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The first Montanans:
before the Europeans came
The
Crow Indians have inhabited the
area now known as south-central Montana and northern Wyoming
from about 1700 onward. Their arrival in the area was
preceded by a 100-year migration taking them from the Great
Lakes area to the northern Rocky Mountains (present-day
Alberta), south to the Great Salt Lake, east to the southern
plains, and finally north to the Big Horn Mountains and the
Yellowstone River. This area became the Crow's new homeland
and they still occupy it today. However, the Crow were not
the first to inhabit the region: Rock art in Pictograph Cave
six miles south of Billings indicates human presence in the
area over 2,100 years ago. The Crow Tribe's true name is
Apsáalooke, which means "people (or children) of the
large-beaked bird". The traditional shelters of the Crow
were tipis made with Bison skins and wooden poles. They were
known to construct some of the largest tipis. The Crow also
had more horses than any other plains tribe; in 1914, their
horse herds numbered approximately 30,000-40,000, but by
1921 had dwindled to just 1,000 because of government
eradication efforts. They also had more dogs, one source
counted 500 to 600. Unlike some other tribes, they did not
consume dog. The Crow were nomads.
The
Cheyenne have a reservation in the
southeastern portion of the state. The Northern Cheyenne of
Montana speak the
Cheyenne language, with
only a handful of vocabulary items different from that
spoken by their relatives in the Southern Cheyenne tribe.
The Cheyenne language is part of the larger
Algonquian language
group, and is one of the few Plains Algonquian languages to
have developed tonal characteristics. The closest linguistic
relatives of the Cheyenne language are Arapaho and Ojibwa
(Chippewa). Nothing is absolutely known about the Cheyenne
people before the 16th century. Much of Cheyenne history
study starts at the 16th century. The Northern Cheyenne
participated in the Battle Where the Girl Saved her Brother
(Rosebud Battle)
Battle of the Little Bighorn, which took place on
June 25, 1876.
The Cheyenne, along with the Lakota and a small band of
Arapaho, annihilated George Armstrong
Custer and his 7th Cavalry contingent of Army soldiers.
The
Blackfeet,
Assiniboine, and Gros Ventres
have reservations in the central and north-central area.
Prior to the reservation era, the Blackfoot were fiercely
independent and very successful warriors whose territory
stretched from the North
Saskatchewan River along what is now
Edmonton, Alberta in
Canada, to the
Yellowstone River of
Montana, and from the Rocky Mountains and along the
Saskatchewan river past Regina.
Blackfoot people were nomadic,
following the buffalo herds.
Survival required their being in the proper place at the
proper time. For almost half the year in the long northern
winter, the Blackfoot people lived in their winter camps
along a wooded river valley perhaps a day's march apart, not
moving camp unless food for the people and horses or
firewood became depleted.
The
Assiniboine, also known by the Ojibwe
name Asiniibwaan "Stone Sioux", are a
Native
American/First Nations
people originally from the Northern
Great Plains area of North America, specifically in
present-day Montana and parts of
Saskatchewan, Alberta and
southwestern Manitoba around the
US/Canadian border.
They were well known throughout much of the late 1700s and
early 1800s. Images of Assiniboine people were painted by
such 19th century artists as Karl
Bodmer and George Catlin.
The Assiniboine have many similarities to the
Lakota (Sioux) people in
lifestyle, linguistics, and cultural habits, and are
considered a band of the Nakoda or
middle division of the Lakota. It is believed that the
Assiniboine broke away from other Lakota bands in the 17th
century.
The
Gros Ventre are an American
Indian tribe located in north-central
Montana also known as the Atsina, which is considered an
inaccurate and derogatory name. There are currently 3,682
members and they share
Fort Belknap
Indian Reservation with the
Assiniboine, their historical enemies. Gros Ventre is a
name that was given to the people by the French who
misinterpreted their sign language. Instead, the Gros Ventre
people refer to themselves as A'ani or A'aninin, which means
"white clay people". They are identified as a band of
Arapaho and speak a variant of
Arapaho language called Gros Ventre or Atsina.
The
Kootenai and
Salish live in the west. The Kootenai are an
indigenous people of
North America. They are one of
three tribes of the
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead
Nation in Montana, and they form
the Ktunaxa Nation in British Columbia. There are also
populations in Idaho and
Washington in the
United States. The
Flathead Indian
Reservation is home to the
Bitterroot Salish
and Pend d'Oreilles
tribes as well.
