When Old Fort Shaw Was Montana’s Social and Entertainment Center

By Mrs. Martha Edgerton Rolfe Plassmann



With dinners, dances, luncheons, teas and card playing for the officers, and target practice, drills an inspection for the privates, and occasional church-going for both, the list of amusements at Fort Shaw, in the days when it was a frontier post, is by no means exhausted.

There were private theatricals given by the officers and their wives, assisted by some of the non-commissioned officers and the post orchestra, which at one time numbered twenty pieces, and was probably the best musical entertainment in the Territory.

These entertainments were decidedly popular among the settlers in the vicinity, who came for miles around, as to a country dance, to attend them. Of one of these amateur affairs Mrs. Roe Writes, “It was surprising that so many of the Sun River and ranch people came, for the night was terrible, even for Montana, and the roads must have been impassable in places.” This was in 1879, an unusually severe winter. Mrs. Roe continues, “Even here in the post there were great drifts of snow, and the path to the theater was cut through banks of snow higher than our heads. It had been mild and pleasant for weeks, and only two nights before the entertainment we had gone to the hall for rehearsal with fewer wraps than usual. We had been there an hour, I think, when the corporal of the guard came in to report to the officer of the day that a fierce blizzard was making it impossible for sentries to walk post. His own appearance told better than words what the storm was. He had on a long buffalo coat, muskrat cap and gauntlets, and the fur from his head down, also heavy overshoes, were filled with snow, and at each end of his mustache were icicles hanging. He made a fine, soldierly picture as he brought his rifle to his side and saluted. The officer of the day hurried out, and after a time returned, he also smothered in furs and snow. He said the storm was terrible and he did not see how many of us could possibly get to our homes.

Nevertheless, those who were rehearsing were willing to essay it and all managed to reach their homes in safety. Those living in the garrison found their way, notwithstanding the fierce wind that was blowing, as they had the now banks along the walk to guide their way; but their progress was seriously impeded by the blown snow which filled the path.

Others, however, were not so fortunate. “Major Peirce undertook to see Mrs. Elsmere safely to her home at the subtler’s store, and in order to get there they were obliged to cross a wide space in between the officers’ line and the store. Nothing could be seen ten feet from them when they left the last fence, but they tried to get their bearings by the line of the fence, and closing their eyes, dashed ahead into the cloud of blinding, stinging snow. Major Pierce had expected to go straight to a side door of the store, but the awful strength of the wind and snow pushed them over, and they struck a corner of the fence farthest away—in fact they would have missed the fence also if Mrs. Elsmere’s fur cape had not caught on one of the pickets, and gone out on the plains to certain death. Bright lights had been placed in the store windows, but not one had they seen.”

The fact that the lights were invisible is not remarkable, if the two wanderers continued to keep their eyes closed, as when they set out. Such a storm as is here described cannot be said to be a common occurrence in Montana, and a winter of great severity is frequently followed by one milder than any known in the East. The winter of 1926 was an instance of this.

It is not strange that the settlers in the neighborhood of the fort should have availed themselves of every opportunity offered there that would serve to relieve the monotony of their existence. They were no weaklings, and never hesitated to go forty miles to a dance no matter what the weather. And this was long before the day of the automobile, when old Dobbin constituted the motive power.

Towards the last, there were bona fide plays given there by trained actors. In 1880, Katie Putnam and her company came up the Missouri [by steamboat] to Fort Benton, where they played for one night—not in a theater, for there was none there—but in a warehouse. The next day the company started for Helena, where they had an engagement; but learning that the Helena opera house would not be ready for use within ten days, they stopped over at Fort Shaw, where they played for a week. Their acting there was done on the credit system, the sergeant of each company listing the men who attended and deducting what they owed for tickets from their next pay. It worked all right, and the actors were not losers; on the contrary, they realized a goodly sum from their stay at the fort.

The story is told that Mrs. Gibbon, wife of General [John] Gibbon, then in command at Fort Shaw, was the first to being professional actors to the fort. It is said that she and her daughter, while passing through Prickly Pear canyon, noticed a new cabin there. Going to the door, they knocked, and were surprised when a woman confronted them. She was, as they later discovered, an actress who, together with her husband, an actor, had come from Europe to visit relatives living in that region.

This chance meeting with Mrs. Barr—for that was the name of the actress—led to her husband and herself leaving the canyon to make their home for the next two years at Fort Shaw. Their household goods were removed there in ambulances by the soldiers. The first play given by the Barrs, after their arrival at the post, was “Ingomar” with Mr. Barr as Ingomar, and his wife, Parthenia.

The playhouse was about 125 feet long, with the stage 35 feet wide and 24 feet deep. Dressing rooms and property room were in ell addition. The floor was of earth, and the scenic effects were not of the best, although they excelled those of Shakespeare’s time. When the footlights needed to be lowered, the orchestra turned down the kerosene lamps in front of the stage. It is perfectly safe to say that this rude hall always held an uncritical audience. It was ready to applaud enthusiastically any acting, however poor it might have been. But real artists visited it. Among these were Parepa Rosa and her husband Karl Rosa, the violinist.

In these days, when royalty deigns to visit this country at frequent intervals, few can understand the excitement caused by the arrival in America, for the first time in the Republic’s history, of an heir to the British throne. Albert Edward, however did not go West, and its inhabitants were thus unable to visualize the fact that princes, even those of Wales, do not differ in appearance from ordinary men, although their attitude towards the world is said to be of another character. They are the product of their environment, rather than of their inheritance.

Following the example of their liege lord the scions of aristocratic families confined their American investigations largely to the Atlantic coast. The great beyond, reaching to the Pacific, until recently saw but little of them.

Imagine then, in what a state of mind the garrison at Fort Shaw was thrown, when it became known in September, 1881, that the Marquis of Lorne, son of the Duke of Argyle and the son-in-law of Queen Victoria, the Governor-General of Canada, who was on his way east, would spend the night at Fort Shaw.

The whole post was in a fever of preparation the officers making arrangements for his reception and their wives devising menus and setting their quarters in order for the entertainment of nobility. The Marquis had as escort a company of the Canadian “Mounties,” arrayed in their brilliant uniforms, and with their queer little caps precariously set on one side of the head.

They were mounted on scrubby Indian ponies, which somewhat detracted from the effect they produced, as preceding the Marquis, they rode onto the parade ground and there separated into two lines, facing one another to permit the Governor and his staff to pass through. There was the usual ceremonious reception. In the midst of which the regimental band struck up that melody, said to have been composed in Germany, but now a national anthem of both England and America. With the first bar of “God Save the Queen,”—our own “America,” every Englishman and Canadian removed his head covering, whatever that happened to be, in silent testimony of their loyalty to their country. We are told that it was an impressive sight.

What I have given in this and foregoing sketches are but casual glimpses of Fort Shaw in its palmy days, in the hope that they will enable those who visit its site today to vision it as it once was in all the picturesqueness and its activities of its military existence. [Montana Newspaper Association Whitefish Pilot 4 April 1927]

Visiting the Ruins of North Montana’s Oldest Mission St. Peter’s

Visiting the Ruins of North Montana’s Oldest Mission St. Peter’s. Erected Before Great Falls Had Been Thought Of. Log to St. Peter’s [40 miles]

The log may not be exactly right as to mileage, as the gear pin was out for a time during the logging from Cascade to St. Peter’s, but the figures are not more than half a mile or so off, there is but one road and there is but one St. Peter’s, which lies at the foot of Sullivan hill.

A trip to St. Peter’s Mission from Great Falls is something worth while and St. Peter’s is by far the oldest thing in shape of a mission in northern Montana--and its little old frame church is the oldest church in all of northern Montana.

The church alone is worth the trip, as it is quaint to the nth degree, as quaint things go in Montana. It was in this church that Henry Plummer, first Montana sheriff and chief of the road agents of the territory, hung in Virginia City by the Vigilantes some 60 years ago, was married to the first young school teacher who ever taught in the Sun River section. It was quite an event and one can think the old old church was a doomed cathedral to the young school teacher and the young road agent as they walked up the isle in the long, long ago.

The church was elaborate in its day, with a sort of a windmill-effect steeple, apart from the church, in which hangs the bell, the same being pulled by a rope to summon to prayers. The altar and the benches stand as they stood more than half a century ago, and the same floor answers. The place is old, almost tottering, the bell is cracked, the bell steeple shaky, and the church looks like an old abandoned homesteader’s shack of the better class. But inside, the floor, the walls, the seats, and all the surroundings, shine from repeated scrubbing, and everything is painfully neat. It is in use evidently, and its door swings open to the world, although there is no priest or padre to welcome, the services being at times and not as in the old days of the first church of northern Montana.

St. Peter’s was the first mission established by the Jesuits east of the Rockies in what is now Montana, was started on four sites, abandoned for eight years, and at one time was the leading academy for young girls in all Montana; at one time it housed 400 little Indian pupils being taught education and the Catholic faith, and it came into existence at direct request of the Indians, who invited Catholicism to come to them.

Once St. Peter’s mission had its site on the Missouri river near to where Great Falls now stands, in the Big Bend, and near to the sign board of Swift on the Great Northern; another site the gate of the Mountains above Cascade was chosen, until the final location was made at where the ruins of the old mission now rest.

For it is a place of ruins, having been given up several years since as a place of education because of fire having swept some of the large buildings. And then St. Peter’s, while once quite the thing, found competition in the cities growing up about the state for girl pupils--and the Blackfeet Indian reservation, which once reached down to near Cascade, was moved far north, and the red pupils were taken with it.

The founding of the mission, as it comes from the musty records, is of interest. The first Montana mission was that of St. Mary’s on the Bitter Root river, near Missoula, founded in 1841, or thereabouts.

The Blackfeet asked that a mission be established in their country so that the rites of the church might be given them, and in 1858 Major Vaughn, agent of the Blackfeet, forwarded a petition asking that a ‘blackrobe’ be sent them. Father A. Hoecken and Brother Magri were assigned in April, 1859, and located a mission on the Teton river near where Choteau now is located, immediately north of Priest’s butte. And this, by the way, is the reason for the name of the butte in question. March 13, 1860, the mission was moved to Sun river, where Fort Shaw now stands, and a couple of cabins erected.

In the spring of 1862, Father Imoda, Father Gieorda and Brother Francis DeKock and Lucian D’Agnostina located St. Peter’s mission six miles above the mouth of Sun river, above where is now Great Falls.

Log cabins were erected, and in 1864 Father Anthony Ravalli, the famous missionary father after whom Ravalli county is named, was located at St. Peter’s, as well as Father F. X. Kuppens, also a famous figure in Montana’s history in the building. In 1865 occurred the famous Sun river stampede, in which many men were frozen, some died and many more would have passed on but for the ministrations of Father Ravalli and his associates at St. Peter’s mission, within sight of the present city of Great Falls. In the winter of 1865 the present site of St. Peter’s mission was selected. In the winter of 1865-66 Father Imoda established camp at the new place and with the assistance of another priest and a number of Indians prepared logs, stone and all the necessary materials. According to a record left by Father Kuppens, they had plans that included all the different departments for chapel and community life; for school and industrial training. Lumber was hauled from Helena. During the winter, the work was never interrupted and the houses were virtually ready in the spring. On April 27, 1866, they abandoned St. Peter’s mission on the Missouri; on the same day they opened the new St. Peter’s mission. the next day they closed that mission temporarily.

