CHAPTER XIX.

FORT BENTON.

Few, if any, towns in the Far West country possess so unique and varied a history as Fort Benton. With the exception of some of the old Spanish villages in the southwest it is the oldest settlement in the mountain country, for the traders made their first establishment there in 1831. The true historic career of Fort Benton did not embrace more than half a century, yet in that brief space it saw more of romance, tragedy, and vigorous life than many a city of a hundred times its size and ten times its age.

[Sidenote: OPENING TRADE WITH THE BLACKFEET.]

The commercial importance of Fort Benton arose, of course, from its situation at the head of navigation on the Missouri River; but this was not the cause of its first location there. The surrounding country was the home of the Blackfeet Indians--great fur producers, but in early times inveterate enemies of the whites. From the time when the traders began to penetrate those distant regions it was their ambition to open up trade relations with this fierce and refractory tribe. Attempts were made in the years 1807–10 and again in 1822–23, but wholly without success. The Indians always evinced a deadly hostility, attacked the trappers, killed a great many, drove them out of the country, and gave them no opportunity to explain their pacific purposes.

In 1831 Kenneth McKenzie, ablest of the American Fur Company traders on the upper Missouri, resolved to make another attempt. He had already securely established himself at Fort Union, near the mouth of the Yellowstone. Fortune threw into his hands at this time the very instrument required for his purposes--an old trapper who had long served under the Hudson Bay Company in the Blackfoot country north of the boundary. His name was Jacob Berger. He understood perfectly the language of these Indians and knew many of them personally. McKenzie prevailed upon him to go to their country with overtures of peace and the promise of a trading post. The real origin of the enmity of the Blackfeet had been the apparent favoritism of the whites, in years gone by, toward their hereditary enemies, the Crows; and McKenzie felt confident that, if he could once get their ear and explain the true purpose of the traders toward them, he would secure their friendship and custom.

Berger set out with a small party in the fall of 1830, carrying unfurled an American flag, and traveled upward of four weeks before he saw an Indian. Finally he came upon a large village in the valley of the Marias River. The sight so terrified the little band that they were for instant flight before they should be discovered. Berger, however, persisted in his mission, and the party moved forward, scarcely expecting to be alive another hour. They were quickly discovered, whereupon a number of mounted warriors started at full gallop to meet them. The whites halted and Berger advanced with his flag. The Indians paused and Berger made signs of peace, and called out his own name. As he was well known to the tribe, they recognized him at once. There was a rush to shake hands and Berger and his party were taken to the village, where, to their infinite relief, they were received with every demonstration of good will.

[Sidenote: A FAIR PROPOSITION.]

Berger remained at the village for some time, and made the Indians fully acquainted with the purpose of his mission. He finally induced about forty of the leading men to return with him to Fort Union, where they could confer with McKenzie direct. The journey was long, and the fickle nature of the Indians showed signs of weakening before it was nearly completed. They began to fear treachery, and it took all of Berger’s ingenuity to keep them from turning back. Finally, as a last resort, when almost at their journey’s end, he pledged them his scalp and his horses if they did not reach the fort in one day more. They agreed to this eminently fair proposition, and before the day had passed they saw, from the top of a hill, in the plain below them, the imposing palisades and bastions of Fort Union. This was about the beginning of the year 1831.

[Sidenote: SUCCESSFUL NEGOTIATIONS.]

McKenzie did all in his power to impress the delegation favorably. He made them liberal presents, and sent a trader with an outfit of goods to remain in their village during the winter. Finally he promised them a permanent trading post the following year. Before the year had passed he induced the Blackfeet and Assiniboines to make a treaty with each other, and he thus established peace all along the northern border. In the fall of 1831 he sent a complete outfit under James Kipp to the Blackfoot country for the purpose of establishing the promised post. After a long and tedious voyage Kipp reached the mouth of the Marias River and selected the point of land between the two streams for the proposed establishment. It was begun about the middle of October. The Indians appeared soon after his arrival, but Kipp requested them to withdraw for seventy-five days, until he could finish the work. They went away and returned punctually on the day fixed. To their astonishment they found the fort entirely finished and everything ready for the trade. This post was very properly named, from the sub-tribe of the Blackfeet in whose country it was located, Fort Piegan.[37]

[Sidenote: THE BLACKFEET NATION.]

