An illustrated history of the state of Montana, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 8

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

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idea of advancement.

We fall to wondering what could have made the difference between these Indians of the Co- lumbia and those of the Missouri. The soil is certainly equally fertile and the climate equally favorable; if advantage is anywhere it is with the former. Perhaps the difference grew from the difference in diet,-the one subsisting on fish, taken without effort, the other on flesh and taken not withont great exertion and often great peril.

of robbers lying in ambush. But the poor pony kept me in my seat, faced about for a second, as if to give me a chance to defend myself, and then plunged on down the mountain two miles to the ferry. There on the edge of the river he fell dead from a bullet wound that must have meaut death from the first, for his nostrils were streaming with blood all the way down the mountain.

When the Indian war swept the Nez Perce country the Indians gathered about 5,000 horses into a valley that fronted on the steep bluffs of the Columbia river, and there, with the great white mountains at their back, pre- pared to make their last desperate stand. In the battle that followed they were defeated and the small fraction of them that remained unkilled put to flight. The horses, shut in by the steep mountains on one side and the steep river bluffs on the other, had to be left behind.

When the battle had closed the soldiers or the volun- teers (for only a part were regulars) made a rush for the horses. But they could not lay hands on one of them or approach them. Their splendid heads, with great manes, tossed and tumbled, were in the air, and they went round and round in a circle in the pretty pent-in little valley and along the sheer edge of the bluff of the river.

And now for the first time it was noticed that they were under a boy herder. The boy was unarmed, entirely naked, and as red as copper. He rode a black stallion with a neck like a bull's, and literally mantled and clothed with mane. The boy had no bridle, but wove his hands into the mane, and thus guided the horse at will, at the head of the herd. Sometimes he laid his face down on the proud neck, and buried it in the mass of hair, which matched his own in its glossy blackness. Hun- dreds of men tried to stop or stay the herd in its wild flight, but tried in vain. The green grass disappeared beneath the strokes of spurning feet and dust began to rise in clouds.

The volunteers dropped on their knees here and there around the edge of the circle aud began to fire at the boy. They were deadly marksmen and they had no care to spare either horse or rider. But the boy did not seem to want to be spared any more than did the horse. At last a bullet struck him in the face. His body flew high into he air, then fell and rolled in the dust.

HISTORY OF MONTANA.

The horses now divided as they came by. Their nostrils were distended at the smell of blood, and their eyes ablaze at the sight of their young keeper in the dust. It seemed as if they truly knew and understood all the fearful tragedy of that day and hour. On the second round after the boy fell the black leader seemed to run sidewise, his eyes fastened to his little dead master until they looked frightful from under the black mane. He plunged on around and came to the very edge of the beetling basalt

bluff. Then there was the sight as of a sculptured image of a horse poised in midair; and a mad, wild cry, such as a horse makes but once, a cry indescribable, that filled the valley. Men looked away, and when they looked back the black statue was gone. Then, faithful to the leader, over the bluff into the foaming, white river went another horse; and then ten, twenty, fifty, five hundred, the whole five thousand! Not one of all the herd was left to the invading victors, and the stream was literally choked with the dead.

CHAPTER VI.

DIPLOMACY-BATTLES ON PAPER-ROBERT E. LEE-JEFFERSON DAVIS- THOMAS H. BENTON AND JOHN C. FREMONT.

W E NOW approach a period of bush- whacking warfare for Montana,-di- plomacy, war on paper, plans of prime ministers and sly moves on the broad chess- board of nations at cabinet meetings, while the line between England and the United States was still plastic and not exactly established.

" Shall I tell you, my lords, how to maintain the integrity of England through all time? My lords, we must get land. My lords, we must get land ! get land ! get land, and never let go one single handful of sand !"

This little speech, under the great bell tower on the banks of the Thames, tells the entire and one controlling policy of England first, last, and all the time, more pointedly than can pages of my own.

Benton was fresh from the late war with England. Jackson, Jefferson, all the great men of the young giant Republic were his per- sonal friends. Had he lacked knowledge of England's persistent policy of forever getting and getting and never letting go, these, his elders, would have told him. But it is pretty

clear from his conduct that he had kept his face lifted toward Montana ever since she parted company with his adopted State and ceased to be a portion of Missouri.