It is probable that the mission was closed because of war being carried on by the Blackfeet, who were trying to exterminate the white brethern at that time quite industriously. The mission was attached to the mission of Helena, and from 1866 to 1874 the mission and all its belongings were in care of Thomas Moran, well known in Great Falls. Services were held in the little church right along, however, by traveling priests, and the bell, then not cracked, was rung regularly to call the faithful to worship.

In 1874, the mission was re-opened, and prospered for many years. There were the usual agricultural and stockraising activities to supplement the industrial school for Indian boys. By 1880, the Ursuline nuns were induced to come there and establish a school for Indian and half-breed girls. Within 10 years, St. Peters had accommodations for 400 children. the buildings were substantial, being of stone, and the school facilities were numbered among the best in the west.

However, the mission had one great handicap. The rapid settling of the region by the whites had caused the government to restrict the territory of the Blackfeet and, as a consequence, the Indians were now placed on a reservation some 100 miles to the north of the mission. So finally, a new mission nearer the Indians had to be established. At first this new dependency was located at Birch creek on the outskirts of the reservation. In 1885, it was moved to a more central location on Two Medicine creek.

White girls were taken to school and for a time St. Peters flourished. But fire followed fire, the Indian pupils were gone, the white pupils became fewer and fewer, and at last only was left the ruins of the once great St. Peter’s mission, crumbling beside the highway from Great Falls to Helena.

The land on which the mission ruins stand, and some 4,000 acres besides, is property of the Ursuline nuns of Great Falls, the same which established the Ursuline academy here a number of years ago, and is leased, the Ursulines receiving one-half of the product in vegetables, hay or stock.

It is an interesting place to visit, in the shadow of the great mountains, with little St. Peter’s creek tumbling through the ruins, chuckling of the days agone and of the history made since the gentle Father Imoda laid the first stone for foundation of a place wherein to teach the gospel of the man of Galilee.

It is a pleasant place to visit, well worth the visit, but don’t leave without seeing the little cemetery perched on the little knoll above the ruins, or your visit will miss much of its worth. In the cemetery lies the mortal remains of men and women who wrote history in Montana in the days when the writing was often done at the expense of life and all that one holds dear. There lie the remains of ‘Whiskey’ Brown, Jim O’Farrell and scores of mighty men and women of the old times who builded better than they knew, checked in at last, and passed on to make way for a newer and greater order of things--made possible through their having lived.

In the peaceful little churchyard of St. Peter’s with the mountains and the skies looking down, they sleep well, those men who dared, life’s fitful fever o’er!” [GFLD 10 Sep 1927, p. 7]

Saint Peter's Mission, An Historic Scenic Gem

St. Peter's Mission April 2010

Saint Peters Mission One of State’s Most Inspiring Spots. Picnic Place, Yes, but More Than That; Resting Place for Forefathers. Ruins of Old Church Call to Mind Marriage of Henry Plummer, Road Agent, There; Pioneers Sleep on Little Hillside.

By Ed Cooney, Managing Editor, Great Falls Leader

. . . It is a beautiful place, is St. Peters, pretty to picnic, with a clear, ice cold stream running through, and big trees for shade. Not to mention ruins of what once was the greatest mission of Montana, and a place where hundreds of Indian, and many white, children learned the elements of education, not to mention religion. There are left now but the crumbling ruins of what was once a mighty educational plant; the cottonwood trees planted more than half a century ago; the old log church with its tottering bell tower, its unchinked logs; and the graveyard on the hill just west with its headstones of marble, its headboards of rotting wood, and its unmarked graves that have lost all shape of mound and mingle with the even grass and sod of the side hill once more.

It was in the old church that Plummer--chief of the road agents of a time long ago. Plummer, who was sheriff of all Montana, then Idaho. Plummer who was hanged with near two score of his road agents by the Vigilantes in Virginia City in the long ago--came to wed. A gentle school teacher of Sun River was the bride of the mighty road agent, but she knew nothing of that side of his life as she stood by his side at the old altar in the old log church, while the copper bell in the old tower rang proudly, far beyond half a century ago.

But that is only one of them. The old log church is still in use, with its old and worn stations of the cross, its rail, its simple cross and cheap Child in the Manger wrought in composition of a time long ago, and covered with sparkles of snow and winter.

It is worth the visit, if only to see the tottering steeple with its big brass bell, and the unchinked logs with the white wash coating. It gives one a weird feeling, and brings a catch to the breath.

And on the peaceful little hill, meant for a graveyard of a bygone people, Bill wandered and mused. There was the grave of John D. ‘Whiskey’ Brown, and his wife Catherine, sleeping side by side for more than 30 years--and above them is a marble tombstone, erected a dozen years or more ago by an old time friend who had prospered . . .

There is the tombstone of J. J. Parrel, Eagle Rock station, and a score more of men whose names spelled civilization, in a day when there was no civilization. . . .

St. Peters, by the way, is the third mission in Montana, St. Marys of the Bitter Root being the first, St. Ignatius of the Flathead the second and St. Peter’s the third. It was located first in 1859 at Priest’s Butte, just this side of the town of Choteau in Teton county, moved the same year or the next to Fort Shaw on Sun River, that on March 3, 1860.

On Feb. 14, 1862 St. Peter’s Mission was located ‘six miles above the mouth of Sun River on the Missouri river,’ and the place was named ‘Flood,’ the same name it bears today, only the name now is only that of a railroad flag station. The exact location of the Mission would probably be the Longeway ranch of today. In 1866 the Mission was moved to its present location. At one time 500 children were being taught there, but that was long ago.

Several fires devastated the buildings, stone though they were, the 1,100 acres property was leased and the Ursuline Sisters, owners of the property, came to Great Falls and the Ursuline academy here is the result a long jump from the St. Peter’s Mission of 1859 at Priest’s Butte, or 1862 at Flood, six miles above where Great Falls now stands. Ed Cooney. [Source: Great Falls Leader Daily 28 Jul 1928, p. 7]

Celebrating 150 Years of the Mullan Military Wagon Road

By Ken Robison

During May 20-22, 2010, the River & Plains Society in Fort Benton will host the national 150th Anniversary Mullan Road Conference. This conference celebrates the completion of the Mullan Military Wagon Road in 1860, the first wagon road from Fort Benton to cross the Rocky Mountains to Fort Walla Walla, Washington Territory, into the Inland of the Pacific Northwest. The 624-mile long Mullan Road joined the Missouri River with the Columbia River, blazing the path through the plains and valleys westward from Fort Benton into the rugged mountains of western Montana and Idaho. The road was built by US Army 1st Lieutenant John Mullan between the spring of 1859 and August 1860 with an expedition of some 230 combined military and civilian men. Parts of the original Mullan Road can still be traveled today, and, weather permitting, the Conference will included a field trip from Fort Benton into the Sun River valley past Birdtail Rock to the Dearborn River.

The Conference also will celebrate the arrival of the first steamboats at the Fort Benton levee July 2nd, 1860. When the Chippewa, commanded by Captain Joseph LaBarge, and the Key West, under Joseph’s brother Captain John LaBarge, moored at Fort Bento’s levee, it heralded the beginning of the steamboat era at the head of navigation on the Missouri River. Aboard the two steamers, belonging to Pierre Chouteau & Company (known as the American Fur Company), were owners Pierre and Charles Chouteau, their agents Fort Benton “Factors” Andrew Dawson and Alexander Culbertson, Indian agents, company employees, military supplies, and Indian trade goods. Also onboard the crowded steamboats were Major George A. H. Blake and his First Dragoons, some 300 soldiers who were poised to become the first, and last, direct military users of the Mullan Road on their way to Washington Territory.

A final exploration group arrived at Fort Benton in that amazing summer of 1860 before Lieut. Mullan, to await steamboat passage down the Missouri. The Military Reconnaissance Expedition of Captain William F. Raynolds had spent the past year exploring the Yellowston basin and had come down the Missouri River from the Three Forks, past the Great Falls of the Missouri, to arrive at Fort Benton July 14th. With the Raynolds Expedition was topographer Lieutenant James Dempsey Hutton, who took the first known photograph of the Fort Benton trading post from across the Missouri River. During that summer of 1860, there was no town of Fort Benton, only the trading post, and an opposition post, Fort Campbell, which by the spring of 1860 had been bought by Pierre Chouteau & Company. Yet, in the words of John Strachan, one of Mullan’s men, “Fort Benton has everything . . . a bakery, blacksmith, carpenter and cooper shops, trade offices for buying, others for selling and retail shops. Goods are sold at enormous prices . . . sugar is sold at $1 and up a pound and everything else in proportion. Business amounts to about $160,000 a year, with buffalo robes the staple of the trade.”

The 150th Anniversary Conference will begin May 20th late Thursday afternoon with a tour of Old Fort Benton, the reconstructed American Fur Company fur and robe trading post built in 1846-47 at the head of navigation on the Missouri River. Resident Mountain Man “Burnt Spoon” will lead the tour group into the 1850’s past to see the original Block House (Montana’s oldest permanent structure), the newly reconstructed log Stockade and Bourgeois House (the Factor’s Quarters), and into the Trade Store and Warehouse where the River & Plains Society will host an evening reception in the fur trade museum. The River & Plains Society is the non-profit that operates the museums complex in Fort Benton and the Joel F. Overholser Historical Research Center. A Fort Restoration Committee leads the effort to reconstruct Old Fort Benton.

Friday will be held at the Montana Agricultrual Center-Lippard Auditorium beginning with regional Mullan Road activity reports from Washington state, Idaho, and Montana. Morning presentations will include: “Going to the Mountains: Major Blake’s Army Dragoons on the Upper Missouri” by Washington State University doctoral student Marc Entze; “Artists Gustavus Sohon and John Mix Stanley Images Along the Mullan Road” by Dr. Paul McDermott of Maryland; “Early Travelers Along the Mullan Road” by Lee Hanchett, author of Montana's Benton Road; and “Natural Resources along the Road” by Dr. John E. Taylor of Helena. The luncheon speaker will be Cultural Historian Bob Doerk discussing “Inni - The Buffalo of the Plains.”

Friday afternoon talks and demonstrations will include: “Mullan Road On-Line Resources Including a Google Earth Mullan Road Fly-Thru” by Dr. Bill Youngs of Eastern Washington University, and Ron Hall; “Sampling the Minckler Mullan Road Collection” which includes unique photographs, diaries, and material from Mullan's wagonmaster John A. Creighton, by Art Historian Thomas Minckler and Ken Robison; “Through Indian Country: Native American Perspectives on Mullan and Regional Development” by Dr. Richard Scheuerman of Seattle Pacific University; and “Actions to Designate the Mullan Road a National Historic Trail” led by Courtney Kramer, Gallatin County Historic Preservation Officer. Friday evening will feature a reception and dinner with Bruce Druliner aka “Burnt Spoon” bringing to life “Old Fort Benton in the 1850s through stories and songs.”