Thus was the white man’s first foothold established in the land of the Blackfeet, near where the great post of Fort Benton stood in later years. Kipp drove a thriving trade during the winter, and in the spring went down to Union with the returns and with all his men, for they refused to remain if he went. It is said that the Indians burned the post after Kipp withdrew. Whether from this cause or from some other, it was not rebuilt upon the original site. D. D. Mitchell, one of the Company’s most capable servants, was sent up in 1832 to reopen trade with the Blackfeet. On his way up he lost his boat in a storm, with all the property, worth some thirty thousand dollars, and two men, one of them a Piegan Indian. The Indians who were with him suspected foul play and Mitchell had all he could do to maintain himself while sending back to Union for another outfit. He succeeded, however, and in due time reached the mouth of the Marias.

[Sidenote: FOUNDING OF FORT MCKENZIE.]

Not liking the situation selected by Kipp, he went up the river some seven miles farther, and chose a spot on the left bank in a fine bottom with abundant growths of timber near by. The erection of the new post was one of the dramatic incidents of the early fur trade. There were several thousand Indians present, suspicious of the whites and ready for trouble upon any pretext. The men worked like beavers in getting up the pickets, and during this time slept on the keelboat. It required the utmost tact and firmness on the part of Mitchell to prevent an outbreak, and several times it seemed as if all were lost. The work was finally completed, and once within the fort the little party felt safe. The new post was named Fort McKenzie, a merited tribute to the man who had accomplished a feat which the traders had hitherto considered impossible.

In the summer of 1833 Alexander Culbertson, next to McKenzie the greatest of the American Fur Company traders, went up with Mitchell from Fort Union, and began his long and eventful career on the upper river. Prince Maximilian was a guest of the party, and remained at Fort McKenzie nearly all summer. While there he was treated to a genuine Indian battle. The Assiniboines, becoming weary of peace, broke the treaty of two years before, and fell upon a band of Piegans who were encamped around the fort. They killed several Indians in the first onset, but were quickly repulsed by aid of the inmates of the post, and were finally driven back beyond the Marias. Mitchell and Culbertson took part in the fight, and the venerable Prince became its historian.

[Sidenote: BLACKFEET AND CROWS.]

The history of Fort McKenzie had more of excitement and incident about it than any of the other early trading posts. The Blackfeet and the Crows were deadly enemies of each other, and many were the bloody encounters between them. The Crows often came to seek their enemy in his own country, and the Blackfeet went to the Crow country on the Yellowstone, where the inmates of Fort Cass witnessed the counterpart of scenes which fell under the eyes of the traders at Fort McKenzie. It is said, but upon uncertain authority, that the Crows once actually laid siege to Fort McKenzie, but as they were a friendly tribe to the whites, this may be taken with some allowance. It is certain, however, that for many years the warfare between these two tribes raged with great fury, though not with much loss to the traders, for the booty captured from one party found its way directly to the trading post in the country of the other.

[Sidenote: SMALLPOX AMONG THE BLACKFEET.]

The thrilling incidents with which the annals of Fort McKenzie abounded in these early years would fill a volume; but we can note only the more important. The year 1837 was the year of the terrible smallpox scourge among the tribes of the Missouri Valley. Great care was taken at Fort Union to dispatch the annual outfit for Fort McKenzie without carrying the smallpox along with it. The expedition was in charge of Alexander Harvey, one of the most noted and desperate characters which the fur trade produced. Harvey took every possible precaution, but in spite of his efforts the disease broke out in his party. He therefore thought it prudent to stop before he reached Fort McKenzie and send word to Culbertson, who had been in charge of the fort since 1834, when Mitchell left. Culbertson wisely decided to leave the cargo at the mouth of the Judith until the disease had run its course. There were large numbers of Indians encamped near the fort awaiting the arrival of the boat, and when they learned of the proposed delay they became suspicious and insisted that the boat should be brought up. Culbertson expostulated with them, but all in vain, and to avoid the capture and destruction of the boat and its crew, he yielded to their demands.

[Sidenote: TERRIBLE MORTALITY.]

The result was exactly what had been foreseen. The disease was communicated to the inmates of the post and to the Indians as well. The latter completed their trade and left the fort before the pest actually broke out among them, and the garrison remained for some time in ignorance of what their fate had been. For upwards of two months not an Indian was seen, and Culbertson, fearing the dreadful truth, resolved to go in search of them. With a single companion he set out for the Three Forks of the Missouri, where the Piegans usually spent their autumns hunting beaver. They finally came upon a village of about sixty lodges, only to find it absolutely deserted, with dead bodies strewn in every direction, and carrion birds of prey the only sign of life anywhere around. The smallpox had done its work well, and the few survivors of the village had fled in scattered groups among the surrounding mountains. The mortality among the Bloods and Blackfeet had been as great as among the Piegans, and Culbertson estimated the total loss among the three bands at six thousand souls. The Grosventres, for some cause, escaped with small loss.

