M. Mark Miller, Author

Author: mmarkmiller

  • A Tale: Gilmann Sawtell, First Yellowstone Park Guide

    Inside Sawtell's Cabin, Sawtell far left.

    Most of the tales I post here come from my collection on early travel to Yellowstone Park that I assembled for my Humanities Montana presentations.  I focus on first-person accounts and let people tell about their adventures in their own words.  But often there very interesting people who never wrote their own story, so I write one for them.  Gilman Sawtell is such a person.

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    Most of the earliest Park tourists came from Montana because that’s where the access rivers ran. The north entrance via the Yellowstone River was 60 miles from the farm town of Bozeman, and the west entrance via the Madison was 90 miles from the gold rush town of Virginia City. Both rivers flow through rugged canyons that made travel difficult. In fact, the Madison Canyon was so bad that early travelers chose to cross the continental divide twice to avoid it. But that was a small sacrifice. Passage over the Raynolds and Targhee Passes was relatively easy. Besides, traveling this route provided the reward of a stop at Henry’s Lake.

    Many travelers left glowing descriptions of Henry’s Lake. The four-mile long lake is surrounded by stately mountains and fed by snowmelt streams and cold springs. Travelers praised the spot as a paradise for game, waterfowl. It was a haven for birds, and filled with magnificent trout. Travelers usually spent several days there hunting and fishing and lolling in the sturdy log structures built by Gilman Sawtell.

    Sawtell was a blue-eyed blond who came west with his wife and son after serving as a Union soldier in the Civil War. He prospected for gold near for a while and in 1867 he began homesteading at Henry’s lake. Sawtell left his mark in many ways. His main business was harvesting and selling fish—as many as 40,000 pounds a year. To make his commercial fish business work, Sawtell had to keep his product fresh and haul it to distant markets.

    Sawtell sawed blocks of ice from the lake in winter and stored them packed in sawdust in an sturdy thick-walled icehouse he built of logs. He speared fish and stored them in the icehouse until he had enough to fill his wagon. In the 1860s Sawtell sold his fish for top prices in the gold rush town of Virginia City 90 miles away. He had to build his own road to get there. As late as 1896, Sawtell was still hauling fish to Monida where they were loaded into railroad cars for sale in Butte and Ogden.

    While launching his fish business, Sawtell built a veritable village. By 1871 he had six well-built log buildings: a residence, a blacksmith shop, a stable, a storage shed for skins and game, and his icehouse. In addition he farmed crops of hay, grain, and vegetables.

    It’s not known when Sawtell began visiting Yellowstone, but he was telling stories about geysers by the mid 1860s. In 1873 he contracted with Virginia businessmen to build a road from his ranch over Targhee Pass to the lower geyser basin. This was called “The Yellowstone Free Road” to distinguish it from the toll road Bozeman businessmen were building along the Yellowstone River to Mammoth Hot Springs. The race for tourist dollars was on.

    In 1871 Sawtell guided a group of businessmen from Deer Lodge and Virginia City on a tour that covered the geyser basins, Yellowstone Lake, and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. This trip made Sawtell the first commercial guide to Yellowstone. Several of these travelers described the trip in newspapers articles. These articles appeared in Virginia City, Helena and Deer Lodge. They fueled Montanan’s interest in visiting the upper Yellowstone and encouraged the U.S. congress to establish the national park. The most extensive account of this trip was written by Calvin C. Clawson, a reporter for The New Northwest, a Deer Lodge newspaper.

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    — For more information about my Humanities Montana Presentation, click the button at the top of the page.

    — Read a story by Calvin Clawson about the 1871 trip. “First Blood.”

    — William Henry Jackson photo from the Yellowstone Digital Archive.

    — For more stories about fishing in Yellowstone Park, click on “fishing” under the “Categories” button on the right.

  • The Belgrade Bull 2: A Local Legend Goes National

    When writer Emerson Hough visited Montana in 1910, he must have heard tales of Corbett, The Belgrade Bull, in cowboy bars everywhere. The facts don’t matter much in such places, but that didn’t bother Hough.  He knew a good story when he heard one.  And so did the editors of the Saturday Evening Post. “The Belgrade Bull,” Part 2.

