USA > Montana > Blaine County > In the land of Chinook; or, The story of Blaine county > Part 2
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I have met many of these men and have heard of many more and must say that while many of them at this time are touchy on the subject and would not like to have their names mentioned, others do not care, as it is known that they live with these women as affectionate husbands and fathers. They are married to them by the white man's law and by that same law do they protect them. The writer does not believe that the mixing of races is the proper thing as the law of caste and congenality precludes such a union.
The white man did not woo the woman in the prescribed white man's way as that would not do when dealing with a race that had a different law and that was governed by different methods. If they were to secure the Indian woman who appeared to be the most attractive to them, they had to pay the price as, the Red man did. This price is, or was, not a general one, but depended probably as much on the wealth and standing of the Indian family as it did on the woman herself, that is on her per- sonal charms.
Some times the price would be a horse or maybe a bottle of whiskey that would soon disappear into the recess made for such liquors, with the result that as soon as the effects of the "fire- water" had died out the Brave would forget that he had made the trade and trouble would occur.
I remember that one of the men of my acquaintance, while in a reminiscent mood, told me some of his experiences. He said: "I have had seven or eight Indian wives in my long and varied experience on the plains. Let me see, how did I get the first one? Oh, yes, I traded a second-hand cook stove for her; and the second one, rung-in on me." Now probably the Indian woman was not unwise when she "rung in" as she found that she could get plenty to eat for what ever service she could render her master.
Now this man was somewhat of a philosopher and I am going to give the result of some of my conversations with him, though some of the material recorded will be, in a way, a repetition.
"There was one custom that was used by the Indian woman, and one of my wives used it on our children, and that was the
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IN THE LAND OF CHINOOK
placing of the new born child in the baby sack in which there was a generous amount of pulverized horse or buffalo dung. The child is swathed in this until about one year old. Why it is done I do not know but believe it is to prevent chafing." How is it that one finds old men with young women as wives and the young men with the old women for wives? was asked. "The young fellows never had property with which to buy the girl of his age-and as marriage was simply to satisfy nature-they could, for a nominal price, secure the old and cast-off wife of some wealthy tribesman."
The Indian woman was the man's property and for infidelity, his right, an undisputed one, was to kill or disfigure her. This, no doubt, bred fear in her to such an extent that she was gen- erally, in the early days, virtuous. This may be a poor defini- tion for the word virtue, but probably many people are compelled to lead virtuous lives-not because of their innate refinement that one must respect in what he knows to be a good man or woman- but for the same reason that the Indian woman remained true to her lord and master-fear.
When the woman found a new master-thru the cupidity of the old one-she must assume her new duties and proceed along the new lines and new places that would be opened for her thru her new owner. Such a condition could not have proved conducive to the highest development of virtue.
The woman who holds her passion in control, because her husband is a brute, who holds her life in his hands, cannot arise to the same high plane as does the one who is governed by love for and a desire to please her mate. The Indian woman was, then, the slave that must do the bidding of the master no matter what that would be. She left his camp fire, her children and the little things which she had gathered about her, for which she must have had some affection, to go to the lodge of any man, no matter how repugnant he might be to her, at the behest of her owner. I want to know who in h-I ever gave any man the right to dominate woman? Surely it must have been a right given by the rules of Hades rather than by a God who is supposed to love.
While there was not and could not be-under such condi- tion-love and respect that is supposed to exist between the more civilized mates, there was an affection for the offspring, borne by both parents. The father would take delight in assisting the son with material wealth to help him become a brave. They all appeared to be proud of relationship and wished to be known as such to the third and fourth generation. There was one peculiar custom which I could never get the reason for and that was the "shame" feeling that the mother-in-law had for the son-in-law.
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THE STORY OF BLAINE COUNTY
She was never supposed to see his face after he had courted or purchased her daughter. She was never to enter his lodge while he was at home.
Several of the stories that will appear in this work will be the stories of men who are squaw-men. They were the men who helped, to some extent, civilize the Indian. And it was from them that much of the early story of the Northwest must be had if had at all.
We find that some of the young men and women-half- breeds if you will-are among the most respected of the inhab- itants, because they behave themselves and try to live upright and decent lives. While it is a fact that many of the unions between the white men of the plains and the Indian women were only matters of convenience, there were other men who were honorable enough to make the union legal.
Affection of white men for their Indian children was not of the same nature that was felt by the white father for the white child. It can be better illustrated by the following story told me by a cowboy who once rode the range of the reservation.
THE COWBOY'S STORY.
