Historic Tales of Whoop-Up Country

On the Trail from Montana's Fort Benton to Canada's Fort Macleod

Ken Robison

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2020
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781439671382
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Withdrawal of the mighty Hudson Bay Company from present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan created a lawless environment with new economic opportunities. A cross-border trading bond arose with growing steamboat mercantile center Fort Benton in Montana Territory. In 1870, Montana traders Johnny Healy and Al Hamilton moved across the Medicine Line and built Fort Whoop-Up. It established the two-hundred-mile Whoop-Up Trail from Fort Benton, through Blackfoot lands, to the Belly River near today's Lethbridge. Over the next decade, the buffalo robe trade flourished with the Blackfoot, as did violence. The turmoil forced the creation of Canada's North West Mounted Police, tasked with closing down the whiskey trade and evicting the Montana traders. Award-winning historian Ken Robison brings to life this dramatic story.

1

THE WILD TIMES

FORT BENTON AND THE FREE TRADERS

In Montana Territory, the placer mines were playing out by the end of the 1860s, incidents between Native Indians and Euro-American settlers were increasing, intertribal warfare continued and smallpox was ravishing the Blackfoot tribes; north of the Medicine Line, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s monopoly over vast western British America was ending—what would happen next in this far-distant land, this powder keg, that would become Whoop-Up Country?

The beauty of the Upper Missouri region inspired all who traveled through its rugged grandeur. Dramatic events during the 1860s transformed the region from the isolation of the fur and bison robe trade to the raucous gold rush days that would keep the region in turmoil throughout the Civil War and after. From the presence of thousands of Native Americans with several hundred White Americans clustered at several trading posts in 1860 to more than seventeen thousand miners and adventurers stampeding from gold strike to strike among the mining camps, the Upper Missouri region that became Montana Territory in 1864 was in turmoil during the Civil War years. The newly formed territory and its mining camps became exiles of choice for many southern soldiers and families as well as adventurers from the North. This was a transformational moment on the Upper Missouri in the heart of Native Blackfoot country.⁷

Fort Benton, the world’s innermost port at the head of steamboat navigation on the Missouri River, transformed from a remote fur and robe trading post into the heart of a growing commercial empire that, within a decade, would extend from the Dakotas to the Idaho mines and from Wyoming northward into British America, later comprising Alberta and Saskatchewan provinces.

American Fur Company Fort Benton Trading Post in August 1860. Photo by Lieutenant James Hutton. Overholser Historical Research Center.

Massive cargoes of freight and numbers of travelers arriving by steamboats bound for the gold fields of the new El Dorado transformed Fort Benton and the region. Still distant from the States, Fort Benton was no longer simply an extension of St. Louis as a trading outpost but rapidly emerging as the center for a commercial empire.

This all began in the summer of 1860. Until then, Fort Benton and nearby opposition post Fort Campbell were the focus of White American activity on the Upper Missouri River, together with Fort Owen and a few other settlements west of the continental divide. During that summer of 1860, three events occurred that set the stage for change. The first steamboats arrived at the Fort Benton levee from St. Louis with the first U.S. military unit, Major George A.H. Blake’s three hundred troopers of the First Dragoons onboard; the William F. Raynolds Expedition arrived after exploration of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers and First Lieutenant John Mullan arrived with his joint military-civilian road-building expedition, completing the 624-mile Military Wagon Road from Fort Walla Walla, Washington Territory, to Fort Benton. The Blackfoot Indians, long dominant in the vast region, were about to be shaken from their isolation from White encroachment. Steamboats from St. Louis to Fort Benton and a wagon road to the Pacific set the stage for change in the region.⁸

Three decades earlier, fur trading posts with the Blackfoot (or Nitsitapi) and Gros Ventre (or A’aninin) reached the Upper Missouri. In that year, the American Fur Company (after 1834 formally known as the Upper Missouri Outfit of Pierre Chouteau Jr. & Co. of St. Louis) opened a series of posts, first Fort Piegan (1831), followed by Forts McKenzie (1832), Chardon (1844), Lewis (1845) and Benton (1846–47). In 1846, an opposition trading post, Fort Campbell, financially supported by St. Louis trader Robert Campbell, was established two miles upriver from Fort Benton. Mackinaws and keelboats laboriously brought upriver from Fort Union at the Dakota border served as transportation before steamboats, bringing trade goods up and taking furs and bison robes downriver. The trading posts were more than businesses; they also served as conduits for news and ideas and as centers for exchange of customs and culture between Native Indians and the traders.⁹

Gustav Sohon painted this scene of the first arrival of steamboats at the Fort Benton levee in 1860. Lithograph by Bowen & Company. Author’s collection.

