History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889, Part 66

Author: Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 1832-1918; Victor, Frances Fuller, 1826-1902
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: San Francisco : History Co.
Number of Pages: 880

USA > Idaho > History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889 > Part 66
USA > Montana > History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889 > Part 66
USA > Washington > History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889 > Part 66

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

South

R.P+t

GOOSACK

K.Malade

Fort Hall ( Thompson Paws

Pleasant. Valley P'aunt

&Yellowstone Lake

Diamond

SK. I'mstilla

SACOASTOANGELA

. Cowlits Pass

Nisqually Tass

ITTER ROOT

Hellgate Pass Mullan Aiss

ood

SDalles

Pilot Rock

595

YELLOWSTONE VALLEY.

scooped out the valleys, and cut the immense cañons which reveal to us the nature of the structure of the earth's foundations.

Volcanic action is everywhere visible, and has been most vigorous. All the stratified rocks, the clays and slates in the Yellowstone range, have been subjected to fire. There are whole mountains of breccia. Great ravines are filled with ashes and scoria. Mountains of obsidian, of soda, and of sulphur, immense overflows of basalt, burnt-out craters filled with water, making lakes of various sizes, everything everywhere points to the fiery origin, or the later volcanic history of the Yellowstone range.

The valley of the Yellowstone where it opens out presents a lovely landscape of bottom-lands dotted with groves, gradually elevated benches well grassed and prettily wooded, reaching to the foothills, and for a background the silver-crested summits of the Yellowstone range. As a whole, Montana presents a beautiful picture, its bad lands, volcanic features, and great altitudes only increasing the effect. In its for- ests, on its plains, and in its waters is an abundance of game, buffalo, moose, elk, bear, deer, antelope, mountain sheep, rabbits, squirrels, birds, water-fowl, fish,6 not to mention the many wild creatures which civilized men disdain for food, such as the fox, panther, lynx, ground-hog, prairie-dog, badger, beaver, and marten. The natural history of Montana does not differ from that of the west side of the Rocky Mountains, except in the matter of abundance, the natural parks on the east side of the range containing almost a superfluity

6 Buffalo used formerly to be numerous on the plains between the South Pass and the British possessions, the Nez Perce ' going to buffalo' through the Flathead and Blackfoot country, and the fur companies wintering on the Yellowstone in preference to farther south, both on account of climate and game. The Montana buffalo is said to have been smaller, less humped, and with finer hair than the southern animal. In 1865 a herd of them were seen on the head waters of Hellgate River for the first time in many years. Idaho World, Aug. 28, 1865. The reader of Lewis and Clarke's journal will re- member their frequent encounters with the huge grizzly. See also the ad- ventures of the fur-hunters with these animals in l'ictor's River of the West. Besides the grizzly, black, brown, and cinnamon bears were abundant.

596

NATURAL WEALTH AND SETTLEMENT.

of animal life-a feature of the country which, taken in connection with the hardy and warlike indigenous tribes, promises well for the prosperity of the white race which unfolds therein.

As to the climate, despite the general elevation of the territory, it is not unpleasant. The winter camps of the fur companies were more often in the Yellow- stone Valley than at the South Pass or Green River. Here, although the snow should fall to a considerable depth, their horses could subsist on the sweet cotton- wood, of which they were fond. But the snow sel- dom fell to cover the grass for any length of time, or if it fell, the Chinook wind soon carried it off; and it is a remarkable trait of the country, that stock re- mains fat all winter, having no food or shelter other than that furnished by the plains and woods.7 Occa- sional 'cold waves' affect the climate of Montana, along with the whole region east of the Rocky Mountains, sometimes accompanied with high winds and driving snow.8 But the animals, both wild and tame, being well fed and intelligent, take care to es- cape the brief fury of the clements, and seldom perish.9 This for the surface, beneath which, could the beholder

