M. Mark Miller, Author

Author: mmarkmiller

  • An Event: Ready To Tell “Smart Women” About The Nez Perce In Yellowstone

    The big event on my schedule this week is my presentation, “The Nez Perce in Yellowstone,” to Smart Women on Wednesday at 3 p.m. at Aspen Point, an assisted living facility in Bozeman. I’m still working on my slides and script, but it’s taking shape in my mind.

    Chief Joseph

    I’ll begin with an overview of the flight of the Nez Perce who generally lived peacefully with whites for most of the 1800’s. After gold was discovered on Nez Perce land in 1853, settlers began moving in and in 1877 the Indians were ordered onto a tiny reservation. Rather than comply with the order, they decided to flee to the buffalo country on the plains. Most accounts of the flight of the Nez Perce emphasize things that happened outside of Yellowstone Park like broken treaties and battles, but I’ll reverse that pattern and focus in the human drama of the Indians’ encounters with tourists.

    Then I’ll talk about what I call “The Joseph Myth,” the common belief that Chief Joseph was a great general whose genius allowed him to outmaneuver the U.S. Army for months. Joseph was the chief of one of the five bands that led the army on its merry chase, but he was never the principal chief. I’ll speculate on reasons the Joseph Myth was born and why it persistes: (1) Joseph was an important chief who had a conspicuous role in negotiations with whites before the Nez Perce decided to leave and he was the last remaining chief at the Battle of Beartooth so he negotiated the surrender. These things made him the apparent leader. (2) The Army Officers needed a genius opponent, otherwise they would look like fools for letting a band of Indians that included old men, women and children—and 1,600 hundred horses and cow—elude them for months, (3)After the conflict Indian sympathizers needed an Indian hero who sought peace to bolster their case, and (4) Joseph was indeed a noble man who devoted his life to obtaining justice for his people. All true, but he wasn’t a military genius.

    I’ll talk about the Radersburg Party’s trip to the park and read Emma Cowan’s description of her being taken captive by the Nez Perce, which ended with her watching an Indian shoot her husband in the head.

    To slow things down, I’ll talk about “Skedaddlers,” tourists who visited the park in the summer of 1877, but left before the Indians arrived. These include: the famous Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman; Bozeman Businessman Nelson Story; English Nobleman and park popularizer, The Earl of Dunraven and his companions, Buffalo Bill’s sometime partner, Texas Jack Omohundro, and Dunraven’s friend, George Henry Kingsley, a physician who patched up the Nez Perce’ victims at Mammoth Hot Springs.

    I’ll talk about the Helena Party’s trip and contrast the all-male group that entered the park from the north with the co-ed Radersburg Party that entered from the west. Then I’ll read Andrew Weikert’s description of his gun battle with the Nez Perce.

    Then I’ll describe how survivors of encounters with the Nez Perce were either rescued by soldiers looking for the Indians or made their way to Mammoth Hot Springs. I’ll explain that after Emma Cowan, her sister, and several wounded men left Mammoth for civilization, three men stayed there to see if their missing companions would appear. Then I’ll read Ben Stone’s description of the Indian attack at Mammoth that left another man dead.

    I’ll end with my synthesis of accounts of Emma Cowan’s overnight ride from Helena to Bottler’s Ranch in the Paradise Valley to join her husband who had survived three gunshot wounds and was rescued by the army. That will give me an opportunity to talk about Encounters in Yellowstone, a book I’m writing now.

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    — The presentation is free and open to the public.  Please tell your friends.

    — You can read about my 2011 presentation to Smart Women.

    — Public Domain Photo.

  • A Tale: Early Hotels Offered Crude Accommodations — 1883

    In August of 1883 Yellowstone Park was overrun with parties of dignitaries including President Chester A. Arthur. Still, that’s when a 58-year-old school teacher, Margaret Cruikshank took new Northern Pacific train to Yellowstone. Miss Cruikshank said her guidebooks were far too lavish in praising the natural wonders of the Park, and she was quick to condemn the accommodations. Here’s her description of Marshall’s Hotel at the Lower Geyser Basin.

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    Marshall’s Hotel

    We went on a rather monotonous day’s journey till the early afternoon brought us to the Forks of Firehole—Marshall’s.

    Marshall is a man who, having no park permit, has chosen to assume that he could keep such a house of entertainment, that the Yellowstone Park Company would be glad to let him stay.

