First Peoples' Mountain latest feature to lose racist's name

The Hayden Valley in Yellowstone National Park memorializes Ferdinand V. Hayden who advocated for the extermination of Indigenous people and Mount Doane in Montana's Absaroka Range was named for Lieutenant Gustavus Doane who led a massacre of the Piikani, part of the Blackfoot Confederacy.

Doane bragged for the rest of his life about what become known as the Marias Massacre. The attack in response to the alleged slaying of a white fur trader killed at least 173 American Indians, including many women, elders and children suffering from smallpox, Yellowstone officials said in a statement. “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,” Piikani Nation Chief Stan Grier said in a statement Wednesday. [Yellowstone mountain that honored massacre leader renamed]

George Custer, Phil Sheridan, George Crook and William Harney all committed crimes against humanity yet their names still besmirch numerous government and geographical features. Crook City near Whitewood, South Dakota and Crook's Tower, one of the 7000 footers in the Black Hills, were named after a war criminal. A state park, a peak, a county and a town in the Black Hills, a county and national forest in Montana are named after a murderer. During the Battle of Greasy Grass on the banks of the Little Bighorn River in Montana George Custer attacked the encampment where the elderly, women and children were hidden and during the Washita Massacre he held a similar contingent as hostages and human shields. 

Doane's name still fouls a peak in Wyoming's Teton Range. But Senators Cynthia Lummis and co-sponsor John Barrasso have introduced a bill to permanently cancel Indigenous culture by blocking the name Bear's Lodge or Mahto Tipila from Devils Tower National Monument in the Wyoming Black Hills. With Democrats controlling the White House, both chambers of Congress and after a tribal member has become Interior Secretary with Park Service oversight the Wyoming Republicans' bill is likely doomed.

ip photo is of the Boulder Valley in Jefferson County, Montana, Bull Mountain and the Tobacco Roots in the background.