Yellowstone mountain named by the massacre of Native Americans is now renamed
Renaming a mountain in Yellowstone National Park after a US Army colonel who was involved in the slaughter of Native Americans has been approved by a federal council.
On Thursday, the National Park Service reported that the U.S. Board on Geographic Names had unanimously approved the name change for Mount Doane.
For Lt. Gustavus Doane, who helped lead an attack against Piegan Blackfeet in Montana in 1870, the 10,551-foot (3,200-meter) mountain in Wyoming’s southeast Yellowstone was named.
Throughout his life, Doane boasted about the Marias Massacre. Yellowstone officials reported in a statement that an attack in retaliation for the suspected murder of a European fur trader resulted in the deaths of at least 173 American Indians, many of them women, seniors, and children who had smallpox.
While leading the slaughter, Doane was also an important member of a Yellowstone trip that year. In 1872, Yellowstone was designated the first national park in the United States.
According to the announcement, Yellowstone authorities engaged with 27 tribes on the name change.
Piikani Nation Chief said “This name change is long overdue. We all agreed on ‘First Peoples’ Mountain’ as an appropriate name to honor the victims of such inhumane acts of genocide, and to also remind people of the 10,000-year-plus connection tribal peoples have to this sacred place now called Yellowstone,”
The traditional area of the Piikani Nation includes much of Montana, including the Marias Massacre site, as well as Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada.
