An illustrated history of the state of Montana, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 162

Author: Miller, Joaquin, 1837-1913. cn
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis pub. co.
Number of Pages: 1216

USA > Montana > An illustrated history of the state of Montana, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens > Part 162

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Our subject was born in the province of Saxony, Prus- sia, near the old free eity of Magdeburg, in the month of July, 1844, being the son of Carl and Elizabeth (Kuphal) Kleinschmidt, the former of whom was born in the Hartz- mountain region of the Prussian province of Hanover, and the latter being also a native of Prussia. The father, who held for many years a prominent official position in the government department of insurance in Prussia, passed his entire life in the land of his birth. The mother with her five children,-Carl, Louis, Bertha, Albert and Reinhold, -- left the fatherland in 1856 and emigrated to America, taking passage on the Mariana, and disembark- iug at Baltimore, Maryland, after having been on the great deep for seven weeks and two days. The family first took up their abode in Allegany county, Maryland, where they remained for a year, after which they re- moved to Bloomington, Illinois. In 1859 they removed to Ilerman, Missouri, and in 1860 to Booneville, that State, where they remained for six months. The mother subsequently made several other changes of location.

Albert Kleinschmidt was thirteen years of age when he arrived in the United States, and was twenty-two at the time of his arrival on Montana soil. He came hither from Kansas in 1860, making the long journey across the plains and mountains with twelve ox teams, which were utilized to transport goods such as were in demand in the mining districts. This stock of goods figured as the uu- cleus of the extensive mercantile business which the Kleinschmidt brothers have developed in the new and favored State of Montana, for sinee that time they have been continuously identified with the commercial inter- ests of this Northwest country. A sketch of the life of Reinhold II. Kleinschmidt appears on another page of this volume, and both of the brothers are known over a wide range of country as pioneer merehauts and enterprising business men, thoroughly in touch at all times with the spirit of progress and ever alive to the furthering of the interests of the State. The two brothers comprise the firm noted, and they have been associated in the com- mercial enterprises which have brought to them an hon- orable reputation and an extensive business.

HENRY J. PRICE, long a respected resident of Butte City and a Montana pioneer of 1864, is a native of Eng- land, born in London, September 10, 1825. a descendant of one of the ancient English families. During the reign

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Judith river to Sage, Willow, Skull and Wolf creek, is the same bed as that at Sand Conlee and Belt creek. Here it varies in thickness from five to ten feet with some shale partings.

The coal has a jointed structure, jet-black color, resinous luster and conchoidal fracture. It is bituminous, burns freely, and gives good satisfaction. This coal field contains immense quantities of good coal.

Plum creek coal lies on Plum creek, at the northeastern end of North Moccasin mountain, and has eight and ten feet of good coal.

The Maiden coal bed opened six miles west northwest of Maiden in sections 31, 32 and 33 of T. 17 N. R. 19 E., has from two to three feet of good bituminous coal. It appears to cover a large area of the country. I have not seen the beds south of Big Snowy mountains and can not speak of the quantity and quality of the coal there; but the facts reported prove these coal beds cover a large area.

Fort Maginnis coal has been opened in sev- eral places on the Reservation and in T. 16 N.

of Charles the First, his ancestry then living resided in Wales, and, being of Cromwell's party, lost their proper- ty and removed to London, where many generations of them resided.

Mr. Price's grandfather, Walter Price, was for many years Tide Surveyor of Customs at the East India docks, London. He had three sons, Walter, Henry and John. Walter, the father of Henry J., married Eliza Toosy, of Bristol, and they had five sons and three daughters. He entered the postoffice department iu 1830, and held his position there for thirty years, and then retired upon a liberal pension. He died at the age of eighty-four years, and his wife at the age of seventy-six.

Mr. Price, whose name heads this biographical notice, was educated in the historical county of Warwick, the home of Shakespeare, but, against the wishes of his par- ents, he went to sea in 1842, sailing mainly in East India waters and ports. After four years, by the advice of his father, he procured a situation with a London railroad company, and after three years there he received an ap- pointment for the postoffice.

