Blood on the Marias: The Baker Massacre

by Paul R. Wylie

On the morning of January 23, 1870, troops of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry attacked a Piegan Indian village on the Marias River in Montana Territory, killing many more than the army’s count of 173, most of them women, children, and old men. The village was afflicted with smallpox. Worse, it was the wrong encampment. Intended as a retaliation against Mountain Chief’s renegade band, the massacre sparked public outrage when news sources revealed that the battalion had attacked Heavy Runner’s innocent village—and that guides had told its inebriated commander, Major Eugene Baker, he was on the wrong trail, but he struck anyway. Remembered as one of the most heinous incidents of the Indian Wars, the Baker Massacre has often been overshadowed by the better-known Battle of the Little Bighorn and has never received full treatment until now.

Author Paul R. Wylie plumbs the history of Euro-American involvement with the Piegans, who were members of the Blackfeet Confederacy. His research shows the tribe was trading furs for whiskey with the Hudson’s Bay Company before Meriwether Lewis encountered them in 1806. As American fur traders and trappers moved into the region, the U.S. government soon followed, making treaties it did not honor. When the gold rush started in the 1860s and the U.S. Army arrived, pressure from Montana citizens to control the Piegans and make the territory safe led Generals William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip H. Sheridan to send Baker and the 2nd Cavalry, with tragic consequences. Although these generals sought to dictate press coverage thereafter, news of the cruelty of the killings appeared in the New York Times, which called the massacre “a more shocking affair than the sacking of Black Kettle’s camp on the Washita” two years earlier.

While other scholars have written about the Baker Massacre in related contexts, Blood on the Marias gives this infamous event the definitive treatment it deserves. Baker’s inept command lit the spark of violence, but decades of tension between Piegans and whites set the stage for a brutal and too-often-forgotten incident.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

338 pages, Paperback

Published October 19, 2017

Reviews

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

The destruction of a peaceful village of Piegan Indians (members of the Blackfeet Confederation) in 1870 by the 2nd Cavalry ranks with the Sand Creek and Bear River Massacres for unnecessary loss of life. Most of the more than 300 fatalities (the Army claimed 173) were women, children, and old men. The Indian Superintendent, Alfred Sully, pointed out that no more than 20 to 30 of those killed were non-elderly men. The cavalry had sought the camp of Mountain Chief, a "renegade" leader.It found the wrong village. The Piegans were not to be attacked by order of the Montana Territorial commander. When the three scouts informed Eugene Baker that he was about to attack a peaceful, protected village, he, drunk, as was often the case, placed one under arrest.

As with Sand Creek, there was an investigation by the US Senate, which condemned the attack, though the area commander strongly resisted the findings, which included evidence of summary executions of women and children. Public concern led the Grant administration to initiate its "peace policy." Wylie's excellent, well-researched account is the first to deal with the massacre.

[Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation · Rating 5 out of 5]

For the intense amount of military information and people involved, I was quite surprised the book read so easy. The Baker Massacre is something I had never learned about growing up in Montana, which is a shame as it was a really important event in Montana history. The description of the massacre was of course awful to read. The fact there were inquiries into the massacre and yet no one was really punished is atrocious. While the author did a good job of covering information, I would like to recommend a couple of additional resources on this subject that I found useful to get a well rounded account.
Blackfeet and Buffalo Memories of Life Among the Indians by James Willard Schultz Chapter 20 provides an account of Bear Head, a survivor.
The Blackfeet Raiders on the Northwestern Plains by John C. Ewers Chapter 14.
More Than Petticoats Remarkable Montana Women by Gayle Shirley provides a chapter on Helene Clarke in which she recounts the story of the night her father was murdered

[Les Wolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best researched books I have read in a while. There are sixty pages of notes in the back of the book. A thorough account of the Baker massacre of the Blackfeet Indians on the Marias river. It is fascinating to follow the newspaper and journal accounts that the author references. There were definitely two camps of thought on this debacle with the praise coming from the highest levels of military command while those who condemned the affair were simply those who recognized that this particular band of Indians were not only friendly but also highly compromised with the smallpox virus.
Paul Wylie has also written a book on Thomas Francis Meagher, commander of the Irish Brigade, who figures in Montana's history as well. I plan to read that book in the future.

[Marsha · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this 244 page book about the Baker Massacre, it took the author 200 pages to finally get to the attack on an innocent Piegan village in northern Montana Territory. The lead up examined the history of the Fur trade on the Upper Missouri River, the history of the military in Montana Territory and the interaction between the soldiers, settlers and the local Blackfeet tribes.
The actual massacre was anticlimactic.
I enjoyed reading about the history of the area (I live in northwestern Montana), but the language was rather too scholarly for laypeople - those who aren't into the Indian subculture and their interactions with the U.S. military.