    When only rough teamsters and hunters visited the Park I suppose he gave satisfaction. But now that crowds throng there and are of a more fastidious sort, Marshall won’t do. Marshall must go.

    The effective force here is only three—Marshall, his wife, and a Chinaman—and they are all overworked and all cross. Not being forethoughted and forehanded as to providing and not having very high standards. I cannot praise their results.

    We had a tolerably good supper, which I enjoyed. Part of the reason was that our party got in early and the over‑worked cook was not so rushed. We had fish nicely fried and quite tolerable coffee. I often found it difficult when things were at their worst at Marshall’s to force down enough food to sustain nature, such abominable messes were served up to us.

    Above the square part of the building was a great loft, and this was elegantly subdivided into cells by burlap partitions reaching rather more than half‑way up. Judging by their size I thought that there must have been more than a dozen of these little cubbyholes, dark and stifling! Into these most of us were stowed. Beyond beds, the less said about our accommodations the better. Many slept on the floor.

    Our room was in the southeast comer upstairs and had two beds in it, one at each end. Mrs. Gobeen was our roommate.

    It fell to my lot to sleep where the eaves came down over me like the crust over the blackbird in the pie. Mrs. Gobeen objected to having the window open. The bed was stuffed with sagebrush and had a horrid medicinal, quininey smell. And though the bedclothes may have been clean, I fancied that they had covered every teamster in the valley, beside being washed in that hot spring till the blankets were perfect felt. Moreover, with the sagacity usually exhibited by the lower classes in bed making, every double blanket had its fold up towards the head, so that if you were too warm you had to throw off both thicknesses—or neither.

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    — Margaret Cruikshank’s journal is at the Yellowstone Research Center in Gardiner, Montana.

    — Photo from a  stereopticon view, Yellowstone Digital Slide File.

  • An Event: Northwest Montana Tour Was Great Fun

    The drive to northwest Montana last Tuesday was gorgeous. Fluffy white clouds sailed across a blue sky above snow capped mountains. Deep blue pine forests in the distance were covered with patches of snow that make them look like acid bleached denim. Rivers, full with spring rain and snow melt, ran aquamarine except where side streams poured in brown water.

    Eureka Historic Village store and church.

    After driving nearly 400 miles, I arrived in Troy in time to relax and have a sandwich before making my “Sidesaddles and Geysers” presentation to a small but lively audience for the public library. Then I drove 20 miles to Libby for the night.

    In the morning, I met Brian Sherry of WVRZ community radio and he took me to the community station’s makeshift studio where we chatted about early travel to Yellowstone Park and my work as an author. (I’ll see if I can post a link to the interview later.)

    Then I drove 70 miles through stunning mountain scenery to Eureka. In the afternoon, Scott Baney, a descendent of Tobacco Valley pioneers, guided me through the Eureka Historic Villiage—a collection of historic buildings including a store, chuch, school, and a hand-hewn cabin built by Scott’s ancestors. I had a great time reminiscing over the antique farm machinery with Scott.

    Eureka auther Darris Flanagan arrived and showed the inside of the buildings where the local historical society has created displays. My favorite was on logging, an activity that I don’t know well.

    In the evening, I presented “Sidesaddles and Geysers” to a lively audience at the Lincoln County High School Auditorium under the auspices of the Sunburst Foundation. Scott and Darris were in the audience.

    On Thursday, I decided to take the scenic route back to Bozeman. I traveled mostly on two-lane roads past Seeley and Swan Lakes.  I arrived home about 5 p.m. after driving nearly 900 miles in three days.  It was great fun.

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  • An Event: Preparing a Stone Soup Story for Sheridan, Montana

    I’ve been assembling a stone soup story to present on April 29 in Sheridan, Montana. It will be my Humanities Montana talks entitled Sidesaddles and Geysers at the Sheridan Public Library beginning at 5:30 p.m.

    I’m building my presentation around stories my grandmother told me when I was a little boy about her trip to Yellowstone Park in 1909. I real don’t know much about that trip, so I’ve been checking my files for accounts of trips to the park at the dawn of the Twentieth Century and historic photos to illustrate those accounts. I’ll put together bits and pieces from those accounts to assemble a description of what Grandma’s trip must have been like. That’s what I mean by a “stone soup story.”