In 1848 he married Miss Lottie Jennings, and in Feb- ruary, 1850, he resigned his place in the postoffice depart- ment. March 1 he sailed for the United States. After a sotrmy passage of fifty-six days he landed at New York,

and R. 20 E. This bed where opened is from two to three feet thick and the coal has a good name among those who have used it. It is a bituminous coal.

Careless creek coal covers a considerable portion of the southern part of the county.

FLATHEAD COUNTY.

The Emerson Tunnel on the Great Northern has exposed nine beds of coal. There have been exposed in all fifteen beds in this Flathead coal basin, which appears to cover an area of many square miles. The examinations made by ex- perts show that these fifteen beds carry over fifty feet of workable coal.

There are in the Flathead basin eighteen or twenty succes ive beds of coal. Nine of these beds range in thickness from two feet to thir- teen feet, aggregating forty-eight feet of work- able coal in the nine beds. The area covered by these coal beds is not fully known, but these coal-bearing rocks cover a large area in this- valley of some 100 square miles, and the proba- bilities are that they cover a much larger area.

May 1. Proceeding to Milwaukee he was employed at various things; next was at Peoria, Illinois, for eighteen months; and then went to Henry county, that State, and purchased 160 acres of land and continued on it improv- ing the place and farming uutil the war interfered with all his arrangements. In 1862 he sold out, and May 1, 1863, he left with a team for Denver, Colorado, making the trip of 1,000 miles in forty days.

At the latter place he entered into a retail grocery business. The next year the flood stagnated trade and he closed his business, and in May left for Alder Gulch by wagon, and came by way of Cheyenne and Bridger's Pass to Montana, a distance of 1,100 miles. Instead of immediately obtaining a mining claim he worked for others, in ground rich with gold. In the spring of 1865 he came to Silver Bow county, where in the course of time he kept hotel, until he was burned out in 1871, losing $3,000. This loss caused him to seek occupation in min- ing placer ground, and this he followed in the gulch call- ed Price Diggings, where he received only wages; but, with the addition of raising cattle he made a living. The gold taken out by himself and others aggregated about $3,000. Since quartz-mining has taken the place of plater-mining he has resided in Butte, where he owns some city property, on which he can rely for support in his declining years. But May 1, 1885, he lost his wife.

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But, if half these beds extend over an area of 100 square miles the quantity of coal is enorm- ous, since one foot of coal will yield 1,000,000 tons to the square mile, and twenty-four feet will yield 24,000,000 tons in 100 square miles. There can be scarcely a doubt that the Flathead coal-field contains this amount of coal probably much more. The coals in this extensive coal basin are truly bituminous and not lignites as represented by some writers. They contain small masses of resin and burn freely like the Lethbridge and Rocky Fork coals.

GALLATIN COUNTY.

There are five or more beds of good coal on Trail creek.

The Timberline inines have been worked for miles and miles to furnish coal for the engines of the Northern Pacific from Spokane to St. Paul. This mine is the great coal bed which follows the mountain range around from Cinna- bar on the Yellowstone, and Cokedale to Tim- berline.

At Mountain Side another opening is made into the coal in the side of the mountain near the railroad.

Chestnut has the same coal bed and has fur- nished vast quantities of coal for various indus- tries.

Hudson's, Vogel & Bergler's and Thompson's mines are good mines on West Trail creek.

Numerous coal mines have been opened on Bridger creek for a distance of twenty miles up to the divide between Bridger and Sixteen Mile creek.

Cockrill's coal is in the mountains nine miles north of Central Park.

There several coal mines on Sixteen Mile creek on the north border of Gallatin. Coal beds have also been opened in the west part of the county on Spring creek above Pullen Park.

Gallatin and Cascade are producing large quan- tities of good coal. Flathead, Fergus and Cus- ter are prepared to yield as much for the next hundred years. Nor will Teton be very far be- hind the best coal producing counties according to present indications.

GRANITE COUNTY.

Coal is reported near Stone Station on the Flint creek branch of the Northern Pacific.

JEFFERSON COUNTY.