    To read the story beginning with Part 1, click here.

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    Corbett’s reputation as a bucker went national in 1910 when he became the subject of a feature article in the Saturday Evening Post.

    The article was written by then prominent novelist Emerson Hough, who attributed the story to a worn-out cowboy named “Curley.” Here some of Curley’s story:

    “You’ve heard of the Belgrade Bull, haven’t you?” Curly asked suddenly. I nodded. What western man hasn’t heard of that historic brute, whose history is one long record of dismantled cowpunchers who thought they could ride anything with hair? …

    “There was maybe one or two fakes of that same name,” added Curley reminiscently. …. “But the real old Simon-pure, North American, eighteen-carat, gold-filed Belgrade Bull was owned by a man named Kid Johnson. He didn’t have no mine nor ranch nor nothin’. That one little, ornery, undersized black-and-white bull—a cross between a Jersey and a Galloway—furnished him with all the income he needed, and all the sport besides. He just run the saloon and gamblin’ place a sort of a incidental amusement.

    “His real means of livelihood was that same critter that he kept out in the corral. The duty of the saloon porter was to git up every mornin’ about four or five and chase that bull around the corral a couple hours or so. That way he was hard as nails, all the same time, playful as a kitten—though he didn’t look it—and able to jump a ten-foot fence any time he wanted to. Buck! Pitch? No, he didn’t buck. He wouldn’t do anything as low down and commonplace as that there. They ain’t no real name for what he done.

    “This here Kid Johnson goes into this little town of Belgrade, up here in Montana, north of here, aleadin’ this cow critter on a string. After he got his red eye joint started up and his corral fixed, he hangs out a notice sayin’ that cowpunchers and others is plumb welcome and can git any kind of game they like. When the word got out that there was a new game, and that this here speckled bull was the king card in Kid Johnson’s layout, the cowpunchers from both sides of the place and five hundred miles up and down the range—why they broke their necks to git in first to take money away Kid Johnson. Now it wasn’t so much money they was after, though the Kid didn’t turn down any sized bets that come, as it was a matter of professional pride; because right soon the news got out on the range that this here Belgrade bull had throwed an average of two to ten cowpunchers every day of the week, not barrin’ Sundays, and some of them was the best riders that ever throwed a rope.

    “Businesses all over the upper-range country just come to a stop. There wasn’t no self-respectin’ cow camp that wouldn’t head right for Belgrade as soon as they got their beef cuts done. Ranch owners, foremen, punchers, everybody—they come, I say, five or six hundred miles to go against the game just for sake of the cause. It slow’ded up the cattle business some, but it was fine for Belgrade while it lasted. Every day in Belgrade was circus day.”

    Apparently Curley was prone to exaggeration and was not overly concerned with factual detail. The bull was owned by Alva and Preston Johnston (Johnston, with a “T”), and neither one of them was called “Kid.” Judging from his black-and-white markings, the bull almost certainly was Holstein. Doubtless the Johnston brothers made a lot of money betting on Corbett, but he was hardly their sole source of support; they owned a livery stable in Belgrade and ran a lucrative threshing business. They did not own a saloon.

    But Curley did capture the mood of the times when Corbett dominated attention in Belgrade. While the Johnston brothers didn’t have Corbett to buck every day, they did schedule rides every time a challenger stepped up, usually on Sunday afternoons. Belgrade did take on a circus atmosphere on those afternoons, and the brothers did make a bundle of money betting.

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    — To see the next installment, “Sunday School Girls Meet the Threshing Crew Riders,”  The true story of  how Corbett the Belgrade Bull got his start, click here.

    — To see all of the stories about Corbett, The Belgrade Bull, click on “Belgrade Bull” under “Categories” in the column to the right.

    —Illustration from the Saturday Evening Post, September 10, 1910.

  • News and Views: Tom McGuane and a Mind Adrift

    My friend, Billings author Craig Lancaster posted a comment about Tom McGuane on his website, A Mind Adrift in the West. A New York Times article about McGuane said, “There’s a view of Montana writing that seems stage-managed by the Chamber of Commerce — it’s all about writers like A. B. Guthrie and Ivan Doig,” he said, referring to two authors of historical novels about a rugged, frontier Montana. “It used to bother me that nobody had a scene where somebody was delivering a pizza.”

