Some of the old employes of the fur trading companies, who are now living, state that the old Indians who were living when they came here about fifty years ago were telling them then that the Flatheads and Blackfeet were often having great battles in the valley of the Sun river. One of these long-ago encounters took place near where is now Allick Pambron’s ranch; no one can tell who were the participants. All that the oldest Indians who are now living can say as to the time this battle was fought is that it was “heap long ago.” It must have been in prehistoric times, for the arrows they used then had flint points, for many of this kind of arrow points have been gathered on this old battlefield. Mrs. McKalvy, who is one of Mr. Pambron’s daughters, told me a few days ago that she and her little brothers used to pick up these points off this historic spot, filling several tobacco sacks for General Gibbon at Fort Shaw.
In 1858, and near where the Sun river irrigation channel is taken from the river, an agency for the Blackfeet Indians was built. In 1866 the same Indians killed its occupants and burned the agency.
In June, 1869, a party of Piegans had come to the Healy and Hamilton trading store at Sun river crossing, with buffalo robes, pelts and furs to trade. They had with them a great many horses. At the same time there was a party of Pend d’Oreilles, whose home was west of the main range, and who were on their way back from the Judith country, where they had been hunting buffalo during the previous winter, and at this time were in camp several miles down the river. One day many of the Pend d’Oreilles were at the trading store. The Piegans suspected that there would be trouble that night. They placed their horses in a corral that was near J. J. Healy’s house. Sure enough, late in the night, the Pend d’Oreilles made an attack, and, when breaking down the corral where the horses were, a desperate battle was fought, lasting about twenty minutes or more. Next morning seven dead Indians were found. One, after he was shot, fell into the well. The Pend d’Oreilles stole all the horses. The bullet holes in Healy’s old house can be seen at the present time. The following night, while the Pend d’Oreilles were in camp on Flat creek, the Piegans recaptured their own horses and many more besides.
Another time a white man named Clark was killed near the Middle bridge by two Indians; one of them was hung to a tree by the citizens, and the other was shot while trying to escape. Not later than one week ago Judge Burcher, of Sun River, stated to me that he and D. H. Churchill, in 1874, were across the Missouri river, opposite the mouth of Sun river, and on the slope of the hill near where now stands the south side school house in the city of Great Falls. There they found four dead Indians, lying not far from each other. By the beadwork designs on their moccasins, the judge recognized that they were Piegans. Likely they had been killed by the Crows.
A Frenchman was murdered by Indians on the Sun river, south of Presly Rowles’ house.
“Little Dog,” a Piegan chief, who was friendly to the whites and lived most of the time (up to his death in 1869) in the Sun river valley, had built a low log cabin for himself and family where now is located the Birkenbuell ranch. He was a man gifted with good sense and considerable intelligence for an Indian, and was as brave as a lion. But at last he was murdered by his own people.
The following was written by J. J. Healy and appeared in the Benton Record in regard to this noted warrior:
“It so rarely happens that an Indian is gifted with good, solid sense that when one of this kind is born into the world he soon becomes a prominent member of his tribe. Not that Indians as a race are wanting in intelligence, but there are few whose intellect is sufficient to overcome their brutish instincts or to understand that their habits and mode of life are slowly but surely wiping them from the face of the earth.
“Little Dog, the soldier chief of the Piegans, was one of the noted exceptions to this rule. He was braver than the bravest member of his tribe, a terror to his enemies, but always a devoted friend of the whites. No doubt he inherited the universal feeling of his race that the whites were his natural enemies and oppressors, but he had the good sense to understand and acknowledge that they were the superior of his people in all things and that entire submission to their rule could only be a question of time. And these truths he endeavored to impress upon the minds of his tribe, using arguments when his great oratorical powers were likely to prevail, but adopting force when, in opposition to his commands, the warriors committed the slightest depredation upon the surrounding settlements.
“Little Dog had a son who was the father’s counterpart in personal appearance, and also possessed the reckless courage and remarkable intelligence of his parent. It is said, and I have personal knowledge of more than one instance in proof of the assertion, that these two men were, in deadly encounter, more than a match for ten of the best warriors of the tribe, and such was the confidence felt in their skill and prowess that a war party under their command would follow them into the very jaws of death. I will relate one instance to show the sort of stuff these two Indians were made of.