While Gallatin is full of coal Jefferson has as yet shown but little. On the old wagon road between Boulder and Elkhorn, several beds of coal crop out, and bave been worked a little. The beds appeared thin but full of good coals.

LEWIS AND CLARKE COUNTY.

Discoveries of coal have been made in several places on Sun river, some twelve miles above Fort Shaw; around the base of Haystack Butte, on the south fork of Sun river; on the north fork of Sun river; on Flat creek; on the hills between Flat creek and the Dearborn; near Eagle Rock; at and near Dearborn; in the moun- tains ten miles south of the Dearborn.

Haystack Butte coal-bed has been examined on Sun river, Willow creek, Smith creek, Beaver creek, all tributaries of South Sun river. In all these places the coal is good in quality, but the quantity as yet proved up is not very great. It is used to supply local demands for such coal.

Two thin beds of most excellent coal have been opened on Flat creek, below Hogan, and used for domestic and other local nses. How extensive these beds may prove is not yet de- termined.

The Eagle Rock coal-bed has been opened in several places on the Benton road near Eagle Rock and in that neighborhood. The bed is about six feet thick, and contains numerous

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shale or " bone partings." Some of the coal is very good, and is used in that region for domes- tie and other local purposes.

The Dearborn coal-beds have been opened on both sides of the river, just above the town. Cohn's mine is in the bluffs, on the north side of the river, and Embody's mine is in the hills, on the divide between the Dearborn and Flat creek, fonr miles north of the river. Several mines have been opened south of the river.

Wolf creek coal has been opened on that creek, a branch of the Prickly Pear at Wolf.

MADISON COUNTY.

Extensive coal-beds have been reported high up on the Madison in this county. Coal has been discovered on Jack creek, a tributary of the Gallatin, and some twenty miles from Red Bluff, which is said to extend across the Madi- son and thirty-five miles up that river.

MEAGHER COUNTY.

While Meagher county is wonderfully rich in her gold, silver, copper, lead, iron and man- ganese mines, no very extensive coal veins have been discovered and developed. There are, how- ever, good prospects on Sixteen Mile creek, in the southwest corner of the county, and on Careless creek in the extreme eastern part, and in the Murray District in the western part, and in a large area sonth of Castle.

MISSOULA COUNTY.

There are several exposures of coal in Mis- sonla. The coal presents a medinm quality, but the extent of these coal deposits is not known. One bed is opened some two miles from Mis- sonla.

PARK COUNTY.

The coal mines of Park county have already acquired some of the reputation which they so richly deserve. The Cokedale mines, the Horr mines, the Bear creek mines and the Rocky

Fork mines are known to contain enormons quantities of excellent caking and dry coals.

The Horr coal mines are in the foothills of the Cinnabar mountains on the Park Branch Railroad. These mines furnish an excellent caking coal, and have forty coke ovens with a capacity of sixty tons of coke per diem. It is said this plant will be increased.

The Cokedale coal mines are in the great Bozeman coal-bed, which extends from Yellow- stone Cañon across the range to Timberline and beyond. The work in these mines is well done and great care is taken to make them safe. They are well timbered and thoroughly ventilated. They now have eighty coke ovens and the plant will soon be increased to 100. The daily out- pnt of coal is some 200 tons, which yield about 100 tons of excellent coke. This coke is used in the smelters at Helena, Wickes and Butte.

The Cinnabar coal mines are on the east side of the Yellowstone near Cinnabar, where the same coal beds have been opened and so devel- oped and proved up as to show the coal is well suited for the manufacture of gas and coke. It has been used in the Helena gas works, and coke ovens will be erected there in the near future.

