Frank Bird Linderman

Frank Bird Linderman (September 25, 1869 – May 12, 1938) was a Montana writer, politician, Native American ally and ethnographer. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he went West as a young man and became enamored of life on the Montana frontier. While working as a trapper for several years, he lived with the Salish and Blackfeet tribes, learning their cultures. He later became an advocate for them and for other northern Plains Indians. He wrote about their cultures and worked to help them survive pressure from European Americans. For instance, he supported establishment of the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation in 1916 in Montana for landless Ojibwe (Chippewa) and Cree, and continued as an advocate for Native Americans to his death.

Linderman worked at various jobs throughout his life: as a fur trapper, then an assayer, and later an agent for Guardian Insurance of America. He owned a hotel for two years. For another two years, he published a newspaper, the Sheridan Chinook. He served two terms in the Montana Legislature and campaigned for a seat in Congress. He published his first collection of Native American tribal stories in 1915 and wrote twenty more books over the next two decades. He wrote to share what he knew about Native American cultures and to preserve their traditional stories. His friend Charles Marion Russell, noted painter, illustrated many of these books.