Saturday morning begins with “Surveying along the Mullan Road” by Montana surveyor re-enactor Bill Weikel, followed by a field trip into the Sun River valley with bus guide commentary about the route of the Mullan Road and key historic, cultural, and geological features. Stops will be made at Sun River Leaving (Vaughn), Sun River Crossing, St. Peter’s Mission, and a box lunch at Birdtail Rock Stage Stop. Weather permitting the tour will continue on over Birdtail Divide to Dearborn Crossing and on to Fort Shaw. At this historic fort, the Sun River Valley Historical Society will show General Gibbon’s original Military Quarters and will talk about valley history including the military at Fort Shaw and the later famed Indian School.

Old Yogo and Millies' Hunting Cat

P. W. Korell, Stanford Pioneer, Tells Yogo Gulch History in Address Before Women’s Club.
Special to the Tribune. Stanford, No. 6.—Judge J. H. Huntoon, Lewistown, and P. W. Korell, Stanford, spoke at a meeting of the Stanford woman’s club on local history.

Mr. Korell, who landed at Fort Benton in 1876, came into the Judith basin with the Yogo stampeders in 1880 and to Stanford in 1923. Referring to early days in the basin he says:

"Jack Wirth and I left Fort Benton Aug. 2, 1880, with two four-horse teams and wagons loaded with tobacco, four barrels of whisky, a crate of picks and shovels, flour, sugar and bacon. We were headed for Fort Maginnis and Yogo.

"Arriving at the Judith river Aug. 7, 1880, we camped on the flat now owned by C. M. Belden, formerly the Murphy ranch, half way between Utica and the Belden residence. We made camp in brush along the old channel of the Judith as a precaution against Indians, who were traveling across the country frequently.

"Whisky is Stolen. When I went to my wagon in the morning the wagon sheet was untied. Investigating, I found the load was short two 55-gallon barrels of whisky. Jack Murphy, Wirth and myself noticed grass had been tramped and w could see where the barrels had been rolled away.

"We followed the trail back and forth across the bottom until it was lost. The following January, in 1881, a man known as Cherokee Jim, coming from Yogo, stopped to kill a deer and found one of the barrels containing 20 gallons of whisky.

"Jim came down to the Murphy cabin, where the postoffice had been established after being moved from Yogo. It consisted of one empty beer case and a rubber stamp. Jim was feeling pretty good but refused to tell where he got his ‘jag,’ so he was followed when he returned to the cache and the barrel was found. Two years later the other barrel, empty, was found in a patch of brush on the Korrel ranch.

"At the time the liquor was taken, two white men were camped where the Utica schoolhouse now stands. One was known as Mike Henderson and the other, Aleck Jesup. The latter, years afterward served a term at Deer Lodge for burglary at Butte, dying shortly after he was released. Whereabouts of Henderson is unknown.

"Yogo did not produce the gold that was expected, the bedrock being too deep. Small bars paid only small returns. However, quite a number of miners remained, expecting to strike it some day.

"Among those who stayed was a colored woman by the name of Millie Ringold. Her faith was so strong in her mine, the Garfield, that she worked it for more than 30 years, doing anything she could to earn a few dollars, washing nursing white women and doing manual labor generally performed by men, returning at intervals to the hills to work her mine.

"Old Millie, as she was called, came to Fort Benton in 1878 as a maid for Colonel Switzer’s wife, and when rumors of the Yogo gold stampede came to Fort Benton, Millie was one of the first to hit the trail. She opened a hotel and restaurant and everyone could eat whether they had money or not, all promising to pay when the cleaned up bedrock.

"Millie had a coal oil can for a musical instrument, with which she entertained her guests. She would drum on it and sing southern songs as long as she had an audience.

"In after years, when dollars were scarce, many of her meals were provided for her by the cat, George Washington. It would catch a rabbit and bring it to the cabin, where it was enjoyed by himself and his mistress. Sometimes Bedrock Jim, another Yogo character, would share in the feast by providing potatoes and an onion or a carrot to make a mulligan. Millie died at her old cabin in Yogo and was buried in the cemetery at Utica by a few old timers.

"Bercham a Character. Jim Bercham, better known as ‘Bedrock’ Jim was another of the old guard who would not leave Yogo. He had his boxes going all the time, shoveling every day, and making regular trips to Utica for me to send his dust to Helena to the assay office. His cleanup averaged an ounce and a half of gold dust, which, at $16 an ounce, kept him in provisions.

"A few years later Mr. Weatherwax built a machine at the mouth of Skunk gulch to work some of his ore. The machine was all homemade and power was furnished by water from Yogo creek.

"One windy day he climbed on the wheel to lubricate it and, losing his balance, fell and was killed.

"Placer mining and prospecting since 1879 has been entirely abandoned on Yogo Creek. My predictions are that some day a corporation with money for development work will show the world that there is gold in Yogo and lots of it."
Source: Great Falls Tribune Daily 7 Nov 1931, p. 13]

Poker Jim, Montana's Oldest Chinese Resident

“Poke Jim,” Aged Chinese Passes Away. Gambler of Early Day Mining Camps Known by Pioneers; Was 105 Years Old.

Special to The Tribune. Helena, Dec 28—News of the death of “Poker Joe,” an aged Chinese who died at the county farm in Powell county recalled to R. J. Quigley of this city that the man was a resident of Last Chance gulch when Mr. Quigley was a boy. Even then, the Chinaman appeared old. He spoke the English language fairly well and said he had come to Montana territory when Bannack and Virginia City were capitals. From Virginia City he had come to Helena when gold was discovered in Last Chance gulch. Later he drifted to Blackfoot City and to Ophir.

Mr. Quigley had nearly forgotten “Poker Jim” until a year ago last summer, when he was driving with his family in the vicinity of Blackfoot City. He learned that the Chinese was the only inhabitant of the ghost city. Mr. Quigley entered the cabin and in a bunk in the corner he saw what appeared to be a mummy, its clawlike fingers clutching the stem of an opium pipe. The man was awake and his beady eyes, peering from their setting of wrinkled parchment, fastened themselves on the sheepman’s face.

Taught Count in Chinese. If he remembered the days when he taught Quigley, as a boy in Helena, to count in Chinese, he gave no sign either by look or work that he recognized his caller. Seeking to rouse memory, Quigley counted to 10 in Chinese and paused. There was barely a flicker of the eyelids and a twitching of the lips. No sound came from the mouth but the eyes remained fixed upon Quigley.

Memory was gone, seemingly, yet it was evident that the Chinese managed some way to keep house and do what little cooking was necessary to supply his needs.

The cabin was clean, the floor swept and the cooking utensils behind the stove were scoured brightly. Mr. Quigley finally gave up an attempt to start a conversation. The eyes of Poker Jim followed him to the door as Quigley withdrew.

Speaks for Last Time. While a resident of Helena, Poker Him lived in the Chinese quarter. He worked as a placer miner on his own hook and spent his nights gambling. He was an inveterate poker player and because of that gained the sobriquet by which he was known throughout the early day mining camps and which he carried to his death.

So far as known, the last time he spoke was when Sheriff Lou Boedecker was taking him to Deer Lodge Nov. 30. In answer to a question, he told the sheriff he was more than 100 years old and that the trip to Deer Lodge would be his first visit there since he went to Blackfoot City 60 years ago. He was though to be 105.
[Source: Great Falls Tribune Daily 29 Dec 1931, p. 5]

2nd Printing for my book FORT BENTON!

Arcadia Publishing has just advised that my book, Fort Benton, is out of stock, going into reprinting, and due out about the end of April 2010. FORT BENTON was released by Arcadia Publishing July 13, 2009.

FORT BENTON tells the story of Fort Benton on the Upper Missouri through postcard images and accompanying stories.

Fort Benton is the head of navigation on the Missouri River, the “birthplace of Montana,” and it’s history spans every era in Montana’s development. Fort Benton, founded in 1846 as a fur trading post and named for Senator Thomas Hart Benton, is Montana’s oldest continuously occupied white settlement. Built on a broad river bottom along “nature’s highway,” American Indians crossed the north-south ford, and Lewis and Clark navigated the waters before white settlement. Arrival of the first steamboats from St. Louis and completion of the Mullan Wagon Road from Walla Walla in 1860 heralded the steamboat era bringing gold seekers, merchant princes, scoundrels, soldiers, North West Mounted Police, and eventually women and children to the wild frontier. Then came the railroads, open range ranching, and homesteaders by the thousand. Today, Fort Benton serves the agricultural Golden Triangle and presents its colorful history through cultural tourism.

Mullan Trail Blazer

[From: Anaconda Standard Sunday Morning Mar 20, 1910]

[Note: Despite the impact of Captain John Mullan on Montana, his death 28 Dec 1909 passed with little notice in the press of Fort Benton or Great Falls. This article in the Anaconda Standard in March 1910 by James U. Sanders of Helena, oldest son of Senator Wilbur F. Sanders, serves as the best "obituary" this author has found in the Montana press.]

The recent death of Capt. John Mullan, jr. Washington at the advanced age of 79 marks the passing of about the last member of that band of explorers of this region. He was a man to whom Montana owes much, and it would be a credit to us if in the not distant future some new county to be carved out of our imperial domain should bear his name.

Lieutenant Mullan’s activities in this part of the Northwest began in the year 1853 as a member of Gov. Isaac I. Stevens’ expedition to explore a route for the Pacific railroad from St. Paul to Puget sound. General Stevens on the creation of Washington territory in 1853 was appointed governor of the new territory and was at the same time placed in charge of the exploration for the Pacific railroad by the northern route.

In 1853 provision was made by congress for explorations for railroad routes from the Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean to be under the supervision of the secretary of war.

Jefferson Davis, then secretary, organized five expeditions, the first to explore a line near the thirty-second parallel of north latitude, the second near the thirty-fifth parallel, the third near the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth parallels, the fourth near the forty-first and forty-second parallels and the fifth near the forty-seventh and forty-ninth parallels. The reports of those surveys published by the government fill 13 royal octavo volumes, one of the most valuable publications of the government printing office. Thirty-five of the 70 full-page colored illustrations of the volume containing the report of the exploration of the northern route are of scenes in what is now Montana, and from one, the view of Cantonment Stevens and Fort Owen in the Bitter Root valley, adorning the walls of the house of representative in our state capitol, was copied.

Secretary Davis in submitting the reports to congress in 1855 expressed a preference for the southernmost route, desiring the Pacific coast to be commercially allied to the gulf states.

It is a matter of interest that Governor Stevens, in crossing the summit of the Rocky mountains at Cadotte’s pass in the present county of Lewis and Clark and entering the confines of the territory of Washington on the 24th day of September, welcomed the members of the party to the new territory and issued a proclamation establishing civil government therein. This incident is worthy of commemoration and the spot should be marked by the Historical or Pioneer society.