    Lancaster responded: I don’t want to toot my own horn (yeah, okay, just go with me on this one), but allow me to direct your attention to the bottom of Page 257 of 600 Hours of Edward:

    “I’m watching Dragnet almost three hours early and might even watch another episode, if I feel like it. I’m also munching on thin-crust pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut. I didn’t go to the grocery store today. I decided I didn’t have to. Maybe I’ll go tomorrow. Or maybe not.

    I’ll do whatever I feel like doing. You live only once.”

    I commented: “I admire Tom McGuane’s mastery of craft, but his writing always strikes me as something written by a guy who moved to Montana 30 years ago and never bothered to learn the history of the place. He apparently hasn’t read the work of fine writers like you [Craig Lancaster], Kevin Canty, and Mary Clearman Blew. He’s right when he says the New York literary establishment slights western writers—and he does too. And, I recommend “Riding on the Rim.” [correction: Make that “Driving on the Rim.”]  It’s a fine novel about how a guy who moved to Montana 30 years ago thinks of the place.

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  • A Tale: Yellowstone’s First Tourists Seek “First Blood”

    When the Washburn expedition returned from exploring the upper Yellowstone in 1870, they confirmed the rumors of the wonders there. Interest in the area surged when people learned it really did contain a grand canyon, a giant lake, geysers and petrified forests.

    Washburn and his companions returned to civilization in late summer—too late to mount another expedition to the Yellowstone plateau where blizzards could trap traveler in September. But in 1871—a year before the national park was created—a small group of men set off “to see Wonderland.”

    The group, considered by many to be Yellowstone’s first tourists, was led by Professor Rossiter Raymond. Their principal chronicler was Calvin C. Clawson who wrote about the trip in a series of 17 articles for The New Northwest, a Deer Lodge newspaper.

    Clawson not only describes the sights the party encountered, he speculates on such things as using of the finely ground minerals found in the geyser basins for lady’s cosmetics, and embalming bodies in the calcium-laden waters. Clawson also describes the antics men out for an enjoyable adventure. Like groups everywhere, they sometimes entertained themselves with strange contests—like seeing who could get “First Blood.”

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    The morning of the eleventh was very pleasant, and a calm air was highly appreciated after a boisterous night. While we made preparations to start, a large eagle sailed over and alighted in a tree half a mile down the creek. Prof. Raymond and Eiler immediately mounted their horses and gave chase.

    As yet we had taken no game—not even a chicken killed or a fish caught—and there was a strife among us to see who would get the first blood.

    I knew that when we got to Bear Creek, among the berries, with my dog Nig’s assistance, I could get a bear—for he was celebrated for hunting that kind of game.

    Bear Creek is well named. Its underbrush furnishes bears with ample and secure hiding places. Here berries grow in abundance, and the industrious ant rears her ingenious palace. Bruin is fond of both.

    After the horses were unsaddled and secured, in company with the dog and my gun, I took a stroll up the creek to see if we couldn’t bag a Bruin before the eagle hunters came up. As we advanced, the “signs” became more and more numerous—until I was satisfied we would soon be rewarded with a bear fight.

    All of a sudden I was brought to my senses by a terrible noise in the bushes ahead of me, as of the rushing and snorting of wild animals. Of course it was a bear out berrying, and he was coming directly towards me. Nearer and nearer he came. I could see the tops of the high berry bushes bending before him.

    Now it occurred to me there might be two—two bears are a good many. I would have whistled for Nig, but to attract attention would prove ruinous, for the bear was coming plenty fast already. If the gun should fail, there would be no alternative but to trust to my knife, and that would bring me face to face with the enemy.

    Old hunters say a bear can be successfully handled (in an emergency) by waiting till he rises on his hind feet, and then smiting him under the fifth rib till he dies. They never tell how the bear amuses himself in the meantime—whether he “throws up his hand” or goes for his foe “tooth and toe nail.”

    These things have to be considered—and I considered them. I recollected that I had never seen but one man who stabbed a bear. We had to take two horses to get him (not the bear) to camp—he was too much scattered to carry on one. The best surgical assistance never could make anything else out of him but a torn up man—although he lived.