We find Robert E. Lee early at St. Louis, the headquarters of our army operations, while yet young in the service. His work was none other than that of watching and confronting the British lion in the great Northwest. But the United States seemed never to have England's lust for land. Indeed, so far from desiring to "get land, and get land, and get land," she was oftentimes quite willing to let go her hold when it could be done with honor.

Of course such vacillation and conservative action encouraged England. She kept crowd- ing down and claiming land all along the line from the heart of Montana to the mouth of the Oregon; and all the time the young Hercules, Montana, lay sleeping on in the cradle while this great serpent was gliding down from the north: the lesser one, Spain, had years before come up from the south, to strangle the infant.

HISTORY OF MONTANA.

Jefferson Davis and John C. Fremont were now of those sent to watch the aggressive neighbor to the north, the one from the south having long since given place to France, and France, as said before, having sold all her vast possessions to the United States through Na- poleon.

But the Saxon, held at bay, was not to be shaken off so easily as were the Latins. The story of England's claims to Oregon and all the tributaries of the Oregon river, which included everything even down to the domains of Spain, is a story of shrewd diplomacy and one of dogged persistence and effrontery.

The Athenaeum, London, March, 1844, tauntingly said: "Lieutenant Fremont has been appointed to the survey of the Oregon Territory. We are heartily glad of it. He will be sure to do his work well, and if our topographical engineers labor in the same style and spirit we may reckon on obtain- ing, through their joint efforts, an accurate knowledge of that country, so that we may be able to calculate, on safe ground, the exact amount of blood and treasure which may be prudently expended in the conquest of it."

But we must not anticipate. This man, Fre- mont, had been in the field some years before this date, and, as indicated by the paragraph from the Athenaeum, a publication which was looked upon as a sort of governmental gazette, had already won a name not only as an explorer but also as a reliable man who was "sure to do his work well."

Let us turn back to his first expedition up the Missouri and read in his own words of Montana as he found her more than fifty years ago.

"We left St. Louis early in April, 1839, on board the Antelope, one of the American Fur Company's steamboats, which, taking its custom-

ary advantage of the annual rise in the Missouri from the snows of the Rocky mountains, was about starting on its regular voyage to the trad- ing-posts on the upper waters of the river.

"For nearly two months and a half we were struggling against the current of the turbid river, which in that season of high waters was so swift and strong that sometimes the boat would for moments stand quite still, seeming to pause to gather strength, until the power of steam asserted itself and she would tight her way into a smooth reach. In places the river was so embarrassed with snags that it was diffi- cult to thread a way among them in face of the swift current and treacherous channel, constantly changing. Under these obstacles we usually laid up at night, making fast to the shore at some convenient place, where the crew could cut a supply of wood for the next day. It was a pleasant journey, as little disturbed as on the ocean. Onee above the settlements of the lower Missouri, there were no sounds to disturb the stillness but the echoes of the high-pressure steam-pipe, which traveled far along and around the shores, and the incessant crumbling away of the banks and bars, which the river was stead- ily undermining and destroying at one place to build up at another. The stillness was an im- pressive feature, and the constant change in the character of the river shores offered always new interest as we steamed along. At times we trav- eled by high perpendicular escarpments of light- colored rock, a gray and yellow marl, made pic- turesque by shrubbery or trees; at others the river opened out into a broad delta-like expanse, as if it were approaching the sea. At length, on the seventieth day, we reached Fort Pierre, the chief post of the American Fur Company. This is on the right or western bank of the river, about one thousand and three hundred miles

HISTORY OF MONTANA.

from St. Louis. On the prairie, a few miles away, was a large village of Yankton Sionx. Here we were in the heart of the Indian coun- try and near the great buffalo ranges. Here the Indians were sovereign .*

"A herd of buffalo had been discovered, com- ing down to water. In a few moments the buf- falo horses were saddled and the hunters mount-

ed, each with a smooth-bore single or double- barreled gun, a handkerchief bound fillet-like around the head, and all in the scantiest cloth- ing. Conspicuous among them were Dixon and Louison. To this latter I then, and thereafter, attached myself.