The annals of Fort McKenzie during the next six years find their chief sensational interest in the exploits of Alexander Harvey. Many were the desperate deeds committed by him, and it required all the steadying authority of Culbertson to offset his sinister influence among the Indians. Harvey was, however, an excellent trader, and rendered the company good service. He was left in charge of the post during the occasional temporary absences of Culbertson at Fort Union, and in spite of his many outrages upon the Indians, and even upon the whites, was considered too valuable a man to lose.

[Sidenote: CULBERTSON TRANSFERRED.]

Under Culbertson’s prudent management Fort McKenzie had become, next to Union, the most paying establishment on the river. The Company were so pleased with his record that they decided to send him to Fort John, on the Laramie River, to build up the trade of that post, which was doing a losing business on account of bad management. Culbertson protested that it would be a mistake to take him away from McKenzie, but the Company overruled him, and Francis A. Chardon, one of their most experienced clerks, was sent to relieve him.

[Sidenote: REVOLTING CRIME.]

Chardon was the same manner of man as was Alexander Harvey, and it goes without saying that such a pair traveled rapidly the highway to commercial ruin. Chardon, being new to his duties and new to the post, relied a great deal upon Harvey, who became the real head of the establishment. The natural consequences of this arrangement quickly followed. Some little offenses committed by the Indians, which a prudent trader would have passed by without trouble, were made the excuse for one of the most atrocious crimes ever committed by either white man or Indian upon the other. The plan was to fall upon the unsuspecting Indians the next time they should come in to trade, and to kill all they could and confiscate their property. It only partly succeeded, owing to the failure of the actors to co-operate exactly; but it went far enough to arouse the hatred of the Indians to the highest pitch. They began a war of vengeance, and soon rendered the situation at Fort McKenzie untenable. Chardon accordingly moved down to the Judith River, and erected a new post on the left bank of the Missouri, opposite the mouth of the smaller stream. He named the post Fort Chardon. Fort McKenzie was burned, some say by Chardon himself and some by the Indians. The fort lost its old name and became known as Fort Brulé, or burned fort, a name which still survives in Brulé bottom, where Fort McKenzie stood. The massacre took place early in the winter of 1842–43.[38]

[Sidenote: RETURN OF CULBERTSON.]

As a result of their reckless management, Chardon and Harvey had by this time ruined the trade with the Blackfeet tribes. In this emergency the Company turned to Culbertson, acknowledged their error in removing him from Fort McKenzie, and besought him to return and restore things to their old-time condition. Culbertson went back in the summer of 1844, abandoned and burned Fort Chardon, and established a new post twelve miles above the modern Fort Benton. The fort was built on the right bank of the Missouri, and was named Fort Lewis, in honor of the great explorer, Captain Meriwether Lewis.

On his way up from Fort Union this season Culbertson was accompanied by Jacob Berger, James Lee, and Malcolm Clark. Clark had served at Fort McKenzie five years before. He was a noted frontier character of good family connections, an unsuccessful student at the West Point Military Academy, a man of fine physical presence, and possessed of a bold and desperate character, which brought to his name the stigma of more than one crime.[39] Clark and his companions seem to have plotted the murder or severe punishment of Alexander Harvey; for when Harvey came down from Fort Chardon to meet the boat, he was attacked by Clark and Lee and barely escaped with his life. He fled to the post, barricaded himself, induced the inmates to stand by him, and would not admit even Culbertson without a guarantee of personal safety. He then closed up his affairs at the post, left the Company’s service, went down the river, and soon after became senior member in the opposition firm of Harvey, Primeau & Co. He returned to the upper river, built a small post near the mouth of Shonkin Creek, and did a fair business for several years, when he sold out to his old employers.

[Sidenote: BLACKFEET TRADE RESTORED.]

With Chardon and Harvey away, Culbertson soon won back the trade of the Blackfeet. The site of Fort Lewis, however, proved unsatisfactory. The valley of the Teton River, a tributary of the Marias, which flowed parallel with the Missouri for many miles, was a favorite camping ground of the Indians. Fort Lewis was a long way off, and across the Missouri from this valley. Accordingly, in the spring of 1846 the post was dismantled, moved down the river, and set up in the fine open bottom where the village of Fort Benton now stands.