Bear creek coal mines are located on Bear creek, a tributary of Clark's Fork and about six miles east sontheast of Red Lodge. These coal mines are in an extension of the great coal field which contains the coal beds on Rocky fork. These mines are in sections 6, 7, 8, 12, 17 and 18 of township 8 sonth and range 21 east; and they are located on five successive beds of coal from the lowest to the highest as follows:

The first bed contains five feet of coal. Above this bed are about 200 feet of sandstones and shales. Then comes the second bed, which con- tains four feet of coal; and above it are forty

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feet of sandstones and shales. Then comes the third bed with nine feet of coal, which contains charcoal partings and numerous globular con- cretions of impure coal. Above this bed are about 200 feet of sandstones, shales and clays up to the fourth bed with six feet of coal, which is followed by 150 feet of sandstones and shales succeeded by the fifth bed of coal, four feet thick. On this coal rests some 300 feet of shales, sandstones and clays containing several small seams of coal.

Four beds of coal are exposed on section 36 of township 7 south and range 21 east, and sec- tions 31 and 32 of township 7 south and range 21 east. These beds vary from four feet to six feet in thickness and lie between the Bear creek coal-beds and the Rocky fork.

Rocky fork coal mines are located at Red Lodge, at the terminus of the Rocky Fork Rail- road. These beds are in the lignitic formation of the cretaceous rocks, and the coal-beds of this formation have been traced all the way from Bear Tooth mountain on the west to Clark's fork on the east. Some twelve different beds of good coal have been opened within a mile of Red Lodge, but only five of these have been worked. The output of these mines now is very large and can be increased to supply any prospective demand.

A coal-bed has been opened near Nye City. Its extent and value are not known.

RAVALLI COUNTY.

Coal beds have been opened in two places in Ravalli county, below Stevensville and on the east side of the valley.

TETON COUNTY.

Very little work has been done on the coal beds of Teton county, but the outcrops are numerous and such as indicate a large area of coal next to the mountains on the west.

Two beds of good coal have been opened in the bluffs of Birch creek, some six miles below the junction of Dupuyer creek. The position of the rocks which contain these coal beds, and the lay of the land indicate that these beds under- lie a large area of adjacent country.

Dry Fork coal mines .- South of the above locality, in T. 28 N., R. 5 W., coal appears in two places. As the country is higher than this coal bed on three sides and over a large area, it probably underlies a wide reach of the adjoin- ing bench and bottom lands. What appears to be the same bed crops out again on the Muddy, north of Bynum's in T. 26 N., R. 6 W., section 24. These croppings of coal, all apparently of the same bed as the npper one on Birch creek, indicates that the whole conntry between the 112th and 113th degrees of west longitude from Greenwich and from the Marias to the Teton, is underlaid by the Birch creek coal beds.

There are several onterops of coal on the north fork of the Sun river, which indicate an extensive coal area.

VALLEY COUNTY.

Coal has been reported in several places in this unsettled county. There has been but little demand for the coals and they have not been developed.

YELLOWSTONE COUNTY.

The Bull mountain coal-field is the most noted coal deposit in that part of the State. The mountain is composed of horizontal strata of the coal-bearing rocks left by the forces which denuded the surrounding country. It lies be- tween the heads of Wild Horse and Parrot creek, tributaries of the Musselshell and Razor creek, a tributary of the Yellowstone, and nearly half way between the two rivers. It covers an area of some fifty square miles; and

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this whole area is underlaid with many coal beds: three or four only are thick enough to work. The thickest, or Mammoth Bed, has from ten to fifteen feet of workable coal, and will yield about 500,000,000 tons; and the other beds will yield about 300,000,000 tons

more, or in all 800,000,000 tons of available coal in Bull mountains. But this coal is a lig- nite.

So far as known Beaver Head has shown no workable coal beds. This county must rest its fame upon the wonderful metallic veins in it.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE INDIANS OF MONTANA -- AN APPEAL FOR THEIR PROTECTION -- THE WISDOM OF GRANT AND CLEVELAND INDIANS NOT DYING OUT -- A DEMAND FOR AN ARMY OF MOUNTED POLICE IN MONTANA.

P ERHAPS the time was not ripe when President Grant proposed to turn the In- dian agencies over to the army; but what- ever may have been his reason for retreat- ing from this wise proposition he had the grandest opportunity of his administration to do good. That it was within the law, despite the cry to the contrary, when he tried to turn out the agents, the following from the Execu- tive Mansion makes clear. Cleveland has done what Grant desired to do and did not.