Governor Stevens’ memory is also worthy of commemoration by Montana. Lieutenant Mullan adds his testimony to the value of his labors, which he says have left to the country a very correct outline of the geography of the Rocky mountain sections examined.

As a preliminary to railroad construction, Stevens appreciated the necessity of a wagon road and emphasized in his introductions to Mullan the problem of a proper connection through a practicable mountain pass of the plains of the Missouri with the plains of the Columbia between the forty-fifth and forty-eighth north latitude. so Mullan considered that his connection with this great national highway dated from that time.

The expedition under Governor Stevens along the norther route is the only one of interest to us. it was divided into two divisions, the main one operating under Stevens from St. Paul west. The western division, under Gen. George B. McClellan, was to proceed to Puget sound and work east through the Cascade and other mountain ranges and meet Stevens. Lieut. R. Saxton was to repair in the Columbia river, organize a party and establish a depot in the Bitter Root valley.

Governor Stevens considered for a time the proposition of chartering a boat, sending a party up the Missouri river and throwing it into the mountains immediately. But he gave this up, not being fully satisfied that a boat, for which he had secured a conditional charter at Pittsburg, could go up that river. So the party proceeded overland.

In this party besides Governor Stevens were several men whose names are familiar as those of pioneers in what later was to be the state of Montana: Lieut. John Mullan, Second Artillery, six years later detailed to construct a military wagon road from Walla Walla to Fort Benton on the Missouri river; F. W. Lander, who later constructed that great highway known as the Lander cutoff, which left the main overland trail in the South pass above old Fort Aspenhul and proceeded direct to Fort Hall, Thomas Adams and Fred H. Burr, remembered by many old-timers, were also in the party. The services of Alexander Culbertson were also secured to acquaint the Blackfeet Indians with the purposes of the expedition.

Lieutenant Mullan was assigned to a party to survey the Missouri river and establish a depot at Fort Union. His party left St. Louis on the American Fur company’s boat May 21, with instructions to make as complete a survey of the Missouri river as circumstances would permit and to establish a supply depot at Fort Union. From Fort Union Mullan was detailed to survey the valley of the Yellowstone river, which he ascended to a point near the present city of Billings. From there he turned northward and explored the valley of the Musselshell and Judith basin and rejoined the main party at Fort Benton on Sept. 1.

Mullan was left in command of a party to explore the mountain regions of eastern Washington and the northwest part of Missouri territory, for this was before the creation of the territory of Nebraska, which came to the summit of the rocky mountains. He established his headquarter in the Bitter Root valley near Fort Owen, and explored the mountain regions, as he expressed it, “which included the sections whence flow the sources of the Columbia and Missouri rivers in a network of babbling brooks.”

Mullan states that the only information of this great region of country was the map left us by Lewis and Clark in 1805, with addenda given him by the more intelligent employees of the Hudson Bay company or chance travelers in the country.

Governor Stevens had employed a wagon train from St. Paul to Fort Benton, but there he had decided that he would be compelled to employ pack trains.

At this time the only overland wagon road t the Pacific was via the South (Pacific) pass, which still probably remains the great highway across the continent.

The question of the navigation of the upper Missouri and Columbia rivers was then a subject of discussion, one or two small steamboats at that time meeting the necessities of the commerce of the Columbia, with the head of navigation at The Dalles. On the Missouri it is recorded that a solitary steamer engaged in the fur trade made an annual trip up that stream.

The region covered by Lieutenant Mullan and his party in 1854-1855 [actually 1853-1854] extended from the Kootenai river on the north to Fort Hall on Snake river, covering the mountainous portions of Montana. Mullan, at this early date, determined that the Bitter Root mountains presented greater difficulties than the Rocky mountains in the matter of wagon and railroad construction, so that perhaps its adoption 10 years later as the boundary between Idaho and Montana territories is not strange.

Lieutenant Mullan, with a small party, left the Bitter Root valley May 1, 1854 and, crossing the summit of the Rocky mountains on the 10th, arrived at Fort Benton on the 14th. There he remained two days fitting up a wagon train, and started on his return on the 17th, against reaching the Bitter Rot valley on the 31st of that month. On this trip, in traveling along the Blackfoot, he said it was a misnomer to call it the Hell Gate, as the sun does not shine on a better spot on earth.

The actual construction of the military road from Fort Walls Walla to Fort Benton was deferred until 1859-1860, when the expedition was placed in the immediate charge of Lieutenant Mullan, and the Mullan road will live in history, although the iron horse has paralleled it for the greater part of its length.

J. Wiessner, the astonomer of the expedition, in submitting his report of the stronomical and meteorological observations to Captain Mullan, closed with the following remarkable state:
“While I was drawing a profile of the road, and by attempting to represent all known heights of the mountains, of settlements and camps along the rivers, in valleys and prairies of Gov. (the late lamented general) I. I. Steven’s Northern Pacific Railroad district, between the longitude of the mouth of the Columbia on the west and Fort Union on the east, and within the parallels of 45 degrees and the northern boundary, your signature was found most wonderfully written by the pen of nature. From the Pacific, along the Columbia up to Mount Adams, down to the Cascades, up to Mount Hood and, down to The Dalles, the profile is an ‘M’; along the Columbia, the Walla Walla, the Touchet to the head of Reed creek, down to the Tukonon to where Lewis discovered the Snake river, up the Pelouse on to the high plains of the Columbia and down to the St. Joseph, the profile is a ‘U’; up the Coeur d’Alene to Sohon’s pass and down the St. Regis Borgia to the Bitter Root, the profile is an ‘L’; by the Medicine Rock, Dearborn, Sun river, over the plains to the right of the Teton, to Fort Benton and along the winding Missouri to Fort Union, the profile is a ‘N.’”

From the foregoing it will be seen that the M of this remarkable profile is written in Oregon and Washington along the Columbia river; the U is written within the state of Idaho, the first L representing the summit of the Bitter Root mountains, the Rocky mountains representing the second L and the A N being written along the Dearborn, Sun and Missouri rivers across the state of Montana to Fort Union on the east. Let the profile of the White mountains look to his laurels.

We have mentioned the Oregon trail. This old highway in its time was without doubt, the best traveled highway of history and was followed for two-thirds of its length by the Pacific Argonauts from 1848 till the completion of the first Pacific railroad in 1869. Along the Oregon trail again old Ezra Meeker, over 80, in arranging to take a rip this summer, retracing the trip which he took 58 years ago, a feat which he accomplished in 1906, visiting President Roosevelt at the White House and driving his oxen into New York city.

A bill is pending in congress providing for the marking of this old trail at prominent points and seeking to interest the historical societies of the states through which it asses, in the matter, surely a worthy cause. The sympathy which this proposition has aroused suggests that similar action should be taken with reference to the route of the Lewis and Clark expedition 44 years before the dedication of the Oregon trail.

the line of the Verendry’s expedition, which penetrated the wilds of our own state 168 years ago and discovered the Shining (Rocky) mountains January 1, 1743, as authenticated in Vol. 1, and in the forthcoming Vol. 7, of “Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana,” might also to advantage be marked at important points by the historical society or some authorized commission.
J. U. SANDERS.
Helena, March 14, 1910.
________

In 1882 Mr. Sanders received this letter from Captain Mullan:
Washington, D. C., Aug. 30, 1882.
“J. U. Sanders, Esq., Helena, Mont.:
“Dear Sir: I acknowledge the receipt of you very full and satisfactory letter of the 20th inst., containing so graphic an account of the operations going on at this time at both ends and in the middle of the Mullan tunnel,, and for which please accept my thanks.

“It would afford me exceeding great pleasure to be present next year at the celebration which you speak of in anticipation of the completion of this great work through the Rocky mountains, and if circumstances enable me to be present on that occasion I shall conceive it my duty to make an effort to visit you in Western Montana and see the result of the growth of that region, where 30 years ago I pioneered the first wagon across that section of the Rocky mountains. I have always had a most abiding confidence in the future growth and development of that, to me, most interesting portion of the Northwest and to travel through that country again at the rate of 500 miles a day, where we thought we were making a fair day’s work when we journeyed five miles a day on foot, will be to me a pleasure which can only be described by the enjoyment thereof.

“My advices from Oregon are to the same effect as you attest, to wit: that the western section of the road will reach Missoula some time about the end of the year.

“J. K. McCaminna, assistant attorney general for the interior deparment, some three weeks ago left Washington for the purpose of making a visit to the Flathead Indian reservation to secure from those Indians the right of way over their Jocko Indian reservation.”

From Walla Walla to Benton by Military Road Report of Capt. John Mullan

From Walla Walla to Benton by Military Road Report of Capt. John Mullan

[From: Anaconda Standard Sunday Morning July 26, 1908]

In no way can the changes wrought in the northeaster portion of the United States in the last half century be more forcibly realized than by a perusal of a report submitted in the war department in 1863 by Capt. John Mullan, who had been in command of several exploring parties sent out by congress to locate and build a military road from Fort Walla Walla on the Columbia river to Fort Benton on the Missouri river.

The necessity felt by the government for a more thorough and satisfactory knowledge in detail of the geographical and topographical character of the country between the Mississippi river and the Pacific ocean, looking especially toward the location and construction of a Pacific railroad, called into the field in the spring of 1853, under authority from congress, several corps of engineers and explorers, whose mission it was to supply this desired information within certain limits of time and means.

Hon. Isaac I. Stevens was in command of the first expedition in 1853 and Captain Mullan was assigned as one of his assistants. This party rapidly and easily surveyed and laid out a good road from St. Paul’s, as the Minnesota metropolis was then called, to Fort Benton. Then the expedition entered the more difficult section of the Bitter Root range of the Rockies, where the lateness of the season, the difficulty of the county, the importance of the undertaking and the scarcity of supplies caused Governor Stevens to leave a small party in the field for further explorations, with Captain Mullan in command.

A Blind Undertaking. The only knowledge the explorers had of the country was that gleaned from the maps and data of Lewis and Clarke and such information as Hudson Bay trappers or chance travelers might be willing to impart. As one of the most essential aids for the construction of a railroad was a good wagon road, owing to the necessity of transporting all supplies for long distances from the eastern to the western depots, the value and importance of Captain Mullan’s work can be appreciated.

The limited commerce and travel along the narrow margin of the Columbia and the principal tributary, the Willamette, at that date gave employment to one or more smaller-sized steam craft, which were amply able to do the business of those who looked toward the Dalles as the head of steam navigation on the Columbia, or to Oregon City, the head of the Willamette; or the eastern watershed of the Rocky mountains a solitary steamer engaged in the fur trade, made its annual trips from St. Louis till it crept along the waters of the Missouri to a region where the red man walked alone, though a pioneer to the long line of steamers that must follow in the wake of the trade and development of this region constituted the only attempt made to test the further navigation of this noble river towards its sources in the Rocky mountains. Captain Mullan’s energies were to be directed to finding the shortest and most feasible route between the headwaters of these two rivers, and the field examined by him in 1853 and 1854 extended from the valley of the Kootenay river on the north to Fort Hall on the Snake on the south.

