A mountain in Yellowstone National Park, named after an army officer who led a massacre that massacred at least 173 Native Americans, has been renamed in honor of America’s indigenous people, according to the National Park Service.
The National Park Service said Thursday that the U.S. Board on Geographic Names had voted unanimously to rename Mount Doane, a 10,551-foot peak in the southeastern portion of Yellowstone. It will now be known as First Peoples Mountain, the Park Service said in a statement.
The mountain was a tribute to Gustaaf Doane, an army officer and explorer who, in response to the alleged murder of a white fur trader, helped lead an attack in 1870 that became known as the Marias Massacre. He boasted of the attack in his reports exploring the land that would become Yellowstone National Park two years later.
The change was announced as the Department of the Interior under Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet member, is taking steps to rid oppressive and offensive names of geographic features in the national park system.
This year, the department announced it would remove the racist term “squaw” from 660 geographic locations, including mountains, rivers and lakes. The Park Service was instructed to take similar steps. A task force has been set up to rename landmarks.
In January, the Department of the Interior said it was seeking nominations for a committee whose members would identify geographic features that should be renamed “as part of a wide-ranging effort to revise derogatory names of the country’s geographic features and to replace”.
In 2016, the Park Service renamed North America’s tallest mountain—Mount McKinley in Alaska—Mount Denali. That name, meaning “the great” or “the high” in Alaska’s native language, Koyukon, pays tribute to the state’s native people. President William McKinley, for whom the mountain was christened in 1896, had few ties to the state, the Park Service said.
First Peoples Mountain was renamed based on input from the 27 tribes in Montana, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota that have historical ties to Yellowstone. Indigenous people lived on the land that would become Yellowstone for at least 11,000 years. According to Smithsonian Magazine, they were evicted by the government when the park was established in 1872.
“This name change was long overdue,” Piikani Nation chief Stan Grier told The Associated Press in a statement. “We all agreed on ‘First Peoples Mountain’ as an apt name to honor the victims of such inhumane genocides, as well as to remind people of the more than 10,000-year-long connection that tribal peoples have with this sacred site that is now Yellowstone is called.”
Since the change was announced, William Snell, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council, said the organization had received questions from tribes in California about repeating the process as a way to right other wrongs.
“It’s a demonstration of working closely with American Indians and making sure mistakes are right and history is rewritten and corrected,” he said.
In its statement, the Park service said the renaming of First Peoples Mountain likely won’t be the last of its kind.
“Yellowstone may consider changes to other derogatory or inappropriate names in the future,” it said.