The smaller
Pend d'Oreille and Kalispel tribes
were found around Flathead Lake
and the western mountains, respectively.
The Louisiana Purchase
On
April 30, 1803,
the Louisiana Purchase Treaty was signed by Robert
Livingston, James Monroe, and Barbé Marbois at Paris.
Jefferson announced the treaty to the American people on
July 4. The area covered by the
purchase included much of what is now Montana.
The
United States Senate
ratified the treaty, with a vote of twenty-four to seven, on
October 20; on the following day,
it authorized President Jefferson to take possession of the
territory and establish a temporary military government. In
legislation enacted on October 31,
Congress made temporary provisions for local civil
government to continue as it had under French and Spanish
rule and authorized the President to use military forces to
maintain order. France then turned New Orleans over to the
United States on December 20,
1803. On March 10,
1804, a formal ceremony was conducted in
St. Louis, to transfer
ownership of the territory from France to the United States
of America.
Lewis and Clark Expedition
The
Louisiana Purchase sparked
interest in expansion to the
West Coast. A
few weeks after the purchase, President
Jefferson, an advocate of western expansion, had the
Congress appropriate $2,500, "to send intelligent officers
with ten or twelve men, to explore even to the Western
ocean". They were to study the
Indian tribes, botany,
geology, Western terrain and
wildlife in the region, as well as
evaluate the potential interference of
British and
French Canadian hunters and
trappers who were already well established in the area.
On
July 3, 1806,
after crossing the Continental Divide, the Corps split into
two teams so Lewis could explore the
Marias River.
William Clark's went
down the Yellowstone River. He signed his name 25 miles
northeast of Billings. The inscription consists of his
signature and the date July 25, 1806. Clark claimed he
climbed the sandstone pillar and "had a most extensive view
in every direction on the Northerly Side of the river". The
pillar was named by Clark after the son of Sacagawea who was
the Shoshone woman who had helped to guide the expedition
and had acted as an interpreter. Clark had called
Sacagawea's son "Pompy" and his original name for the
outcropping was "Pompys Tower". It was later changed (1814)
to the current title. Clark's inscription is the only
remaining physical evidence found along the route that was
followed by the expedition.
Lewis'
group of four met some Blackfeet
Indians. Their meeting was cordial, but during the night,
the Blackfeet tried to steal their weapons. In the struggle,
two Indians were killed, the only native deaths attributable
to the expedition. The group of four—Lewis, Drouillard, and
the Field brothers—fled over 100 miles (160 km) in a day
before they camped again. Clark, meanwhile, had entered Crow
territory. The Crow tribe were
known as horse thieves. At night, half of Clark's horses
were gone, but not a single Crow was seen. Lewis and Clark
stayed separated until they reached the confluence of the
Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers
on August 11. Clark's team had
floated down the rivers in bull boats.
While reuniting, one of Clark's hunters, Pierre Cruzatte,
blind in one eye and nearsighted in the other, mistook Lewis
for an elk and fired, injuring Lewis in the thigh. From
there, the groups were reunited and able to quickly return
home by the Missouri River.
Fort Shaw
Fort Shaw (Montana
Territory) was established in the spring of 1867. It is
located west of Great Falls
in the Sun River Valley and was one of three posts
authorized to be built by Congress in 1865. The other two
posts in the Montana Territory
were Camp Cooke on the Judith River and Fort C.F. Smith on
the Bozeman Trail in south
central Montana Territory. Fort Shaw, named after Colonel
Robert Gould Shaw, who
commanded the 54th
Massachusetts, one of the first all
African-American regiments,
during the American Civil War, was built of adobe and lumber
by the 13th Infantry. The fort had a parade ground that was
400 feet (120 m) square, and consisted of barracks for
officers, a hospital, and a trading
post, and could house up to 450 soldiers. Completed in 1868,
it was used by military personnel until 1891.
After the
close of the military post, the government established Fort
Shaw as a school to provide industrial training to young
Native Americans. The Fort Shaw Indian Industrial School was
opened on April 30,
1892. The school had at one time 17 faculty members, 11
Indian assistants, and 300 students. The school made use of
over 20 of the buildings built by the Army.
Battle of the Little Big Horn
The
Battle of the Little
Bighorn — which is also called Custer's Last Stand and
Custer Massacre and, in the parlance of the relevant Native
Americans, the Battle of the Greasy Grass — was an armed
engagement between a Lakota-Northern
Cheyenne combined force and the
7th Cavalry of the
United States Army. It
occurred June 25–June
26, 1876, near the Little Bighorn
River in the eastern Montana
Territory.