Indian Reformation. In the spring of 1854, from a half-breed named Gabriel Prudhomme, who had been a voyager and traveling companion of the earlier Jesuit fathers in their pilgrimage through the Rockies, Captain Mullan learned of an easy and direct route from his camp in the Bitter Root mountains to Fort Benton. The party left camp on the first of March, arrived in Fort Benton on the 14th and returned to their starting point in the Bitter Root mountains on the 31st of the same month. A messenger was dispatched to Governor Stevens with the news, which gave fresh hopes to him and his friends, as they were anxious to open this section by a line of immigrant travel.

This discovery led up to an appropriation of $30,000, the first of a series, to open a wagon road from Fort Benton to Walla Walla, and the party turned its attention to the country to the west. One of the engineers in the party examined the southern Nez Perce trail, but found it an impossible one, owing to snow and other obstacles, Clarke’s Fork, St. Regis, Borgia, Coeur d’Alene valley and Lolo pass were the other lines left to be examined, and to arrive at a just estimate of the advantages possessed by each route it was necessary for one person to make an examination of all of them. Clarke’s Fork was examined in the spring and, owing to the high water, was decided to be impracticable, although Captain Mullan later regretted that he did not choose this route, as he came to the conclusion that the extra expense of constructing a road above the high water mark would have been more than balanced by the difference in climate enjoyed by this route over that of the Coeur d’Alene valley, which was chosen.

Thinking, very naturally, that as the Coeur d’Alene route lay 50 or 60 miles south of the Clarke’s Fork road and the difference in altitude being small, all questions of climate would be in favor of the more southern route. Later examinations developed the remarkable fact that as one goes north in this mountainous region, within certain limits the climate grows milder, the snow less deep, that horses can travel all winter and the general characteristics of winter are all less servere.

As to Climate. In regard to this climatic peculiarity, Captain Mullan says: “If we take an isothermal line which crosses the country in the latitude of St. Joseph, Mo., and trace this line westwardly, we reach Fort Laramie, when, varying from the line of latitude, it trends northwestwardly and passes between the Wind River mountains and the Black hills of Dakota, reaching the head waters of the Yellowstone at the hot springs and geysers of that stream; thence again to the Beaverhead valley, crossing the main range of the Rocky mountains at Deer Lodge valley. In other words, the longitude from St. Joseph to the Rocky mountains has gained six degrees of latitude, which remarkable increment continues as we trace it further westward; for the lie crossing the range grasps the valley of the Hell’s Gate and keeps it until it reaches the Bitter Root, and thence, trending northwest, strikes Clarke’s Fork at the Pend d’Oreille lake; from this point it trends south and come to Walla Walla, in Washington territory. Thus we find the same climate along the Clarke’s Fork, Hell’s Gate, upper Missouri and the Yellowstone rivers that we find at St. Joseph, Mo. This is as true as it is strange, and shows unerringly that there exists in this zone an atmospheric river of heat flowing through this region, varying in width from 1 to 100 miles, according to the physical face of the country.

Over the Field. Captain Mullan completed his field labors in 1854, when the appropriation gave out, and was sent by Governor Stevens from Puget sound in January, 1855, to Washington with letters to the war department, urging it to continue the explorations. The subject hung fire from this time until the winter of 1857, when Governor Stevens was in congress and, owing to the latter’s interest and enthusiasm, Captain Mullan was again detailed to take command of a road-building party. This decision of congress was hastened by the Mormon disturbances, which brought the necessity of troops at the center of trouble forcibly before the government. Then the Indians along the Columbia rose to a tribe, and although they were defeated in the wars of 1856 and 1857, they were not quelled, and in 1858 occurred the defeat of Colonel Steptoe, which caused Captain Mullan to delay his expedition for the time being, as the escort of 60 men which General Clarke, commander of the department of the Pacific, had been directed to furnish him, could not be spared from Fort Walla Walla, and, in addition, it would have been impossible to construct wagon roads with the Indians in a state of open hostility.

Rather than remain idle, Captain Mullan offered the services of himself and engineers to General Clarke, who assigned him to duty on Colonel Wright’s staff as topographical officer. This gave Captain Mullan an opportunity of learning, at first hand, the nature of the country through which the road would eventually pass, as he knew it only from the reports and maps of others, and was uncertain as to where a road should be built. The Indian campaign was successful, Colonel Wright pursuing the Indians about 150 miles, and on the banks of a stream near the Spokane, which, Captain Mullan speaks of as the Nedlwhuald’s, caught up with them, hanged the Yakima chief, Qualtian, and several of the other leaders of the uprising.

Making Ready. Not wishing to await the action of the bureau and the decision of congress in regard to orders for another expedition, Captain Mullan journeyed to Washington, and through the aid of Governor Stevens an appropriation of $100,000 was made in March, 1859.

In June Captain Mullan had his command of 100 men assembled at The Dalles, in Oregon, and sent a part of them on ahead to run levels along the banks of the Columbia, in the Snake river to determine the feasibility of a railroad along this route.. In this advance party were several engineers who had had experience on eastern railroad lines, and they made note of the wood, sand, lime, stone, etc., which would be available for the construction of a Pacific railroad. They were to await the main party at Walla Walls.

G. Sohon, who had accompanied Captain Mullan on his expedition in 1853 and 1854, and who was familiar with the Indian languages and had great influence over the savages, was sent on with the advance party to Walla Walla, from whence he was told to proceed to the Coeur d’Alene country; from there he was to go to the Coeur d’Alene mission and from Father Joset procure such guides as were necessary and then to reconnoiter and determine where the best crossing of the Snake river could be made, and where was the best and shortest route between the head waters of the Palouse river and the Bitter Root valley. Father Joset and Captain Mullan had been in correspondence and the latter believed that through the Indians he could learn of a direct route. Unfortunately, the Indians were so bitter and the country proved so rough that, after many hardships, Sohon was recalled and Captain Mullan gave up all hope of finding a better route at this point than through the Coeur d’Alene valley.

On the first of July the whole party met in Walla Walla, and thence started on its long, arduous journey eastward, which ended at Fort Benton 13 months later, and on which they laid out 624 miles of road, built many bridges and gained for the benefit of the settlers and gold seekers much valuable data in regard to climate, topography and natural resources of the country.

The Route Traversed. The route traversed was from Walla Walla to the mouth of the Palouse; then the Snake river was crossed where one of the men was drowned, and then on to Fort Taylor, which was built in 1858. Whatever work was required en route in the way of excavations or bridges was done by the men as the train was moving, as the country was a rolling prairie.

It being a question in the mind of the commander as to whether the road should follow the main valley of the Palouse, or should strike across the high prairie country and follow the upper tributaries of this stream, Theodore Kolecke was sent ahead to explore both routes. The more northern route was chosen, which lay near Pyramid butte. The road now crossed the Ora Yatayeuse river and required little work until a tributary of the last named stream called the Teho-Teho-u-Seep was reached, after which they entered the most difficult portion of the basaltic basin which, owing to the deep ravines, and the bed of Spectre lake intervening, forced them to take a still more northerly course when they reached the prairie that separates the waters that flow into the Snake river from those that flow into the Spokane.

They now camped on the banks of the Nedlwhuald, where Colonel Wright had hung the Indians a year before, and after traveling over a country that required almost no work in the construction of the road reached the spurs of the Bitter Root mountains, where the difficult feats of road-building began.

The line chosen for the road lay on the southern edge of Coeur d’Alene lake, then continued four miles up the St. Joseph’s river. After crossing the latter it took the most direct route to the Coeur d’Alene river and to the mission of that name. In order to make the descent from the table land to the St. Joseph valley a bridge 60 feet long was constructed and a good deal of excavating had to be done.

Beautiful Valley. It was in this valley, which Captain Mullan extols as one of the most beautiful it was his fortune to see, that the Catholic fathers first established their mission, but, owing to the overflow of the lower portion of the valley, which made communication with the outside world difficult and prevented the extension of their fields, they removed to Coeur d’Alene lake.

The road from St. Joseph’s to the mission, 12 miles away, was constructed with some difficulty, as three bridges had to be built and a good deal of excavation done along rocky spurs. Two parties were sent out, one of which was directed to cross the mountains along the south fork of the Coeur d’Alene river, strike the Clarke’s Fork at or near Thompson’s prairie, procure Indian guides and an outfit and pursue investigations up the Clarke’s Fork to the Pend d’Oreille mission and return via the Bitter Root, recrossing the mountains via Sohon’s pass and thence to the main camp, which was busy making a corduroy road a few miles from the Coeur d’Alene mission. The other exploring party was sent forward to ascertain the best crossing of the Coeur d’Alene mountains and to continue examinations down the valley of the St. Regis to the Bitter Root and thence up it to Hell’s Gate valley. After careful consideration of the data brought in by these two parties it was decided to build the road up the valley of the Coeur d’Alene, and finally after much laborious work through dense timber the outfit reached the valley of the St. Regis the 1st of December.

Severe Winter. As they had been obliged to keep the stock in the mountains until they were covered with snow, many of them died from starvation. Captain Mullan had intended to spend the winter in the Bitter Root valley because of its mild climate, but as it was, winter overtook him and the best he could do was to make a point on the St. Regis. In order to do this he pushed his animals to the last notch of their endurance, dreading to be caught in a mountain gorge to battle out the winter or to contend with the high water of the coming spring. After becoming settled in camp the stock was sent 100 miles to the Bitter Root, but the ground was covered with snow and the animals so impoverished that many of them died en route. The beef cattle were slaughtered and the meat frozen and lasted in this condition until March. The camp was called Cantonment Jordan and the men spent the winter compiling field notes, making maps and busy with the ordinary camp routine.

Captain Mullan devoted a good deal of attention to measuring the snowfall, and many inquiries developed the fact that no Indian had been known to pass the mountains in the winter via the Coeur d’Alene route, but that the Clarke’s Fork trail was nearly always passable, which fact he wished he had known sooner.

Owing to the difference in climate enjoyed by the Bitter Root country the camp was moved and as the horses were still in no condition to be used, the men transported two months’ supplies on their backs through the dense timber to the new camp, where they constructed six bateaus and a large flat, the latter to be left at the crossing and the former to be used in transporting supplies to the river as the work progressed.

Aid From Indians. Captain Mullan then left the party in charge of Lieut. J. L. white and went to the Bitter Root valley and laid his needs before the Flathead Indians, who had always been friendly to him. He informed them that he needed 117 horses with park saddles and 15 or 20 men to accompany Mr. Sohon, who was to be sent to Fort Benton for supplies. The chief, Ambrose, appeared the next day, after Captain Mullan had stated his request with a bundle of 137 sticks, each of which represented a horse or a man. The Indians were paid for the use of their animals and the services of the men and returned in March from Fort Benton to the Bitter Root camp with 11,000 rations. A messenger was also sent from the Bitter Root to Salt Lake with a requisition on Colonel Crossman for 50 mules.

