November 17, Helena: I’ll be hosting a table for “Great Conversations,” a fundraiser sponsored by the Helena Education Foundation. My job will be to lead a dinner conversation (scintillating, I hope) with seven people who want to talk about early travel to Yellowstone Park. I’ll get a free dinner, an opportunity to talk about a topic I love, and the satisfaction of contributing to Helena schools.
February 17, Bozeman: I’ll be making a presentation for the Fine Arts Series of the Montana State University College of Art and Architecture. My title will be “Bozeman to Wonderland: Early Trips to Yellowstone Park.” In addition to talking about the explorers who first documented Yellowstone’s wonders, I’ll tell about Bozeman women who arranged for cavalry to escort them to the park through Indian country and rode sidesaddle through the wilderness.
Meanwhile, Ivan Doig says on his website, writer at work.
After word spread about the magnificent big game in Yellowstone Park, hunters from the eastern United States and Europe began coming to bag a trophy. Even if they were skilled hunters where they came from, they needed someone to guide them in the rugged West. Jack Bean had the perfect credentials for the job. Before hiring out as a guide, Bean had been a trapper, hunter, and Indian fighter.
In the summer of 1877, the army hired Bean to look for Chief Joseph and his band of Nez Perce Indians along the Madison River and in Yellowstone Park. He returned to Bozeman after locating the Indians and telling the Army they were headed into Yellowstone Park, to discover that a Colonel Pickett wanted to hire him as a hunting guide. In his memoir, Bean tells this tale about the intrepid Colonel.
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The Colonel was very anxious to kill a bear and had only seen a bear entering the brush on his previous hunting trips.
The next morning our trail led us over Mount Washburn where it commenced to snow. By the time we had reached our highest point in the trail the snow was about a foot deep. As the Colonel had only summer shoes, he had to walk to keep warm. So the Colonel stopped to dig the snow off his shoes and tie them a little tighter. I looked back behind me and saw a big bear crossing the trail. I spoke to the Colonel, “There goes a bear. ” But he kept tying his shoe. When he had finished he raised his head and with a southern accent answered me, “Whar?”
I advised him that a bear didn’t wait for a man to tie his shoe. Our trail now left the ridge and descended down to the head of Tower Creek where we saw another big bear in the trail coming toward us. So I told the Colonel, “There comes a bear.”
“Whar?” he answered so I showed him. He got off his horse and walked quietly up the trail. I watched Mr. Bear and saw him leave the trail and start up the grassy hillside.
I was afraid that the Colonel would shoot him when the bear was right above him and it would come down and use him rather roughly. The Colonel saw him when he was on the hill side about 30 yards away, so I dismounted and slipped up behind the Colonel. When the Colonel shot the bear it made a big growl and came down the hill on the run and passed him within 30 feet. The Colonel didn’t know I was so close behind him until I spoke.
I told him to hold his fire until the bear jumped the creek, but he wouldn’t do it. As the bear passed the Colonel shot and missed him. When the bear crossed the creek I opened fire with my Winchester. By the time the Colonel could load and was ready to shoot again I had put five Winchester balls into him. But the Colonel gave him his last shot through the breast while the bear was falling. It rolled into the creek dead.
We found when we had examined the bear that the Colonel’s first shot just went under the skin in the bear’s neck, which caused him to come down the hill so rapidly.
I knew that the Colonel would want to take this hide along. But we only had one packhorse between the two of us and it was too loaded to carry the wet and green hide. So I decided that I had better spoil it. So I gave my knife a lick on the steel and as we got to the bear stuck my knife between the ears and split the skin down the backbone clean to the tail.
The Colonel gave me a slap on the back and says, “Bean, that’s my bear.”
I told him, “All right.” It was no credit to me to kill a bear.
“Well,” he says, “We’ll take this skin.”
I said, “Why didn’t you say so before I split the skin—why I’ve spoiled it.”