    Grandma went to the park with her Aunt Elvina Redfield, seven of Elivina’s eleven children, and two of her brothers whose last name was Mercer. The Redfield-Mercer party had a surrey for Elvina and the younger children, a wagon for supplies, and four saddle horses. They left the family ranch near the Point of Rocks west of Twin Bridges in early August and were gone for four weeks. That’s about all I know about the trip.

    I’ll model my reconstruction of the trip after Florence Strebb Fassler’s diary of her trip to Yellowstone Park in 1910, which probably was very like my grandmother’s a year earlier. Florence started in Melrose, a town west of Twin Bridges, on August 1. She provides good descriptions of the route she and her companions and the sights they saw.

    Florence’s first stop was Twin Bridges where she spent the first night and then toured the state orphans home the next morning. After that,  she headed down the Jefferson Valley traveling about twenty miles a day. She and her companions fished for food and stopped by farmhouses to buy bread, butter, milk and fresh vegetables.

    Florence was impressed by her stop in Bozeman where she saw streetcars and electric lights for the first time. She also took a tour of Nelson Story’s massive new flourmill—and got to meet Mr. Story himself.

    Two days later, Florence was at Yankee Jim Canyon where she met the famous toll road operator. Yankee Jim had stopped taking tolls by then, but he was still spinning tall tales for passing tourists and telling fortunes.

    The next day Florence entered the park and stopped at Mammoth Hot Springs for a couple of days. Then her group traveled to the lush meadows south of Mammoth to let their horses rest and graze for a couple of days.

    After describing travel to Yellowstone Park, I’ll turn to other traveler’s descriptions of adventures that they had about the time the Redfield-Mercer party went there:

    After reading the stories, I’ll tell about heading down the Madison River and exiting the park at West Yellowstone. Florence’s diary ends there. That should leave time for me to answer questions and sigh copies of my book, Adventures in Yellowstone.

    I think the presentation will give a good ideas of what it would have been like to tour Yellowstone Park a hundred years ago. I know I’ll enjoy being in Sheridan.

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  • An Event: Getting Ready for My Northwest Montana Tour

    I’ve prepared a slide show and script for my presentations in northwest Montana next week. I’ll be at the Troy Public Library on Tuesday, April 24, at 6:30 p.m., and at the Lincoln County High School Auditorium in Eureka on Wednesday, April 25, at 7 p.m. I’ll be doing  my Humanities Montana program, “Sidesaddles and Geysers: Women’s Adventures in Early Yellowstone.”

    Troy and Eureka are 90 miles apart so I decided to prepare one slide show for both. Of course, my presentations are largely ad libbed so no two of them are the same.

    I always read a few stories from my collection of more than 300 first-person accounts of early trips to Yellowstone National Park. It’s always a challenge to choose a stories that work well together and illustrate the variety of adventures people had on the Yellowstone vacations, but that’s the fun of it. I truly enjoy reviewing the stories I’ve collected. It gives me a chance to examine new additions to my still growing collection and to see how they fit with the old friends.

    I’ll begin both nights by introducing myself and explaining how I became interested in early travel to Yellowstone Park. That gives me an excuse to recount the stories my grandmother told me when I was a little boy. Grandma went to the park in 1909 with her aunt, seven cousin and two brothers. Family lore says they took a milk cow to provide for the younger children. Grandma told stories about churning butter by tying a bucket of cream under the wagon axle, cooking fish still on the hook in a hot spring, and dying geysers pink by tossing red flannel underwear in them.

    Then, I’ll tell about the first women to visit the park in the 1870’s when it was a remote roadless wilderness. I’ll follow that with Emma Cowan’s chilling story of being taken captive by fleeing Nez Perce Indians in 1877. To lighten things up, I’ll read excerpts from Eleanor Corthell’s adventures taking her seven children to the park in 1903 and read the story of a women nearly falling in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone in 1911. I’ll end with the sad tale of a sedate group of tourists saying goodbye to new friends they made while traveling through the park in comfortable coaches and staying in world-class hotels.

    That should leave time for questions and comments from the audience, which I really enjoy. And, if the audience wants an encore story, I’ll have one ready.

    Of course, I’ll stay after the presentation to chat and sign copies of my book, Adventures in Yellowstone: Early Travelers Tell Their Tales.

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    — To find the stories listed above, click “Women’s Stories” under the categories button to the left.  Explore this blog for all kinds of tales of early travel to Yellowstone Park.