The messenger was caught in the mountains by deep snow, near the head of the Snake river, lost his horse, made snowshoes from his saddle rigging, and, though snow blind, made the greater portion of the 500 miles on foot, reaching Camp Floyd safely and returning on horseback with one companion, making the whole trip to and from within 50 days. Captain Mullan then went to the Pend d’Orielle mission for fresh vegetables, as many of the men were showing signs of scurvy.

Captain Mullan was anxious to reach Fort Benton as soon as possible and thought that the summer of 1860 would prove a good time for carrying out the proposition of Jefferson Davis—a military movement via the Columbia and Missouri rivers and the route which was then being laid out. If the soldiers could be transported across the country by this route, it would show that some result had been obtained from the expenditure of the money. The success of the steamers in reaching Fort Benton in 1858 and 1859 was one point accomplished, and then the fact that the forts in Washington and Oregon needed recruits and supplies and the fact Captain Mullan would reach Benton with a large and empty wagon train would make the spring of 1860 a proper time for testing the merits of the road. A messenger was dispatched to Washington setting forth the advantages of the route and requesting that 300 recruits be sent from St. Louis on the steamers belonging to Pierre Chouteau & Co. with four months’ supplies. Captain Mullan agreed to meet them at Fort Benton with his train with which they could make the trip to Walla Walla in 60 days.

Heading for Fort Benton. After procuring the vegetables Captain Mullan returned to the camp on the Bitter Root ferry and now every effort was made to reach Fort Benton in as short a time as possible. The road was made along the right bank of the Bitter Root river, with but one crossing of that stream, and an arduous cut made around Big mountain, which cost the labor of 150 men for six weeks. The next stretch of country of 60 miles to Hell’s Gate required the building of a bridge 150 feet in length and this part of the road was left in fine condition. The party then pushed on to the Blackfoot river, which was reached on the 1st of July, and a party was sent out to make a thorough examination of the Big Blackfoot and run a line of levels from the mouth of its tributary. Lander’s Fork, across the Rocky mountains, via either Cadottes’ or Lewis and Clark’s pass to the Dearborn river. This party was to join the main command at the crossing of the Dearborn river.

The Big Blackfoot was crossed by means of a wagon boat and a small bateau, the last named of these being transported the entire distance to Fort Benton, and in it some members of the party descended the Missouri to Fort Randall. While crossing the river Captain Mullan learned of the arrival at Fort Benton of Major Blake, with a command of 300 recruits, en route to Fort Walla Walla, who was awaiting the arrival of the exploring party with the wagon train. After a good deal of wire pulling by the friends of the new road the soldiers had been sent to Fort Benton and the government was saved $30,000 by the opening of the route.

The road up the Hell’s Gate required 11 crossings on this trip, but later all but one were eliminated. They followed the Little Blackfoot for some distance and reached the west base of the Rockies, crossed Mullan’s pass on the 17th day of July. They followed the coarse of the Big Prickly Pear and passed through the Prickly Pear valley, which Captain Mullan states abounded with game of all kinds. They crossed Little Prickly Pear, and as at one place the stream enters into a deep rocky canyon with no berme on either side, they were forced to make the road over a broken section, which they termed Medicine Rock mountain. As Major Blake was becoming impatience they descended into the valley of the Little Prickly Pear and made 18 crossings of the stream in order to save time.

On Medicine Rock mountain Captain Mullan states that traces of quartz were found and continual indications of gold, and the Indians told the party of gold which had been found two miles up a canyon, near the Big Prickly Pear. The route now lay over prairie hills to the Dearborn river, where dispatches from Washington were received setting forth a continuation of the appropriation. Camp was made at Bird Tail Rock, from there they proceeded to the Sun river, which was crossed at a ford where the Indian agency of the Blackfeet, in charge of Col. A. J. Vaughn, was located.

Easy Going. The remaining 55 miles to Fort Benton was over easy, almost level road and was made without incident, the end of the journey being reached on the 1st of August. A Mackinaw boat was in readiness and the soldiers and civilians, whose terms had expired, were sent down the river to St. Louis. The wagons were turned over to Major Blake, and on the 3rd of August Captain Mullan, after leaving several of his most competent men with the major as guides, left Fort Benton for Walla Walla, desiring to keep in the lead and make whatever repairs the road called for. The soldiers under Major Blake made the trip to Walla Walla from Fort Benton in 57 days and the feasibility of the route was demonstrated for future military movements to the western coast.

On his next expedition Captain Mullan desired to test the Laramie-Deer Lodge route, and with this in mind went to San Francisco, from there to St. Louis by stage, thence to Washington, where, owing to the chaotic conditions prevailing in 1860, he was forced to return to Walla Walla and take up work on his original proposition, which had previously been accepted, to continue work on the Missouri, making improvements on the road. He left Walla Walla the middle of May, 1861, and spent the winter in camp in the Bitter Root mountains at Cantonment Wright, which was located at the fork of the Hell’s Gate and Big Blackfoot rivers. The winter of ’61 and ’62 was one of unusual severity, the Indians losing the greater part of their cattle and stock.

In the spring of this year many of the bridges were washed away, necessitating new ones, and in many places the road was moved in order to place it as much as possible above the high water mark. Fort Benton was reached in June and on the return trip to Walla Walla, which Captain Mullan made almost immediately, he had the extreme satisfaction at seeing many settlers, emigrants and miners availing themselves of the road which he had planned. Late in August, 1862, he reached Walla Walla and auctioned his property at public sale and on the 11th of September started for Washington to make his report to the war department. He had been seven years on the work and had opened up a road 624 miles in length, at a cost of $230,000.

When Captain Mullan made his journey there were three grist mills and two sawmills in Walla Walla valley, one grist mill at the Coeur d’Alene mission, one saw and one grist mill at Frenchtown and the same number at the Pend d’Oreille mission; one sawmill at the Jocko river and one steam saw and one grist mill owned by LaBarge & Co., which they proposed to erect near the Deer Lodge gold mines, which were already coming into notice.

Prophecy Fulfilled. An interesting prophecy made by Captain Mullan has been fulfilled. He states that he expected that the buffalo would be exterminated in a few years and their places taken by thousands of bands of sheep and he also states that he hopes in time that the streams of the Rocky mountains would be harnessed and wool manufactories erected which would send to St. Louis via the Missouri an enormous quantity of wool and that this wool, together with gold, would be the principal exports of the Northwest.

In 1858 gold was discovered in British Columbia and in the next year Captain Pierce explored the Bitter Root mountains and discovered the Nez Perce gold mines. Within three years prospectors had spread all over Eastern Washington and then in their restless wanderings had uncovered the rich mines in the Big Hole and Beaverhead valleys, and Captain Mullan remarks in his report that “enough discoveries have been made to warrant us in thinking that the whole mountain system is gold bearing.” He also speaks of copper, sulphur, coal and iron indications which encourage him in the belief that the cherished scheme of a railroad to the Pacific will become a necessity.

In his special report of the Indians along the road he praises the Flatheads, which at that time numbered about four hundred. The other tribes mentioned are the Palouse, Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, Pend d’Oreilles, Snakes, Bannacks, mountain Nez Perces and the Blackfeet, the last of which are, according to the captain, the most numerous and the worst of the lot.

The white population found on or tributary to the road at this time is estimated at 1,000, found mostly at Walla Walla, Lewiston, Deer Lodge, Hell’s Gate, Beaverhead, Big Hole, Bitter Root and Prickly Pear. Two weekly papers were published in the region, at Walla Walla the Statesman and at Lewiston the Golden Age.

There were three Indian missions established along the line of the road—one among the Coeur d’Alenes, one among the Pend d’Oreilles and one among the Blackfeet. Captain Mullan pays the Fathers the highest tribute, both on account of their unvarying kindness to him and because of the marvelous influence for good which they had over the Indians.

In expatiating upon the wants of the country, Captain Mullan urges the establishment of a cavalry post at Deer Lodge and one at Hell’s Gate, which should receive their supplies from a military depot which he urges the government to build at the head of the great falls of the Missouri, at the mouth of the Sun river. Florence, Ore Fino, Fort Boise and the Coeur d’Alene mission also needed companies of soldiers, and the war department was advised to retain Fort Laramie, with a large body of troops always in readiness. Military roads were recommended from Deer Lodge to Salt Lake, from Fort Benton to Beaverhead valley, and from this valley to Salmon river.

The government was urged to establish mail facilities from Hell’s Gate to Fort Benton, from Deer Lodge to For Laramie and Salt Lake, and also a mail route from the Beaverhead valley to Florence City.

As to Railways. In discussing the Pacific railroad, the question as to whether the constitution of the United states would allow land grants or not was a mooted question. The fact that the country from the eastern terminus, St. Paul, to Walla Walla was almost wholly unsettled and that the road would be liable to the attacks of the Indians, and would have no tonnage from the intermediate points, was a deterrent feature in all the plans suggested for the immediate construction of the road.

Captain Mullan goes at length into the various questions affection the proposed railroad and reviews the matter from the time of Whitney, who first advocated a Pacific railroad in the ‘40s, gives elaborate explanations of the cost, different systems and routes and debates whether in view of existing conditions the credit or cash system of construction would be the better.

The sextant, transit and meteorological observations of the exploring party are given in the last part of the book, and those people who claim that the climate of the Northwest is changing and is no longer the same as it was in the early days have a reliable record with which to compare the conditions of the present and to discover whether improved conditions of lining account for the weather seeming milder or whether there really is a change for the better.

When Fuel Famine and Flood Harassed Old Fort Benton

A Woman’s Perspective of Life on the Frontier: The Fort Benton Years of Martha Edgerton Rolfe--Part III
By Ken Robison

This continues the series of frontier historical sketches by historians at the Joel F. Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton.



Mrs. Martha Edgerton Rolfe, daughter of first territorial Governor Sidney Edgerton and wife of adventurous Herbert Percy or H. P. Rolfe, left a remarkable account about life Fort Benton in its transition years from lawless whiskey trading post of the early 1870s to transportation hub by the end of that decade. In Part I, published in The River Press, Mattie, as her family called her, wrote about the hazardous trip the Rolfes made by stage from Helena to Fort Benton arriving December 8, 1879. Part II presented Mattie’s observations as she and her family spent their first year at the head of navigation on the Missouri River. Mattie now continues her narrative of life in Fort Benton:

The winter of 1880-81 in Montana was one of unparalleled severity. The cold weather set in about the first of November and continued until the first of February except for an all to brief chinook during the first week in December, which preceded a heavy fall of snow that isolated Fort Benton, where I was then living, from the rest of the world.

By November 17, according to the River Press of that day, the Shonkin was frozen solid, and a week later it notes the Missouri river was also frozen, and that the “cold snap froze up the printing office.” During this extreme cold the government thermometers registered at one time 59 degrees below zero.

