Atsina
The Atsina, also known as the Gros Ventre or White Clay People, are an Indigenous group primarily located in Montana within the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation. Historically part of the Algonquian-speaking nations, the Atsina separated from the Arapaho in the late 17th or early 18th century and migrated northward. Traditionally, they subsisted through gathering, hunting buffalo on foot, and later adopting horseback riding for hunting after acquiring horses in the mid-18th century. The Atsina's interactions with neighboring tribes included both alliances and conflicts, notably with the Arapaho and the Assiniboine.
A significant aspect of Atsina culture involves their religious and social structures, which are centered around two medicine bundles that hold both spiritual and political significance. Despite facing territorial erosion and governmental pressures throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the Atsina have made notable legal advancements, such as the landmark Supreme Court case Winters v. United States in 1908, affirming their water rights. Today, the Atsina, alongside the Assiniboine, continue to thrive within the Fort Belknap Indian Community, focusing on preserving their rich history and cultural heritage, with a current population of about 7,000.
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Atsina
- CATEGORY: Tribe
- CULTURE AREA: Plains
- LANGUAGE GROUP: Algonquian
- PRIMARY LOCATION: Montana
- POPULATION SIZE: 7,000 (Includes Assiniboine) (2023 Fort Belknap Indian Community)
The ethnological origins of the Atsina, or White Clay People, are mysterious. The Atsina, also known as the Gros Ventre, once belonged to an Algonquian parent nation that included the Arapaho. Until the seventeenth century, the Arapaho-Atsina hunted, gathered, and perhaps planted near the Red River of Minnesota. In the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, the Atsina broke off from the Arapaho and moved northward and westward to the Eagle Hills in Saskatchewan. The Atsina probably subsisted by gathering and pedestrian buffalo hunting, although they also planted tobacco. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the Atsina acquired horses and became equestrian buffalo hunters. In the late eighteenth century, the Cree and Assiniboine pushed the Atsina from Saskatchewan southwest to the Upper Missouri River.
Like other Plains tribes, the Atsina alternately battled and allied with their neighbors. Atsina bands were often allied with the closely related Arapaho and the Algonquian-speaking nations of the Blackfeet Confederacy. In 1861, however, the Atsina sought an alliance with their erstwhile enemies, the Crow. At some point in the mid-nineteenth century, the Atsina allied with their former enemies, the Assiniboine, to resist the encroachments of the Sioux into their hunting territory.
Atsina religion and social organization revolved around two medicine bundles, containing the Flat Pipe and the Feathered Pipe. Stewardship of the bundles, which combined both religious and political authority, rotated among certain adult men every few years.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the territory under the control of the Atsina steadily eroded. An executive order by President Ulysses Grant in 1873 established a large reservation for the Blackfoot, Assiniboine, and Atsina in northern Montana. In January 1887, representatives of the federal government met with the Atsina and Assiniboine at the Fort Belknap Agency to negotiate the cession of most of the Indigenous Americans' reserve. President Grover Cleveland signed the Fort Belknap agreement into law on May 1, 1888, reducing the Atsina and Assiniboine to a shared reservation of approximately 600,000 acres. Despite the diminution of their territory, the Atsina and Assiniboine of the Fort Belknap Reservation won an important United States Supreme Court decision in the early twentieth century that became a landmark in Indigenous American law. On January 6, 1908, the Supreme Court ruled in Winters v. United States that the Indigenous Americans of Fort Belknap Reservation, rather than nearby White settlers, had first rights to the contested water of the Milk River.
In 1934, Fort Belknap became the first reservation in the Plains to establish a government under the auspices of the Indian Reorganization Act. For the Atsina, reorganization had the unanticipated consequence of merging their reservation government with that of the Assiniboine. Economic conditions at Fort Belknap languished until the mid-1960s when many Atsina were able to take advantage of federal War on Poverty programs. By 1980, Fort Belknap had the highest percentage of college graduates of any northern Plains reservation. In the mid-2020s, the Atsina, who self-identified as Gros Ventre, continued to live with the Assiniboine in the Fort Belknap Indian Community on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation. They were a federally-recognized Indigenous nation, whose membership totaled around 7,000. This number indicated a population increase. The Atsina worked to preserve their history, culture, traditions, and language. They occupied 650,000 acres of land in Montana, with headquarters in Harlem, Montana.
Bibliography
Alexander, Kathy. "Gros Ventre Tribe of Montana." Legends of America, Jan. 2023, www.legendsofamerica.com/gros-ventre-tribe. Accessed 25 Oct. 2024.
Bright, William. "A Glossary of Native American Toponyms and Ethnonyms from the Lewis and Clark Journals." Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Sept. 2004, https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/item/lc.sup.bright.01. Accessed 25 Oct. 2024.
Fleming, Walter C. "Encyclopedia of the Great Plains - Gros Ventres." University of Nebraska Lincoln, plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.na.031. Accessed 25 Oct. 2024.
"Fort Belknap History." Fort Belknap Indian Community, 2023, ftbelknap.org/history. Accessed 25 Oct. 2024.
"Fort Belknap Indian Community." Governor's Office of Indian Affairs, tribalnations.mt.gov/Directory/FortBelknapIndianCommunity. Accessed 25 Oct. 2024.
Townsend, Kristopher K. "The Atsinas." Discover Lewis & Clark, lewis-clark.org/native-nations/algonquian-peoples/atsinas. Accessed 25 Oct. 2024.