[Sidenote: FORT BENTON FOUNDED.]

The post was thus finally settled in its future permanent location, although the name, Fort Lewis, was still retained for several years. Business flourished under Culbertson’s management, and he at one time had three outlying posts in the country round about. In 1850 he determined to rebuild the post of adobe, after the manner of Fort John, on the Laramie. The soil was well adapted to the purpose, and although the work was begun late in the season, it was completed, thanks to an open fall, before winter set in. On Christmas night, 1850, it was dedicated with a grand ball, and was rechristened Fort Benton, in honor of Senator Thomas H. Benton, who had so often rescued the Company from the peril of its own malefactions. The name Fort Benton, as applied to the post of the Blackfeet, and to the head of navigation on the Missouri River, thus dates from the year 1850, nineteen years after the first trading post was established in that vicinity.

[Sidenote: THE STEVENS EXPLORATION.]

No events of other than a routine nature transpired at Fort Benton until the year 1853, when the extensive exploring expedition of Governor I. I. Stevens took the field to find a northern railroad route to the Pacific Ocean. These explorations brought a great deal of business to Fort Benton, and added a new feature to the life of that hitherto almost unknown post. Growing out of this work came the effort to negotiate treaties with the Blackfeet similar to those which had been formed at Fort Laramie three years before with most of the plains tribes. Congress made a large appropriation to cover the expense of the negotiations, and Governor Stevens and Alfred Cummings were appointed treaty commissioners. The necessary gifts for the Indians were purchased, the American Fur Company was awarded the contract for their transportation, and in due time Commissioner Cummings and party left St. Louis on the Company’s steamboat _St. Mary_.

There were on board, besides Commissioner Cummings, Major Culbertson, Indian agents Vaughn and Hatch, and a friend of Captain La Barge, an army officer, who later became paymaster in the army. At Fort Union the goods were transshipped in keelboats for Fort Benton, while the passengers took wagons for the same destination. Arrived at Milk River crossing, the party met Governor Stevens just returning from the Pacific Coast, and here the details of organization of the Commission were decided upon. There was much dispute over the question of precedence, and although Governor Stevens finally yielded to his colleague, the relations of the two men were so embittered that their subsequent work lacked harmony and effectiveness.

[Sidenote: CHANGE OF CONDITIONS.]

From Milk River the party went on to Fort Benton, but the boats were not able to get up that far except with very great delay, and it was decided to hold the expected council at the mouth of the Judith River. The goods were stopped at that point and hither repaired the Commissioners and the various Blackfeet bands to the number of about two thousand. The work was completed and in about ten days the Indians departed with their lavish presents. The era of the fur trader had ended and that of the Indian agent had come. In this case, as in all that had preceded it, the change, so far as the Indians were concerned, was a change for the worse.

[Sidenote: GREATNESS OF FORT BENTON.]

These events bring our sketch of the history of Fort Benton down to the point already reached in our regular narrative. The arrival of the first steamboat in 1859 was an epoch in her history. Followed, as it was, almost immediately by the discovery of gold in Montana, and the consequent rush of emigration, it changed the whole order of things at the post. Stores and other buildings began to appear, and in 1865 a town site was laid off.[40] The young city grew with astonishing rapidity and became a place of very great importance. Strange indeed must it have seemed to the Indians and to the old trappers to behold upon this spot, where for so many years there had been only a single palisade--sole habitation of white men within five hundred miles--buildings of metropolitan style and quality, trains of wagons coming and going, and lines of noble steamboats lying at the bank along the entire front of the town.[41] It was a wonderful metamorphosis, scarcely paralleled in any other city of the country. Mushroom towns have sprung up all over the West, but no permanent city from causes like those which built up Fort Benton. Her rise and greatness were due solely to her position as a strategic point in the commerce of the far Northwest, not from any great mineral discovery in her neighborhood. Her supremacy she maintained until other commercial routes had rendered useless the great natural highway which found its terminus at her door.[42]

[Sidenote: AMERICAN FUR CO. LEAVES THE RIVER.]

The American Fur Company, founders of Fort Benton, continued to do business on the upper river until 1864, when they sold out to the firm of Hawley, Hubbell & Co., under the style of the Northwestern Fur Company. The negotiations were concluded in the winter of 1864–65, and the actual transfer accomplished in the following season. In 1869 the Northwestern Fur Company sold out all its interests below Fort Union to Durfee & Peck, and in 1870 abandoned all the trade above Fort Union.