"My horse was a good one, an American, but grass-fed and prairie-bred. Whether he had

* "But Montana had not been left idle and empty through all the years that lay between the going of Lewis and Clarke and the coming of Fremont. The following read- able and perfectly reliable sketch by Dr. James Stu- art, one of the discoverers of gold in Montana, shows that forts had been built and soil broken by the plowshares at least a decade before Fremont's time. He says:

" Ft. Union was the first fort built on the Missouri riv- er, above the mouth of the Yellowstone. In the summer of 1829, Kenneth Mckenzie, a trader from the Upper Mis- sissippi, near where St. Paul, Minnesota, is now located, with a party of fifty men, came across to the Upper Mis- souri river looking for a good place to establish a trad- ing-post for the American Fur Company. (Mckenzie was a member of said company.) They selected a site a short distance above the mouth of the Yellowstone river, on the north bank of the Missouri, and built a stockade, two hundred feet square, of logs about twelve inches in diameter and twelve feet long, set perpendicularly, put- ting the lower end two feet in the ground, with two block-house bastions on diagonal corners of the stockade, twelve feet square, and twenty high, pierced with loop" holes. The dwelling houses, warehouses, and store were built inside, but not joining the stockade, leaving a space of about four feet between the walls of the buildings and the stockade. All the buildings were covered with earth, as a protection against fire by incendiary ludians. There was only one entrance to the stockade-a large double- leaved gate, about twelve feet from post to post; with a small gate, three and a half by five feet, in one of the leaves of the main gate, which was the one mostly used, the large gate being only opened occasionally when there were no Indians in the vicinity of the fort. The houses, warehouses, and store were all built about the same height as the stockade. The above description, with the exception of the area inclosed by the stockade, will de- scribe nearly all the forts built by traders on the Missouri river, from St. Louis to the head-waters. They are easily built, convenient, and good for defense. The fort was built to trade with the Assiniboins, who were a large tribe of Indians ranging trom White Earth river, on the north side of the Missouri, to the mouth of Milk river, and north into the British Possessions. They were a peaceable, inoffensive people, armed with bows and ar- rows, living in lodges made of buffalo skins, and roving from place to place, according to the seasons of the year, occupying certain portions of their country in the sum-

mer, and during the winter remaining where they could be protected from the cold with plenty of wood. For fear of trouble with them the traders did not sell them guns; but when an Indian proved to be a good hunter and a good friend to the traders by his actions and talk, he could occasionally borrow a gun and a few loads of ammunition to make a hunt. The principal articles of trade were alcohol, blankets, blue and scarlet cloth, sheet- ing (domestics), ticking, tobacco, knives, fire-steels, ar- row-points, files, brass wire (different sizes), beads, brass tacks, leather belts (from four to ten inches wide), silver ornaments for bair, shells, axes, hatchets, etc .- alcohol being the principal article of trade, until after the pass- ing of an act of Congress (June 30, 1834) prohibiting it under severe penalties. Prior to that time, there were no restrictions on the traffic. But notwithstanding the trad- ers were often made to suffer the penalty of the law, they continued to smuggle large quantities of spirits into the Indian country, until within the last few years ( ¿. e., 1873). St. Louis was the point from which the traders bronght their goods. They would start from there with Mackinaw boats, fifty feet long, ten feet wide on the bottom and twelve feet on top, and four feet high, loaded with about fourteen tons of merchandise to each boat, and a crew of about twelve men, as soon as the ice went out of the river, usually about the Ist of March, and would be six months in getting to Ft. Union, the boat having to be towed the greater part of the way by putting a line ashore, and the men walking along the bank pulling the boat. Every spring, as soon as the ice went out of the river, boats would start from the fort of St. Louis, each boat loaded with three thousand robes, or its equivalent in other peltries, with a crew of five men to each boat, ar- riving at St. Louis in about thirty days. All the employes in the Indian country lived entirely on meat-the outfit of provisions for from fifty to seventy five men being two barrels of flour, one sack coffee, one barrel sugar, one barrel salt, and a little soda and pepper. After the fort was established, and proved to be a permanent trading point, large quantities of potatoes, beets, onions, turnips, squashes, corn, etc., were raised, sufficient for each year's consumption. The wages for common laborers were two hundred and twenty dollars for the round trip from St. Louis to Ft. Union, and back again to St. Louis, taking from fifteen to sixteen months' time to make it. Carpen- ters and blacksmiths were paid three hundred dollars per annum. The traders (being their own interpreters)

HISTORY OF MONTANA.

gained his experience among the whites or In- dians I do not know, but he was a good hunter and knew about buffalo, and badger holes as well, and when he did get his foot into one it was not his fault.