The snowfall, like the cold, was unprecedented. It continued until the ground was covered from three to seven feet in depth. Cattle, deer, antelope, and other unsheltered animals were frozen to death or perished from starvation. Travel became impossible.

W[orden] P. Wren, who was then in charge of Murphy-Neal Co., in Fort Benton, had occasion to go in January to Sun River on business. On his return journey by “jerky” as the two-seat coach running between Helena and Fort Benton, and sometimes on other stage routes, was called, the driver lost his way, and for two days and a night wandered through the snow after leaving Reinecke’s place [on the Sun River], before he reached Fort Benton with his hungry and half-frozen passengers, they having had but one meal during that time. From Reinecke’s to Fort Benton was ordinarily a journey of less than ten hours by coach.

It was not alone travelers who were sufferers because of the heavy snowfall; the citizens of Fort Benton found their fuel supply rapidly decreasing. Wood rose to $12 and $13 a cord, and soon could not be purchased at any price.

The situation was the more alarming because of the intense cold that showed no signs of modifying. Those who had laid in enough fuel to last through an ordinary Montana winter were the most fortunate, although it was evident, unless there came a change in the weather, they, too, would have to utilize whatever would burn and keep them warm, as others were already doing.

Wherever possible, several families went in together and pooled their fuel supply. Our own small roof during this period sheltered three families. The cold being almost unendurable, the men were compelled to do most of the cooking for our household, as they were more warmly dressed than the women. But even they could stay but a few minutes at a time in the kitchen that was built of boards, lined with paper, and impossible to comfortably heat in such weather.

Finally our wood gave out, and we began to tear down our fence. Others had long before resorted to all sorts of experiments to keep warm. When everything without doors had been used, including fences, and small buildings, furniture was then broken up and burned. Murphy-Neal Co. burned a large quantity of rancid bacon they fortunately had on hand. how the other large firms managed to tide over this period is not a matter of record.

Fort Benton was then a military post, with Colonel [Edward] Moale, brother-in-law of General Gibbon, in command. In their extremity, the citizens of Fort Benton turned to him for relief, which he was only too glad to give if it lay within his power to do so. He telegraphed to Washington, explaining the situation, and from there received permission to share the large amount of wood at the post with the needy inhabitants --that is to say, with everyone living in Fort Benton, for all were fuel paupers.

Scarcely was there a prospect of the fuel famine being ended, when the residents of this sorely tried town ere called upon to face another danger, that threatened its very existence. A wind came out of the southwest, and within a few hours the thermometer indicated increased warmth of over 60 degrees. The River Press of Feb. 2, 1881, says: “Benton is swimming, water running in the streets and ditches being cut to drain it into the river.” The chinook had arrived and brought with it real summer weather. The snow did not disappear gradually, but suddenly melting, poured down the hillsides surrounding Fort Benton in torrents of muddy water, covering the sidewalks, and making the town look as if it were a part of the river, which it soon threatened to become.

What effect the thaw had upon the roads leading into town can readily be imagined. They were afloat, and it would be some weeks before they would be in a condition for travel. Less wood was needed now the weather was milder, but the tock at the post could not last indefinitely, even if the money was available to buy it at twenty-five dollars a cord, to which price it had risen. Meanwhile the chinook blew and blew.

The streets dried and became passable, when it was noticed the ice in the river gave signs of weakening, and it soon became dangerous to cross it, and communication with the other side was cut off. At length the ice began to break up, and it was hoped the river would be clear enough to permit the ferry to operated before many days.

Then came the startling news near nightfall of a lovely spring-like day, that the valleys of the Teton and Marias rivers were flooded, and an ice gorge had formed in the Missouri above the town. The business section of Fort Benton, and many of its homes were situated on low ground, but little above the river at high water. if the gorge did not give way, this part of the town would certainly be washed away.

Had we been saved from freezing, now to be drowned? It certainly looked like it. My own home would be in the direct course of the flood that was imminent if the gorge resisted much longer the hammering of the great blocks of ice that swept down against it. These, arrested in their progress, piled up and helped strengthen the dam.

Many, who like ourselves lived in the lowlands, fled to higher ground for safety. Among these was Colonel James Stanford, his wife and infant son. We foolishly remained. Again we numbered three families, who decided to brave the flood together, as we had formerly endured the cold. But we did not sleep--only the children slept, happily unconscious of the danger--while we waited calmly whatever fate had in store for us, not because we were courageous; it was the thought of how cold and uncomfortable it must be out there on the hills, and we had been cold so long.

We sat about the fire indulging in gloomy suggestions of what might happen. As our house was at the upper end of town, it was near the gorge. Every few minutes one of the men left our circle to go to the narrow place between the hills where the gorge had formed, looked it over, and returned to give us his opinion of the situation.

But our men were not the only ones who were anxiously watching the rising water. Those others, whose wives and children were in safety on the hillsides, knew if the flood came it would sweep away their homes and all they contained. As for our group by the fireside, it never occurred to us that should the gorge break, it would be impossible for any one to warn us in time to permit of our escaping. We thoroughly enjoyed the bliss of ignorance, which in this case meant comport, and a roof over our heads other than the sky.

Some time after midnight the latest visitor to the gorge hastened back with the joyful news that the ice had given way; the river running free, and all danger was over. On hearing this, the refugees on the hills went back to their homes and for a few hours until morning came, the weary citizens of Fort Benton slept peacefully after their long vigil.

[Sources: “When Fuel Famine and Flood Harrassed Old Fort Benton in Montana Newspaper Association 10 March 1924 by Martha Edgerton (Rolfe) Plassmann; Memories of a Long Life by Martha Edgerton Rolfe Plassman]

The Benton Chinese Persevered and Worked On: The Celestial Kingdom on the Upper Missouri—Part III

This continues the series of frontier historical sketches by historians at the Joel F. Overholser Historical Research Center in Fort Benton.

[This article was published in the 24 February 2010 Fort Benton River Press]

Throughout the 1890s the Chinese in Fort Benton and Choteau County grew in numbers and persevered. In June 1891 an unusual marriage license was issued in Fort Benton for Lee Pack Foet, “formerly of China, and Miss Long Hair, a native American, one of the first families of the Gros Ventre reservation.” The bride, Miss Longhair, 19 year-old daughter of Gros Ventres parents Bad Dog and Nice Woman, married 22 year-old Lee Pack Foet, son of Lee Foet. The wedding took place in Chinook, then part of Choteau County, with Justice of the Peace William T. Richey officiating and his wife, Fannie Richey, and Chinese Sum Land witnessing the ceremony. Lee Pack Foet lived at Fort Belknap at the time.

While sentiment was hardening against the Chinese statewide, their number in Fort Benton and the new towns of Havre and Chinook was increasing. This was due in part to active use of the old Whoop-Up Trail for smuggling operations. On the 5th of August 1891, lightning struck and killed freighter Gus Brede during a violent storm. The first report reaching Fort Benton was that Brede was hit by lightning while sitting on a wagon between two Chinese, who were unhurt. The River Press editorialized “It seems a great deal like discrimination for a streak of lightning to dodge nine Chinamen in order that it may get a whack at a smuggler. It may be, however, that of the ten evils it chose the lesser.” The Press went on to headline “He’ll Smuggle No More. Chinese Contrabands Will Have to Find Another Pilot [than August Brede] Across the British Line.”

Contrary to the Press’ rumor, the county coroner found that Brede was alone on the wagon seat with nine Chinese concealed in the wagon bed, being smuggled from Fort Macleod to Fort Benton. Eight of these men were captured and deported to China via San Francisco. The men were held in jail in Fort Benton for ten days, the mandatory time allowed in which to make an appeal. The ninth man, Sing Lee, proved that he was a legal U. S. resident formerly residing in Fort Benton and Fort Assinaboine, and consequently was discharged. Sing no doubt had been along to select locations to distribute his contraband countrymen. Brede clearly had a racket going for some time, smuggling whisky into Canada and returning with smuggled Chinese. Earlier he had been fined $1,000 by the North West Mounted Police for smuggling whisky into Canada, and his outfit had been confiscated for smuggling Chinese into the United States by customs collector Jere Sullivan in Fort Benton.

The Great Falls Leader provided insight into these smuggling operations when it reported, “It has been common talk on this frontier for some time that the Chinese were coming into the British possessions to the north of us and were securing entry into the United States through Montana teams. The Celestials being well provided with money were able to pay handsomely for their overland trip and it is reported that $75 per head [the price was elsewhere reported as $15] is what it is worth to a teamster and guide who will undertake to pilot the Chinamen past the custom officers and deliver them at some point on the line of the railroad traversing the central portions of the state.”

Testimony at the coroner’s inquest provided further insight from Chinese witnesses. Brede with his human cargo hidden in the covered wagon had left Lethbridge five days before his death and reached a point just south of the Teton Bridge. When Brede was struck by the lightning, the Chinese panicked. Farmer Sam Heron, then stock inspector for Choteau County, arrived on the scene and discovered the tragedy. The Chinese had not yet recovered from their panic, and their superstitions were so great that Heron had trouble getting help to load Brede’s body in the wagon.

In the aftermath of the Brede smuggling episode, Jere Sullivan, Collector of Customs for Montana and Idaho, asked for the right to appoint a force to patrol the Canadian line to prevent the influx of Chinese from Canada. Sullivan planned to establish a system similar to the mounted police of Canada with twelve to fifteen armed men. Sullivan argued “With all its force of mounted police Canada is unable to totally suppress all whisky smugglers who attempt to enter that territory, and much less can one man, with a couple of deputies, stay the host of Chinese who are constantly streaming across the border into Montana and Idaho. Once these Mongolians succeed in getting into this state it is next to impossible to prove that they are illegally here, or, in fact, to even find them.” Sullivan’s plan for Montana’s Mounted Police did not happen.

By the dawn of the 20th century, the attitude in Fort Benton toward the Chinese was mixed with some advocates and many detractors. An insightful report by a special correspondent of the Great Falls Tribune is fascinating, “The ministers of Great Falls are losing a whole lot of good material by the dictum of the labor unions excluding Chinese. The Benton Chinese have begun to take kindly to the gospel and both the Episcopal and Methodist churches have flourishing China Sunday school classes. It is our custom to name Chinese servants after the man they work for and one can imagine a stranger’s feelings hearing ‘Charley Duer’ or ‘Doc Frields’ or ‘Tom Cummings’ or some other prominent citizen instructed in the elementary principles of the sermon on the mount, etc.”

The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by Congress in the 1880s, restricted immigration and froze the Chinese community in place, preventing it from growing and assimilating into U.S. society. Another federal law, passed in 1891 required all Chinese to register and be photographed, and by early 1894 Fort Benton’s photographer Dan Dutro recorded photographing 21 Chinese in Fort Benton, 18 at Fort Assinniboine, 14 at Havre, and 9 in Chinook. In February 1894 29 Chinese registered in Fort Benton and about 50 overall in the county.