  • A Tale: Lone Outlaw Holds Up Seventeen Stagecoaches — 1908

    A Wylie Way Coach, 1908.

    What was probably the greatest stagecoach robbery of the Twentieth Century in terms of people (174)  and coaches (17) occurred in Yellowstone Park on August 24, 1908, but the bandit grossed only about $2,000 in cash and jewelry.  The holdup man was never caught. A similar robbery of 14 coaches occurred on July 29, 1914, but the holdup man was caught.  Here’s how the park superintendent described the events of 1908.

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    The unfortunate event, the hold-up of seventeen coaches, surreys, and spring wagons on August 24, and the robbery by one man or many of the passengers therein at a point on the main road between Old Faithful Inn and the Thumb of Lake Yellowstone, and about 4 1/4 miles distant from the former, took place about 9 a. m. on August 24.

    In accordance with the established time schedule, the first coach of Yellowstone Park Transportation Company loads at Old Faithful Inn at 7.30 o’clock in the morning; after all coaches of that company have been loaded, the Monida and Yellowstone Company coaches are loaded at same point and follow after. These are followed in turn by the coaches of the Wylie Permanent Camping Company—all on the road eastward toward the Thumb.

    This was the order of travel on morning of August 24. As a precaution against dust and against accident on grades, drivers are instructed to maintain a distance of approximately 100 yards between coaches. On the morning in question eight vehicles were not molested by the robber. It appears that the trooper on patrol passed the point where the robbery took place ahead of the first coaches. The interval between the eighth and ninth coaches in order of travel was rather extended, with an angle of the road intervening in a narrow defile, thickly wooded on either side. The ninth vehicle was stopped by the robber with repeating rifle at a ” ready; ” and in vulgar, blasphemous language he ordered a young man down from the box seat and made him carry a sack alongside the coach—into which passengers were commanded to deposit their money and jewelry. This was repeated with each of the sixteen vehicles following. No one received physical injury excepting one passenger, whose actions did not suit the robber and who was disciplined by a stroke on the head with the gun, which was discharged at the same time. The injury was not reported serious. Four of the looted coaches belonged to the Yellowstone Park Transportation Company, five to the Monida and Yellowstone Stage Company, and eight to the Wylie Permanent Camping Company. As near as can be learned by the separate memoranda handed in by the passengers the losses sustained by them in the robbery aggregated $1,363.95 cash and $730.25 in watches and jewelry. Upon being liberated the first coach of those robbed drove rapidly to the camp of the road sprinkling crew, located about 2 miles east of the hold-up point, where notice was given and a messenger dispatched to Old Faithful Inn—distant 6 miles—with news of the robbery.

    The agent of the Yellowstone Park Transportation Company at the inn telegraphed the news to all stations in the park and notified the detail of soldiers stationed at Upper Geyser Basin, within a few hundred yards of the inn. He also states that he notified the officer in command of a troop of cavalry camped in the Lower Basin, about 9 miles distant by the old road. Telegraphic notice was received at Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel and immediately transmitted to my office by telephone. The message was repeated to Major Allen, who was up in the park, and he was requested to give the matter his personal attention. All guard stations were warned and instructed and two scouts present at Mammoth were dispatched to the scene. They made the ride (49 miles) in four hours. Major Allen, who was in the park with General Edgerly, came into Mammoth the same evening, and on the following morning reported that he had given the necessary orders to his troops by telephone and telegraph from Norris. The robber was on foot, and disposed of a few pocketbooks and purses near the scene of the robbery, where they were found in a clump of bushes. One of these contained valuable papers and all were returned to their respective owners.

    The trail could only be followed a short distance. The robber had apparently taken off his shoes and passed into a densely wooded region. All United States marshals, sheriffs, and peace officers in surrounding States, counties, and towns were duly notified and given description of the robber, as nearly as could be ascertained from tourists and drivers in the hold-up.

    All passengers in their excitement blamed the soldiers. The character of the country is such that the entire Army of the United States could not prevent an evil-disposed man from entering the park with a gun.

    On the date of the hold-up one troop was on practice march in the park and was camped within 10 or 12 miles from Old Faithful Inn. One troop has been camped in Lower Geyser Basin all the season and one troop has been camped on Yellowstone River within a mile of Lake Hotel all the season.