" The yearly mean temperature of Decr Lodge City, the elevation being nearly 5,000 fect, is 40° 7', and the mean of the seasons as follows: Spring 41° 6', summer 69° 7', autumn 43° l', winter 19° 9'. This temperature is much lower than that of the principal agricultural areas. The total yearly rainfall is 17 inches, and for the growing season, April to July, 9.15 inches. Norton's Wonder-Land, 89. Observations made at Fort Benton from 1872 to 1877 gave a mean annual temperature of 40°, and an average of 291 clear days cach year. The average temperature for 1866 at Helena, which is 1,000 fect higher than many of the valleys of Montana, was 44º 5'. The snowfall varies from 43 inches to 413. The report of the U. S. signal officer at Virginia City gives the lowest temperature in 6 years, with one exception, at 19° below zero, and the highest at 94° above. Observations taken in the lower valleys of Mou- tana for a number of years show the mean annual temperature to be 4S". Navigation opens on the Missouri a month earlier near Helena than at Omaha. The rainy season usually occurs in Junc. Omaha New West, Jan. 1879; Schott's Distribution and Variations, 48-9; Montana Scraps, 54, 69-71.

8 These storms, which are indeed fearful on the elevated plateaux and mountains, are expressively termed 'blizzards' in the nomcnelature of the frontier. The winter of 1831-2 is mentioned as one of the most severe known, before or since.

9Shoup, in his Idaho, MS., 4, speaking of stock-raising, says: 'Cattle of all kinds thrive in the hardest winters without stall-feeding, and we lost noue through cold or snow. My loss in the hardest winter in 5,000 head was not more than one per cent.'

597

MONTANA, HOME OF GOLD

look, what might he not see of mineral riches, of gold, silver, and precious stones, with all the baser metals !

Montana is the native home of gold. Nowhere is it found in so great a diversity of positions; in the oldest igneous and metamorphic rocks, in the mica- ceous slates, in alluvial drifts of bowlders and gravel, sometimes in beds of ferruginous conglomerates, and infiltrated into quartz, granite, hornblende, lead, iron, clay, and every kind of pseudomorphs. In Montana quartz is not always the 'mother of gold,' where iron and copper with their sulphurets and oxides are often a matrix for it. Even drift-wood long embedded in the soil has its carbonaceous matter impregnated with it; and a solution of gold in the water is not rare.10 The forms in which the precious metal exists in Mon- tana are various. It is not always found in flattened, rounded, or oval grains, but often in crystalline and arborescent forms.11 The cube, octahedron, and do- decahedron are not uncommon forms, the cube, how- ever, being most rare. Cubes of iron pyrites are sometimes covered with crystals of gold.12 Beautiful filaments of gold frequently occur in quartz lodes in Montana, and more rarely spongiform masses.13 Curi- ously exemplifying the prodigality and eccentricity of the creative forces, cubes of galena, strung on wires of gold, and rare tellurium, are found in the same place in the earth.

10 This statement I take from an article by W. J. Howard, in the Helena Rocky Mountain Gazette, Dec. 24, 1868. The author writes like a man ac- quainted with his subject. Might not this account for the presence of flour gold in certain alluvial deposits 2

11 The same may be said of California, Oregon, and Idaho. I have seen a stem with leaves, like the leaf-stalk of a rose, taken from a creek-bed in Cali- fornia, and the most elegant crystalline forms from the Santiam mines of Oregon.

12 The Venus lode, in Trout Creek district, Indian, Trinity, and Dry gulches in the vicinity of Helena, have produced some beautiful tree forms of crystallization. Also other crystalline forms of gold have been found near the head of Kingsbury gulch, on the east side of the Missouri River, in seams in clay slate overlying granite. Helena Rocky Mountain Gazette, Dec. 24, 1868.

13 The finest specimens of thread gold, says Howard, were found in the Uncle Sam lode, at the head of Tucker gulch. A sponge-shaped mass valued at $300 was taken from MeClellan gulch, both in the vicinity of Mullan's pass. See Virginia Montana Post, June 2, 1866; Deer Lodge Independent, Nov. 30, 1867; Deer Lodge New Northwest, Dec. 9, 1870.

598

NATURAL WEALTH AND SETTLEMENT.

