Frank Bird Linderman (September 25, 1869 – May 12, 1938) was a Montana writer, politician,
Native American ally and ethnographer. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he went West as a young man and became enamored of life on the Montana frontier. While working as a trapper for several years, he lived with the Salish and Blackfeet tribes, learning their cultures. He later became an advocate for them and for other northern
Plains Indians
Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nation band governments who have historically lived on the Interior Plains (the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies) of N ...
. He wrote about their cultures and worked to help them survive pressure from European Americans. For instance, he supported establishment of the
Rocky Boy Indian Reservation
Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation (also known as Rocky Boy Reservation) is one of seven Native American reservations in the U.S. state of Montana. Established by an act of Congress on September 7, 1916, it was named after ''Ahsiniiwin'' ( Stone Ch ...
in 1916 in Montana for landless
Ojibwe
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
(Chippewa) and
Cree
The Cree ( cr, néhinaw, script=Latn, , etc.; french: link=no, Cri) are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada ...
, and continued as an advocate for Native Americans to his death.
Linderman worked at various jobs throughout his life: as a fur trapper, then an assayer, and later an agent for Guardian Insurance of America. He owned a hotel for two years. For another two years, he published a newspaper, the ''Sheridan Chinook.'' He served two terms in the
Montana Legislature
The Montana State Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Montana. It is composed of the 100-member Montana House of Representatives and the 50-member Montana Senate.
The Montana Constitution dictates that the legislature me ...
and campaigned for a seat in Congress. He published his first collection of Native American tribal stories in 1915 and wrote twenty more books over the next two decades. He wrote to share what he knew about Native American cultures and to preserve their traditional stories. His friend
Charles Marion Russell
Charles Marion Russell (March 19, 1864 – October 24, 1926), also known as C. M. Russell, Charlie Russell, and "Kid" Russell, was an American artist of the American Old West. He created more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Native Americans, an ...
, noted painter, illustrated many of these books.
Life
Early life
Linderman was born in
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
,
Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
. He was the child of James Bird Linderman and Mary Ann Brannan Linderman. He attended schools in Ohio and
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
, including
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...
.
In 1885, at the age of sixteen, he moved to the Swan Valley of
Montana Territory
The Territory of Montana was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 26, 1864, until November 8, 1889, when it was admitted as the 41st state in the Union as the state of Montana.
Original boundaries
T ...
in search of "the most unspoiled wilderness I could discover."
Montana
While working as a trapper from 1885 to 1891, Linderman met many members of the
Salish
Salish () may refer to:
* Salish peoples, a group of First Nations/Native Americans
** Coast Salish peoples, several First Nations/Native American groups in the coastal regions of the Pacific Northwest
** Interior Salish peoples, several First Nat ...
(also known as Flathead) and
Kootenai
The Kutenai ( ), also known as the Ktunaxa ( ; ), Ksanka ( ), Kootenay (in Canada) and Kootenai (in the United States), are an indigenous people of Canada and the United States. Kutenai bands live in southeastern British Columbia, northern ...
tribes. He set up camp on their territory on the shores of
Flathead Lake
Flathead Lake ( fla, člq̓etkʷ, label=Salish, kut, yawuʔnik̓ ʔa·kuq̓nuk) is a large natural lake in northwest Montana.
The lake is a remnant of the ancient, massive glacial dammed lake, Lake Missoula of the era of the last interglacial. ...
, where he learned their ways and lived as they did. To know them better and communicated for trading, he mastered
Plains Indian sign language
Plains Indian Sign Language (PISL), also known as Hand Talk, Plains Sign Talk, and First Nation Sign Language, is a trade language, formerly trade pidgin, that was once the lingua franca across what is now central Canada, the central and west ...
, and he became known by the Crow as "Sign-talker",
or, sometimes Great Sign-talker.
The Blackfeet called him Iron Tooth, the Kootenai knew him as Bird-Singer, and the Cree and Chippewa called him Glasses or Sings-like-a-bird.
[ Sherry L. Smith, Chapter 5: "Native Son Frank Bird Linderman"](_blank)
in ''Reimagining Indians: Native Americans through Anglo Eyes, 1880-1940'', Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 95-118
In 1891 he met his future wife, Minnie Jane Johns, in Demersville (now
Kalispell). He knew he needed steady work in order to marry, and in 1892 he left his trapping career and started working as a watchman at the Curlew Mine in
Ravalli County
Ravalli County is a county in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Montana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 44,174. Its county seat is Hamilton.
Ravalli County is part of a north–south mountain valley bordered by the Sapphir ...
. Stearne Blake, part owner of the mine, asked him to take over bookkeeping and to
assay
An assay is an investigative (analytic) procedure in laboratory medicine, mining, pharmacology, environmental biology and molecular biology for qualitatively assessing or quantitatively measuring the presence, amount, or functional activity of a ...
silver and lead ore. Linderman promptly ordered books and taught himself to do these jobs. He and Minnie married in Missoula in 1893.