    Closer and closer come the bears—I thought I got a glimpse of them through the bushes.   There was a drove of them—two abreast, rushing on me—another minute and the fight would begin. There was no tree in reach. I held a council of war—a change of base was considered in order. I immediately stepped behind a point of rocks half a mile down the creek. After waiting a reasonable time for the enemy to appear, I walked into camp—demoralized, but not damaged. The dog soon followed, panting as though he too had a race for life.

    In a short time the eagle hunters made their appearance—with their hats bedecked with trophies in the shape of eagle feathers, and an eagle hanging to the horn of each saddle—while the wings dragged the ground.

    The old one had showed fight when she saw the hunters approaching, and settled down by the nest to protect her young. After several shots from a rifle, she was disabled—and Mr. Raymond climbed the tree as far as possible, threw a rope over the limb, and shook the two young out—then brought them to camp. They were monsters for their age, and after admiring them a while, we turned them loose to shift for themselves.

    The first blood was unanimously accorded to the Professor by the balance of the party, but if the other parent bird had been at home they might have “got away” with the invaders.

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    — You can read Clawson’s complete account of the 1871 trip to the upper Yellowstone in A Ride to the Infernal Regions edited by Eugene Lee Silliman.

    —Photo from the Yellowstone Digital Slide File.

  • News and Views: Meeting Ivan Doig Was Great!

    I got a few minutes to chat with Ivan Doig last night at the Friends of MSU Libraries dinner. I told him about my mother’s evaluation of his novel, English Creek. Mom was unimpressed with his description of life in rural Montana during the Great Depression. “He just wrote about things the way they were,” she said.

    Ivan chuckled politely and his wife, Carol, quickly added, “but he worked so hard to get it right.” So the joke didn’t get the hearty laugh I expected.

    Of course, I know how hard it is to bring the past to life accurately. I’ve tried it myself a few times. Besides, anybody who has read the acknowledgement sections in Doig’s books knows how hard he works to get the details right. If you haven’t read his acknowledgments, you should. That would give you a greater appreciation of Doig’s work.

    In his speech, Doig talked about his work in libraries “listening for voices in the quiet of the past” and looking for “crystallizing details” in places where “Google doesn’t go.”  Classic Doig: precise colorful phrases that stick in the skull and move the narrative.

    Doig focused on his “Montana Trilogy,” books that span the state’s first century by chronicling three generations of the fictional McCaskill family.  Much of the authentic detail for English Creek, the Depression era novel, came from the WPA Writer’s Project documents held and the Merrill G. Burlingame Special Collections of the MSU Libraries.

    Doig praised the New Deal project, which sent unemployed writers to gather and write the history of every state, as “an almost miraculous effort.” He also told the story of how Dr. Burlingame, who was a MSU History Professor, made a “heroic rescue” of the papers of the Montana writer’s project when he found they were going to be thrown in the Silver Bow County dump.

    (I’ve worked with the WPA papers several times myself, so I know what a tragedy that would have been. If you’d like to see a sample of the work that might have been lost, get a copy of An Onery Bunch: Tales and Anecdotes Collected by the WPA Montana Writer’s Project 1935-1942.)

    Doig told other tales about such incidents as putting on his coat to search for documents in the icy basement of Saint Andrew’s University Library in Scotland for another book in the Montana Trilogy, Dancing at the Rascal Fair. The main characters of this novel migrated to Montana from Scotland at the dawn of the Twentieth Century. Doig was delighted to find letters from a Scots emigrant describing a trans-Atlantic crossing and if you’ve read Dancing, you know why.

    Doig also talked about Work Song, his new novel set in Butte in 1919. In this book, he said, a library becomes a character. Doig said a photograph of the grand library building that Butte citizens built to show the world there was culture in the rugged mining city inspired him. Doig didn’t talk about his head librarian character that obviously is based on Granville Stuart, whose diaries are one of the best descriptions of frontier Montana. I’d love to hear him talk about that.

    After the speech, I chatted with a library friend who said he was amazed at what a good speaker Doig was. While I agreed that Doig’s style and finesse as a speaker is superlative, I said I wasn’t surprised. He is a master wordsmith who works hard to reach his audiences. Of course, that shows in his speaking as well as his writing.

