Marias Massacre

The Marias Massacre (also known as the Baker Massacre or the Piegan Massacre) was a massacre of a friendly band of Piegan Blackfeet Indians on January 23, 1870 by the United States Army in Montana Territory during the Indian Wars. About 200 Indians were killed, mostly women and children, and elderly men.

During a campaign to suppress Mountain Chief's band of Piegan Blackfeet, who harbored a man named Owl Child, said to have murdered a white trader and rancher, Malcolm Clarke, the U.S. Army instead attacked a band led by Heavy Runner, a chief who had been promised protection by the United States government. Following public outrage, the long-term result was a shift in the policy of the Federal Government toward a "peace policy" as advocated by President Ulysses S. Grant. He kept the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior, at a time when the War Department was trying to regain control, and he appointed men who were recommended by various religious clergy including Quakers and Methodists as Indian agents, hoping they would be free of corruption he had found in the department.