[Sherry L. Smith (2000), "Native Son", pp. 99-100]
![Butte and Boston Smelter](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Butte_and_Boston_Smelter.png)
After the Curlew Mine closed, Linderman moved with his family in 1893 to
Butte
__NOTOC__
In geomorphology, a butte () is an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller landforms than mesas, plateaus, and tablelands. The word ''butte'' comes from a French word mea ...
where he worked as chief assayer and chemist for the Butte & Boston Smelter. Two daughters were born to the Lindermans while they lived in Butte. He complained about the brutality of the city, saying that it was overrun with rough immigrants from Europe. He worked there until 1897, moving in 1898 to Brandon, Montana, where their third daughter was born.
[''Frank Bird Linderman''](_blank)
, exhibit at The Museum at Central School; accessed 7 January 2019 His parents joined him in Montana the following year.
[Sherry L. Smith (2000), "Native Son", pp. 101]
Around 1900, the Linderman family moved to
Sheridan, Montana
Sheridan is a town in Madison County, Montana, United States named after the Civil War general Philip Sheridan. The population was 694 at the 2020 census. Sheridan is known as the "heart of the Ruby Valley." Seven majestic mountain ranges surr ...
, where Frank worked several jobs, as an assayer, furniture salesman, and newspaperman. He bought the local newspaper and renamed it the ''Sheridan Chinook.'' He bought most of the paper's content from a publishing house in Spokane, but each week he published a few columns of his own writing—poetry, "Uncle Billy" sayings, and stories about local miners.
Politics
Linderman became active in politics and was elected in 1902 to the Montana Legislature as the representative from
Madison County, Montana
Madison County is a County (United States), county in the U.S. state of Montana. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 8,623. Its county seat is Virginia City, Montana, Virginia City. The county was founded in 1865 ...
; his term was one year, and he was elected again in 1904, serving in 1905.
That same year, the Linderman family moved to the capital city of
Helena. After his term in the legislature, Linderman served as assistant secretary of state from 1905 to 1907. He also opened an assay office in Helena.
Linderman changed jobs again in 1907 and began traveling the state as a life insurance agent for
Germania Life Insurance Company. But his political ambitions continued. In 1916, he ran for one of Montana's two
at-large
At large (''before a noun'': at-large) is a description for members of a governing body who are elected or appointed to represent a whole membership or population (notably a city, county, state, province, nation, club or association), rather than ...
seats for Congress, but did not place among the top two finishers.
Jeannette Rankin
Jeannette Pickering Rankin (June 11, 1880 – May 18, 1973) was an American politician and women's rights advocate who became the first woman to hold federal office in the United States in 1917. She was elected to the U.S. House of Representat ...
, who was born in the state and worked for women's suffrage, gained the second-highest number of votes and won a seat. She helped gain a national constitutional amendment to achieve universal suffrage for women. In a letter to his father, Linderman blamed his loss on the "fad" of woman suffrage.
In
1924
Events
January
* January 12 – Gopinath Saha shoots Ernest Day, whom he has mistaken for Sir Charles Tegart, the police commissioner of Calcutta, and is arrested soon after.
* January 20– 30 – Kuomintang in China hol ...
, Linderman ran for popular election to the
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and pow ...
against well-known incumbent
Democratic United States Senator
Thomas J. Walsh
Thomas James Walsh (June 12, 1859March 2, 1933) was an American lawyer and Democratic Party politician from Helena, Montana who represented Montana in the US Senate from 1913 to 1933. He was initially elected by the state legislature, and from 1 ...
. The Democrat had first been elected in 1912, and re-elected in 1918, both times by the state legislature, which was then the practice. In 1924 Walsh faced his first election challenge by popular vote. Linderman won the
Republican
Republican can refer to:
Political ideology
* An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law.
** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
primary against
Wellington D. Rankin, the
Attorney General of Montana, and advanced to the general election. Walsh defeated Linderman by a wide margin to keep his Senate seat.
Native American advocate
Linderman continued to be fascinated by Native Americans. He advocated on behalf of the landless
Chippewa and
Cree
The Cree ( cr, néhinaw, script=Latn, , etc.; french: link=no, Cri) are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada ...
in Montana, who struggled to survive. He supported Native Americans as the real Americans, while believing there was a place for Anglo-Americans in the West. Believing that native peoples should be protected, he became an advocate with the government for Chief
Rocky Boy, who had a Chippewa band and was seeking to gain a reservation. He recognized that they had been originally assigned to land that was infertile and unsuitable for farming. Linderman used his network of prominent whites, including other politicians and painter
Charles M. Russell, to lobby Congress to set up a reservation for the Chippewa band.
Thanks largely to Linderman's advocacy, Congress established the
Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation in Montana in 1916.