Silver is present here, also, in a variety of forms, as the native metal, in sulphides, chlorides of various colors, antimonial silver, ruby, and polybasite, with some rarer combinations. Gems, if not of the finest, are frequent in gulch soils where gold is found. By analogy, there should be diamonds where quartz pebbles, slate clay, brown iron ore, and iron sand are found. Sapphires, generally of little value because of a poor color, beryl, aquamarine, garnet, chryso- beryl, white topaz, amethyst, opal, agate, and nioss- agate are common. Of these the amethyst and the moss-agate are the most perfect in points of fineness and color. Of the latter there are several varieties, white, red, black, and green, in which the delicate fronds of moss, or other arborescent forms, are defined by the thin crystals of iron oxides, manganese, or other mineral matter in the process of formation; crystals of epidote, dark red and pale green, form veins in the earth; calcite, of a beautiful light red color, marbles, tin ores, cinnabar, magnesia, gypsum, and fire-clays, base metals, coal-these are what this montana storehouse contains, waiting for the re- quirements of man.

There have been those who talked of catacombs in Montana, of underground apartments tenanted by dead warriors of a race as far back as one chooses to go. However this may be, it is certain that in the mauvaises terres, or bad lands of the early French explorers, are immense catacombs of extinct species of animals. These Bad Lands form one of the wonders of the world, which must be counted since the discovery of this region to be at least eight. The region is geo- logically remarkable. Under a thin gray alkaline alluvium, which supports only occasional pines and cedars on the banks of the streams, is a drab-colored clay or stone, which covers, in most places, beds of bituminous coal, or lignite. The soil is interspersed with seams of gypsum in the crystalline form, which

599

THE BAD LANDS.

sparkle in the sun like necklaces of diamonds upon the hills and river-bluffs. Other seams consist of spar iron, carbonates of magnesia, and deposits of many varieties of the spar family in beautiful forms of crys- tallization. In the alluvium are bowlders of lime and sandstone, containing as a nucleus an am- monite, some of which are five feet in diameter, and glowing when discovered with all the colors of the rainbow. Fossil crustaceans also abound in the shales, their shining exposed edges making a brilliant mosaic. Beds of shells of great depth, and of beautiful species, are exposed in the walls of cañons hundreds of feet beneath the surface. Balls of sandstone, in size from a bird-shot to half a ton's weight, are found on the Missouri River, the centre of each being a nucleus of iron. Bones of the mam- moth elephant, of a height a third greater than the largest living elephants, and of twice their weight, are scattered through the land, together with other fossils. In some localities the country is sculptured into the likeness of a city, with narrow and crooked streets, white, shining, solitary, and utterly devoid of life-the most striking picture of desolation that could be im- agined. Fancy fails in conjecturing the early devel- opments of this region, now dead past all resurrection.14

It is worthy of notice that the shining appearance of the Bad Lands, which the Indians of Montana

14 It is not in the Bad Lands alone that we find interesting fossil remains in Montana. Teeth and bones of extinct fossil mammals have been exhumed at various points, as in Alder gulch, at Virginia City, where also an enormous tusk has been dug up, and shells, in state of almost perfeet preservation. Forty feet from the surface in Last Chance gulch a tooth, in good condition, corresponding to the 6th upper molar of the extinct elephasintormedius, was found. A little lower two tusks, one measuring 9 fect iu length and 20 inches in circumference, were taken out, this being hut a part of the whole. New York gulch produced a tooth 14 inches long and 5 inches aeross. Helena Rocky Mountain Gazette, Dec. 31, 1868. Many hints as to the geography and resources of Moutana have been gathered from the Deer Lodge Independent; Helena Independent; Helena Herald; Helena Rocky Mountain Gazette; Drer Lodge New Northwest; Virginia City Post; and the local journals of Montana generally; also, from Stevens' Northwest; Daly's Address Am. Geog. Soc., 1873; Smally's Hist. N. Pac. R., and H. Ex. Doc., 326, 248-71, 42d cong. 2d sess. ; Overland Monthly, ii. 379-80.

600

NATURAL WEALTH AND SETTLEMENT.

described to the tribes farther east, and they to others in commercial relations with the French in Canada, and which became mingled with descriptions of the great mountain range, should lead to a journey of exploration in search of the Shining Mountains, where diamonds and gold abounded, by the Canadian French.

AMERICA

PARTS UNKNOWN

Hudson

Bay

York R.