The Colonel was very much put out to lose the skin. He tramped the snow down for ten feet around and finally concluded he would take the front paw and hind foot and a good chunk of meat to eat. I only took meat enough for him, as I didn’t care for bear meat. And after dissecting the bear we journeyed on our way to the Yellowstone Falls and made camp.
That night he wanted me to cook him plenty of bear meat, but I cooked bacon for myself. I noticed that after chewing the bear meat a little, he would throw it out of his mouth when he thought I wasn’t looking. I gave him bear meat for about two days and throwed the balance away, which was never inquired for.
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— Adapted from Jack Bean, Real Hunting Tales, typed manuscript, Pioneer Museum of Bozeman. Pages 31-33.
I have completed a major milestone for my next book, Encounters in Yellowstone 1877. I finished an outline. That was a complicated task because I’m writing about a myriad of overlapping events and disparate (often desperate) people.
First, there are the Nez Perce, who decide to flee their homeland in Idaho and Washington State and make a new life in the buffalo country of Montana. After the army’s predawn attack on their sleeping camp on the banks of the Big Hole River, the Indians fragment. The Chiefs try to avoid whites while leading the main group, but they lose control over small bands of young men who spread out to seek revenge. These young warriors attack settlers along the Montana-Idaho border and tourists in Yellowstone National Park.
Like a nuclear chain reaction, each attack breaks up a group of people yielding several dramatic stories. For example, when a young warrior named Yellow Wolf and his companions attack a tourist party near the lower geyser basin, they capture a young woman, shoot her husband in the head and leave him for dead, and send several other tourists fleeing into the forrest. This one event yields Emma Cowan’s chilling tales of her captivity and quest for help after being released in the wilderness; George Cowan’s story of regaining consciousness to find himself wounded and alone, and the Cowan’s companions’ efforts to hide, flee and find help. Meanwhile, army units converge on Yellowstone Park from several directions, trying to find and subdue the elusive Nez Perce.
I’ve organized these events into 20 chapters that chronicle events beginning in 1805 when the Nez Perce befriend several starving men from the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and ending 130 years later with publication of a book entitled Adventures in Geyserland. Doubtless I’ll make changes as my research proceeds. I’ll need to merge some chapters, split others and rearrange things. But I have an outline that organizes a complicated human drama into a coherent narrative. For now, I’m happy with that.
Early tourists had to brave a roadless wilderness to see the sights of the new Yellowstone National Park. That meant supplies had to be carried by pack animals—often cantankerous mules. One such tourist was the Earl of Dunraven, an Irish noble who first visited the park in 1874. Dunraven was an astute observer and a droll wit. Here’s his description of how to pack a mule.
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A man stands on each side of the mule to be operated upon; the saddle, a light wooden frame, is placed on his back and securely girthed. A long rope is looped into proper form and arranged on the saddle. The side packs are then lifted into position on each side of the saddle and tightly fastened. The middle bundle is placed between them—a few spare articles are flung on the top—a tent thrown over all—and the load ready to be secured.
The rope is fixed so the fall is one side and the slack is on the other. Each man places one foot against the animal’s ribs. Throwing the whole weight of his body into the effort, each man hauls with all his strength upon the line.
At each jerk, the wretched mule expel an agonized grunt—snaps at the men’s shoulders— and probably gives them a sharp pinch, which necessitates immediate retaliation.
The men haul a while, squeezing the poor creature’s diaphragm most terrible. Smaller and more wasp like grows his waist—and last not another inch of line can be got in, and the rope is made fast.
“Bueno,” cries the muleteer, giving the beast a spank on the behind which starts it off—teetering about on the tips of its toes like a ballet dancer. Having done with one animal, the packers proceed to the next, and so on through the lot.
While you are busy with the others, Numbers One and Two have occupied themselves in tracing mystic circles in and out—among and round and round several short, stumpy, thickly branching firs—and, having diabolical ingenuity they have twisted, tied, and tangled their trail-ropes into inextricable confusion. They are standing there patiently in their knots.
Number Three has been entrusted with the brittle and perishable articles because she is regarded as a steady and reliable animal of a serious turn of mind. She has acquired a stomach ache from the unusual constriction of that organ—and is rolling over and over—flourishing all four legs in the air at once.
