The Marias Massacre, or known as Baker Massacre, was a mass murder of a band of peaceful Blackfoot Indians on January 23, 1870 in Montana.

There are things missing from our history books. When I was in high school I didn't learn about Indians much, we learned Christopher Columbus found America in 1492. We learned that there were Indians here and we became friends with the Native Americans that inhabited the land. We didn't learn the bloodbath of a past we call American History.

The Marias Massacre all started with the murder on August 17, 1869, of Malcolm Clarke. Malcolm was a respected, white trader and rancher who lived in Montana for quiet a while. Tension raised when Clarke married a Blackfoot woman and had mixed-raced kids. He was killed by a Blackfoot warrior who was known as Owl Child. This murder happened during dinner time at the Clarke residence -- Owl Child and his comrades swarmed around the house and invaded. He killed Clarke and Malcolm's oldest son, Horace. Another son, Nathan, the two daughters, and Clarke's wife, Coth-co-co-na, had taken shelter in the house and were unharmed.

This attack was Owl Child's revenge. Two years earlier, in 1867, Owl Child stole some horses from Clarke as payment for his own horses, whose loss he blamed on the trader. Clarke and his son, Horace, had tracked Owl Child down and beaten him in front of a group of Blackfeet, humiliating him. Native accounts had said that Malcolm Clarke had earlier raped Owl Child's wife, who was a cousin of Clarke's wife, Coth-co-co-na. Other Blackfeet oral history accounts state that Owl Child's wife gave birth to a mixed-race child from the rape, who was either stillborn or killed by elders in the tribe.

The killing of Clarke at home outraged settlers in the region, who demanded that Owl Child be killed, and his body delivered within two weeks. Owl Child fled and joined the band of Mountain Chief in the north. Mountain Chief's band was noted for its hostility toward white settlers, but they were not conducting organized raids against them. When the two-week deadline had passed, General Phillip Sheridan sent a squad of cavalry from the Second Calvary Regiment, led by Major Eugene Baker, to track down and punish the offending party. Sheridan ordered:

"I want them struck, I want them hit hard."

First we steal their land, kill their people, and demand a head of a warrior who wanted nothing more then to have reprocussion of what was stolen from him. About 200 Indians were killed, mostly women, children, and elderly men from this massacre.

There are things missing from our history books. Christopher was not a saint, a warrior, a adventure man. He was a rapist, murderer, and he found America on accident.