Indians respect army officers, but they do not, nor can they, comparatively, respect the average Indian agent from civil ranks. They have found the agent grasping always, often cowardly and untruthful. Yon might as well hope to have your child improve under the in- struction of a teacher it despises as expect an Indian to do any good with the average civilian agent to instruct and control him. But with the army officer this child of nature is changed: his whole bearing is better in his presence. The army officer is, like himself, a soldier, brave and ready to die. He has had it from his fa-

thers, and he believes instinctively that an army officer never lies, by word or deed, nor turns his back in battle to his foes. The little order signed by Grover Cleveland and which means so much to the red man reads thus:

EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, June 17, 1893.

Pursuant to a provision of chapter 164 of the laws of the first session of the Fifty-second Con- gress, passed on the 13th day of July, 1892, which reads as follows:

Provided, That from and after the passage of this act the President shall detail officers of the United States Army to act as Indian agents at all agencies where vacancies from any cause may hereafter occur, who, while acting as snch agents, shall be under the orders and direction of the Secretary of the Interior, except at the agencies where, in the opinion of the President, the public service would be better promoted by the appointment of a civilian.

I hereby detail the following officers of the United States Army to act as Indian agents at the agencies set opposite their respective nanies:

GROVER CLEVELAND.

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This important document bore the names of twenty officers. Seven more were soon added, others later; so that now more than half the Indians in the Union are in full charge of the army, according to the official report sent to me from Washington. Pray heaven that there may be no returning from this noble course. It is the most important thing pending in the scales of futurity for Montana.

There are more Indians in, and in striking distance of, Montana to-day, within a half decade of the close of the nineteenth century, than ever before in all their history. I have no means of proving this exactly, for the forty or more re- ports sent me by the Indian Bureau are more than unreliable, made so by the cupidity of In- dian agents who, as a rule, reported many more Indians than were in sight. An agent who conld report 500 Indians with, in reality, but one-fifth that number, had a good margin for profits in taking for himself and friends the other four-fifths of supplies and ammunitions; besides, a truthful report might involve a dis- establishment of his agency. It will be re- membered that attempts to get at the facts by polling the Indians on the great Sioux Reserva- tion only recently caused a rebellion among the Indians there who also had an interest in double and treble rations; and out of this, to some ex- tent, sprung the trouble which ended in the death of Sitting Bull. Still, in the face of all these volumes of statistics, I take the responsi- bility of saying that there are more Indians in Montana and within easy reach of her bounds to-day than ever before, and they are increasing. Now that the army has entire charge of the In - dians and all that concerns them we shall have exact reports year after year, and, barring war or pestilence, they will show an annual increase of numbers.

While a guest of Lord Lorne at Quebec, at the time when he was Governor-General of Canada, I, in the line of this work, found that this was true of the Indians of the British Do- minion. Both the Princess Louise and his lordship, humane, observant and equipped with the best means possible of gaining information, assured me that the Indians, when civilization could reach them and keep down their disposi- tion for tribal wars, were better in every way than ever before .*

Let ine observe in passing that the British, unlike ourselves, always have a strong arm with- in reach of the Indians. As to which of the two is the more humane policy no good man will debate.

Having said that there are more Indians in Montana to-day than ever before, I will go a step further and say that there are probably as many on this continent as ever before, possibly more. True, Columbus is quoted by theorists on the Indian themne as having said that seven- eights of the Indians had perished from the country within his own observation; but even if he ever said such a thing it could not have applied to a land he never saw.

* The word "Nez Perces" is French, and means "pierced noses," and is derived from the fact that, in ancient days, they often pierced the cartilage of the nose, and inserted pieces of bone, and other "jewelry," that might well be considered more ornamental than useful. This beastly practice appears to have been nearly extinct when Lewis and Clarke visited them, and I believe is en- tirely so now. These Indians are fast becoming civilized, and now farm to a considerable extent, a large proportion of their country being well adapted to agricultural pur - suils.