Despite the setbacks, the Chinese in Benton worked on. Those running the laundry on St. John Street in Fort Benton opened a branch washhouse in Havre with two of their number moving to the railroad town to run the operation. The Press noted, “The gentle Mongolian has not only adopted the American customs, but is getting onto the ‘branch’ business.” Lee Gee bought the popular Enterprise Restaurant from Sing Lee and continued the business “at the old stand.” Lee Gee went back to China in October 1891 to visit relatives. By the following June, he was back in San Francisco, returning to Fort Benton in late July. In an 1892 ad in the River Press, Lee Gee & Company, proprietors of the Enterprise Restaurant, charged 50 cents for meals and 50 cents for lodging with board six dollars per week. His ad emphasized that the “popular restaurant” had fresh oysters in season. Later that year the Chinese laundry on St. John was gutted by fire although a week later Joseph Milligan was repairing the building owned by G. F. Deletraz.

Poor construction and deterioration of the wooden buildings occupied by several Chinese businesses seemed to plague them. In March 1894 the Press reported, “The ‘devil’ of which the superstitious Chinese complained so bitterly seems to have followed them to their new quarters. The Chinese left the Deletraz building two weeks ago, giving as their reason that the ‘devil had set it on fire twice, and they moved into the Huston brick [building], corner St. John and Main [probably the first part of the Hagen block], where they again started a laundry. At about one o’clock Tuesday morning the large frame wash room adjoining the brick was noticed to be in flames, as was also the log house used as sleeping apartments by the Chinese. The flames quickly communicated to the main building, but were gotten under control by the hose company before much damage was done to the brick structure. The wooden buildings were a total loss.”

In April 1895 the Chinese community went out to the cemetery one morning and left a supply of cigars, candles and other luxuries on the graves of their departed countrymen. The Press reported “Some irreverent American small boys will probably appropriate the mementoes before the resurrection of the dead, this being the result of such proceedings for some years past.” That same year the Press reported, “One of the meanest jokes we have heard of was recently played in this city upon a Chinese cook who is also running a chicken ranch. A party made nightly raids on the Chinaman’s hen roost, and then turned the plunder over to the heathen to be dressed and cooked, and up to date has eluded detection.”

Only a few letters have been found from or to the Chinese in north central Montana. When Fred C. Campbell became Superintendent of the Fort Shaw Indian Industrial School in 1898, he brought along Joe Ling to cook in his household. Although the Campbells departed Fort Shaw in 1908, Joe Ling stayed on with new Superintendent John B. Brown. In 1910 F. C. Campbell sent a remarkable letter to his long-time Chinese cook, “Dear Joe,” urging him to come cook for Campbell at the Fort Peck Agency, and concluding “A great many of your friends down this way have been inquiring if you are coming. I feel sure you will like the work and the people.” Overall, the letter read like correspondence between two friends, perhaps not surprising since F. C. Campbell proved over several decades to be a strong advocate for Native Americans in Montana.
Another fun and fascinating letter was sent by the smuggler Sing Lee at Fort Leavenworth October 28, 1898, to Charles E. Conrad. The letter reads, “Dear Sir I have send Hung letter to him nearly a months ago but still have no answer come to me yet. I want to know that you have hear from him yet? If you can not find him and if you want a good cook I will get you one. I left Montana about five years I did not make enough of any thing. I am hardly could make my living here if there is any things that I could do to make living there please let me know? Yours truly [signed Sing Lee]” Perhaps this letter explains why Sing Lee was augmenting his income by helping smuggle his fellow countrymen into Montana—he needed the money.

It is interesting also to note that African American J. P. Ball photographed Tu Hang, C. E. Conrad’s Chinese cook in the late 1890s. Perhaps the same man, Charlie Hung, also cooked on ranches in the area at this time.

The Chinese presence in Fort Benton continued and in June 1899 Wing Lung & Company opened a new laundry on Front Street next to the Owl Barber Shop. The next February a couple of Chinese opened a restaurant in the Magnolia Saloon building, next to Thielbar Brothers. By June 1900, 39 Chinese resided in the Fort Benton, and were operating washhouses, restaurants, the ever-present opium dens, and were in demand as gardeners and as cooks on area ranches. Ling Wock cooked at the Culbertson House, and Gee Ak and Lee Sam were partners in a laundry employing six other Chinese. Aum Lum cooked for Thomas Clary, while Frank Lee Hung operated as a silk and tea merchant. Gee Lee with brothers Lung Lee and Him Lee and partner Poy Lee operated a restaurant in the Culbertson Block employing young Sing Lee who had apparently returned to Montana by then. Laundryman You Louie employed five other Chinese in his business.

Overall, Choteau County had 86 Chinese in 1900 with Havre having 25, Chinook 13, Big Sandy 4, Harlem 1, and Fort Benton 39. The new Teton County, by then split away from Choteau, had 16 Chinese residents. Great Falls still had no Chinese, strictly enforcing its self imposed exclusion policy although within Cascade County there were Chinese residing in Sun River and Belt.

Ranchers in the Sun River valley and Fort Benton areas sought the services of Chinese cooks as status symbols in the community. Four successful ranchers in the Shonkin range had Chinese cooks. John Woodcock employed young California-born 23 year-old John Charles as cook on his ranch. Charlie Hung, born in China in 1863, immigrated to the U.S. in 1879, and cooked for James Patterson. Ah Jim, born in China in 1863, immigrated to the U.S. in 1875, and cooked for W. P. Sullivan. Ah Ling cooked for Charles Lepley. Ah Ling was born in China in 1857 and immigrated to the U. S. as a boy of ten. In addition from photographs held in the Overholser Historical Research Center we know that Joseph A. Baker had Chinese cooks “Jim” and “Toy” at various times, and that “China Boy” cooked at the Milner-Sullivan Ranch at Square Butte. Years later, Frances Ameilia Babcock recalled, “So many people in Fort Benton had Chinese cooks in those days. Mrs. Joe Baker, who was one of the Conrad girls, had a marvelous one, who used to send to China for their Christmas candy, nuts, fruit, and sauces.”
Fort Benton historian Jack Lepley recalls stories his mother Margaret told him about her childhood on the George and Louise Patterson ranch in the household with a Chinese cook. Their cook Charlie Hung would often laugh and tell young Margaret, born 1894, “when I go back to China, I take you with me.” They would all join in the laughter and treat his comment with the sense of humor believed intended. This went on for several years until Margaret was about seven years old and Charlie Hung decided to return to his home in China. One day Hung announced that he was ready to take Margaret with him. It began to dawn on Mrs. Patterson and Margaret that Charlie seriously wanted to “buy” Margaret and take her back to China with him. He was not at all happy when his offer was turned down, but Margaret Patterson remained on the ranch and later married Charles Lepley.

One studio photograph of a Chinese man in the collection of our Overholser Research Center has fascinating insight written on the back. The image taken by photographer John G. Showell shows “Lum,” no doubt Lum Crum, cook for Sheriff Thomas and Mary Clary. Also written is “Lum was one of about 5 Chinese taught English by Mrs. Buzzell, wife of Methodist minister. According to her daughter Esther Buzzell Turner, Lum and the others came to the Buzzell home in Fort Benton 1 or 2 evenings a week to learn to read and write English about 1900.” One can only imagine that this related to earlier reports that by this time some Chinese were attending church services in Fort Benton. Imagine Chinese Sunday School in the Methodist Church on Sunday mornings and English lessons at night at the home of the Methodist minister.

In March 1901 Joe Yu, a Chinese who had cooked for a number of parties in the Benton area during the previous ten years, died of pulmonary oedema. The funeral was held from Wolff’s undertaking rooms with “the local celestials turning out in force.” Joe Yu was about 50 years of age and had lived in the United States for over 25 years.

In October 1901 Lee Gee, who had owned the Enterprise restaurant most of the time for the past fifteen years, sold out to Lee Hing and left for China along with a party of other Benton Chinese including Gee’s two brothers. The Great Falls Leader covered their departure, “Speaking of the Chinese party that left Fort Benton last week for China, an old-timer who is well informed on such matters said that the three Lee brothers had been thrifty almost beyond belief. ‘They came here only six or seven years ago,’ said he, ‘and two of them ran a little restaurant while the other farmed a small truck patch, and yet I know that they took $31,00 [sic apparently $31,000] to China with them, and they made it here too, every cent of it. That is what I call thrift.’” The Leader concluded, “Lee Gee, the eldest of the trio, said that they intended to return to their native province in China, build houses and live the rest of their years in ease and plenty.”

That same month, October 1901, Mar Joe, a Chinese who had been in Fort Benton just a month was arrested by Customs Inspector E. A. Ringwald for violating the Chinese exclusion act. The U. S. Commissioner granted him ten days to prepare his defense. While Mar Joe remained in jail, it was discovered that he was wanted by Canadian authorities at Fernie, British Columbia, and they offered a $500 reward for his arrest, although the nature of the crime was not known. After a ten-day delay, Mar Joe was escorted west by Inspector Ringwald and Deputy Marshal Wall for deportation to Canada.

More troubles arose from the Chinese exclusion act for a man in Fort Benton in January 1902, when Louis Kim, alias Ung Toy, was arrested. One evening Henry Hagen noticed smoke coming from under the sidewalk in front of the old Magnolia saloon building on Front Street, recently vacated by the St. Paul restaurant. Hagen could not locate any fire and despite a thorough wetting with a hose, the volume of smoke did not diminish. He then got Marshal Sneath, who finally located a trap door in a lean-to kitchen at the rear of the building. On raising it a Chinese man was found in the cellar, and a fire he had made on the floor accounted for the smoke. Kim had been working at Tong Chong’s restaurant for about six months and was evidently prepared for quite a stay, as he had bedding with him in his cellar dwelling. Louis Kim was lodged in jail for ten days while Inspector Ringwald investigated. The finding was that Kim’s paper had been issued in Buffalo, Wyoming in April 1893, but had not been re-registered that November when a new exclusion law as passed. Louis Kim was released and allowed to remain in the country, but he was fined $8.50 for the bonfire. Louis Kim died in Fort Benton just five months later.

Sam Lee’s laundry at the corner of Main and St. John’s was closed for quarantine most of the month of February 1902 when clothing from Mrs. William Morrow’s home had been taken there. The board of health discovered that young Harry Morrow had come down with a mild case of varioloid, smallpox in a previously vaccinated patent. By the end of the month all the clothing at the laundry had been fumigated and the quarantine lifted much to the relief of the hard-pressed laundry.

Photos:

(1) Identification Cards Similar to This One Issued in San Francisco Were Issued to Chinese in the United States during the 1890s. (Ken Robison Collection)
(2) Chinese in Choteau County Were Photographed during the 1890s. Lum Crum, cook for Sheriff Thomas Clary was photographed by John G. Showell. (Courtesy of OHRC)
(3) Charles E. Conrad’s Chinese cook Tu Hang photographed by Famed Black Photographer J. P. Ball in Helena. (Courtesy of Thomas Minckler Collection)
(4) Chinese Gardens Area on the 1902 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map (Ken Robison Collection)