Fort Belknap Agency - The Herds Came Home Here First
Photo: Lukas Eddy, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
A stop on American Prairie: Rewilding the Plains, a free self-guided tour.
End where the rewilding story really begins. Fort Belknap Agency is the capital of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, set aside in 1888 and shared by two nations under one government: the Aaniiih, the White Clay People, also called Gros Ventre, and the Nakoda, or Assiniboine. Bison were at the center of both peoples' lives for generations before the herds were destroyed.
The tribes brought bison back in the 1970s, decades before American Prairie existed. Today the Snake Butte buffalo pasture, about 22,000 acres beneath a butte rich in petroglyphs and tipi rings, holds hundreds of animals. In 2012 a second herd arrived: bison of pure Yellowstone descent, sent home to the plains after quarantine on the Fort Peck Reservation.
The pastures are tribal land, so do not go looking on your own. Aaniiih Nakoda Tours, led by tribal members, visits Snake Butte, the buffalo pastures and Mission Canyon by appointment. Contact the tribe's tourism office here before your trip, and use the agency rest area to stretch and look south toward the Little Rockies.
Getting here: From Zortman, follow the signed roads to Montana Highway 66 and drive it north across the reservation through Hays to its end at US 2 at Fort Belknap Agency.
Did you know?: Bison are not the only animals coming home here: the reservation has also reintroduced black-footed ferrets and, in 2021, swift foxes from Colorado.
Photo op: From the agency, look south across the Milk River valley and frame the long blue line of the Little Rocky Mountains on the horizon.
More on Wikipedia: Fort Belknap Indian Reservation · Gros Ventre · Assiniboine · Fort Belknap Agency, Montana
Stops on this tour
- Phillips County Museum - Elvis and the Homesteaders
- Great Plains Dinosaur Museum - Leonardo's Hometown
- Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge - Pelicans on the Plains
- Sun Prairie - Back in Bison Country
- Buffalo Camp - Where the Argument Lives
- Mars Vista - Prairie Dogs and the Paved Way In
- James Kipp Recreation Area - The Missouri Breaks
- Slippery Ann - Elk on the Russell Refuge
- Zortman - Gold in the Little Rockies
- Fort Belknap Agency - The Herds Came Home Here First