You may use language strong enough to split a rock—hot enough to fuse a diamond, without effect. You may curse and swear your “level best”—but it does not do a bit of good. Go on they will, till they kick their packs off. And then they must be caught —the scattered articles gathered together—and the whole operation commenced afresh.
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—You can read more about the Earl’s adventures in my book, Adventures In Yellowstone.
—Text and ilustration from the Earl of Dunraven, The Great Divide: Travels in the Upper Yellowstone in the Summer of 1874, London: Chatto and Windus, Picadilly, 1876. pages 139-141.
—You can read more about the Earl’s adventures in my book, Adventures In Yellowstone.
— For more stories by this author, click on “Dunraven” under the “Categories” button to the left.
In 1913 Louise Elliott publish a book about a young schoolteacher from Lander, Wyoming, who took a job as a camp assistant for a mobile camp tour. In her preface, Elliott confesses that she used several techniques that critics now might label “new journalism.” She created composite characters by combining traits of her camp companions, and made up a “little romance” for her protagonist.
We can forgive Elliott because she provided an explicit disclaimer—and an entertaining portrait of travel to Yellowstone Park in the early twentieth century. While her tales must be taken with the proverbial grain of salt, we probably can take her word that “the camp episodes and jokes, the weather and scenery, and the statistics” were all accurate descriptions copied from her diary.
Elliott gives interesting details of her trip—a cook who makes biscuits “charred on the outside and doughy in the middle,”—a guide who carries “the scratchiest flannels” to be worn by anyone who didn’t heed his warning to bring warm clothing—and, snobbish hotel guests who refuse to return the greetings of lowly campers.
At one point during the story, Elliott says her protagonist, Violet, and her friend, Maud, became irritated with one of their guests—a Boston lady that they called “The Spinster.” Here’s Louise’s story about that.
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Maud and I baked enough biscuits for supper and some cup cakes while the Spinster complained of all the discomforts of camp life as compared with her home conveniences. Neither did she forget to mention her lovely twenty-eight dollar and fifty-cent air mattress.
“That settles it once for all,” whispered Maud. “Never again!”
Well Maud had her revenge—and not once today has the Spinster boasted of her comfortable pneumatic mattress. I wondered last night why Maud was anxious to retire early as she is usually the last one to bed.
The great pine fire was lighting our tent, and the Spinster was peacefully enjoying her first snore when I saw our Irish lassie get stealthily out of bed—and crawl over to the hated mattress. She certainly must have made a thorough study of the mechanism—she knew just where to find the valve screw. She gave a few turns—crept back into bed again—and began breathing hard and steady.
Maud had not let me into her proposed vengeance because she feared I would not countenance it. But I suspected that the air was slowly leaking out of the mattress under the sleeping Bostonian. Soon that lady stopped her regular breathing and sat up in bed. She began fumbling under her and muttered, “Well, I never.” Finally she got up, punching the mattress, muttering something and reached into her bag.
Pump, pump, pump—I tried so hard to keep from giggling that a snort escaped from my throat. Maud began to talk incoherently and to toss and throw her arms about to cover my tell-tale noises. “No sir, I told you before that I will not dance—no—no—.” Then her voice died away and she snored vociferously while the—pump, pump, pump—continued. At last the wonderful pneumatic was restored to its proper stage of plumpness and the weary Spinster was soon resuming her snores where she left off.
She was more silent than usual this morning and did not allude in any way to her mattress. But while Maud and I were doing up the dishes, she went into the tent and gave her bed a thorough examination. She became more talkative after she had read the little pamphlet of directions, which had been attached to the mattress. After that she told the party how Maud had discussed her secrets and love affairs in her sleep.
Maud asked innocently, “What did I talk about?”
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— From L. Louise Elliott, Six Weeks on Horseback Through Yellowstone Park, 1913.
Marsha Karle lavished praise on my book minutes before the next eruption of Old Faithful.
