  Before Yellowstone could become accessible as a national playground a certain evolution of security had to take place. Indian tribes and buffalo herds were hindrances to both colonization and travel. A double-action roundup was needed to clear the way for an ephemeral phase, known as cattle days on the open range, and ultimate colonization within the approaches of the Park. The early clash of white trappers and Indians has been reviewed. Passing of time worked no respite. Indeed, occasional friction swelled into almost constant strife. As settlers multiplied, the accumulation of past mutual grievances and suspicions rolled in from other scenes of combat like a moving tide and then broke into smaller waves, backwashing among the Rockies. Racial antagonisms and cultural conflicts swept every tribe into the whirlpool. Each in turn wrecked itself against the might of federal power. Finally, a crimson trail was stretched toward Yellowstone when Nez PercÉ Joseph chose to make it a part of his escape route. In the outset, English colonial charters granted belts of land to companies, or proprietors, without reference to Indian occupation. Still, a native people was found almost everywhere, but these savages were generally interested only in what might be had for the taking, whether from nature’s bounty or an enemy tribe. Here was a land with resources for the sustenance of a thousand times their number. White men were given a generous reception at first. Indians generally displayed an Arabian type of hospitality and enjoyed showing homage to important visitors. However, it became increasingly apparent that white and red men had little in common. The former were quick to recognize the Indians’ simplicity and to exploit it. If judged by civilized standards, they were a people living as children, naÏve and simple. They roamed about seeking game and plunder. Something to eat, a shred of clothing, a partial shelter, and a touch of adornment sufficed. They would exchange much corn, meat, beaver, and deerskins for a handful of beads, an iron hatchet, knife, ax, awl, or—best of all—fire water. Articles of real value were first given cheaply for items of scarcely any value at all. Mere curiosity led them into many commercial pitfalls. Ross, the trader, said, “Our people might have loaded a seventy-five-gun ship with provisions bought with buttons and rings.” In the opinion of the Indians, palefaces were weaklings under torture. Still, white folks possessed strong medicine capable of moving great boats upon water without paddles. They also set great store upon boundaries on land and upon scratches on paper, which they said meant the same thing yesterday, today, and forever, and when a chief touched the quill to make his mark at the end of a writing it might bring trouble for years to come. Of course, the whites then said it was a treaty of cession by which the tribe had agreed to move the Indian village away and leave the settlers alone. These strange white people had a passion for killing trees continually, for making more tobacco than they could smoke, and for sending most of it away in their ships. White men were always working, mostly at tasks fit only for squaws, and they were fond of getting other white men and black men, and even trying to get red men, to work for them. Palefaces rarely moved their houses or changed their wives, and they would eat little more in harvest, or after a kill, than at any other time. Their restraints and their lack of restraint were equally unaccountable; and their numbers were ever swelling and their demands ever continuing for more and more land. They were, in truth, unfriendly neighbors, unwilling to blend the colony with the tribe; but they were firm, and on occasion impolite, in living their own lives and crowding the red men out. This brought battle now and then and a few blond scalps to dangle, but in war, too, the whites were unreasonable. They would not wait for Indian summer to do battle, and when once they took the path they were not content with raids, ambushes, and surprise attacks, but they would persist in a campaign under staunch command long after sensible, spasmodic Indian folk had grown weary. Thus, we may fancy, thought the Algonquins, Iroquois, Mohicans, Tuscaroras, and the Cherokees, the more sedentary eastern tribes early to experience the white man’s aggression. At length In what light was the Indian held by the white settlers of America? It has already been noted that Europe’s Christian sovereigns and their governors disregarded the Indians’ tribal ownership. They were primitive, pagan, and of ill repute. Human beings they were, perhaps, but with a hazy past, precarious present, and reckless future. If they could be converted to Christianity, well and good. That blessing would adequately compensate for the loss of their hunting grounds. Salvation in heaven was far better than savagery on earth. Hence, we learn that the Pilgrim Fathers first “fell upon their knees and then upon the aborigines.” Roger Williams, William Penn, Zebulon Pike, John C. Calhoun, and Brigham Young raised dissenting views, but theirs were as voices crying in the wilderness. Other more self-seeking councils prevailed. Many were the voices raised in condemnation. General Phil Sheridan, in his oft-quoted comment, said, “There is no good Indian but a dead Indian.... If a white man steals, we put him in prison; if an Indian steals, we give him a blanket. If a white man kills, we hang him; if an Indian kills, we give him a horse to put the blanket on.” Another characterization from a Montana frontiersman goes, “An Indian’s heart is never good until he is hungry and cold.” Jim Stuart, than whom no man had more occasion to harshly judge Indians about Yellowstone, made the following observation:
The Earl of Dunraven professed to express the Sportsman’s viewpoint when he said that Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack had the same feeling for Indians that they entertained toward game. That is to say, “They love them, and they slay them.” To the typical frontiersman, the Indian was a savage, ready to pounce on careless settlers, scalp them, burn their homes, and carry off their loved ones—in short, a “varmint.” To the romantic writers, the Indians were children of nature, dwellers in shady forests and peaceful plains, earth’s true nobility! Of course, the romantic writers seldom saw the natives and never lived with them. These errors, and many others, have been accepted as first-hand accurate observations. Indeed, the whole American Indian policy has been called a tragedy of errors, beginning with the naming of the race “Indian.” Given this background of Indian ways, what might reasonably have been expected in the way of biracial adjustment? So little was the question of Indian welfare considered before 1880 that one cannot yet determine just what course might have solved the problem and brought about successful assimilation. First the English, and then the Americans, just muddled along, bribing here, cajoling there, and ultimately forcing everywhere, until this once Even when the white man’s heart was good toward his red brother there was conflict in policies. Some thought his only salvation was in the adoption of agriculture and stock raising, but such a program was ruinous to the fur traders. The natives were the sinews of that business. The contrast in economy and culture, rival claims to land, and mutual feelings of superiority presented a gulf too vast for peaceful desires to overcome. It was the realization of this fact that impelled the wise Alexander Ross to say, “Peace in reality was beyond our power; it was but an empty name.” Against this ominous force the Indians could only writhe and twist. The uneven contest waged for two and a half centuries, extending from Jamestown to the Pequot War and from Tippecanoe to Custer’s defeat in the battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. It is a tale of red fury and white vengeance such as might properly appertain to an age of barbarism but which presents an incongruous picture in a Christian land. It is correct to say that Indian-American relations were never improved but always embittered until the natives were reduced to the point of decimation. Actually, the activities of fur trappers were not bitterly resented by the natives. Notwithstanding their excessive exploitation of the game there were compensations. A measure of accommodation resulted, which does not imply that there was any lack of violence. Theft, rivalry, and sheer joy of conflict were motives always The bison is America’s largest game animal, and for centuries it was most plentiful. Native to both plains and mountains it was a truly monarchial beast. A Spanish conquistador, Cabeza de Vaca, left an account of his observation upon the Texas plains in 1532: “The cows came from the north, and are found all over the land for over four hundred leagues.” Several years later Coronado’s report stated that they “had seen nothing but cows and sky.” Ample supporting evidence sustains the fact that the number was legion. In 1832, Captain Bonneville stated, “As far as the eye could reach the country seemed absolutely blackened by innumerable herds.” No census was ever taken, but competent authority suggests that sixty million head was a conservative estimate for the American plains in the early nineteenth century. Dependable calculations place the number persisting until 1870 at one fourth that number. At the end of the century the species was on the verge of extinction. How did this remarkable diminution transpire? Here, indeed, is a roundup of mammoth proportions and far-reaching consequences. Bison were the natives’ base of life, their tribal grubstake, a divine heritage. Only by wise conservation of this wild animal wealth were they enabled to maintain such a free and easy life. After the Civil War railroads were projected into the buffalo country. Construction camps employed professional hunters to provide fresh meat. William F. Cody held a contract for the However, it was the railroad itself that dealt the deadliest blow. Bison robes were too bulky to be handled by pack train, and only marginal profits accrued to wagon masters, but the effect of the iron horse was revolutionary. During the early seventies several lines conducted hunting excursions at low rates, guaranteeing shots from the windows. These facilities, supplemented by horse-and-wagon outfits, made the conquest of buffalo easy, especially when a definite profit was in view. That condition developed when the tanneries discovered bison hides could be used in leather wear. Thereafter, hides sold from $1.00 to $4.00 each, and a party of six hunters could kill and skin fifty or more in a day. In 1873, the Santa Fe alone carried 754,529 hides to eastern markets. Courtesy Union Pacific Ry. Thus, for a score of years, hundreds of expert riflemen combed the plains. They were armed with heavy Sharps and Winchester rifles, which boomed relentlessly at the ponderous bellowing herds. They took away the hides, brains, and tongues, leaving the rest to waste. It was wanton business written in crimson carcasses that dissolved into whitened bones. The railroad, therefore, destroyed frontier isolation and quickened the process of transforming a wilderness into a settled community. This increase in the tempo of frontier life was most apparent in the solution of the Indian problem. As the great train, piled high with hides, rumbled away its reverberations were echoed by a more ominous rumble in the disconsolate camps of the red men. This was the final aggression, the ultimate grievance, and it set the people’s teeth on edge. This inexorable white advance broke the natives’ hearts. Once