Frank Bird Linderman


Frank Bird Linderman 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 other northern Plains Indians. 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 in 1916 in Montana for landless Ojibwe and Cree, and continued as an advocate for Native Americans to his death.
He also was active in business, working as an assayer, and later as an agent for Guardian Insurance of America. He later had a hotel for two years. Linderman published his first collection of Native American tribal stories in 1915, and wrote several books over the next two decades - both about Native American cultures and collections of their traditional stories. His friend Charles M. Russell, noted painter, illustrated many of these books.

Early life

Linderman was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He was the child of James Bird Linderman and Mary Ann Brannan Linderman. He attended schools in Ohio and Illinois, including Oberlin College, before moving at the age of sixteen to Montana Territory in 1885.

Montana

While working as a trapper from 1885 to 1891, Linderman came to know many members of the Salish and Kootenai tribes. He set up camp on their territory on the shores of Flathead Lake, where he learned their ways and lived as they did. To know them better and communicated for trading, he mastered the sign language, 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.
In 1891 he met his future wife, Minnie Jane Johns, in Demersville. He knew he needed steady work in order to marry, and in 1892 started working for the Curlew Mine in Ravalli County as a watchman, eventually becoming an assayer. He and Minnie married in Missoula in 1893.
After the Curlew Mine closed, Linderman moved with his family in 1893 to Butte chief assayer and chemist for the Butte & Boston Smelter. Two of his and Minnie's daughters were born there. 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, where their third daughter was born. His parents joined him in Montana the following year.
Around 1900, the Linderman family moved to Sheridan, Montana, where Frank worked several jobs, as an assayer, furniture salesman, and newspaperman. A few years later he entered politics.

Native American advocate

Linderman continued to be fascinated by Native Americans. He advocated on behalf of the landless Chippewa and Cree in Montana, who struggled to survive. He supported the Native Americans as the real Americans, while believing there was a place for the Anglo-Americans in the West. Believing that the 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 help gain Congressional passage of legislation in 1916 setting up a reservation for the Chippewa band.
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, 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."

Politics

Linderman became active in politics and was elected in 1902 to the state Legislature as the representative from Madison County, Montana; his term was one year, and he was elected again in 1904, serving in 1905. He served as Assistant Secretary of State from 1905–07.
Through his work and gaining support from other influential whites, Congress passed a law to establish the Rocky Boys Indian Reservation in Montana in 1916. That year he ran for one of two at-large seats for Congress in the state, but did not place among the top two finishers. Jeannette Rankin, 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 1924, Linderman ran for popular election to the United States Senate, against well-known incumbent Democratic United States Senator Thomas J. Walsh. 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 primary against Wellington D. Rankin, the Attorney General of Montana, and advanced to the general election. Walsh defeated Linderman to win his US Senate seat again by a wide margin.

Works

Many works are available online at Project Gutenberg and/or the Internet Archive.