Here is a practical refutation of the time-honored lie, that intercourse with the whites is an injury to Indians. Let any one take Lewis and Clarke's journal, written sixty years ago, when few of the western tribes bad ever seen a white man, and follow them in their journey to the mouth of the Columbia, and he will find that the Indians along their route are, almost without exception, ten times better off to-day than they were then. They have more to eat, are infinitely better clothed, have more horses, do not live in such constant fear of their neighbors, and some of them are even beginning to believe that this is so .-- Granville Stuart, in Montana As It Is, page 77.

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HISTORY OF MONTANA.

The heart of Mexico city stands to-day where the Montezumas placed it; the cathedral and the president's palace stand where stood the temple to the Sun, reared out of its ruins; yet the cypress tree under which Cortez sat down to weep, out in the wilderness, after having been beaten from the city, stands to-day within the city stores and shops and saloons all around the iron case that protects it. This shows the city to be many times larger than Cortez found it, four-fifths of its inhabitants being Indians. This sort of thing obtains nearly all over Mexico, showing an increase in the number of Indians, despite the Spanish wars.

Go with me one step further. There never were any "mound-builders" on this continent, or mounds, such as theorists believed them to be. The plain fact is that when the waters began to recede down the great incline toward the gulf, leaving Iowa and other coral-covered sea beds with little islands peeping up here and there, from the mountains of the east to the mountains of the west, the nomad came by in his canoe, caught fish, fowl, game, made camps on favored spots where ice had left drift and stone above the water as age on age went by; and so the mounds grew. Pipes, pottery, bones, bits of copper, but everything except their dead scattered about, lost, buried in the debris of camp, through unnumbered thousands of sea- sons; and even after " the dry land appeared" the mounds grew for ages, from camps during inundations.

This is a new reading of these old pages of bone and stone and potter's field; but not mine.

I took it from the lips of Captain Eades, at his table in New Orleans, with Congressmen Breckenridge of Arkansas and Sumner of Cali- fornia also listening and believing. Later, on going down the delta of the great river where

his work called him during one of the perennial inundations, he pointed out mound-builders at their work,-men with derrick and barrow build- ing little islands back in the edge of the woods in some more favored place than the bank and levee on which to save their families and cattle; and these, believe me, outside of the ancient campers, whatever toppling of high-built theories may follow, are the only real mound-builders this continent ever knew. I concede that these campers on the slowly rising islands who hard- ened copper implements and fashioned pots of stone and clay, like the Toltecs or the Aztecs, or had commerce with nomads who did, were some degrees above the wild men once found in these vast valleys,-that they never, first or last, were numerous. Think of Daniel Boone and his brother spending a whole winter shooting buffalo in Kentucky at a time when to meet an Indian was to kill or be killed! Think of one of the two returning for their families and leav- ing the other alone for months on months, yet never being seen by savages till the incoming train of voyagers was discerned; then a battle, then the deadly Blue Licks, which gave a name to our language. Like the first chapters in the mighty story of Montana, the Indians were not there, in any numbers to speak of, when the white man came. He came after the white man, as coyotes come after you pitch camp, and they smell the frying bacon. No, the Indians were never numerous on this continent, never, perhaps, more numerous than now, certainly never so numerous in Montana as in these con- cluding years of the nineteenth century.

But for all his pancity of numbers he has, in the history of this continent, beaten us terribly four times. He beat the Irish general, Brad- dock, and Colonel George Washington of Vir- ginia; he beat the Scotch general, St. Clair, with

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his Revolutionary veterans; he beat Daniel Boone with all his kindred and the flower of Kentucky at Blue Licks; and he beat Custer and destroyed the very core of his dashing Seventh.

This brings ns back in line and ready for the further assertion that the great, final Indian fight has not yet been made. The danger is not with the 60,000 Indians of the Sonth, who have, more or less, melted into their environ- ments. It never was, even at the worst, so very great in the South. Observe that all these dis- asters took place far to the north, in line with Montana, and at the end of each disaster the nation cried out the words of Braddock as he moaned all the time that was left to him after his defeat: "Who would have thought it? Ah! Who would have thought it?" In those battles the Indian knew as much about the trade of war, to which he was born, as now, but he was not equipped for it; nor did he then know, as now, the address and divine valor of the white man. But he has everything now, everything.