"I was riding the range in the vicinity of an Indian reserva- tion and got so I would attend the dances given by them. Their tribal dances were not alone indulged in as they also danced many of the square dances of the whites. I was young and probably foolish. There was one of the young girls with whom I struck up an acquaintance. Often I would drop my bridle lines at their cabin door and call on her. She was, so far as I know, as virtuous as any white girl. One evening, riding that way, I got off my horse and walked into the cabin. As soon as I got in the whole family left. This was, to me, a strange proceeding as it had not occurred before. I made my visit short. Again I called and the old Indian father kissed me on the cheek and then they all left. I asked the girl the meaning of this seeming affection-a thing that I had not experienced before. She simply said: 'My folks like you, in fact would be willing for you to become one of the family.'
"I soon retired and went to camp. A short time after this I was at one of our camps attending to my horse. when one of the men who has been identified with the Indians for years, came in to the stable and watched me for a while. I could see that there was something of importance on his mind although he hesi- tated somewhat in finding an opportunity to express himself. At last he said: 'I notice that you have been frequently, of late, at the Indian dances. I don't like it myself and wish to tell you a
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story. I came into this land when I was a young man. There were no other than Indian women. I was, as you are, healthy and passionate, and proceeded to purchase a woman, then the only way of getting one. That same Indian woman happens to be the little woman I am living with now. Soon nature operated in its usual way and a little dark baby came to our lodge. It was then that I pitied that woman, the mother of my child, and pitied more, the child. This was my fault and I a white man. Well, others came and I have stayed with the woman that I would have wronged by leaving her. I have loved, not as the white father would the child of his loins, but my love for them is more of pity, that I had brought half-castes into existence where they would always be handicapped. Now, my boy, I have told you this little story of my life, hoping that you may never be the father of any little child you will have to pity.'
"To see that little man standing, wrought by his feelings to such an extent that the tears were welling up and flowing down his cheeks, made an impression on me of such a nature that I never went again to see the Indian maiden but lived to know no affectionate pity for my babes as they are the babes of a white mother."
That was only one instance that came to my notice when after material to make a story. One other which I will relate will give much the same results. My narrator said: "I recall that one time I was riding with a cowboy who was of a good family. I shall not tell his name as he is a mighty proud man and might take exceptions to anything of a personal nature. He was so proud that all of his clothes had to come from the east. No clothing that would be shipped for the use of the ordinary cowboy was good enough for this man who had been raised to finer things. This day our conversation turned on the men who had taken Indian women. He said: 'If I had a black bunch of babies as - has I would throw them into the Milk river the same as I would any other animal that I wished to get rid of.' To me that did not sound right. The sequal shows him in a little different light. He secured a woman off the reservation and took her to his cabin. There was an Indian Agent who appeared to have a little higher idea of right than those who had been there before, as he issued an order that white men living with Indian women must either marry them or else bring them back to the reservation and leave them alone. This was not considered by many of the white men as any business of the Agent. My friend said he would do as he pleased. He did not at once take the woman back. Once more the edict came forth to either marry the woman or bring her back. There were no uncertain terms and no fooling in the demand made at that time and on that
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THE STORY OF BLAINE COUNTY
occasion. He loaded up the furniture and took her back and was going to turn her adrift. When the time came he found that he, the son of a noble sire, had unknowingly formed an affection for this little dusky woman and he could not turn her loose. He called in the proper authority and wedded her. Then to his cabin came little dark fellows, not one, but many, and the Milk river never became as the Ganges, the burial place of unwelcome babes, so far as this man was concerned. He lives on the reser- vation and lives for those children as few white fathers ever have lived for theirs." These two instances should be proof of the peculiar affection that the good white man has for his half-breed offspring. They could be multiplied if one would wish to go into the matter to a more thorough extent.
All of the men who came into the Indian country were not men of high class by any means. They were wild and reckless and were only after personal gratification. They were, many of them, the cause of trouble between the whites and Indians. It would not take much of a stretch of the imagination to prove that a man who had gone to live with the Indians when he was a young man could be lead to become a horse thief. There was nothing an Indian would not attempt in the way of securing a horse. A large number of them together would make it an almost impossibility, as they could too readily be seen while try- ing to get their position where they could get the horses with the least amount of danger to themselves. This taught caution, the one thing needed in doing this kind of work. Now the white man who had no high standards could fall into this kind of work and use the Indian as a shield. That is, he could cause the Indian to be suspected, as he was noted for his love for someone else's horse. This was known to have caused much trouble in the early days of the settlement of the wilds of North America.
It is not an easy thing to go to a man and ask him anything of a personal nature. Many of them are like a man of my acquaintance, a man very prominent in the state and one for whom a county was named, from whom I tried to get a story. His reply was: "I only wish I could forget some of the things that have occurred in my life."
Now he is not the only man who wishes to forget. Some of the squaw-men of the reservation, so I have been told, would like to forget. No one will ever write the stirring and true stories of the early days, nor tell the truth about the Rustlers who caused so much trouble among the stockmen. Many a man who would have been hanged, if caught, twenty years ago, is a respected citizen whom no one would ever suspect of having been anything except what he appears at this time to be, a perfect gentleman.