Thousands
of Indians had slipped away from their reservations.
Military officials planned a three-pronged expedition to
corral them and force them back to the reservations, using
both infantry and
cavalry, as well as small detachments of
artillery, including
Gatling guns. Custer's force
arrived at an overlook 14 miles (23 km) east of the Little
Bighorn River in what is now the state of Montana, on the
night of June 24, as the Terry/Gibbon
column was marching toward the mouth of the Little Big Horn.
The Lakota
with their allies, the Arapaho and
the Cheyenne, defeated the U.S. 7th
Cavalry in 1876 at the Battle at the Greasy Grass or Little
Big Horn, killing 258 soldiers and inflicting more than 50%
casualties on the regiment. But like the
Zulu triumph over the British at
Isandlwana in Africa three years later, it proved to be
a pyrrhic victory. The Teton were defeated in a series of
subsequent battles by the reinforced U.S. Army, and were
herded back onto reservations, by preventing buffalo hunts
and enforcing government food-distribution policies to "friendlies"
only. The Lakota were compelled to sign a treaty in 1877
ceding the Black Hills to the United States, but a
low-intensity war continued, culminating, fourteen years
later, in the killing of Sitting
Bull (December 15,
1890) at
Standing Rock and the
Massacre of Wounded Knee
(December 29, 1890) at Pine Ridge.
Within
roughly three hours after the beginning of the battle,
Custer's force was completely annihilated. Only two men from
the 7th Cavalry later claimed to have seen Custer engage the
Indians: a young Crow whose name translated as
Curley, and a trooper named
Peter Thompson, who had fallen
behind Custer's column, and most accounts of the last
moments of Custer's forces are conjecture. Lakota accounts
assert that Crazy Horse personally led one of the large
groups of Lakota who overwhelmed the cavalrymen. While exact
numbers are difficult to determine, it is commonly estimated
that the Northern Cheyenne and Lakota outnumbered the 7th
Cavalry by approximately 3:1, a ratio that was extended to
5:1 during the fragmented parts of the battle.
Northern Cheyenne exodus
Following
the Battle of the Little Bighorn, attempts by the U.S. Army
to capture the Cheyenne intensified. A group of 972 Cheyenne
was escorted to Indian Territory
in Oklahoma in 1877. The government intended to re-unite
both the Northern and Southern Cheyenne into one nation.
There the conditions were dire; the Northern Cheyenne were
not used to the climate and soon many became ill with
malaria. In addition, the food
rations were insufficient and of poor quality. In 1878, the
two principal Chiefs, Little Wolf
and Morning Star (Dull Knife)
pressed for the release of the Cheyenne so they could travel
back north.
That same
year a group of 353 Cheyenne left Indian Territory to travel
back north. This group was led by Chiefs
Little Wolf and Morning Star. The
Army and other civilian volunteers were in hot pursuit of
the Cheyenne as they traveled north. It is estimated that a
total of 13,000 Army soldiers and volunteers were sent to
pursue the Cheyenne over the whole course of their journey
north.
After
crossing into Nebraska, the group split into two. One group
was led by Little Wolf, and the
other by Morning Star. Little Wolf and his band made it back
to Montana. Morning Star and his band
were captured and escorted to Fort
Robinson, Nebraska. There
Morning Star and his band were sequestered. They were
ordered to return to Oklahoma but they refused. Conditions
at the fort grew tense through the end of 1878 and soon the
Cheyenne were confined to barracks with no food, water, or
heat. In January of 1879, Morning Star and his group broke
out of Ft. Robinson. Much of the group was gunned down as
they ran away from the fort, and others were discovered near
the fort during the following days and ordered to surrender
but most of the escapees chose to fight because they would
rather be killed than taken back into custody. It is
estimated that only 50 survived the breakout, including
Morning Star (Dull Knife). Several of the escapees later had
to stand trial for the murders that had been committed in
Kansas. The remains of those killed were repatriated in
1994.
The Retreat of the Nez Perce
With 2000
U.S. soldiers in pursuit, Chief Joseph led 800 Nez Perce
toward freedom at the Canadian border. For over three
months, the Nez Perce outmaneuvered and battled their
pursuers traveling 1,700 miles across Oregon,
Washington, Idaho, and
Montana.