I have quoted Howard, showing that the Indian will follow his "dreamer" straight into death and against all reason. He simply be- comes insane from fasting and " ghost-dancing," and is fit only to fight only as a maniac fights. Look at Sitting Bull and his braves. The dreamer need not necessarily be of any particu- lar tribe or place. All wild, or half wild, In- dians will follow any dreamer. And so I again say that the great Indian fight has yet to be fought, unless extreme caution be at once in- augurated and constantly maintained for years; and the battle ground will be Montana. Not that they will ever again inundate the valleys as of old. They are now numbered and named and inust keep their places; they are in the best possible hands,-best for the red man and the white; but let a dreamer arise to-morrow and

what could a force of 1,600 of the line and four score officers do with thousands of armed and insane savages ?* True we could throw in regi- ment on regiment; we could and would fight and destroy these imaginative creatures at a cost of a few thousand, maybe many thou- sand, soldiers; but to what good? In the name of humanity, humanity toward the Indian, if you please, give the Indian protection, pro- tection from himself. This is a repetition of what I have before said. Bear with me: the case demands it.

There must be, I repeat it, an army sent into Montana and maintained there equal to the fighting force of the Indians. This is the only real kindness to the Indian. It is the only se- curity for life, property and treasure of this re- public. Ignore and despise what I entreat? Do it, and again will go up the wail, "Who would have thought it? Oh, who would have thought it?"

More than that, this army of at least 25,000 should be splendidly mounted, equipped and made up of armies who know the country as In- dians know it, so far as possible, and they should be paid as generously at least as the mounted police of Canada. Montana has earned many times over the right to have this army; and, I repeat, it is not only humanity but the only true economy.

*1ST INDORSEMENT.

ADJUTANT GENERAL'S OFFICE, September 15, 1894 .- Respectfully returned to the Acting Secretary of War. According to the latest returns received, there are in Montana 84 officers and 1,660 enlisted men.

THOMAS M. VINCENT, Acting Adjutant General.

2D INDORSEMENT.

WAR DEPARTMENT, September 15, 1894 .- Respectfully returned to Mr. Joaquin Miller, Oakland, California, in- viting attention to the report of the Acting Adjutant General in the preceding indorsement.

By order of the Acting Secretary of War:

JOHN B. RANDOLPH, Acting Chief Clerk.

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I have spared mention of my last fight. It was long and disastrous. Captain Waymire, now Judge Waymire of San Francisco, com- manded the regulars; I commanded the volun- teers. We followed the ghost dancers for months and then fought them for days, leaving our dead unburied; but I only set out to say that during the long fight we heard Indians banter and challenge us in nearly every tongue my men had ever heard. General Howard, fighting over this same ground ten years later, tells us that he could not get reliable guides even from the Warm Springs. They had all gone to fol- low the "dreamer;" and these Warm Springs Indians have been civilized nearly half a cen- tury. I repeat again and again, they will do this in Montana. Look at Joseph; the more civilized he became the better he fought and followed his dreamer.

I know prophecy is not history. It will be- come so in this case if some respect is not paid to what I have gone out of my way and taken the risk of derision to say. I have even intro- duced much of my own experience with Indians to show that I know them as few do, and you are quite at liberty to laugh at that also and call it egotism if you like. With this prophecy and this appeal for Montana, which has done and endured so much and yet has had so little, I end this book. How far it falls below what I hoped to perform no one can know better than myself; for my theme was the most magnificent that man ever laid hand to. It has dazzled me and I have not done well. I can only say I have, in the brief time allowed me, done my best, and that the fanlts are not of the heart; and so, leaning heavily on those who have done the better parts of this work, I write

THE END.

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An illustrated history of the state of Montana, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 162

Author: Miller, Joaquin, 1837-1913. cn Publication date: 1894 Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis pub. co. Number of Pages: 1216

Author: Miller, Joaquin, 1837-1913. cn
Publication date: 1894
Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis pub. co.
Number of Pages: 1216