    So far it has been impossible to locate an escaped criminal who was convicted of poaching in the park and escaped from confinement in the military prison at Fort Yellowstone in October last. There seems to be a well-grounded suspicion that he is the perpetrator of this daring highway robbery. It is a slow and difficult task to conduct a systematic search for this criminal, without funds for expenses, by correspondence alone. The detectives in adjacent States, with whom I have corresponded since the robbery, work for a per diem and expenses and not for rewards offered, and although they have been informed that this office has no money for that purpose, they have never hesitated to give any information in their possession in regard to this particular matter.

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    — Report of the Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park. Department of Interior, Yellowstone Park, Wyoming, October 15, 1908.

    — Photo, Yellowstone Digital Slide File.

    — You might also enjoy.

  • A Tale: Hunting a Yellowstone Lion

    The story below was included as an example of student writing in a 1914 composition textbook for college freshmen. The textbook authors didn’t give the student’s name or the year the piece was written, but apparently it was after the army took over administration of Yellowstone in 1886.

     The Secretary of Interior promulgated a regulation in 1883 that prohibited hunting in Yellowstone Park, but that was generally interpreted as not applying to predators. In fact the general policy toward predators—cayotes, wolves, bears, wolverines, and mountain lions—was “shoot on sight.” Predators weren’t protected in the park until the 1930s.

    The textbook authors praise this account as an “ambitious and  effective narrative theme.”  I agree.

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    “Whoa there! Back into the road, you black brute! What are you shyin’ at?” yelled the driver of a sightseeing coach in the Yellowstone.

    He glanced across the bridge and immediately learned the reason for the strange behavior of one of his leaders. There, in a leather-wood thicket, crouched the long, lithe form of a mountain lion. Its wicked yellow eyes challenged his right to the passage, and its long slender tail writhed among the bushes. The driver pulled up his horses, uncertain of the lion’s intentions; but the great cat, finding himself unmolested, slipped through the bushes and disappeared among the jagged rocks on the mountain slope.

    As the coach was discharging its passengers at the next stopping place, the driver yelled to a camp boy, “Go over and tell the guards I saw that big lion they’ve been looking for, down by the last bridge. Tell ’em they’d better hurry before he leaves the country.”

    The boy lost no time; and soon two of the soldiers were at the bridge, carefully examining the tracks of the great beast from the impressions in the loose dirt. They quickly learned that this lion was the very one with which they had been having a great deal of trouble, the one which had invaded camps during the night, and had terrified tourists with his long-drawn, almost human wail from the forests.

    Clambering over the great grey rocks, and sliding in the loose gravel of the slope, the two soldiers made their way slowly up the mountain side. When they reached the first promontory they stopped to rest and look about them. Far to the left and a mile below them, still shrouded by the evening mists yet tinted now by the morning sun, lay the magnificent and awe-inspiring Yellowstone Gorge. They gazed at the green thread winding along the floor of the great chasm and tried to hear what they knew to be the roar of its rushing waters.

    “It’s a great sight, Judd! We don’t realize it, bein’ here all the time. But come on. Let’s hit the trail again.”

    “Wait a second.” replied the other. “Help me tighten this bandage on my hand. It’s come loose.”

    The men, intent upon the loosened bandage, failed to see that, from the edge of an overhanging rock above them, two pale green eyes were watching their every move. Behind the eyes, the sinewy form of a great cat was stealthily adjusting itself for a leap.

    Having tightened the bandage, the men straightened up and at the same time stepped back a pace. Their feet, imbedded in the loose gravel, began to slide, and together the two soldiers rolled back under the overhanging rock. At the same instant a great tawny streak flashed over their heads, and the huge form of the mountain lion crashed into the rocks at the very place upon which they had been standing.

    They jumped to their feet and, with startled eyes, watched the great ball of yellow fur as it bumped and rolled down the steep incline. The lion tore madly at the rocks and bushes as he fell, but tried in vain to secure a footing in the sliding gravel. A hundred feet below, he stopped with a thud against a fallen tree trunk; but before he could move, two bullets crunched their way through his body, and, with a gasp, he straightened out, dead.

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    — Anonymous, “A Yellowstone Lion,” pages 561-562 in Frances Berkeley Young and Karl Young, Freshman English: A Manual. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1914. Pages 561-562.

    — Coppermine Gallery Photo.