General
Howard, leading the opposing cavalry, was impressed with the
skill with which the Nez Perce fought, using advance and
rear guards, skirmish lines, and field fortifications.
Finally, after a devastating five-day battle during freezing
weather conditions with no food or blankets, Chief Joseph
formally surrendered to
General Nelson Appleton
Miles on October 5,
1877 in the
Bear Paw Mountains of the
Montana Territory, less
than 40 miles (60 km) south of Canada
in a place close to the present-day
Chinook in
Blaine County. The battle is
remembered in popular history by the words attributed to
Chief Joseph at the formal surrender:
"Tell
General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before,
I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our
chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Too-hul-hul-sote
is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men
who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead.
It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children
are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run
away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one
knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want
to have time to look for my children, and see how many
of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the
dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick
and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no
more forever."
Louis Riel & the Metis
Many
Canadian Métis settled
in Montana in the latter half of the 19th century. For a
time, Louis Riel taught school at
St. Peter's Mission and was active in local
Republican Party
politics. Some controversy resulted over his alleged signing
up of Metis men to vote for the Republicans who were not
American citizens. In the summer of 1884
a delegation of Metis leaders from the
Saskatchewan Valley
including Gabriel Dumont and
James Isbister retrieved Riel
to Canada, resulting in the
Northwest Rebellion the following year. After the
Rebellion, Gabriel Dumont fled to exile in Montana, later
joining Buffalo
Bill's Wild West Show.
Montana Territory
Subsequent
to the Lewis and Clark
Expedition and after the finding of gold and copper (see
the Copper Kings) in the state
in the late 1850s, Montana became a United States territory
(Montana Territory) on
May 26, 1864 and
the 41st state on November 8,
1889.
The
territory was organized out of the existing
Idaho Territory by Act of
Congress and signed
into law by President Abraham
Lincoln on May 28,
1864. The areas east of the
continental divide had
been previously part of the
Nebraska and Dakota
territories and had been acquired by the United States in
the Louisiana Purchase.
The
territory also included a portion of the Idaho Territory
west of the continental divide and east of the
Bitterroot Range, which had
been acquired by the United States in the
Oregon Treaty, and originally
included in the Oregon Territory.
(The part of the Oregon Territory that became part of
Montana had been split off as part of the
Washington Territory.)
The
boundary between the Washington Territory and
Dakota Territory was the
Continental Divide (as
shown on the 1861 map), however the boundary between the
Idaho Territory and the
Montana Territory followed the
Bitterroot Range north of 46°30'N (as shown on the 1864
map). Popular legend says a drunken survey party followed
the wrong mountain ridge and mistakenly moved the boundary
west into the Bitterroot Range.
Contrary to
legend, the boundary is precisely where the
United States Congress
intended. The Organic Act of the Territory of Montana
defines the boundary as extending from the modern
intersection of Montana,
Idaho, and Wyoming
at:
"the
forty-fourth degree and thirty minutes of north
latitude; thence due west along said forty-fourth degree
and thirty minutes of north latitude to a point formed
by its intersection with the crest of the Rocky
Mountains; thence following the crest of the Rocky
Mountains northward till its intersection with the
Bitter Root Mountains; thence northward along the crest
of the Bitter Root Mountains to its intersection with
the thirty-ninth degree of longitude west from
Washington; thence along said thirty-ninth degree of
longitude northward to the boundary line of British
possessions"
The
boundaries of the territory did not change during its
existence. It was admitted to the Union as the
State of Montana on
November 8, 1889.
20th century
The revised
Homestead Act of the early
1900s greatly affected the settlement of Montana. This act
expanded the land that was provided by the Homestead Act of
1862 from 160 acres to 320 acres (65-130 ha). When the
latter act was signed by President
William Taft, it also
reduced the time necessary to prove up from five years to
three years and permitted five months absence from the claim
each year.
In 1908,
the Sun River Irrigation Project, west of
Great Falls was opened
up for homesteading. Under this Reclamation Act, a person
could obtain 40 acres (16 ha). Most of the people who came
to file on these
homesteads were young couples who were eager to live
near the mountains where hunting and fishing were good. Many
of these homesteaders came from the
Midwest and Minnesota.
Cattle
ranching has long been central to Montana's history and
economy. The
Grant-Kohrs
Ranch National Historic Site in Deer Lodge Valley is
maintained as a link to the ranching style of the late 19th
century. It is operated by the
National Park Service
but is also a 1,900-acre (7.7 km²) working ranch.
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