Part of the fun of singing books in the lobby of the Old Faithful Inn was meeting other authors. On Saturday morning, my friends artist/illustrator Marsha Karle and her husband, author Paul Schullery, stopped to chat. They were kind enough to hang around the lobby for a few minutes announcing loudly how much they enjoyed Adventures in Yellowstone and saying everyone should read it. I can’t wait to get my hands on their new book, This High Wild Country: A Celebration of Waterton- Glacier International Peace Park. The combination of Marsha’ s watercolors and Paul’s prose has to make for a wonderful book.
Too bad Paul wasn’t around a few minutes later when another author of books on fishing arrived. I’m sure he would have enjoyed meeting Harry Sloan, the author of Virginia Trout Streams: A Guide to Fishing the Blue Ridge Watershed.
In the afternoon, I got to meet Ralph Himmelsbach, author of Norjak, The Investigation of D.B. Cooper. Ralph was the lead FBI investigator in the case, one of the most fascinating unsolved crimes of the last century. In case you don’t remember, a man calling himself Dan Cooper highjacked a passenger plane, ransomed it for $200,000, and parachuted away.
I’ll post more later on the thrill of hearing people say “I loved your book,” and the fun of convincing others that they’d enjoy it.
The Cowans visiting the site of their capture in 1901.
Emma Cowan and her family visited Yellowstone National Park in 1877—the year the U.S. Army pursued the Nez Perce Indians there. The Nez Perce generally had amicable relations with whites, but in what has become a familiar story, the peace was shattered when gold was discovered on their land. Some Nez Perce acquiesced to government demands that they move to a tiny reservation, but others decided to flee their homeland instead.
The Army sent soldiers to subdue the defiant Nez Perce, but the Indians defeated them several times. In the most dramatic battle, the Army made a pre-dawn attack on a sleeping Nez Perce camp on the banks the Big Hole River in southwest Montana. The Indians rallied, drove back their attackers, then retreated leaving their equipment, teepees, and at least 89 dead—most of them women and children.
After the battle, they fled though Yellowstone Park where they captured Emma’s party. Here’s her account of what happened later.
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Every Indian carried a splendid gun, with belts full of cartridges. As the morning sunshine glinted on the polished surface of the gun barrels, a regiment of soldiers could have not looked more formidable. The Indians pretended all the while to be our very good friends, saying that if they should let us go, bad Indians, as they termed them, would kill us.
Suddenly, without warning, shots rang out. Two Indians came dashing down the trail in front of us. My husband was getting off his horse. I wondered what the reason. I soon knew, for he fell as soon as he reached the ground—fell heading downhill. Shots followed and Indian yells, and all was confusion. In less time than it takes to tell it, I was off my horse and by my husband’s side….
I heard my sister’s screams and called to her. She came and crouched by me, as I knelt by his side. I saw he was wounded in the leg above the knee, and by the way the blood spurted out I feared an artery had been severed. He asked for water. I dared not leave him to get it.
I think we both glanced up the hill at the same moment, for he said, “Keep quiet. It won’t last long.” That thought had flashed through my mind also. Every gun in the whole party of Indians was leveled at us three. I shall never forget the picture, which left an impression that years cannot efface. The holes in those gun barrels looked as big as saucers.
I gave it only a glance, for my attention was drawn to something near at hand. A pressure on my shoulder was drawing me away from my husband. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw an Indian with an immense navy pistol trying to get a shot at my husband’s head. Wrenching my arm from his grasp, I leaned over my husband, only to be roughly drawn aside. Another Indian stepped up, a pistol shot rang out, my husband’s head fell back, and a red stream trickled down his face from beneath his hat. The warm sunshine, the smell of blood, the horror of it all, a faint remembrance of seeing rocks thrown at his head, my sister’s screams, a faint sick feeling, and all was blank.
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Two days later the Indians released Emma, her sister, Ida, and her brother, Frank. They made their way to Mammoth Hot Springs where they found help. Emma’s husband, George, survived the shooting. He carried the slug that an Army surgeon dug out of his head as a watch fob for the rest of his life.
