The Little Rocky Mountains

At the foot of the range near Hays, the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions opened St. Paul's Mission in 1887, a year before Congress created the Fort Belknap Reservation around it. Jesuits had been working among the Aaniiih since the 1860s. In the decades after the mission came, much of the traditional ceremony fell away, though the Aaniiih's two sacred pipes, the Feathered Pipe and the Flat Pipe, remain at the center of their spiritual life. The mission church now houses a school, and the tribes hold the Lodgepole powwow in June and the Hays powwow in August.

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• The Little Rocky Mountains — 17 mi