Oliver Racine, Blackfeet Tribe

Allottee No. – 524
Age – 42
Degree – ½
Status – Fee Pat.
Family – 7 Children

Home on Badger Creek near Old Agency. Forty horses, seven cattle, no chickens. Has twenty acres wheat, eight acres oats, garden. Family in good health.

Date of survey ———- May 11, 1921

Oliver Racine is a patent in fee Indian and lives on one of his children’s allotments near the day school. He was formerly married to Miss Belle Alvares of the Fort Peck reservation. They have seven children. These people were recently divorced and his wife, Belle, is married to a young Indian boy by the name of John Tatsey living in the Heart Butte district.

Oliver is farming cooperatively with one of his sons who is about eighteen years of age, also with Louie Little Plume just mentioned. They have twenty acres in wheat and eight acres in oats. While he is batching he has a very well kept house and everything looked clean and neat and he does his own housekeeping. This young man was a former school boy of mine and he and his wife were married at Fort Shaw while I was superintendent there. They had every prospect for a happy home but unfortunately it was broken up.

He has a house twenty by eighteen, well floored and a shingle roof. He has one of the best barns on the south side although the roof which is rubberoid is becoming deteriorated. He borrowed $800.00 on his patented land and while he says he did not use all of it judiciously he had made good use of part of it. He has forty horses and seven head of cattle. Last year he had thirteen head of cattle and four were stolen and he has butchered two. He feels that it is impossible to continue in the cattle business because of the heavy toll taken by the cattle thieves. He would like in some way to start in the sheep business and would be very glad to get twenty head of good ewes and a good ram. We are not pushing the sheep activity among these Indians but it is our plan to make careful inquiries and wherever we find someone that seems to have the right attitude and proper facilities with which to take care of sheep to encourage them to start in a small way. I think this is once place that we might extend encouragement and while I do not know just how he would finance them, he could probably do so from the sale of some of his horses. He has sufficient shed room already for that number and an abundance of grazing and some very good hay land. He has cattle shelter in addition to his improvements and a good open spring of warm water that is always available for stock.

He has his children growing up around him and I think it is worth while to start a family of this kind and one or more of the children may become interested and later on become successful. Oliver is a very good mechanic and at present is doing the black smithing and general repair work for the Indians of the Old Agency district. He is a man that needs helpful advice and encouragement and I believe would respond very generously to advice in the way of handling and taking care of a small sheep activity such as I have mentioned if there is any way to get him started. He is also a good steam engineer. Mr. Stone informs me that he had him in charge of the dipping vat and that he handled the boiler very successfully.

His reimbursable indebtedness amounts to $65.93

Genealogy of the Racine Family

Jean Baptiste Racine and Julia Tall Eagle

Oliver Racine was born 24 Jun 1877 in Teton, Montana to Jean Baptiste Racine and Julia Tall Eagle. He derives his Native ancestry through his mother, who was a full-blood Piegan Blackfeet. Jean Baptiste was French, born about 1832 in Missouri, allegedly to Jean Francois Racine and Marie Morel, though I can find no proof of this kinship, nor can I find evidence that Jean and Marie ever resided in Missouri. Julia was born about 1847 in the Blackfeet Nation and died there on 19 Jul 1908. She married second, Joseph Trombley before 30 June 1893. Julia died on 5 Jul 1920 and is interred at the Holy Family Mission Cemetery in Family, Montana.

Jean Baptiste Racine was enumerated in 1880 at Fort Benton, Missouri on sheet 48A, page No. 33, of the Supervisor’s District Montana, Enumeration District No. 3, dwelling #253 and family #173. He had a significantly large household at the time. In the 1880 census, Willie is the child who as an adult would be known as Oliver.

1880 Census

Baptiste is said to have died about 1891. His widow, Julia Racine would marry Joseph Trombley as her second husband before the 1893 census but have no further surviving children than what is listed in the above census. We find Julia and the two boys residing at the Blackfeet Agency in Montana as they were enumerated in 1892, #1594-1596 in the 1892 Blackfeet Blood and Piegan Indians census. I am unsure what happened to Mary, but by 1892 she could have been married and living elsewhere.

1892 Blackfeet Blood and Piegan Indians census

Julia and Joseph Trombley, along with Frank and Oliver would be enumerated in

Oliver Joseph “Willie” Racine and Belle Alvares

There are numerous birth dates given for Oliver in the various records. His WW2 draft registration card indicates he was born on 24 Jun 1877 in Teton, Montana, his gravestone says 1876. He appears to have missed a couple of years as he aged, and this is reinforced by the various census records. Based on his earliest record, the 1880 census (taken in June 1880 and listed above under his father’s record) he is listed as 7 months old; this places his likely birth as about November 1879. Further reinforced in his marriage to Belle Alvares in Cascade County, Montana on 28 Jun 1899 where he is provides his age as 20.

Belle Alvares was the daughter of Philip Alvares (pronounced Alvarey and sometimes written like that), Interpreter for the Interior Department, and Josephine Plenty Horses, a Sioux. In her marriage record to Oliver, she is listed as having been born in Poplar, Montana about 1881 (age 18), and that is where her father resided after 1876. Philip was enumerated in the 1900 census at Fort Peck Indian Reservation as a 1/2 blood of the Aztiz tribe (Aztec) to which his mother belonged. His father was white.

Oliver and Belle were enumerated in the 1900 census at the Blackfeet Indian Reservation where it was reported that his father was born in Canada. In this record he lists his birth as Feb 1879, Belle’s birth as May 1881, both born in Montana. Belle had already had her first child by this time, Joseph, born Mar 1900. Enumerated above them were Oliver’s stepfather and mother, Joseph and Julia Trombley. Oliver’s mother was listed as a member of the Blackfeet, and Belle’s mother as a member of the Sioux. Oliver’s father was white, Belle’s father, Mexican. At the time of the 1900 census, neither Oliver nor Belle was employed, and each were listed as Ration Indians.

Oliver and Belle were enumerated in 1893 in the Piegan Tribe of Blackfeet Indians in Montana. The family still comprised only the three, Oliver, Belle, and Joseph.

In the 1910 census, however, the family starts to grow. It now consists of the following:

1910 Indian Census

In the 1910 census the tribe attributed to Belle as Sioux is further delineated as Yankton Sioux.

Oliver was registered in the World War One draft on 12 Sep 1918. He at that time gave his birth as 28 June 1881, age 37, and a stock grower in Family, Teton, Montana, the same town his mother was residing in. The signature appears to have been filled in by Wesley D. Helm who wrote down the information as all the handwriting is the same as on subsequent cards.

The 1920 census gives us a more complete view of the children of Oliver and Belle and the individual life changes in their family. Enumerated below you will see that Oliver is listed as divorced and his mother as widowed. On 27 December 1917 Oliver sued Belle for divorce in the District Court of the Eleventh Judicial District of the State of Montana, in and for the County of Flathead. This extensive divorce record is provided in PDF format.

1920 Census