While making their way through the Yellowstone wilderness, the Nez Perce discovered they were not welcome with their old friends, the Crow, who had made accommodations with the whites. The Nez Perce decided to head north to join Sitting Bull and his Sioux in Canada. In October the starving and exhausted remnants of the band surrendered to the Army just 40 miles from the Canadian border.
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— You can read Emma’s complete story in my book, Adventures In Yellowstone.
On Saturday, I’m going to the Page-Redfield family reunion in Twin Bridges. I was invited to the event by—let’s see—my second cousin once removed. Something like that; I never did get the hang of calculating kinship. I don’t expect to see any relatives much closer than a third cousin. Sometime a couple of generations back branches of the family drifted apart and I’m pretty sure my brothers, cousins, nieces, nephews, etc, won’t be there. But, there could be dozens of shirttail relatives. My family has had nearly a hundred and fifty years of being fruitful and multiplying in Montana.
The first of my relatives to arrive in Montana Territory was an 11-year-old girl named Mary Christianson. In her application for membership in the Montana Historical Society, Mary said she arrived in Montana in 1864 by the Bridger Cutoff. I imagine Mary walking beside a covered wagon in a train led by the famous mountain man Jim Bridger. Bridger’s wagon train emerged from the canyon that bears his name early in July 1864. From the mouth of the canyon, Mary could have looked past the point where three rivers run together to form the Missouri to the Tobacco Root Mountains 70 miles to the west. Mary’s odyssey from her birthplace in Germany, across the Atlantic and then across America was almost over. Mary would spend the rest of her life west of the Tobacco Roots.
While Mary contemplated her new life in gold-rush Montana, her future husband, James Madison Page, languished in the notorious Civil War prison at Andersonville where union soldiers died by the thousands of starvation and disease. (Andersonville Prison has been burned into the American consciousness as a symbol of inhumanity, but Page said he never saw any intentional cruelty there. In fact, in 1908 Page published a book that said the charges against Major Henry Wirtz, who was hanged for murders he allegedly committed at Andersonville, were trumped up.)
Jim Page was released from Andersonville in a prisoner exchange and returned home to Michigan. After recovering from his ordeal and attending business college, Jim decided to move to Montana in 1866. Family lore says he wanted to rejoin the army so he could fight under his hero, General George Armstrong Custer, but his mother talked him out of it.
Jim got a job as a teamster on one of the wagon trains hauling supplies to the gold fields. When he arrived in Montana, he tried his hand at prospecting, but, like many gold rushers, he soon turned to other ventures. He established his Excelsior Ranch near Twin Bridges and began enticing his siblings to join him. His brother, Robert Wallace Page, came to Montana with his family by steamboat up the Missouri in 1879. Low water stopped the boat at Cow Island, but the family had planned to come overland the remaining distance anyway. A sister, Elmira Utley, came with her family a year later on an “immigrant train” operated by the Utah and Northern Railroad. The track ended at Lima, Montana, then, so the Utleys had to continue by horse and wagon from there to Twin Bridges.
My Great Great Grandfather Rodney Page and his widowed sister, Elvira Stephens, were the last to arrive, coming in 1882. By then the track reached as far as Dillon. Actually, Grandpa Rodney went ahead leaving his wife and sister to manage the move while he rushed ahead to join his brother, Jim, on a surveying expedition to Yellowstone Park. That was the beginning of the Page brothers land survey company, which operated for nearly 40 years. Jim Page said the company surveyed in every county in Montana (probably meaning the original territorial counties).
Descendants of the Pages still tell stories about the 1882 Yellowstone trip. Rodney hired two young assistants named Fred Mercer and Harry Redfield. Mercer and Redfield become close friends and loved playing practical jokes on each other. They used to steal each other’s red flannel underwear and toss it into Old Faithful tinting the next eruption pink—so the story goes. With nearly 4,000 gallons in the typical eruption of Old Faithful, it’s doubtful that one pair of flannels would dye it, but perhaps the prank involved a smaller geyser.