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  • News and Views: I’m Eager To Meet Ivan Doig

    I’m looking forward to seeing Ivan Doig tonight at the annual Friends of MSU Libraries dinner. I’ve been a fan of Doig’s since the 1980s when I read his marvelous memoir, This House of Sky. Like Ivan, I grew up in Montana ranch country, so I find much to identify with in his work.  He got the people, times, and the setting I grew up with right.

    I’m sure that Ivan gets other times and settings right.  I was so impressed with his novel, English Creek, that I gave it to my mother.  Mom came of age during the Great Depression in rural Montana, just like the protagonist of English Creek, Jick McCaskill.

    The next time I visited, I asked, “Mom, what did you think of that book I gave you?”

    “It was okay,” she said.

    “But did he get the times right?” I persisted.

    She agreed that he had, but she was still unimpressed.

    “He just wrote about things the way they were,” she said.

    If I get a chance to talk with Ivan tonight, I’ll tell him that story.  I think he’d be amused.  At least, I hope so.

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  • The Belgrade Bull 1: That Bucking Son of a Milk Cow

    I became interested in the Belgrade Bull when Ann Butterfield showed me a letter she found in the research collections of the Pioneer Museum in Bozeman.  Ann, who is associate director of the museum, thought maybe I could write an article based on it.  I love piecing together stories out of the detritus of the past, so I decided to give it a try.

    The bull has been legendary in the southwest Montana town of Belgrade for more than a hundred years and soon I was buried under a treasure trove of newspaper clippings, letters and reminiscences. From them, I assembled an article that was published in the Spring 2009 issue of  The Pioneer Museum Quarterly.

    Ann gave me permission to share it on my blog, but it’s too long for a single post so I’ll present it in installments.  The Belgrade Bull, Part 1.

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    Mention of the famous Belgrade Bull can still prompt passionate debate among fans of rodeo history—and it’s been more than a century since that son of a milk cow dumped dozens of cowboys in the dirt. In addition to his alliterative name, he had several characteristics that make him the stuff of legend. He had a gentle disposition and could be led down a crowded parade route on a thin rope. But the moment a cowboy climbed on his back, he became a bucking machine that no man could ride. Or did a few men succeed? Should Starkey Teeples’ ride with a rigged saddle count? How about Bill Sitton’s ride with a double-chinch?  Or John “Kid” Kelly’s ride when the bull was blindfolded? Were newspaper reports that Joe Kirkwood rode him to a standstill true? Most important, where did Jake Ross get his medal that said he rode the Belgrade Bull?

    The bull was born in 1889 on the Jim Ballard ranch on Dry Creek north of town. His pedigree is unknown but his mother was a milk cow and he bore the black-and-white markings of the Holstein dairy breed. A dairy cow gives more milk than a calf needs, so the bull probably was taken from his mother at birth and raised by hand. Bucket fed calves naturally bond with their human caretakers. In fact, the Belgrade Bull was noted for his genteel disposition.

    When the bull was weaned, Jim Ballard’s neighbor, Annie Miller, bought him. She apparently planned to use him to sire a whole herd of black and white dairy cows. She called him “Jim Ballard” or more likely, “that Ballard Bull.” When the Johnston brothers, Pres and Al, bought the bull they named him “Corbett” after the heavyweight boxer, “Gentleman Jim” Corbett who won the national championship with his “scientific” style of boxing. That was appropriate—people said Corbett, the Belgrade Bull, used the scientific method to throw his riders. Will Everson, a Montana newspaperman described Corbett’s bucking style:

    “Corbett is a ‘curve pitcher’ all right—and with a hump in his back that makes the saddle look undecided, and a bound skyward that makes the rider think of heaven, home, and mother—he rolls his hide until saddle and rider take a position at right angles to the original one.

    “Then the bull throws his head around and gives the rider that sort of where-have-I-met-you-look. And while the victim yet gazes and guesses, Corbett gets in his ‘beautiful curve.’ With a swish of this tail, he straightens his body and gives his height prodigious roll. This sends the saddle and rider spinning over to the other side with a momentum that carries them nearly under his belly. Anon he strikes the earth with a sharp, sudden shock, and for a moment seems to stand on the point of his nose, with his tail straight in the air.