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It can truthfully be said that the men who came to the west and took up the roving life of the Indian did not as a general thing accumulate much property. Nor did they, ordinarily, benefit the Red Man by teaching him thrift and industry. The early life on the plains was of such a nature that men could not stay in any particular place for any given time as they never tried to cultivate the soil or build permanent habitations.
The reason for this is plain; they had to follow the chase for a livelihood and wherever the game went they would go if not deterred by some stronger tribe.
No property that they could get would be anything but per- sonal which only caused them more or less anxiety, as it was a menace rather than a pleasure, as other tribes and people were ever anxious to take it from them.
Their sustenance seemed to be a secured thing, as they could not, in the early days, understand how it would be possible to destroy the numberless buffalo that covered the plains from Mexico to the great lakes of Canada.
I do not believe the ordinary Squaw-man ever found out much of real value concerning the people among whom he went to live. He was not a student of conditions nor did he care to find out any of their peculiarities, or learn what they knew about them- selves.
He worked along the lines of least resistance and simply knew the Indian as a companion on whom he might rely if he was friendly and knew the Indian woman as a matter of convenience as she did the work around his tepee and gratified his physical desires.
And far too many of them were men of no education who were but little higher in the human scale than the people with whom they cast their lots. Let us leave them and not condemn them as we only "see according to our lights."
CHAPTER III.
BUFFALO AND THEIR HUNTERS.
One who never saw the buffalo in the times of plenty, when they roamed the Great Plains in countless numbers from Texas to the Canadian line, could not be made to realize, by written word, even though it might be penned by the most gifted describer of events and conditions, their immense numbers or the wonder- ful life and variety they gave to those same plains.
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BUFFALO ON THE PLAINS.
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THE STORY OF BLAINE COUNTY
The Red Men, in all their picturesque costumes, rode the plains in their chase for food and robes. Under them these herds increased to millions and would have continued to have been their main support for ages, as they killed and saved all portions, and only hunted when in need.
Many years after the advent of the whites the plains were covered with these herds because the whites had not reckoned their value as to hides. Many noted plainsmen got more or less a questionable notoriety by their slaughter of these brutes. Buffalo Bill, for instance, got his name and much of his fame in that way. Bill was one who must have had more or less talent in the adver- tising line as he was in a position to make the most of anything of that nature that came to him. The fact that he was advertised to such an extent that he became the chief guide when the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia came to America to hunt, was the Red Letter Day for Bill. Many a man to whom Bill could not hold a candle, so the writer has been told by the old plainsmen and hunters, have hardly been known to the general public.
CREE HALFBREEDS.
These people were the natural offspring of hunters, as both the father and mother were of that class. They were from Canada and came to the Milk River section to hunt, as there were not many buffalo as far north as they resided. I have an idea that these same people used to hunt in North Dakota before the buffalo were driven to the West along the Missouri.
Louie Shambrow, who came to the Milk river in 1865 came with these people. They were men who were used to the hard conditions of the plains and were always willing to fight the Indians, if necessary, in their struggle for existence. They were a happy people who found enjoyment as they passed. One of the first things they would do on arriving in camp would be to put up the tent or lodge in which they held their dances. They had a floor with them. The one thing that the priest could not do was stop their dance. Many of these people were so fair that they would be taken for whites. They had light hair and blue eyes. Shambrow was for years thought to be one of them, as he was with them when he was only twelve years of age. Not many of them spoke English, so it fell to the lot of Louie to become interpreter.
The conditions along the Milk river were well adapted to the life they were to lead as the buffalo came to know the country as grazing ground. These people built cabins in several places along the Milk River valley and lived in settlements so that they
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IN THE LAND OF CHINOOK
could be strong enough to protect themselves from Indians, and also for their social life.
These people were too near of the Indian nature to have exterminated the buffalo. It required the man who was a hunter of hides for the money that was in it that would soon destroy the last vestige of them. Then, too, it took the big trading companies to encourage even these men before the work was fully accom- plished. When the time came for their extermination hunters did the work so rapidly that it was done so suddenly that all the frontiersmen were astonished. One of the men who had been on the plains for fifty years said that the hunter would begin in the north and as the great herds began to move south they would send telegrams to others that the herds were coming and in that way they were met and slaughtered. Noted shots would employ men to do the skinning and they would do the killing.
V. Bogy says that one of the noted hunters of those days was Brisbeau, who at this time is living on the reservation. Bogy said that this man had killed as many as 300 head at one stand. They were about all killed from '82 to '85.
