Thomas Moran’s watercolor The Yellowstone Range, near the Crow Mission presents a breathtaking view of a broad valley, the expansiveness of which is only limited by the mountains that rise majestically in the distance.¹ A group of what appear to be Anglo-Americans on horseback enters the scene in the lower right, although they may be the Crow from the nearby reservation. Moran, however, portrays the area as he and his Anglo-American contemporaries wanted to see it—an essentially unoccupied land, free from the crowds in the cities of the eastern United States and the Old World of Europe. Nonetheless, the title of the work suggests that there were others who lived here, hinting at the region’s troubling history.

Paul Schullery, a former park ranger at Yellowstone National Park, relates that Native people visited the region to hunt or collect obsidian for centuries, as early as ten thousand years ago, and had possibly taken up residence there almost six thousand years ago.² The Crow, whom Moran referenced in the title, were relative latecomers to the area, settling in the valleys of the Yellowstone River in the late 1700s.³ Historian Mark David Spence observes that the Yellowstone area was also home to the Shoshone and was well traveled by other Native peoples. The Nez Perce, Salish, Kalispel, and Coeur d’Alene Nations all passed through the region to travel to hunting grounds and trading centers along the Missouri River. Some twenty-seven tribes had historic associations with the greater Yellowstone region, related primarily to hunting and trade.⁴

The designation of Yellowstone as a national park by the United States government in 1872 ignored the sovereignty of those Native people. A year earlier, on March 3, 1871, the Indian Appropriations Act reversed federal government policies that had existed since the time of George Washington. The new legislation outlawed recognizing Native tribes as nations and forbade the negotiation of any additional treaties with them.⁵ The federal government increasingly forced Indigenous people who frequented or settled in the area onto reservations, which were now managed by a dozen different religious groups.⁶ By the 1880s and 1890s, few signs of Indigenous existence in Yellowstone remained.⁷ Currently, however, efforts are underway to restore both an active and a historic presence of the region’s Indigenous people.

When National Park Service (NPS) staff began preparations to commemorate the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Yellowstone as a national park in 2022, they consulted Native tribes and included them in planning activities for the event and beyond. The NPS is engaged in a multiyear partnership with the Native American Studies faculty of Salish Kootenai College—a tribal community college in Montana—to create programs that will increase understanding of the cultural significance of Yellowstone for Indigenous people. Current Yellowstone National Park superintendent Cameron “Cam” Sholly, NPS staff, and various tribal councils are exploring collaborative ventures to present a view of Yellowstone that includes Indigenous people, acknowledges their historic association with the region, and encourages their ongoing engagement with the park.⁸

—Sandra Pauly, Henry Luce Foundation Curatorial Scholar for Moran Collection Research, 2021

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¹ The area is probably Lamar Valley, located in the northeastern quadrant of Yellowstone National Park.
² Schullery, Searching for Yellowstone, 7–8.
³ Schullery, Searching for Yellowstone, 23–24.
⁴ Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness, 48.
⁵ Nabokov and Loendorf, Restoring a Presence, 34.
⁶ Nabokov and Loendorf, Restoring a Presence, 35. The year Yellowstone was designated a national park coincides with changes to the administration of the reservations. They were initially managed by the U.S. military, but by 1872 sixty-three of the seventy-five reservations were managed by a variety of religious groups. Of the tribes with long-standing associations with Yellowstone, the Crow and Blackfeet “missions” were managed by the Methodists, the Shoshone by the Episcopalians, and the Nez Perce by the Presbyterians.
⁷ Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness, 4–5, 49–58. The complex history of Native Americans and Yellowstone cannot be related here as it requires an extensive discussion of the history of the park, the history of Anglo-American westward expansion, conflicts with Plains tribes, and the development of the reservation system. These issues are covered by Schullery in Searching for Yellowstone and by Spence in Dispossessing the Wilderness, as well as by Nabokov and Loendorf in Restoring a Presence. A complete bibliography of scholarship on these subjects is extensive. An additional text focusing on Yellowstone’s history is former park ranger A. L. Haines’s two-volume The Yellowstone Story: A History of Our First National Park (University Press of Colorado). For a focus on the presence of Native people in Yellowstone, see archaeologist Joel C. Janetski’s Indians in Yellowstone National Park (University of Utah Press).
⁸ Morgan Warthin, “Yellowstone National Park engages with Tribes to improve partnerships (news release).” Available on the National Park Service website for Yellowstone National Park; see “News” under “Learn About the Park.” This is an ongoing project to facilitate collaboration between Indigenous people and the NPS: visit the Yellowstone National Park website for updates. The Yellowstone National Park site also maintains a list of tribes that have associations with Yellowstone and their histories in the region, as well as updates about activities. See “History & Culture” under “Learn About the Park.”