Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National Park

by James Willard Schultz

Monroe always camped at the foot of the lower lake, near the outlet, and was there more than once attacked by roving war parties of Assiniboines, Crows, and even the Yanktonais. The horses were kept at night in a strong corral just back of the lodge, and in the daytime were watched by some member of the family while they grazed on the rich prairie grasses. All the family—John and François, the sons, Millie and Lizzie, the daughters—and even the mother had guns, flintlocks, and a good supply of powder and ball. Early one morning a large war party was discovered approaching the camp, sneaking from bush to bush, some crawling on all fours through the high grass. Lizzie opened fire upon them and killed her man, and then the fire became general on both sides. But the Monroes, in their trenches surrounding the lodge, had the best of it from the start, and eventually made the enemy retreat with a loss of five of their number. Late the following night the Assiniboines crept in to make another attack, but the Monroes were expecting them, waiting for them, and in the bright moonlight could take fairly accurate aim. They again drove them off, with a loss of two more of their number, and that time they kept going. Nothing more was seen of them. But for some days the Monroes did not venture far from their camp.

I first saw the St. Mary’s Lakes in October, 1882, in company with Charles Phemmister, James Rutherford, Charles Carter, and Oliver Sanderville, all old plainsmen, good company, and best of hunters. We outfitted for the trip at the Old Agency, on Badger Creek, Blackfeet Reservation, and started northward. There was no trail after leaving the crossing of Little or Milk River, and we struck up country toward the big gap in the mountains, in which we knew the lakes must lie, and that evening camped on the shore of a large prairie lake that was black with ducks. I shot a dozen or more of them as they flew over a long point, and to my surprise and delight found that they were all canvasbacks and redheads, and very fat from feeding upon the wild celery beds of the lake. I named the sheet of water Duck Lake.

The next day we made a trail down the long hill, and camped at the foot of the lower lake, close to the outlet. Then began two weeks of most glorious sport. We shot elk, deer, and several grizzlies in the valley, and bighorn on a mountain that I named Flat Top, and combed that mountain from one end to another and on all sides for an animal known to us as the Rocky Mountain ibex. We had seen several skins of them, bought from the Stony Indians by Captain John Healy, of Fort Whoopup and Fort Benton fame, but none of us nor any man of our acquaintance—and we knew every trapper and trader in the country—had ever seen one of the animals alive. Of course we found none, as this sub-Arctic animal, which we later learned is a true antelope, and not an ibex or goat, seldom leaves the high cliff mountains for the outer and lower ones of the range. When, later, we did find them, we in our ignorance named them Rocky Mountain goats, and that is the common name for them to-day, despite the fact that they are antelopes.

On this first visit to the St. Mary’s Lakes country I was so impressed by the grandeur of its mountains, the beauty of its many lakes, and its plenitude of game, that thereafter for many years it was, more than anywhere else, my home. In 1883 I brought out to the lakes a good boat that I had had built for me at Fort Conrad, and with it learned that both lakes were alive with whitefish and Mackinaw, Dolly Varden, and cutthroat trout. During the summer of this year I named Red Eagle Mountain and Red Eagle Lake, after my uncle-in-law, Red Eagle, owner of the Thunder medicine pipe, and one of the most high-minded, gentle-hearted Indians that I ever knew. In the autumn of this year Dr. George Bird Grinnell joined me, and we hunted around the lower lake, and went up Swift Current far enough to see what we thought would possibly prove to be a glacier. We had not then time to learn if our surmise was correct. During our hunt Dr. Grinnell killed a large ram at long range, offhand, with one shot from his old Sharp’s rifle, on the mountain next above Flat Top, and I therefore named it Single-Shot Mountain.

AT THE NARROWS. UPPER ST. MARY’S LAKE

In the summer of this year I also named Divide Mountain, because it is the outermost mountain on the Atlantic-Arctic watershed. At the same time I named Kootenai Mountain, also for a very good reason. Some members of that tribe were encamped beside me at the foot of the upper lake. I noticed often that they would ride out of camp at daylight and return at noon or a little later with all the bighorn or goat meat that their horses could carry, and finally I asked them where they went to make their killings so quickly.

“Come with me to-morrow and I will show you something,” one of them answered. And the next morning I rode with him up Red Eagle Valley and part way up a mountain, where we tied our horses and went on afoot for a couple of hundred yards. Then, looking down into a coulée, we saw a dozen or more bighorn in the bottom of it and killed four of them. They had been eating salty clay and drinking from a salt spring that oozes from the ground there, so I named the place Kootenai Lick, and also gave the mountain the name Kootenai. Thereafter I knew where to go for bighorn when I wanted one.

In 1884 I named Almost-a-Dog Mountain, after one of the few survivors of the Baker massacre, which took place on the Marias River, January 1, 1870. At that time Colonel E. M. Baker, with a couple of companies of cavalry from Fort Shaw, Montana, was trying to find the camp of Owl Child, a Piegan Blackfoot, and murderer of a settler named Malcolm Clark, and arrest him. By mistake he struck the camp of Heavy Runner and his band of friendly Indians, and, although the chief came running toward him waving his letters of recommendation and his Washington medals, Baker ordered his men to begin firing, and a terrible massacre ensued, the Indians firing not one shot in defense, as about all the able-bodied men were at the time on a buffalo hunt. When the firing was over, two hundred and seventeen old men and women and children lay dead and dying in their lodges and in the camp. The soldiers then shot the wounded, collected the lodges and property of the Indians in great piles, and set fire to them and departed.[9]