"Now I was to see the buffalo. This was an event on which my imagination had been dwell- ing. I was about to realize the tales the mere

were paid five hundred dollars per annum. The store and warehouse, or two stores, were huilt on each side of the gate, and on the side next to the interior of the fort the two buildings were connected by a gate similar to the main gate, the space between the buildings and stockade filled in with pickets, making a large, strong-room, with- out any roof or covering overhead. In each store, or stores, ahout five feet from the ground, was a hole eight- een inches square, with a strong shutter-fastening inside of the store, opening into the space or room between the gates. When the Indians wanted to trade, the inner gate was closed; a man would stand at the outer gate until all the Indians that wanted to trade, or as many as the space between the gate would contain, had passed in; then he would lock the outer gate, and go through the trading hole into the store. The Indians would then pass what- ever articles each one had to trade through the hole to the trader, and he would throw out of the hole whatever the Indian wanted, to the value in trade of the article re- ceived. When the party were done trading, they were turned out and another party admitted. In that way of trad- ing, the Indians were entirely at the mercy of the traders, for they were penned up in a room, and could all be killed through loop-holes in the stores without any danger to the traders. The articles brought by the Indians for trade were buffalo-robes, elk, deer, antelope, bear, wolf, beaver, otter, fox, mink, martin, wild-cat, skunk, and badger skins. The country was literally covered with buffalo, and the Indians killed them by making " surrounds." The Indians moved and camped with from one to four hundred lodges together-averaging about seven souls to the lodge; and when they needed meat the chief gave orders to make a "surround," when the whole camp, men, women, and the largest of the children, on foot and on horseback, would go under direction of the soldiers, and form a circle around as many buffalo as they wanted to kill-from three hundred to one thousand buffalo. They would then all start slowly l'or a common point, and as soon as the circle commenced to grow smaller, the slaugh- ter would begin, and in a short time all inside the circle would be killed. The buffalo do not, as a general rule, undertake to break through unless the circle is very small but run round and round the circumference next to the Indians until they are all killed.

" Ft. Union burned down in 1831, and was rebuilt by McKenzie in the same year. The new fort was two hun- dred and fifty feet square, with stone foundation, with

telling of which was enough to warm the tacit- urn Renville into enthusiastic expression, and to ronse all the hunter in the excitable Froviere.

The prairie over which we rode was rolling, and we were able to keep well to leeward and out of sight of the herd. Riding silently up a short slope, we came directly upon them. Not a hundred yards below us was the great, com-

similar buildings, but put up in more woman-like man- ner, inside of the stockade. The fort stood until 1868, when it was pulled down by order of the commanding officer at Ft. Buford, five miles below Union.

"Robert Campbell and Sublette built a trading-post where Ft. Buford now stands, in 1833. They also, the same year, built a trading-post at Frenchman's Point, sixty miles ahove Union, the next year (1834). They sold out to the American Fur Company, who destroyed both posts the same year. Campbell went to St. Louis and went into business on Main street. Sublette went to the Green river country in command of a party of trappers.

" In 1832, the first steamboat, named the Yellow- stone, arrived at Ft. Union. From that time, every spring, the goods were brought up by steamboats, hut the robes, peltries, etc., were shipped from the fort every spring by Mackinaws to St. Louis.

