This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Crow Coal History: Draft 12/24 Main Menu Introduction Introduction Timeline and Map Timeline and Map of Major Events Detailed History In-depth Historical Information Resources Resources Contact Contact Page About About page

Robert Yellowtail

43381

Robert Yellowtail was born in 1889 or 1890 and was a noted Crow leader throughout the twentieth century, as well as a rancher and horse breeder. He served as the first Superintendent to be a Crow tribal member in the 1930s, as well as tribal chairman in 1948 until 1956.

This page has paths:

1930s-1950s Kerri Clement
Contents of this path:
1800s-1920s Kerri Clement
Contents of this path:

This page is referenced by:

1930s-1950s From the 1930s to the late 1960s, the Apsáalooke Tribe and surrounding area saw an overall increase in outside interest in developing mineral resources, especially coal.

On the reservation, the Tribe issued a few permits for small mines during the 1930s, but development stalled overall despite the tribe authorizing Superintendent Robert Yellowtail to issue more permits, likely due to upheaval in federal policies.
To the Crow reservation and the surrounding area, the 1930s brought abrupt and immense changes, including in federal policy. As a result of the larger New Deal economic and social programs, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) in 1934. If Tribes wanted access to federal funds for programs, the Act required Indigenous nations to adopt Euro-American democratic government systems but also appropriated funds for economic, cultural, and social programs on reservations. The Crow Nation, however, voted against adopting the IRA, due in part to concerns over federal oversight of Tribal governments. Of note to coal extraction, the IRA ended federal allotment and allowed the federal government to purchase land to “restore lands” to Indigenous Nations. Between the IRA and other laws that addressed mineral leases on Indigenous reservations, governance and oversight of Indian mineral rights were in a general disarray.

The Secretary of Interior began offering suggestions for improvement in 1937 and a Supreme Court decision in April of 1938 served to further highlight the confusion, especially as the Court ruled that mineral rights belonged to Tribes, not the Federal Government. One month later, Congress passed the Indian Mineral Leasing Act, which overall, sought to return oversight of mineral development on reservations to Tribal leadership, albeit with some noteworthy exceptions. Congress initially excluded the Crow reservation from the 1938 Act, however, because the Tribe refused to organize under the IRA.

Just a few years after the passage of the Indian Mineral Leasing Act, the United States entered World War II, which significantly altered the coal market both nationally and in Montana. The Crow Nation sought to capitalize on the growing demand for coal. During council meetings in the early 1940s, Tribal members encouraged their leaders to utilize Crow coal to support the war effort and benefit their people. However, this enthusiasm did not lead to a substantial increase in coal extraction on the reservation during the 1940s, likely because of the war's relatively short duration.

Following WWII, Montana and Crow’s coal industry languished, in part because of the adoption of diesel engines for rail transportation. By 1960, less than “one hundred employees working at coal mining” in Montana, as described by one Montana history text. That would soon change by the end of the 1960s. But for the Tribe, the period between the end of WWII and late 1960s proved to be highly consequential in relation to politics and natural resource rights.

In 1948, the Crow tribe adopted a new constitution. The constitution repeated the Crow’s previous governing structure of direct democracy by requiring large Tribal votes for major decisions, including for mineral rights. That quickly changed, however, as Tribal members realized they needed faster response times to bids and other mineral-related concerns. In response to the increased attention to their coal, in 1952, the tribe formed a committee to handle much of the mineral leasing issues. Additionally, ten years later in 1959, the United States Congress officially returned mineral rights to the Crow tribe, including on the ceded strip.

The Crow tribe faced an additional fight during the 1940s and 1950s, this time in relation to building a dam on the Big Horn River. The Yellowtail Dam was completed in 1965 and its water eventually used for coal production that would increase in the next few decades. The debates within Crow communities over the Big Horn River dam shaped similar debates that would occur in the 1960s and 1970s over coal development. Some of the divides between pro (“River”) and anti (“Mountain”) were created, or at the very least, cemented, during the dam fight.
1920 Crow Act The 1920 Crow Act was the culmination of over a decade of Crow tribal members fighting white settler attempts to "open" the reservation to settlement. The Act was a compromise that was both a victory and a failure for the settlers and tribal leaders. Opposition to the various attempts to open the reservation were guided by tribal leaders such as Plenty Coups and later assisted by the young Robert Yellowtail.