Fura

WESTERN SEA

I.Meadow

L.Ouinipique

Str. Anian

R.of West

MOUNTAIN BRIGHT STONES

Assiniboils

L. Woods

C.Blanco

N. ALBION

.R.Manton

Red R.

I.Superior

Mendocin

TEGUAYO - QUIVIRA

Drake B.

Missouri R

New Years Haven

120

*100

CARVER'S MAP, 1778.

For the progress of these mercurial people since 1728 westward along the line of the great lakes, for the lies of Baron La Hontan, the adventures of Ve- rendrye,15 the journey of Moncaht Apé, the explora-

1> It was the 1st of Jan., 1743, when Verendrye reached the Shining Moun- tains. The point at which the ascent was made was near the present city of Helena, where the party discovered the Prickly Pear River, and Iearned of the Bitterroot. They described the Bear's Tooth Mountain near Helena, and in other ways have left ample evidence of their visit.

rt.

Aguilar

Pike L.

Mississipi R.

601

EARLY EXPLORATIONS.

tions of Lewis and Clarke with the names of the first white men in Montana,16 and the doings of the fur- hunters 17 and missionaries in these parts, the reader

16 The treaty of Reyswick, concluded in 1695, defined the boundaries of the English, French, and Spanish in America; but so crude were the notions of geography which prevailed at that period, that these boundaries were after all without intelligibility. The Spanish possessions were bounded on the north by the Carolinas of the English, but to the west their extent was indefinite, and conflicted with the French claim to all north of the mouth of the Missis- sippi and west of the Alleghanies, which was called Louisiana. France also claimed the region of the great lakes and river St Lawrence, under the title of Canada. The English colonies lay east of the Alleghanies, from Maine to Georgia. During the latter part of the 17th century and early in the 1Sth the French explored, by the help of the jesuit missionaries, the valley of the Mississippi, and established a chain of stations, one of which was St Louis, penetrating the great wilderness in the middle of the continent, well toward the great divide.

17 A fort was built at the mouth of the Bighorn in 1807, by one Manuel. In 1808 the Missouri Co., under the leadership of Maj. Henry, penetrated to the Rocky Mountains, and was driven out of the Gallatin and Yellowstone country by the Blackfoot tribe, with a loss of 33 men and 50 horses. But in the following year he returned, and pursued his adventures westward as far as Snake River, naming Henry Lake after himself. In 1816 Burrell, a French trader, travelled from the mouth of the Yellowstone across the plains to the mouth of the Platte River. The St Louis and American fur companies soon followed in his footsteps. In 1823 W. H. Ashley led a company to the Rocky Mountains, and was attacked on the Missouri below the mouth of the Yellowstone, losing 26 men. The Missouri Co. Jost seven men the same year, and $15,000 worth of goods on the Yellowstone River, by the Indians. There was much blood, of red and white men, shed during the operations of the fur companies. Of 200 men led by Wyeth into the mountains in 1832, only 40 were alive at the end of 3 years. Victor's River of the West. The names of Henry, Ashley, Sublette, Jackson, Bridger, Fitzpatrick, Campbell, Bent, St Vrain, Gantt, Pattie, Pilcher, Blackwell, Wyeth, and Bonneville are a part of the history of Montana. Many of their employés, like Carson, Walker, Meek, Newell, Godin, Harris, and others, were men not to be passed over in silence, to whom a different sphere of action might have brought a greater reputation. If not settlers, they made the trails which other men have found it to their interest to follow.

In 1829 there was established at the mouth of the Yellowstone, by Kenneth Mckenzie of the American Fur Company, a fortified post called Fort Union, the first on the Missouri within the present limits of Montana. Mckenzie was a native of Scotland, and served in the Hudson's Bay Co., from which he retired in 1820, and two years afterward located himself on the upper Missouri as a trader, where he remained until 1829. From that date to 1839 he was in charge of the American company's trade, but Alexander Culbertson being ap- pointed to the position, he went to reside in St Louis. James Stuart, in Con. Hist. Soc. Montana, SS.