"In the winter of 1830, Mckenzie, desirous of estab- lishing a trade with the Blackfeet and Gros Ventrees,* sent a party of four men-Burger, Dacoteau, Morceau, and one other man-in search of the Indians, and to see if there was sufficient inducement to establish a trading- post. The party started up the Missouri river with dog- sleds, to haul a few presents for the Indians-bedding, amunition, moccasins, etc. They followed the Missouri to the mouth of the Marias river, thence up the Marias to the mouth of Badger creek, without seeing an Indian, finding plenty of game of all kinds, and plenty of beaver in all the streams running into the Missouri. Every night when they camped they hoisted the American flag, so that if they were seen by any Indians during the night they would know it was a white man's camp; and it was very fortunate for them that they had a flag to use in that man- ner, for the night they camped at the mouth of Badger creek they were discovered by a war party of Black-feet, wbo surrounded them during the night, and as they were about firing on the camp, they saw the flag and did not fire, but took the party prisoners. A part of the Indians wanted to kill the whites and take what they had, but through the exertions and influence of a chief named Good-Woman, they were not molested in person or property, but went in safety to the Blackfoot camp on Belly river, and stayed with the camp until spring. Dur- ing the winter they explained their business, and pre- vailed upon about one hundred Blackfeet to go with them to Union to see Mckenzie. They arrived at Union about *The Minatarees of Lewis and Clarke.

HISTORY OF MONTANA.

pact mass of animals, moving slowly along, feed- ing as they went, and making the loud incessant grunting noise peculiar to them. There they were.

"The moment's pause that we made on the sum- mit of the slope was enough to put the herd in motion. Instantly as we rose the hill, they saw us. There was a sudden halt, a confused wav-

the 1st of April, 1831, and Mckenzie got their consent to build a trading-post at the mouth of the Marias. The In- dians stayed about one month, then started home to tell the news to their people. Mckenzie then started Kipp,* with seventy-five men and an outfit of Indian goods, to build a fort at the mouth of the Marias river, and he had the fort completed before the winter of 1831. It was only a temporary arrangement to winter in, in order to find out whether it would pay to establish a permanent post. Next spring, Col. Mitchell (afterward colonel in Doniphan's expedition to Mexico) built some cabins on Brule bottom, to live in until a good fort could be built. The houses at the mouth of the Marias were burned after the company moved to Brule bottom. Alex. Culbertson was sent by Mckenzie to relieve Mitchell, and to build a pocket- stockade fort two hundred feet square on the north bank of the Missouri river, which he completed during the fall of 1832. This fort was occupied for eleven years, until Ft. Lewis was built by Culbertson on the south side of the Missouri river, near Pablois' Island, in the summer of 1844. Ft. Brule was then abandoned and burned. In 1846 Ft. Lewis was abandoned, and Ft. Benton was built by Culbertson, about seven miles below Ft. Lewis, and on the north bank of the Missouri river. It was two hun- dred and fifty feet square, built of adobes laid upon the ground without any foundation of stone, and is now staud- ing (1875), occupied as a military post. The dwellings, warehouses, stores, etc., were all built of adobes. The Piegans, Blackfeet and Blood Indians, all talking the same language, claimed and occupied the country from the Missouri river to the Saskatchawan river. Prior to the building of the winter-quarters at the mouth of the Mari- as, they had always traded with the Hudson Bay Com- pany at the Prairie Fort or Summerset House, both on the Saskatchawan. There was a bitter rivalry between the Hudson Bay Company and the American Fur Com- pany. The Hudson Bay Company often sent men to in- duce the confederated Blackfeet to go north and trade, and the Indians said they were offered large rewards to kill all the traders on the Missouri river, and destroy the trading-posts. McKenzie wrote to Gov. Bird, the bead man of the Hudson Bay Company in the north, in regard to the matter, and Bird wrote back to Mckenzie, sayiog: " When you know the Blackfeet as well as I do, you will know that they do not need any inducements to commit depredations."

ering movement, and then a headlong rout; the hunters in their midst. How I got down that short hillside I never knew. From the moment I saw the herd I never saw the ground again until all was over. I remember, as the charge was made, seeing the bulls in the rear turn, then take a few bounds forward, and then, turning for a last look, join the headlong flight.

" At the time the Blackfeet commenced to trade on the Missouri, they did not have any robes to trade : they only saved what they wanted for their own use. The Hudson Bay Company only wanted furs of different kinds. The first season the Americans did not get any robes, but trad- ed for a large quantity of beaver, otter, marten, etc. They told the Indians they wanted robes, and from that time the Indians made them their principal article of trade. The company did not trade provisions of any kind to the Indians, but when an Indian made a good trade, he would get a spoonful of sugar, which he would put in his med- icine-bag to use in sickness, when all other remedies failed.

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An illustrated history of the state of Montana, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 8

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