    “If the rider is not ‘sent to the grass’ by the first buck, the bull continues, constantly adding new and different variations while in mid-air. Three, four, or five jumps usually does away with the most experienced bronco riders, and six is the most that he has ever done with a ‘clean saddle.’”

    Pres Johnston, who managed Corbett during his bucking exhibitions, said that as soon as the rider was off his back, Corbett resumed his friendly disposition

    “After he threw his rider, he would stop and come up to me, as I would have a piece of bread or some biscuits for him. He liked them very much. When he was out running loose in town, some women would go out to their gate and call him to feed him some bread. He would come on the run when they would hello, “Come Corbett.” He knew his name.”

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    — To see the next installment, “A Local Legend Goes National” In 1910 a worn-out cowboy named “Curley” told Corbett’s story in a feature article in the Saturday Evening Post.  Curly was prone to exaggeration and not obsessed with accuracy, click here.

    — To see all of the stories about Corbett, The Belgrade Bull, click on “Belgrade Bull” under “Categories” in the column to the right.

    —Illustration from the Saturday Evening Post, September 10, 1910.

  • When Versions Collide

    George F. Cowan

    I’ve been researching the ordeal of George Cowan, who regained consciousness in Yellowstone Park on August 24, 1877, with bullet wounds in his head and thigh. Nez Perce Indians had left George for dead after chasing his companions into the forest and hauling off his wife and her 13-year-old sister.

    It would be easy to reduce things to a few general statements that everybody agrees on, but that would be boring. I want to dig up enough specific details to bring the story to life.

    George’s own account has to be the primary document, but it needs to be approached with some skepticism. We’re always the heroes of our own stories, so George may have presented himself as smarter and stronger than he really was. Also, his version is the recollection of a starving man who had a lead slug embedded in his skull.

    Of course, George’s version must take precedence during those times when he was alone. One writer says George fell asleep by a campfire one night and awoke to find it had spread through mold on ground and burned him. It’s a dramatic and plausible incident, but I doubt that it happened. George doesn’t mention it and the people who rescued him don’t count burns among his injuries. Besides, it sounds exactly like what happened to Truman Everts, who was separated from the Washburn Expedition to Yellowstone in 1870 and spent 37 days alone in the wilderness. I think the writer conflated the two stories, so I’ll omit this incident from my book.

    Things get trickier when versions offer conflicting interpretations of the facts. Contemporary newspaper accounts of George’s adventure portray him as a courageous victim of “the Red Devils,” but later writers who were sympathetic to the plight of the Nez Perce make him out to be an arrogant ass who provoked the attack on himself and his companions. I think there is truth to both versions.

    I’ll take sides sometimes. Army officers said George was an ingrate who did nothing but complain about the care they provided him. But, George says army surgeons left him with open wounds and a lead slug in his head for five hours while they went “geyser gazing” with other officers. I’ll go with George’s version here. One of his travel companions corroborates George. Besides, it’s well documented that military men of the era were fascinated by Yellowstone’s wonders. In fact, General William Tecumseh Sherman, who was the Army’s top officer in 1877, visited the geysers just days before Cowan and his friends arrived there.

    It’s hard work to compare multiple versions of events that happened more than 130 years ago, but the effort is giving me a deeper appreciation of them. My book will be better because of that.

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    — Image from Progressive Men of Montana.

  • A Tale: A Million Billion Barrels of Hot Water — 1871

    A group of professionals and businessmen visited the geysers in 1871—long before the era of hot water heaters. The trip was chronicled by Harry Norton, who published the first Yellowstone travel guide in Virginia City in 1873. Norton called one of his companions, who owned telegraph lines between Deer Lodge and Bozeman, “Prince Telegraph.” Here’s Norton’s description of the Prince’s experiments in geyserland.

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    Just for the oddity of the idea, some of the party proposed that we should try a cup of geyser tea. Happy thought! A million billion barrels of hot water within easy reach, and nothing to do but put the tea a-drawing! Notwithstanding all that has been said by former tourists, the tea was excellent—and produced no disagreeable effects.