again, it was demonstrated that Indians and white men could not live together. It meant the annihilation of their way of life—their very existence—and a tragic fate—starvation. Why did the government wink at this great imposition? Because after the railroad came colonization was imminent, but land overrun by wild Indians and buffalo could not be occupied. The herds had to be greatly diminished and the Indians, confined. The destruction of the bison was the most expedient means of bringing a recalcitrant race into subjection. Extremely superstitious, they carried certain charms about their persons, the efficacy of which was never doubted. Thus protected, they charged fearlessly into an affray. Too, youth was considered the proper time to die, and young men sometimes sought death, lending an air of fanaticism to the attacks. Red men were greatly exhilarated by victory. They would vault and yell in fiendish glee as they flourished the gory scalps of their victims. By 1850, however, the destiny of Indian folk was established. Thereafter, their cries seldom bore the shrill staccato notes of victory but rather the mournful wail of defeat. The legend of “Big Foot,” great chief of the Flathead tribe, had been fulfilled. In 1804 he is supposed to have assembled his warriors in council and related this message:
Flight of the Indians to the mountains delayed, but did not preclude, the final conquest of their domain. They were only After the Civil War the execution of this business was taken in hand by resolute fighting men. Hence, the military spirit was hardened toward the red men. Inexorably the race was pressed toward the appointed end. This work was accomplished by a series of military actions during the sixties and seventies. In eastern Idaho Colonel Patrick Connor wrought swift vengeance on the Bannock nation in 1863. More than two hundred Indians were killed, a loss which forever broke down their force and effectiveness. This tribe was guilty of many depredations against migrants, miners, and Mormon settlers. Its forlorn remnants were assigned to the Fort Hall Reservation. The plains tribes went on the war path in 1864. Colonel Chivington’s command surprised and almost annihilated a peaceful band of Arapahos and Cheyennes in the Sand Creek massacre. What Chivington neglected General Custer completed four years later in the destruction of Black Kettle’s village. In frontier parlance there was always battle when the Indians were killed and a massacre when the whites were the victims. In 1871 Generals Sherman and Sheridan projected a plan that eventuated in the complete conquest of the Kiowa and Comanche nations, but the Sioux were the most formidable obstacle to the colonization of Wyoming and Montana. They stood immovable astride the country lying between the headwaters of the Powder Federal ultimatums to assemble upon designated reservations were spurned by the Sioux, and a campaign of coercion was invoked with Brigadier Generals Alfred H. Terry and George Crook on far-flung phalanx and Colonel George A. Custer as the spearhead of the advance. Whether through reckless bravery, error of judgment, or necessity, Custer rushed into a treacherous situation, and his entire command (265 men) was annihilated. The day was June 25, 1876; the place, Little Bighorn River. It was a red letter event in the history of the Sioux, but it was a fleeting victory because the military, ably led by Colonel Nelson A. Miles, persisted in the campaign, and within a few months the mighty Sioux were either upon their appointed reservations or in exile. One of the last scenes in this solemn drama was enacted in June, 1881, at Miles City, Montana. Sixteen hundred Sioux, formerly under the leadership of Chief Rain-in-the-Face, were loaded on government steamboats for the Standing Rock Reservation in Dakota. Deep mourning issued from their camp on Tongue River:
Courtesy Union Pacific Ry. As the buffalo and Indian went out, the Texas longhorn and “long drive” came in. The long drive lay across the tablelands of western Texas into Kansas, crossed the Santa Fe Trail at Dodge City, passed over the headwaters of the Salmon and across the Republican, and reached the South Platte at Ogallala. From this camp it followed the Oregon Trail to Fort Laramie, and then veered north over the Bozeman road. The American cattle industry started back in 1521 when seven calves of Andalusian breed landed in Mexico. Gregorio was the pioneer ranchman on the continent. His flocks literally covered “a thousand hills.” In spite of his vaquero’s diligence, some of his stock strayed and formed the nucleus of a mighty herd. Conditions for stock raising were ideal in Texas. Millions of acres were plush carpeted with grama, mesquite, buffalo, and bluestem grasses. Early settlers gathered this wild stock into princely domains, and a new industry was born. The greatest problem was getting the cattle to market. New Orleans, Mobile, and Cuba were reached from Shreveport by boat. Still, there were the thriving northern cities where prices doubled those in Texas. The first authenticated northern drive came in 1846 when Edward Piper drove one thousand Texas steers to Ohio. By 1865 Texas boasted one-eighth of all the cattle in America, as against a local population of less than half a million people. Somehow these cattle had to be gotten to market. Returning Confederate veterans, broke but adventurous, saw the challenge of the open range and seized it. Loose, wild stock and “mavericks” were soon in the clutches of men and mustangs as wild as they. The first cowboys to make the long drive had need Cattle kings were men of great energy and enterprise. They took big risks, sometimes winning large profits and occasionally losing just as handsomely. Chisum, Hittson, Kennedy, O’Connor, and King were charmed names in the cattle fraternity. They nurtured their stock on