  • A Tale: Teddy Roosevelt Bags an Elk on Two Ocean Pass — 1891

    There was no greater supporter of Yellowstone National Park than Theodore Roosevelt. TR was an avid hunter, but he favored prohibition of hunting inside Yellowstone National Park. The idea was that keeping hunters out would make the Park an endless well of trophy animals that could be hunted when they strayed outside its boundaries.

    And Roosevelt knew that areas near the park provided marvelous hunting. Here’s his description of one of his kills while on a hunting expedition in 1891 to the Two Ocean Pass, an area just outside Yellowstone’s southern border.

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    The weather became clear and very cold, so that the snow made the frosty mountains gleam like silver. The moon was full, and in the flood of light the wild scenery round our camp was very beautiful. As always where we camped for several days, we had fixed long tables and settles, and were most comfortable; and when we came in at nightfall, or sometimes long afterward, cold, tired, and hungry, it was sheer physical delight to get warm before the roaring fire of pitchy stumps, and then to feast ravenously on bread and beans, on stewed or roasted elk venison, on grouse and sometimes trout, and flapjacks with maple syrup.

    Next morning dawned clear and cold, the sky a glorious blue. Woody and I started to hunt over the great tableland, and led our stout horses up the mountainside, by elk trails so bad that they had to climb like goats. All these elk-trails have one striking peculiarity. They lead through thick timber, but every now and then send off short, well-worn branches to some cliff-edge or jutting crag, commanding a view far and wide over the country beneath. Elk love to stand on these lookout points, and scan the valleys and mountains round about.

    Blue grouse rose from beside our path; Clarke’s crows flew past us, with a hollow, flapping sound, or lit in the pine-tops, calling and flirting their tails; the gray-clad whiskyjacks, with multitudinous cries, hopped and fluttered near us. Snow-shoe rabbits scuttled away, the big furry feet which give them their name already turning white. At last we came out on the great plateau, seamed with deep, narrow ravines. Reaches of pasture alternated with groves and open forests of varying size.

    Almost immediately we heard the bugle of a bull elk, and saw a big band of cows and calves on the other side of a valley. There were three bulls with them, one very large, and we tried to creep up on them; but the wind was baffling and spoiled our stalk. So we returned to our horses, mounted them, and rode a mile farther, toward a large open wood on a hill-side. When within two hundred yards we heard directly ahead the bugle of a bull, and pulled up short.

    In a moment I saw him walking through an open glade; he had not seen us. The slight breeze brought us down his scent. Elk have a strong characteristic smell; it is usually sweet, like that of a herd of Alderney cows; but in old bulls, while rutting, it is rank, pungent, and lasting. We stood motionless till the bull was out of sight, then stole to the wood, tied our horses, and trotted after him. He was travelling fast, occasionally calling; whereupon others in the neighborhood would answer. Evidently he had been driven out of some herd by the master bull.

    He went faster than we did, and while we were vainly trying to overtake him we heard another very loud and sonorous challenge to our left. It came from a ridge-crest at the edge of the woods, among some scattered clumps of the northern nut-pine or pinyon—a queer conifer, growing very high on the mountains, its multi-forked trunk and wide-spreading branches giving it the rounded top, and, at a distance, the general look of an oak rather than a pine.

    We at once walked toward the ridge, up-wind. In a minute or two, to our chagrin, we stumbled on an outlying spike bull, evidently kept on the outskirts of the herd by the master bull. I thought he would alarm all the rest; but, as we stood motionless, he could not see clearly what we were. He stood, ran, stood again, gazed at us, and trotted slowly off.

    We hurried forward as fast as we dared, and with too little care; for we suddenly came in view of two cows. As they raised their heads to look, Woody squatted down where he was, to keep their attention fixed, while I cautiously tried to slip off to one side unobserved. Favored by the neutral tint of my buckskin hunting-shirt, with which my shoes, leggins, and soft hat matched, I succeeded. As soon as I was out of sight I ran hard and came up to a hillock crested with pinyons, behind which I judged I should find the herd.

    As I approached the crest, their strong, sweet smell smote my nostrils. In another moment I saw the tips of a pair of mighty antlers, and I peered over the crest with my rifle at the ready. Thirty yards off, behind a clump of pinyons, stood a huge bull, his head thrown back as he rubbed his shoulders with his horns. There were several cows around him, and one saw me immediately, and took alarm. I fired into the bull’s shoulder, inflicting a mortal wound; but he went off, and I raced after him at top speed, firing twice into his flank; then he stopped, very sick, and I broke his neck with a fourth bullet.

