Laramie. Here an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 Plains Indians gathered to establish peace with the United States and among themselves. The tribes represented at the council included the Assiniboine, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Crow, Shoshone, Arikara, Gros Ventre, Mandan, and Hidatsa.