Fort Assinniboine


 * For the fort in Alberta, Canada, see Fort Assiniboine.

Fort Assinniboine, a fort in Montana and within the military Department of Dakota, was built in 1879. This was following the Great Sioux War of 1876-77 and the disastrous defeat of U.S. Army forces led by General Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876. The fort is located in Hill County six miles southwest of Havre (the county seat) on Highway 87. The fort was named for the Siouan-speaking Assinniboine people.

The United States established Fort Assinniboine primarily to ward off possible attacks from the North by the Sioux led by Chief Sitting Bull, who had migrated to the Cypress Hills in Canada, and by the Nez Perce, some of whom were also in Canada. Both peoples had moved there following the defeat and capture of Chief Joseph by the U.S. Army in the Battle of Bear Paw in 1877. The Native Americans never attacked from Canada.

The fort was located on a massive military reservation. At its peak, it was garrisoned with more than 750 officers and enlisted men, and officers' families. With 104 buildings, the fort was one of the largest ever built in the United States. Among the military officers stationed at the fort in the 1890s was John Pershing, who later achieved fame as the leader of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I.

By the early twentieth century, hundreds of Chippewa Cree people lived on the large military reservation, as they traded with the Army and had no land of their own. In 1916, the government ceded a portion of Fort Assinniboine to the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation, established for the Chippewa Cree tribe.

Another portion of the reserve was ceded to Hill County to create Beaver Creek Park, the largest county park in the United States. Most of the buildings at the Fort were razed; a handful of surviving structures have been adapted for use as an agricultural extension station associated with Montana State University.