![Linderman at Thunder Lodge](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Linderman_at_Thunder_Lodge.jpg)
For years afterward, Linderman "continued to press politicians and Indian service bureaucrats for better rations, permission for the Indians to practice traditional dances, such as the forbidden sun dance, and for an expansion of the reservation. In a 1933 letter to the reform-minded
John Collier, head of the
Bureau of Indian Affairs
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), also known as Indian Affairs (IA), is a United States federal agency within the Department of the Interior. It is responsible for implementing federal laws and policies related to American Indians and A ...
, he wrote, 'these indians are real workers, and if encouraged and helped will prove to the doubters that the red man has a future even in the white man’s scheme of things.' They needed more land to be successful, he believed, to prove themselves."
[Jason E. Pierce, Chapter Title: "INDIANS NOT IMMIGRANTS: Charles Fletcher Lummis, Frank Bird Linderman, and the Complexities of Race and Ethnicity in America"](_blank)
''Making the White Man's West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West'', University Press of Colorado, 2016 Linderman corresponded with Collier for the rest of his life. He encouraged Collier's reforms, including stopping the use of tribal funds for administrative purposes, denouncing boarding schools, allowing Indians to practice their ceremonies, and passing the
Indian Reorganization Act
The Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of June 18, 1934, or the Wheeler–Howard Act, was U.S. federal legislation that dealt with the status of American Indians in the United States. It was the centerpiece of what has been often called the "Indian ...
(IRA). He supported the IRA by traveling to Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation in 1934 to explain the new policies to the reservation's business council.
Writing career
![Linderman and Russell](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Linderman_and_Russell.jpg)
Throughout his life, Linderman collected Native American stories. His first book, ''Indian Why Stories: Sparks from War Eagle's Lodge-fire,'' was published in 1915 by
Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing American authors including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjorie Kinnan Rawli ...
. After moving with his family to a log home on Montana's Flathead Lake in 1917, Linderman focused his attention on writing. He had spent his life gathering stories, and he felt a duty to write them down. He wrote as much in a letter to a friend, "I feel it a duty to, in some way, preserve the old West, especially Montana, in printer's ink, and if I can only accomplish a small part of that, I shall die contented." He wrote six books of Native American legends, an autobiography, a collection of frontier stories, six novels, three animal stories, and a collection of reminiscences about his friend and artist Charles Marion Russell.
His most important works, however, were biographies of
Pretty Shield
Pretty Shield (1856–1944) was a medicine woman of the Crow Nation. Her biography, perhaps the first record of female Native American life, was written by Frank B. Linderman, who interviewed her using an interpreter and sign language.Linderm ...
and
Plenty Coups
Plenty Coups (Crow: ''Alaxchíia Ahú'', "many achievements"; 1848 – 1932) was the principal chief of the Crow Nation ("Apsáalooke") and a visionary leader.
He allied the Crow with the whites when the war for the West was being fought, becaus ...
. He interviewed them in sign language over the course of several weeks. He shaped his notes into books that he presented as autobiographies. Anthropologists and ethnologists noted that Linderman shaped the narratives in significant ways. However, anthropologist
Robert Lowie
Robert Harry Lowie (born '; June 12, 1883 – September 21, 1957) was an Austrian-born American anthropologist. An expert on Indigenous peoples of the Americas, he was instrumental in the development of modern anthropology and has been described as ...
acknowledged that Linderman's work contains useful information about Crow life.
Works
*
* (1920)
* ''On a Passing Frontier'' (1920)
* (1921)
* (1921), collected poems
* (1922)
* (1926)
* (1930)
* ''Morning Light'', (1930)
* ''Red Mother'' (1932), republished under the title ''Pretty-Shield: Medicine Woman of the Crows''
* ''Old Man Coyote (Crow)'' (1932)
* ''Beyond Law'' (1933)
* (1933)
* ''Out of the North: A Brief Historical Sketch of the Blackfeet Indian Tribe'' (1940)
* (1963)
Legacy
*The
Frank Bird Linderman House in
Lake County, Montana
Lake County is a county located in the northwest part of the U.S. state of Montana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 31,134. Its county seat is Polson.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the county has a total a ...
is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
.
*His papers are preserved at the University of Montana in th
"Frank B. Linderman Memorial Collection, 1885-2005"
*Other papers of Linderman are held by UCLA
[Guide to the Frank Bird Linderman Papers](_blank)
UCLA
* In 2007, he was inducted into the
Hall of Great Westerners
The Hall of Great Westerners was established by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in 1958. Located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S., the Hall was created to celebrate the contributions of more than 200 men and women of the American W ...
of the
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum
The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is a museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, with more than 28,000 American West, Western and Native Americans in the United States, American Indian art works and Artifact (archaeology), ar ...
.
References
External links
*
Guide to the Frank Bird Linderman Papers UCLA
*
*
*
Frank Bird Linderman Memorial Collection University of Montana Archives
{{DEFAULTSORT:Linderman, Frank Bird
1869 births
1938 deaths
Writers from Cleveland
Members of the Montana House of Representatives
American male writers
Writers from Montana
Oberlin College alumni
People from Madison County, Montana