The Tribal Council of the Three Affiliated Tribes – 1946 to 1948
by Marilyn Hudson
Kneeling: Christian H. Beitzel, Superintendent; George Gillette; Carl Sylvester
Middle Row: Floyd Montclair; Earl Bateman; Mark Mahto; Rufus Stevenson; Leo Young Wolf
Back Row: James Hall, Sr.; Jim Baker; Levi Waters
This council served from September 1946 to September 1948. George Gillette was Chairman. This 10-man council met in Elbowoods and represented the following districts: Nishu (2); Elbowoods (1); Shell Creek (2); Santee (1); Independence (2); Little Missouri-Red Butte(1) and Beaver Creek (1). Here are a few interesting facts about our leaders of 70 years ago.
Carl Sylvester and Mark Mahto attended Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. Floyd Montclair graduated from Chilocco Indian School in Oklahoma in 1910. George Gillette attended Haskell Institute in Lawrence KS.
Carl Sylvester and Floyd Montclair were both accomplished musicians. A note on the back of this old photograph reads “Carl Sylvester – played in the Sousa Band” and “Floyd Montclair – good clarinetist.” In 1952, Majestic Productions secured Mr. Montclair’s permission to use a song he had written entitled “Lovely Flora.”
Sylvester, Montclair and Mahto were skillful writers and penned many articles and letters during their time of leadership. Mr. Montclair authored the pamphlet Fort Berthold Indians of North Dakota in 1945 to express opposition to the Garrison Dam project. Carl Sylvester advocated the name change from “Gros Ventre” to “Hidatsa.” In 1949, he testified in Washington DC as follows: “Our name in Indian is Hidatsa, or however you want to spell it, or Minatari, as the Mandans call us. History says we were over here in Virginia and in the Carolinas originally. We migrated by slow migration until we got west, after perhaps a thousand years, and we have settled in that territory of the Missouri River for hundreds of years. The Mandans were the first, and the Gros Ventre migrated toward Canada and many years afterward we came back. The Arikara joined us from somewhere in Nebraska about 1837, and they have been with us ever since.”
Mark Mahto testified on behalf of the Three Affiliated Tribes in several of the Congressional hearings during the Garrison Dam era. At once such meeting in 1947, he said the following: “My name is Mark Mahto, and I am a full-blooded Indian, and I am secretary of our tribal business council, and I am going to make a record today by making the shortest speech that you gentlemen ever heard, and this comes from a full-blooded Indian. I do not want to trade my land: I do not want to sell my land, and I do not want to move away from my land that I am used to for the last several hundred years. That is all that I have to say. Thank you.”
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