    We afterwards utilized several of the geysers by boiling meat, dirty clothes, beans, coffee, etc., each experiment being attended with satisfaction. For boiled beans, two quarts of “navies” were put in a flour sack, and with a rope, lowered into the steaming crater. In thirty minutes they were perfectly soft and palatable. This is not a first-rate method to make allopathic bean soup, but for a homeopathic dose. it can’t be beat. In this connection, a little incident:

    Prince Telegraph’s wardrobe, like our saddle-seat, was constantly getting out of repair—and as he had failed in trying to sew on a patch with a needle-gun he was obliged to procure assistance. He finally compromised affairs by a change of duties: Woodall, an expert, was to sew on the patch while Prince Telegraph washed the dishes—his first attempt probably in a lifetime. Hesitating a moment, a brilliant idea struck him. Fifty or sixty feet distant was a very noisy little geyser. Its aperture was in the centre of a noisy shallow, well-rimmed basin of about two and a half by four feet. The water scarcely ever covered the flat bottom at a greater depth than two inches.

    Pitching the soiled tin ware, knives, forks, towels, etc., into a champagne basket, and with an “0h, ho! I guess I can’t wash dishes!” the Prince approaching his improvised dishpan, unceremoniously dumped them in to soak while he placidly enjoyed his meerschaum. Suddenly, and as if resenting the insult to its dignity, the little spouter spit the basin full to overflowing in a second. Setting the contents in a perfect whirl, and the next instant, drawing in its breath, the geyser commenced sucking everything toward the aperture.

    We at the camp heard an agonizing cry for help, and looking out, beheld the Prince—with hat off and eyes peeled—dancing around his dishpan in a frantic attempt to save the last culinary outfit. It was comical in the extreme. There would be a plunge of the hand in the boiling water, a yell of pain, and out would come a spoon—another plunge and yell, and a tin plate—an” Oh! ah! o-o-o, e-e-e” and a fork. As we arrived, the towel and one tin plate were just going out of sight; while the Prince, gazing at his parboiled hands, was profanely discussing the idea of being “sucked in” by a geyser!

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    — From  Harry J. Norton, Wonderland Illustrated or, Horseback Rides Through the Yellowstone National Park, 1873.

    — Postcard from the Yellowstone Digital Slide File.

    — You may also enjoy Colonel William J. Barlow’s tale of bathing in Mammoth Hot Spring.

    — For more funny stories click on “Humor” under the “Categories” button on the left side of this page.

  • Narrative History or Historical Fiction?

    Most of the time I think I’ll write my next book, Encounters in Yellowstone 1877, as narrative history, but when I hit a dead end in my research, I’m tempted to switch to historical fiction. That happened yesterday when I was trying to find out what the weather was like in Yellowstone Park on August 25, 1877.

    One of the main characters in my book, George Cowan, woke up that morning after lying unconscious under a tree in his blood-soaked clothing. George was suffering from three gunshot wounds so severe that he could barely crawl, let alone walk. He hoped to drag himself on his elbows for five miles that day to a campsite where he might find food.

    I’d like to write something like this: “An ominous gray sky greeted George . . ..” Or maybe: “The bright morning sun cast deep shadows that must have looked like canyons to George . . ..”

    I don’t want to just say: “George awoke the next morning . . ..” But I may have to if I can’t find out what the weather was like. It might be easier to give up narrative history and convert to historical fiction. Then I wouldn’t have to ground every detail in the facts; I could just make stuff up.

    That may sound like a no-brainer: don’t bother with the hard research; go with historical fiction, but it’s not that easy. When you tell your readers you’re writing fiction, you promise to provide compelling stories, fully formed characters, and gripping details that will bring your story to life. That can be as hard—maybe even harder—than sticking to the facts.

    I’ve got myself persuaded. I’m sticking with narrative history—at least for now. I know it’s possible to write true stories that have all the compelling virtues of fiction. Laura Hillenbrand did it with Seabiscuit; Erik Larson with Devil in the White City; Timothy Egan, The Big Burn; David Laskin, The Children’s Blizzard—and there are many more examples.

    If they can do it, maybe I can do it.

    What do you think?

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    — Read more about History versus Fiction.