    The elk I thus slew was a giant. His body was the size of a steer’s, and his antlers, though not unusually long, were very massive and heavy. He lay in a glade, on the edge of a great cliff. Standing on its brink we overlooked a most beautiful country, the home of all homes for the elk: a wilderness of mountains, the immense evergreen forest broken by park and glade, by meadow and pasture, by bare hill-side and barren tableland.

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    — Excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt “An Elk Hunt at Two Ocean Pass.”  Pages  177-202 in The Wilderness Hunter: An Account of Big Game in the United States.  Putnam’s Sons: New York, 1902.

    — Photo from The Wilderness Hunter.

    — For other stories about tracking game, click on “Hunting” under the Categories button to the left.

  • A Tale: A Fur Trader Travels to Geyserland — Ferris, 1834

    Only a few of the rugged mountain men who penetrated the area that became Yellowstone National Park could read and write. One who could was Warren Angus Ferris,  a clerk for the American Fur Company. Ferris kept a journal that was published in serialized form in 1843-44 in the Western Literary Messenger and later as a book entitled Life in the Rocky Mountains. In these writings he offered one of the earliest written descriptions of the grand geysers in the Upper Geyser Basin.

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    Beehive Geyser

    I had heard in the summer of 1833, while at rendezvous, that remarkable boiling springs had been discovered, on the sources of the Madison, by a party of trappers in their spring hunt; of which the accounts they gave, were so very astonishing, that I determined to examine them myself, before recording their descriptions, though I had the united testimony of more than twenty men on the subject, who all declared they saw them, and that they really were, as extensive and remarkable as they had been described.

    Having now an opportunity of paying them a visit, and as another or a better might not soon occur, I parted with the company after supper, and, taking with me two Pen-d’orielles, set out at a round pace, the night being clear and comfortable. We proceeded over the plain about twenty miles, and halted until daylight on a fine spring, flowing into Cammas Creek.

    Refreshed by a few hours sleep, we started again after a hasty breakfast, and entered a very extensive forest called the Piny Woods, which we passed through, and reached the vicinity of the springs about dark, having seen several small lakes or ponds, on the sources of the Madison; and rode about forty miles; which was a hard day’s ride, taking into consideration the rough irregularity of the country through which we had travelled.

    We regaled ourselves with a cup of coffee, and immediately after supper lay down to rest, sleepy, and much fatigued. The continual roaring of the springs, however, for some time prevented my going to sleep, and excited an impatient curiosity to examine them; which I was obliged to defer the gratification of, until morning; and filled my slumbers with visions of water spouts, cataracts, fountains, jets d’eau of immense dimensions, etc. etc.

    When I arose in the morning, clouds of vapor seemed like a dense fog to overhang the springs, from which frequent reports or explosions of different loudness, constantly assailed our ears. I immediately proceeded to inspect them, and might have exclaimed with the Queen of Sheba, when their full reality of dimensions and novelty burst upon my view, “The half was not told me.”

    From the surface of a rocky plain or table, burst forth columns of water, of various dimensions, projected high in the air, accompanied by loud explosions, and sulphurous vapors, which were highly disagreeable to the smell. The rock from which these springs burst forth, was calcareous, and probably extends some distance from them, beneath the soil. The largest of these wonderful fountains, projects a column of boiling water several feet in diameter, to the height of more than one hundred and fifty feet—in my opinion; but the party of Alvarez, who discovered it, persist in declaring that it could not be less than four times that distance in height accompanied with a tremendous noise.

    These explosions and discharges occur at intervals of about two hours. After having witnessed three of them, I ventured near enough to put my hand into the water of its basin, but withdrew it instantly, for the heat of the water in this immense cauldron, was altogether too great for comfort, and the agitation of the water, the disagreeable effluvium continually exuding, and the hollow unearthly rumbling under the rock on which I stood, so ill accorded with my notions of personal safety, that I reheated back precipitately to a respectful distance.

    The Indians who were with me, were quite appalled, and could not by any means be induced to approach them. They seemed astonished at my presumption in advancing up to the large one, and when I safely returned, congratulated me on my “narrow escape.”  They believed them to be supernatural, and supposed them to be the production of the Evil Spirit. One of them remarked that hell, of which he had heard from the whites, must be in that vicinity.