The intent of the Act was, in the words of historian Timothy McCleary, to "make the Crow become farmers and to destroy tribal life by treaty each family as a separate economic unity." (McCleary, 118)

The Act divided up the reservation into allotments, where Crow tribal members received 900 acres. This division, in turn, served to disperse Crow families and bands. Additionally, the Act also required that the tribe establish a general council to deal with federal and state governments, and set aside mineral rights for the tribe.

The effects of the Act are difficult to measure in full because of how far-reaching they are but include economic, social, political, and environmental changes for Crow families and the reservation land.

1920 Crow Act Text

For more information see Timothy P. McCleary, “An Ethnohistory of Pentecostalism among the Crow Indians of Montana,” Wicazo Sa Review 15, no. 1 (2000): 117–35 and Hoxie, Parading Through History.
1948 Crow Constitution During the 1940s and to speed the approval of the Big Horn Dam, the federal government pressured the Crow tribe to adopt a formal constitution, as opposed to the tribal council system already in place. The 1948 constitution repeated the Crow’s previous governing structure of direct democracy by requiring large tribal votes for major decisions, including for mineral rights. During the constitutional debates in the late 1940s, several different constitutions were proposed by tribal leaders. The "blue" constitution, largely written by Chairman Robert Yellowtail, was adopted by the tribe in 1948. The constitution preserved the tribal council system already in place and the council elected the chairman, vice-chairman, and secretary. With this constitution, the chairman held more power than the other proposed constitutions. Yellowtail was criticized for seeming to grab power with the passage of the 1948 constitution but others countered that he was gathering power to counteract the Big Horn Dam proposal.

For more information on Crow constitutions see Kelly Mae-Lane Branam, “Constitution -Making: Law, Power, and Kinship in Crow Country” (Ph.D., Indiana, Indiana University, 2008).
Yellowtail (Big Horn) Dam The fight between Crow tribal members and federal and officials over the Yellowtail Dam, or Big Horn Dam, extended for several decades before the Dam completed construction in 1965. During those decades, the federal government passed several bills and plans, like the Pick-Sloan Plan in 1944, that worked to implement flood control and hydropower. Those efforts, however, served to undermine tribal sovereignty by empowering federal and state governmental officials to coerce tribes into leasing or giving up their land for dams.

For the Crow tribe, the Bureau of Reclamation had earmarked the Big Horn river and canyon for dams since the early 1900s. During the post-WWII push for hydropower and flood control, the federal government pressured the Crow tribe to approve the damming of the Bighorn River. In 1944, Congress officially allocated funds for the construction of a dam on the Big Horn River on the Crow Reservation for the purpose of creating hydroelectric power and supporting local agriculture’s irrigation needs.

To summarize a complex and detailed history, many Crow tribal members, including Robert Yellowtail, opposed the dam, while others supported it. Over the course of the 1950s, federal and state officials went back and forth with the Tribe, with some allegations of federal and power company officials offering gifts and money to tribal members in exchange for supporting the dam. The tribal council approved a negotiation resolution in 1956 but the disagreements between the tribe and federal government continued over compensation for the land to be flooded by the dam. The back-and-forth resulted in several cases in district court with the end result in 1963 that the tribe received compensation for the land lost but retained all mineral rights and a $2.5 million settlement.

For more information see Megan Benson, “The Fight for Crow Water,” Montana; The Magazine of Western History 57, no. 4 (2007): 24–42 and Megan Benson, “The Fight for Crow Water: Part II, Damming the Bighorn,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History58, no. 1 (2008): 3–97 and Timothy P. McCleary, “An Ethnohistory of Pentecostalism among the Crow Indians of Montana,” Wicazo Sa Review 15, no. 1 (2000): 117–35.