Chief Eneas Bigknife

Chief Eneas Bigknife: Kootenai Indian Patriot and Diplomat has been assembled from excerpts of the letters of Flathead Indian Reservation agent Peter Ronan written to the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs about Ronan’s dealings with Eneas Bigknife, chief of the Flathead Reservation Kootenai Indians between 1865 and 1900.

Agent Ronan was impressed with Chief Bigknife’s dedication to his community and his struggle to protect Kootenai rights and property. The Kootenai band on the Flathead Reservation was small—only 315 members in 1877—and vulnerable to physical extinction from intertribal conflict with the Plains Indian tribes and later to hostile white settlers in the Upper Flathead Valley. Since the Kootenai settlement was approximately sixty-five miles from the Flathead Agency in the Jocko Valley, Ronan relied on Bigknife to keep the peace between the Kootenai Indians and local white men. Bigknife used his government salary to purchase agricultural equipment and tools to help the Kootenai expand their farms and horse and cattle herds. He struggled to get the biased white legal system to give justice to the Kootenai Indians who were assaulted and murdered by white men.