Rodney must have liked Mercer and Redfield well enough. When the survey was done, they followed him home and married his daughters. Harry Redfield married Elvira Page and they had eleven children, so their descendants doubtless will dominate the family reunion. Fred Mercer married Eva Page and they had four children. I descend from the Mercer line.
One of the members of the famous Washburn Expedition that explored the uppper Yellowstone in 1870, a jocular man named Jake Smith, was always ready to gamble. Unfortunately, he lost all his money in a card game the night before the trip started. But Jake came up with a way to replenish his stake. N.P. Langford tells the story.
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Descending the range to the east, we reached Trail creek, a tributary of the Yellowstone about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, where we are now camped for the night. We are now fairly launched upon our expedition without the possibility of obtaining outside assistance in case we need it. Our safety will depend upon our vigilance. We are all well armed with long range repeating rifles and needle guns, though there are but few of our party who are experts at off-hand shooting with a revolver.
In the course of our discussion Jake Smith expressed his doubt whether any member of our party is sufficiently skilled in the use of the revolver to hit an Indian at even a close range. He offered to put the matter to a test by setting up his hat at a distance of twenty yards for the boys to shoot at with their revolvers, without a rest, at twenty-five cents a shot.
Several members of our party blazed away with indifferent success—with the result that Jake was adding to his exchequer without damage to his hat. I could not resist the inclination to quietly drop out of sight behind a clump of bushes. From my place of concealment I sent from my breech-loading Ballard repeating rifle four bullets in rapid succession, through the hat—badly riddling it.
Jake inquired, “Whose revolver is it that makes that loud report?” He did not discover the true state of the case, but removed the target with the ready acknowledgment that there were members of our party whose aim with a revolver was more accurate than he had thought.
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— Excerpt Langford’s book, The Discovery of Yellowstone Park. in my book, Adventures in Yellowstone.
— Photo, Yellowstone Digital Slide.
— You can read a condensed version of Langford’s The Discovery of Yellowstone Park in my book, Adventures in Yellowstone.
— To see more stories by this author, click on “Langford” under the “Categories” button to the left.
— For more stories about the Washburn Expedition, click on “Washburn” under the “Categories” button to the left.
Cars weren’t officially admitted to Yellowstone Park until 1915, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there before that. One story says that Henry G. Merry drove his Winton to Mammoth Hot Springs in 1902 to a dance at the National Hotel. He was caught—the story goes—but was allowed to drive out under cover of darkness. Here’s a more colorful version told by his son.
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When the Winton car arrived it was the conversation piece of the time. The word reached the commandant at the fort, along with the information that the noise it made was terrifying to horses. Very wisely he issued an order prohibiting this machine and others like if from the confines of the Yellowstone Park. My father knew of this order, but thought he would pilot the car to the fort and talk things over with commandant. In the interim, two troopers had been stationed at the entrance to prevent any such violation of the commandant’s order.
As related in father’s diary, on June 2nd, 1902, he and my Mother took off. When the north entrance was reached, he opened up the speed to about 25 mph, and the troopers’ mounts acted up so that they could not block the passage. The machine was well on its way before they got their horses quieted down and started after the car—which was rapidly widening the distance between them.
All went well as long as the road was level but that was not for long. As the grade became steeper—the speed was reduced—and soon the car came to a stop. The troopers arrived at a hard gallop.
Fortunately, each one had a lariat and between the two horses they managed to pull the car to the commandant’s office and gave him a report of how things happened. He was quite pleasant and took time to explain to father, who already knew, that the noise of his conveyance posed a threat to the lives of all tourists who were visiting the park in horse-drawn vehicles. Then he became quite stern and reminded him that he was still under arrest and would have to pay a penalty to be released. When my father asked what the penalty would be, the officer very seriously replied, “You will have to take me for a ride in this contraption.” He got his ride and then assigned a detail to escort father to the gate.
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—Photo and text from The Pioneer Museum, Bozeman, Montana.
M. Mark Miller, Author 