The bones were gathered in piles and the railroad did a thriving business hauling them to the Eastern market. Pages could be filled with the stories of the days when the men were killing the buffalo. These men came from all over the West and Southwest. Some will say that many of the buffalo hunters became, later, the cattle rustlers as they got so they could see but little difference between the Indian's cattle (the buffalo) and the white man's.
Charlie Russell, the Cowboy Artist, once said to the writer: "You can't blame the Indian very much for being sore at the whites as they killed what nature had provided for their food and did it wantonly."
It is true that General Miles had said that the only way to subdue the Indian was to kill the buffalo so they could not sustain themselves. The American Indian had been a problem ever since the first white men landed on their soil. Those first white men found a race that were not vicious. At least the overt act was on the part of the race that should have been the best and should have used its education and religion to uplift and enlighten. They had no thought other than to make a dollar, with the result that the Indian was taken and sold into slavery in foreign lands. Noth- ing could be more cruel than the separation of families in such a way. It was done in a way that taught the Red Man that the white one had no kindly feeling for them. They could not see that all the whites were not of the same class as they could only judge those whom they first met and these certainly had treated them in a most contemptible manner.
MRS. LINCOLN.
We came here in 1878 on the steamboat Benton, having taken fourteen days to come from Bismarck to Fort Benton. Landing there we went overland to Fort Belknap and found one man there, Tom O'Hanlon, acting as post trader.
This reservation had been established several years before, but had been abandoned and my husband, Major W. L. Lincoln, was the first agent upon its re-establishment. He had supervision over about two thousand Indians, Gros Ventres and Assinniboines. Mr. Lincoln served two terms, a period of eight years, at the end of that time the reservation was opened to the railroad and the Indians were moved to Harlem.
My son-in-law. C. G. Fish, was bookkeeper and his daughter Nellie, now Mrs. Robt. Cline of Highwood, Mont., was the first white child born there.
MRS. W. L. LINCOLN.
Note from caption : Mrs. Lincoln, first white woman to live in the Milk River Valley.
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THE STORY OF BLAINE COUNTY
The Indian went to the plains of the far west and in that land thought for a time they would be safe, but the cupidity of the white race brought them also and they overran that, too, and crowned all their efforts by the utter extinction of the supply that nature had furnished for the Indian's sustenance.
There are two sides of this question but the settlement of it was on the side of the majority. Whether this was right or wrong must be decided by that ONE who made us all and who may some time judge.
The American Buffalo or Bison was a wonderful animal that lived in vast herds. Men have seen them in such great numbers that no one who had no real experience in the early days could believe that the stories told could possibly have any virtue.
In the early days when the steamboats were used as a means of transportation on the Missouri, they had to be stopped while the herds were swimming the stream. One man told me that on one of his trips to a trading post on the Milk river he had to take men and drive the buffalo out of the way so the ox teams could get through as they were so thick the teams could not, with safety, make their way.
The buffalo hunter and wolfer were peculiar men who were used to many hardships and who would go for months without any other food than that killed from day to day or the jerked or dried meat of some other killing. One man told me that he lived for eight months on meat alone and for three months of that time without salt.
The hide was worth about five dollars delivered along the banks of streams that one could navigate in any kind of a boat and especially on such streams as the Missouri and Yellowstone.
The Government did not try to stop the slaughter but rather encouraged it. It does not appear to me that there could have been any romance attached to work of that nature. The Indian had been subdued and was no longer a menace. If he had not been in the minority the buffalo would still roam the broad plains of this country in untold numbers.
CHAPTER IV.
FIRST SETTLEMENT BY THE WHITES.
"I will give the story as it was told to me, not knowing what the truth may be," as Harry Norton, a once well-known News- paper man said, when writing of the early days and the tales that came to his ear.
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There are three ways in which history can be obtained: Live it, hunt the written records or get the stories of those who have lived it.
Living at this time in Blaine county is a man on whom one may rely for facts concerning the time which he has spent in Montana, "Billy" Cochran is well known to all of the old-timers on the Milk river and the writer will give a statement made by him.
The first settlement in what was afterward to become Blaine county was on Rock creek in the Little Rockies one mile east of where Landusky is now. Wm. Cochran, John Dillon, O. B. Nevins and Adam Armstrong left Fort Benton about the first of October, 1865, in a mackinaw with goods with which to trade with the Indians. On the 15th day of that month they found some Indians at the mouth of the creek from whom they bought some horses. These were the Gros Ventres and River Crows. The expectation was to trade with these Indians at the mouth of the creek. The natives, however, said that the Sioux were too troublesome as they would come as soon as the river was frozen over and make it so disagreeable that there would be no enjoy- ment in trying to stay in that vicinity and the better thing would be for all of them to move to the mountains. We took their advice and went up the creek and built four log cabins. Two of these were on each side of the enclosure and formed two sides of it while the stockade formed the other two.
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