Robert Summers "Robbie" Yellowtail was a leader of the Crow Nation. Described as a "20th Century Warrior", Yellowtail was the first Native American to hold the post of Agency Superintendent at a reservation.
Early Life & Education
Yellowtail was born in Lodge Grass, Montana in 1889.Throughout his life, Yellowtail went by three Crow names. He was referred to as Bíawakshish, or "Summer," then Shoopáaheesh, or " Four War Deeds," and finally Axíchish or " The Wet", which was shared with another war chief who was in the same clan as Yellowtail. Separated from his mom at the age of 4 years old, Yellowtail was culturally assimilated into a reservation boarding school. When he was 13 years old, he went to the Sherman Institute, in Riverside, California, graduating in 1907. He then attended the Extension Law School in Los Angeles, transferring to the University of Chicago Law School, where he gained his J.D. degree.
Personal Life
Yellowtail was married four times. In 1911, he married a daughter of Spotted Horse, and after she died during the 1920's, he then married Lillian Bull Shows. His second marriage ended in divorce, and in 1932, he married his late wife, Margaret Picket. After which in 1960, he entered his fourth marriage to Dorothy Payne. He also has seven children and many grandchildren which extended his family connections far and wide.
Political Activism
In 1910, He was immediately enlisted by Crow chief Plenty Coups to defend the Crow Indian Reservation against a bill sponsored by Montana Senator Thomas J. Walsh that sought to open the reservation to homesteading. The bill was defeated after seven years of work in Washington by Yellowtail. Yellowtail's first official position was as a district representative in 1912, it was on a tribal business committee where he negotiated grazing leases, and gave the tribe a voice during land disputes. Initially, Yellowtail was in this committee to fight disputes related to Crow land, but caught the attention of other political leaders like Plenty Coup. Less than a year later he made his first trip to Washington D.C. He attended the National Indian Memorial in New York City as an interpreter for Medicine Crow, Plenty Coup and other leaders. In 1920, he helped to draft the "Crow Allotment Act" that protected Crow lands, and was instrumental in obtaining voting rights for Native Americans in 1924. In 1934, Yellowtail became the Superintendent of the Crow Indian Reservation, the first superintendent to administer his own tribe. Yellowtail held the office until 1945. During this time, Yellowtail was able to get white ranchers to return 40,000 acres of land back to the tribe, built a Crow Hospital, brought horses and cattle from Canada, and buffalo from Yellowstone National Park. Yellowtail was a leading figure in opposition to a proposed dam on the Bighorn River in the southern portion of the reservation. The dam would flood the Bighorn Canyon, sacred to the Crow. Yellowtail was unable to prevent the dam's construction, which began in 1961, but won a modest increase in compensation to the tribe after a divisive fight. In a final irony, Yellowtail Dam was named after Yellowtail. Yellowtail continued to fight for compensation for the Crow people in the 1980s, arguing against sales of coal from mineral rights held by the Bureau of Indian Affairs under the Crow reservation. Yellowtail was the subject of a 1985 video, Contrary Warriors: A Story of the Crow Tribe.