In 1830 the American Fur Co. made a treaty with the Piegans, a branch of the Blackfoot nation; and in 1831 Captain James Kipp erected another post named Fort Piegan, at the mouth of María River, in the country of the Piegans, which extended from Milk River to the Missouri, and from Fort Piegan to the Rocky Mountains. The situation, however, proved untenable, on account of the bad disposition of the Indians, and for other reasons, all of which led to its abandonment in the autumn of 1832, when Kipp removed to a point opposite the inouth of Judith River. But here again the situation was found to be unprofitable, and later in the season D. D. Mitchell of the same company erected Fort Brulé at a place on the south side of the Missouri

602

NATURAL WEALTH AND SETTLEMENT.

is referred to my History of the Northwest Coast, in this series.18

called Brulé Bettom, above the mouth of María River. The following year Alexander Culbertson teek charge of this fort, remaining in command until 1841, when he went to Fert Laramie, and F. A. Cheardon assumed the charge.

Cheardon proved unworthy of the trust, becoming involved in a war with the Piegans, and losing their trade, in the following manner: A party of Piegans demanded admittance to the fort, which was refused, on which they killed a pig in malice, and rode away. Being pursued by a small party from the fort, anieng whem was a negre, they shot and killed him, after which the pursu- ing party returned to the fert. Chearden then invited a large number of the Indians to visit the post, throwing open the gates as if intending the utmost hospitality. When the Indians were crowding in, he fired upon them with a howitzer, loaded to the muzzle with trade balls, killing about twenty men, wemeu, and children. After this exploit he leaded the mackinaw boats with the goods of the establishment, burned the buildings of the fert, and descended to the post at the mouth of the Judith River, which he named Fort Chearden.

Robert Campbell and William Sublette, of the Missouri Co., erected a fort five miles belew Fert Unien, in 1833; and in 1834 another sixty miles above, bnt sold out the same year to the American co., who destroyed these posts. In 1832 MeKenzie of the latter company sent Tulleek to build a post on the sonth side of the Yellowstone River, three miles below the Bighorn, to trade with the Mountain Crews. These Indians were inselent and exacting, lying and treacherous, but their trade was valuable to the fur companies. Tullock erected a large fert, which he named Van Buren. The Crews often wished the trading post removed to some other point, and to suit their whims, Fort Cass was built by Tulleck, in 1836, en the Yellowstone belew Van Buren; Fort Alexander by Lawender, still farther dewn, in 1848; and Fort Sarpy by Culbertson, at the month of the Rosebud, in 1850. This was the last trading post built on the Yellowstone, and was abandoned in 1833.

In 1543 Culbertson returned from Fort Laramie to the Missouri, and built Fort Lewis, twenty-five miles above the mouth of Maria River, effecting a reconciliation with the Piegans, with whom he carried on a very profitable trade. Three years afterward this post was abandoned, and the timbers of which it was constructed rafted down the river eight miles, where Culbertson founded Fort Benton, in 1846. In the following year an adobe building was erected. In 184S Fort Campbell was built a short distance above Fort Ben- ten by the rival traders Galpin, Labarge, & Co., of St Louis, who did not long occupy it, and successively a number of fortified stations on the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers have been built and occupied by traders who alternately courted and fought the warlike Montana tribes. They enriched themselves, but left ne historical memoranda, and ne enduring evidences of their occu- patien.

18 P. J. De Smet, missionary of the Society of Jesus, in the spring of 1840 left St Louis on a tour of exploration, to ascertain the practicability of estab- lishing a mission among the Indians of the Rocky Mountains. Travelling with the American Fur Co. to their rendezvous on Green River, he there met a party of Flatheads, who conducted him to the Bitter Root Valley, where he remained teaching and baptizing front the 17th of July to the 29th of Aug., when he set out en bis return, cscerted as before by a company of Flat- head warriors. His route was by the way of the Yellowstone and Bighorn rivers to a fort of the American Fur Co., in the country of the Crows. From this point De Smet precceded down the Yellowstone to Fort Union, with only a single companion, John de Velder, a native of Belgium, having several nar- row escapes from meeting with parties of hostile Indians. Freni Fert Union they had the company of three men going to the Mandan village, whenco De Smet procceded, via forts Pierre and Vermilion, to Independence and St Louis. .