hundred-thousand-acre ranches and then sent them forth to forage upon the public domain. It is estimated that six million head grazed their way to market over the Chisholm, Great Western, Shawnee, and other trails. This wealth of the cloven hoof was entrusted to young athletes equally adept in forking a hoss, shooting a gun, and hurling a lariat. Cowboys were capable of both long, patient application to duty and vigorous relaxation when opportunity afforded. As a class they were steady and dependable. They delivered their charges in good condition at such shipping points as Sedalia, Abilene, Wichita, Ogallala, Glendive, and Miles City. This migration of cowmen and their herds was a strong, tremendous movement. It came with a rush and a surge, and in ten years it had subsided. Even as the iron horse gave birth to the long drive, just so surely did it eventually destroy the big cattle business itself. Homesteaders came with the advance in transportation. There was a gradual, but irresistible, invasion of the open range. The “nesters” enclosed public domains. Thus, as the Indian gave way before the soldier and the hunter, so the cowboy yielded to the farmer. Ranches soon absorbed the eight million acres formerly overrun by bison and cattle. There were still several regions ideally suited for stock raising—Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. Toward these remote areas men looking for new, free grassland, timber, and water headed their cattle. The quest led them into the several great valley approaches Among the pioneer ranchmen of the Rockies was Nelson Story. He netted more than ten thousand dollars in the placer mines of Alder Gulch. This sum he invested in a thousand Texas longhorns in 1866. With twenty-seven trail-hardened cowboys he brought the cattle to Montana. It was a tremendous undertaking to get them through a veritable gauntlet of hostile Indians and desperate white thieves. Three of his men were killed before they reached the end of Bozeman Trail. At this time the able Sioux chief, Red Cloud, served notice upon the government that he would kill every white man who traveled along that trail. It was not an idle boast; the record shows nearly two hundred casualties in the last six months of 1866. In fact, the Bozeman Trail became one long battleground, scene of such Sioux victories as the Fetterman and Wagon Box massacres. However, the military persisted, and with constant operations stemming from Forts Kearney and Smith the trail was kept open. In 1870 more than 40,000 Texas cattle reached Wyoming, New names entered the stage with the growth of the cattle business such as Granville Stuart, James Fergus, A. J. Davis, John Ming, John Grant, Conrad Kohrs, R. S. Ford, Ancenny, Poindexter, Iliff, Flowerree, and George Searight. Under the impetus of such flourishing activity, the great river valleys stemming out of the Yellowstone Plateau were soon dotted by ranches. Wind, Snake, Madison, Gallatin, and Yellowstone valleys each received its quota. None of them quite reached the Park land, but Frederick Bottler’s range almost impinged upon the northern border. It is probable that rancher invasion of the actual Park area was minor, if there was any. However, there The decade overlapping the sixties and seventies was the twilight period in frontier history. A transition was progressing from semi-lawlessness to orderly government. The arrogant Henry Plummer and his wicked gang of Innocents were liquidated by Montana Vigilantes in 1864, but another nefarious activity was taking heavy toll from the cattlemen. Horse and cattle rustlers found a lucrative business in preying upon the large herds grazing the open range. These cunning men would establish a rendezvous in some sequestered place like Teton Basin or the upper Madison Valley. From such a position they would make forays upon the stock owned by the big interests. The worst offenders, and those most difficult to apprehend, were men who at some time had been connected with the cattle business. Sometimes they altered the brands, but often a crisscross plan of shipment was followed; that is, Wyoming and Montana stock was whisked down to the Utah market; while Idaho material went east to Cheyenne. Men such as “Teton” Jackson, Ed Harrington, and Bob Tarter worked both sides of the Divide. The high meadows in and near Yellowstone were ideal for their purpose. It is also claimed that the notorious Butch Cassidy gang, long ensconced upon the Green River, made occasional forays among stock ranging near the southeastern borders of the Park. It is a fact that the Washburn-Langford-Doane party encountered representatives of the rustler element upon their last day in the Park area. Mr. Langford left this account:
It was actually an area of operation for the Murphy and Edmonson gang of desperadoes. Langford and Doane came upon three of their horses which they caught and pressed into service during the rest of the journey. By 1873 stock losses by rustling were so great as to force counter measures. The Wyoming Stock Growers Association hired a large force of detectives and inspectors. The movements of every newcomer were watched with suspicious vigilance; blacklists were circulated. The penalties for mis-branding and marking were doubled, and prosecution was swift and vigorous. These hard-hitting policies soon brought the problem under control. Thus ended the major evil of another era, and the rustlers were hustled into that Shangri-la of frontier romance where “happy ghosts,” as Professor Paxson has said, “will endure forever, a happy heritage for the American mind.” By 1880 the hostile human barriers, red and white, had been removed from the way. The West’s unsettled areas were so broken as to destroy the frontier line. Yellowstone was still a wilderness, but it was accessible to man. |
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