Robert Summers Yellowtail (August 4, 1889 – June 20, 1988) was a

leader Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group or organization to "lead", influence or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. The word "leadership" often gets vi ...

of the

Crow Nation The Crow, whose autonym is Apsáalooke (), also spelled Absaroka, are Native Americans living primarily in southern Montana. Today, the Crow people have a federally recognized tribe, the Crow Tribe of Montana, with an Indian reservation loca ...

. Described as a "20th Century Warrior", Yellowtail was the first Native American to hold the post of Agency Superintendent at a reservation.

Early life and education

Yellowtail was born in

Lodge Grass, Montana Lodge Grass ( cro, Eelalapiío) is a town in Big Horn County, Montana, United States. The population was 441 at the 2020 census. It is at the confluence of Lodge Grass Creek and the Little Bighorn River, on the Crow Indian Reservation. Source ...

in 1889. Throughout his life, Yellowtail went by three Crow names. He was referred to as Bíawakshish, or "Summer", then Shoopáaheesh, or "Four War Deeds", and finally Axíchish, or "The Wet", which was shared with another war chief who was in the same clan as Yellowtail. Separated from his mother at the age of 4 years old, Yellowtail was culturally assimilated into a reservation boarding school. When he was 13 years old, he went to the Sherman Institute, in

Riverside, California Riverside is a city in and the county seat of Riverside County, California, United States, in the Inland Empire metropolitan area. It is named for its location beside the Santa Ana River. It is the most populous city in the Inland Empire an ...

, graduating in 1907. He then attended the Extension Law School in Los Angeles, transferring to the

University of Chicago Law School The University of Chicago Law School is the law school of the University of Chicago, a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is consistently ranked among the best and most prestigious law schools in the world, and has many dis ...

, where he gained his Juris Doctor degree.

Personal life

Yellowtail was married four times. In 1911, he married a daughter of Spotted Horse, and after she died during the 1920's, he then married Lillian Bull Shows. His second marriage ended in divorce, and in 1932, he married his late wife, Margaret Picket. After which in 1960, he entered his fourth marriage to Dorothy Payne. He also has seven children and many grandchildren.

Political activism

In 1910 Yellowtail was enlisted by Crow chief

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 ...

to defend the

Crow Indian Reservation The Crow Indian Reservation is the homeland of the Crow Tribe. Established 1868, the reservation is located in parts of Big Horn, Yellowstone, and Treasure counties in southern Montana in the United States. The Crow Tribe has an enrolled member ...

against a bill sponsored by Montana Senator Thomas J. Walsh that sought to open the reservation to homesteading. The bill was defeated after seven years of work in Washington. Yellowtail's first official position, in 1912, was as a district representative on a tribal business committee where he negotiated grazing leases and gave the tribe a voice during land disputes. Initially, Yellowtail was in this committee to fight disputes related to Crow land, but caught the attention of other political leaders like Plenty Coups. Less than a year later he made his first trip to Washington D.C. He attended the National Indian Memorial in New York City as an interpreter for Medicine Crow, Plenty Coups and other leaders. In 1920, he helped to draft the "Crow Allotment Act" that protected Crow lands, and was instrumental in obtaining voting rights for Native Americans in 1924. From 1934 until 1945, Yellowtail was the Superintendent of the Crow Indian Reservation, the first superintendent to administer his own tribe. During this time, Yellowtail was able to get white ranchers to return 40,000 acres of land to the tribe, built a Crow Hospital, brought horses and cattle from Canada, and buffalo from

Yellowstone National Park Yellowstone National Park is an American national park located in the western United States, largely in the northwest corner of Wyoming and extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the 42nd U.S. Congress with the Yellowst ...

. Yellowtail was a leading figure in the opposition to a dam on the

Bighorn River The Bighorn River is a tributary of the Yellowstone, approximately long, in the states of Wyoming and Montana in the western United States. The river was named in 1805 by fur trader François Larocque for the bighorn sheep he saw along its ba ...

in the southern portion of the reservation. The dam would flood the Bighorn Canyon, sacred to the Crow. Yellowtail was unable to prevent the dam's construction, which began in 1961, but won a modest increase in compensation to the tribe after a divisive fight. In a final irony, Yellowtail Dam was named after Yellowtail. Yellowtail continued to fight for compensation for the Crow people in the 1980s, arguing against sales of coal from reservation mineral rights controlled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Yellowtail was the subject of a 1985 video, ''Contrary Warriors: A Story of the Crow Tribe''.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Yellowtail, Robert 1988 deaths Chairpersons of the Crow Nation Crow tribe 1889 births People from Lodge Grass, Montana 20th-century Native Americans