    The diameter of the basin into which the water of the largest jet principally falls, and from the centre of which, through a hole in the rock of about nine or ten feet in diameter, the water spouts up as above related, may be about thirty feet. There are many other smaller fountains, that did not throw their waters up so high, but occurred at shorter intervals. In some instances, the volumes were projected obliquely upwards, and fell into the neighboring fountains or on the rock or prairie. But their ascent was generally perpendicular, falling in and about their own basins or apertures.

    These wonderful productions of nature, are situated near the centre of a small valley, surrounded by pine covered hills, through which a small fork of the Madison flows. Highly gratified with my visit to these formidable and magnificent fountains, jets, or springs, whichever the reader may please to call them, I set out after dinner to rejoin my companions.

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    — From Warren Angus Ferris, A Diary of Wanderings on the sources of the Rivers Missouri, Columbia, and Colorado from February, 1830, to November, 1835.

    — Image from the Coppermine Photo Gallery.

    — You might also enjoy these early descriptions of geysers:

  • A Tale: One Good, Square Drink — General W.E. Strong, 1875

    Before the Northern Pacific completed its transcontinental link in 1883, the best way from the east coast to Yellowstone Park was to take the Union Pacific to Corinne, Utah, and then travel north 400 miles by stagecoach. The stagecoach ride itself could be a great adventure. Here’s General W.E. Strong’s description of his ride in 1875.

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    At 6 o’clock we were ready to start. The coach had pulled up at the village of Franklin, near Corinne, Utah, and stopped near a whiskey shop for the regular driver to take the reins. This dignitary, who soon appeared, was a slim-built man of five-and-thirty—and so very drunk that I could hardly believe we were to be conducted over our first run by a person in his condition. He had most remarkable control over his legs and hands, however, he managed to reach the coach and climb to his seat without aid from anyone.

    “Are you ready,” says the driver. “All ready” was the response. Then gathering the reins carefully in his left hand and swinging his whip with the right, the lash cutting sharply across the flanks of the leaders, “Lee Goddard,” (that was his name) exclaimed “Git out of here, you pirates.”  The next instant we were off, lead, swing, and wheel horses on the keen jump. Again and again the whip was applied and thus we departed from Franklin at the rate of sixteen miles an hour.

    The intense pleasure to me of this first morning’s ride in the great, swaying Concord wagon is indescribable. We were fairly afloat on the great plains of Idaho.

    At Bear River we jumped out and ‘stretched our legs’  while a fresh relay of six handsome bays were hitched to the coach, and in five minutes were bowling along again, at a killing pace. Goddard’s run is to Port Neuf Canyon, sixty miles, and he changes five times—an average of 12 miles for each relay.

    From Bear River to Port Neuf Canyon the road was fearfully dusty, so we were enveloped in great clouds hour after hour, and it seemed sometimes as though we would surely suffocate. For miles and miles the lead horses were entirely hidden and very frequently all of the horses were lost of view.

    The stage driver looked longingly at the demijohn of whiskey—about a gallon—that was under our feet, and finally mustered the courage to say that if he had one good, square drink he was sure he could get through to Port Neuf in time; but as the small flask we carried—strictly for medical purposes—would not probably have come up to his estimate of a good, square drink, I declined the proposition.

    Later, and while we were making some sharp curves, where the narrow road was cut out from the mountain’s side, with frightful precipices below us, I turned, and, to my astonishment, saw the driver nodding, with the reins hanging loosely in his hands. The situation was by no means pleasant. The horses were going rapidly, with a drunken driver fast asleep, and only a foot between the outer wheels and the brink of the precipice two hundred feet high—where, if a horse slipped and went down, or a wheel came off, there was no hope for us.

    In view of this, I grasped the reins, and at the same time shook the fellow gently until he awoke, when he very cooly asked, “Wha-ze matter?” and I told him he was sleeping, he laughed saying, “Don’t be skeert, ole fellar; them hosses, they knows the road, sure’s yer borned. Never upset a stage in my life.” At the same time he applied the whip to the swing horses sending us along faster than ever.

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    — From General W. E. Strong, A Trip to the Yellowstone National Park in July, August, and September, 1875. (Pages 15-18).

    — Northern Pacific Railroad postcard.

    — You might also enjoy General Strong’s account of catching his first fish in Yellowstone Park, or Sidford Hamp’s story of a stagecoach robbery.