37 Facts About Mountain Chief

Mountain Chief was a South Piegan warrior of the Blackfoot Tribe.

Mountain Chief was called Big Brave and adopted the name Frank Mountain Chief.

Mountain Chief was involved in the 1870 Marias Massacre, signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, and worked with anthropologist Frances Densmore to interpret folksong recordings.

Mountain Chief was born around 1848 at Oldman River in Alberta, Canada.

Mountain Chief was the son of Mountain Chief and Charging Across Quartering.

Mountain Chief's father, known as Butte Bull and Bear Cutting, was a South Piegan chief and the son of Kicking Woman and Chief Killer.

Mountain Chief was the hereditary chief of the Fast Buffalo Horse band.

Mountain Chief was a Piegan and part of the Blackfeet Nation, one of four tribal groups composing the Blackfoot Confederacy.

Mountain Chief lived on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana.

Mountain Chief's father became chief around the time that Lewis and Clark visited in 1806.

Mountain Chief learned to hunt birds and prairie dogs using arrows without points, and his mother's father, Big Smoke, made his first bow that he used for hunting.

When Mountain Chief was old enough to ride well, he began to hunt buffalo and was given steel-tipped arrows.

Mountain Chief participated in his first war party when he was 15 years old, at which time he was given his first war name, Big Brave, by Head Carrier.

Mountain Chief was the half-brother of Owl Child, who was involved in the Marias Massacre.

Mountain Chief had two full sisters, Litte Snake and Last Kill.

Mountain Chief had three other half-brothers, Sitting In The Middle, Red Bull, and Last Kill, and one half-sister, Lone Cut.

Mountain Chief was married to five different women, including Bird Sailing This Way, Fine Stealing Woman, Hates To Stay Alone, and Gun Woman For Nothing.

At the time of Owl Child's attack, Mountain Chief was the head chief of the Amskapi Pikuni.

Good Bear Woman, Mountain Chief's daughter, was at Heavy Runner's camp at the day of the massacre and Heavy Runner's wife was Mountain Chief's sister.

Mountain Chief signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie on April 29,1868.

Mountain Chief gained prominence through warfare with the Crows and Kutenai and facilitated treaty negotiations in the 1880s and 1890s, visiting Washington, DC, often.

Mountain Chief was a member of the Indian Congress held from August to October 1898 in conjunction with the Trans-Mississippi International Exposition in Omaha, Nebraska.

Mountain Chief travelled with a delegation to Washington, DC, in 1903 to provide information related to the Blackfeet Nation and to speak with the United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

Mountain Chief collaborated with researchers Walter McClintock, Joseph Kossuth Dixon, and Frances Densmore.

McClintock returned to the Blackfeet Reservation in 1903 and 1905 to take photographs of the Blackfeet community, including one photograph of Mountain Chief that appeared in his book The Old North Trail.

Mountain Chief appeared in Joseph Kossuth Dixon's book The Vanishing Race wearing an upright feather headdress with ermine fur and holding a horse efficacy.

An account of Mountain Chief's childhood was included in Dixon's text as well.

Mountain Chief appeared in many photographs beyond those included in McClintock and Dixon's books.

One of the most widely used photographs of Mountain Chief depicts him interpreting a recording for Frances Densmore at the Smithsonian.

In February 1916, Mountain Chief met with ethnomusicologist Frances Densmore at the Smithsonian Institution.

Mountain Chief was interested in the preservation of Plains Indian Sign Language and consulted with General Hugh L Scott at the Bureau of American Ethnology on Native American sign language.

Mountain Chief later served as a tribal delegate at the Indian Sign Language Council in 1930.

Mountain Chief was identified in this image because of the Plains Indian head covering he is wearing and by the "U" on his moccasins which identify him as Blackfeet.

Densmore and Mountain Chief were featured as the cover image on the Healing Songs of the American Indians.

Mountain Chief was the last hereditary chieftain of the Blackfeet Nation.

Mountain Chief died at his home in Browning, Montana, on February 2,1942, at a reported age of 94, and was buried in a Browning cemetery two days later.

Mountain Chief's life was mentioned in oral histories included in James Willard Schultz's Blackfeet and Buffalo: Memories of Life among the Indians.