603

EARLY SETTLERS.

The first actual settlers of Montana, not mission- aries, were some servants of the Hudson's Bay Com-

In the following spring he set out again for the mountains, accompanied by two other priests, Nicolas Point, a Vendeean, and Gregory Mengarini, an Italian, and three lay brethren. Falling in at Westport with a party from New Orleans going to the mountains for a summer's sport, and another party bound for Oregon and California, they travelled together to Fort Hall, where the Flatheads again met the missionaries to escort them to their country. In all this journeying De Smet evinced the utmost courage, believing that be- cause he was upon an errand of mercy to benighted man the Lord of mercy would interpose between him and harm. I am impressed with his piety, but I do not fail to observe the egoism of his christianity when he writes about other religious teachers, inspired, no doubt, by an equal philanthropy.

As far as Fort Hall the fathers had travelled with wagons, which there they seem to have transformed into carts, and to have travelled with these, by the help of the Indians, to Bitterroot Valley, going north from Fort Hall to the mouth of the Henry branch of Snake River, at the crossing of which they lost three mules and some bags of provisions, and came near losing one of the lay brethren, who was driving, but whom the Indians rescued, and as- sisted to get his cart over. As De Smet nowhere mentions the abandoument of the carts, and as he had before proved himself a good road-maker, I take it for granted that they arrived at the Bitterroot with their contents, among which was an organ. The route pursued was through the pass of the Utah and Northern Railroad, which was named The Fathers' Defile, thence north, on the east side of the Rocky Mountains, and through a pass at the head of Deer Lodge River, and by the Hellgate canon, to the Bitterroot Valley, where, ou one of the last days of September 1841, the cross was set up among the Flatheads, and a mission founded, which was called St Mary's, and dedicated to the blessed virgin. A long account is given by the father, in his writings, of a journey to Fort Colville, and subsequent doings, which are unimportant.

In 1843 the jesuit college sent out two priests-Peter De Vos and Adrian Hoeken-to assist Point and Mengarini, while De Smet was despatched on a mission to Europe to secure both men and women for the mission. He was eminently successful, returning with both, and giving much assistance to the missions of western Oregon. De Vos and Hoeken arrived at St Mary in Sept. with three lay brothers. In 1844 Hoeken founded the mission of St Ignatius a short distance north of the Clarke branch of the Columbia, east and south of Fort Colville, in what was later Washington. Here De Smet found him on his return from Europe, and here again he visited him in 1845, having been down to the Willamette Valley and loaded a train of eleven horses with 'ploughs, spades, pickaxes, scythes, and carpenters' implements,' brought by ship to the Columbia River. Not until these arrived could Hoeken commence any improvements, nor was much progress inade until 1846. During these two years the father lived as Point had done, roaming about with the Indians and subsisting on camas-root and dried berries. After the first year Father Anthony Ravelli was associated with Hoeken. The first wheat raised was boiled in the husks for fear of waste. But iu 1853-4 the mission of St Ignatius had a farm of 160 acres under improvement, a good mission-house of squared logs, with storeroom and shops attached, a large chapel tastefully decorated, barns and out-buildings, a windmill, and a grindstone hewn out of native rock with a chisel made by the mission blacksmith. Brick, tinware, tobacco- pipes turned out of wood with a lathe aud lined with tin, soap, candles, vine- gar, butter, cheese, and other domestic articles were manufactured by the missionaries and their assistants, who were often the Indians. On the farm grew wheat, barley, onions, cabbages, parsnips, pease, beets, potatoes, and carrots. In the fields were cattle, hogs, and poultry. See Stevens' N. P. R. R. Rept, in De Smet's Missions, 282-4; Shea's Missions, 146; Shea's Indian Sketches, passim,

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History of Washington, Idaho, and Montana : 1845-1889, Part 66

Author: Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 1832-1918; Victor, Frances Fuller, 1826-1902 Publication date: 1890 Publisher: San Francisco : History Co. Number of Pages: 880

Author: Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 1832-1918; Victor, Frances Fuller, 1826-1902
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: San Francisco : History Co.
Number of Pages: 880