North of the Medicine Line in British America, in Rupert’s Land, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) merged with the North West Company in 1821, ending their fierce competition. For the decades before the first competition with Americans on the Upper Missouri at Fort Piegan, the HBC was the source of tobacco, blankets, knives, iron arrow points—and alcohol. For many years, the British provided brandy or rum as a key part of their trade with the Natives. The Blackfoot and other neighboring tribes acquired the taste—in essence were groomed—for alcohol long before Fort Piegan opened for business in 1831. Fort Benton historian Joel Overholser captured the setting well:

One fact became apparent, the tribesmen had no reason to learn to fancy whisky. They had already acquired the taste before [James] Kipp keyed his grand opening of Fort Piegan on the conversion of a barrel of alcohol into a three-day wingding. Two years later at Fort McKenzie, [Prince] Maximilian [of Wied] repeatedly commented on the thirst of Indian visitors. The source of the taste was unquestionable. In fact, David Mitchell of [Fort] McKenzie implied in a long talk with Maximilian that American Fur would be content to drop the trade in intoxicants as he claimed the company had in the Mandan area. But he noted that the fort’s customers would trade at HBC forts if the Americans offered no whisky.¹⁰

This painting by David Parchen of Fort Campbell depicts the opposition trading post on the upper levee at Fort Benton. Author’s collection.

Alcohol was the subject of Canadian historian Hugh Dempsey’s book Firewater, and he wrote about this “liquid death” in terms as strong as ever used by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union:

The whisky-trading era was relatively brief, about six years, but its effects were more devastating than any epidemic or massacre. Not only did the trade kill many people, but for the Blackfoot tribes, it devastated their cultural and social life, created internal dissension, and left them helpless in the face of the invasion of their hunting grounds by enemy tribes. Chiefs lost their power to control their bands, fathers could not control their young men and the rush to sell their robes and everything they owned for whisky turned many families into virtual paupers.…

They [the Blackfoot] did not deserve to be decimated, victimized, and pauperized by the illicit trade in a deadly commodity that was foreign to their culture.¹¹

Alexander Culbertson, founder of the American Fur Company’s Trading Post at Fort Benton, painted by John Mix Stanley in 1856. Displayed at the Dean & Donna Strand Gallery, Fort Benton. Author’s photo.

Rupert’s Land, composed of the Hudson’s Bay drainage, was held under charter by the Hudson’s Bay Company until 1869. Wikimedia Commons.

Clearly, the Natives wanted the goods, and whisky, offered on both sides of the ill-defined boundary, and thus they tolerated Whites in their trading posts. Remarkable James Willard Schultz, who lived with the Blackfeet after 1870, wrote about “the company”: “They sold watered rum and scotch whisky. We sold watered American alcohol and whiskey. I claim that we were just as respectable as the honourable lords and members of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Limited.”¹²

American and British traders accepted a “truce” over several decades. Yet all was not well for the HBC as the trade shifted from furs to the much heavier bison robes. The HBC had a long river and portage route that limited the number of robes that the canoe-based transportation system could handle. Meanwhile, as steamboat technology advanced, the mighty Missouri River became a natural highway for steamboats, first to Fort Union, at the confluence of the Yellowstone River, with large keelboats laboriously completing the trip to the Upper Missouri. Finally, by 1860, steamboats were landing at the Fort Benton levee, completing the natural highway to the head of navigation.

During the 1860s, few Americans ventured north into HBC country—the gold discoveries from 1862 to 1866 kept most adventurers stampeding from camp to camp in southwestern Montana Territory. Jesuit missionary Father DeSmet ventured as far north as the HBC post at Fort Edmonton in 1845. During the Montana gold rush, several incursions north of the border came, including adventures by both Americans and British Canadians in 1864, described by a descendant of Canadian Sam Livingston:

In 1864, Sam [Livingston] went north prospecting for gold in the Kootenai area, and while in Wild Horse creek met James Gibbons, a pioneer of the Edmonton area. Many other prospectors were there at this time and word came in from Edmonton that a fine type of gold had been found on the North Saskatchewan. Most of the prospectors did not know how to handle this type of gold, however, Sam said that he had found the same kind of gold on the Pend d’Oreille and knew how to save it. With Sam’s assurance of his help a party of the prospectors decided to head for the North Saskatchewan.

The north bound group consisted of James Gibbons, Sam Livingstone, Johnny Healy, Charley Thomas, Joe Kipp, a man called Big Tex [Cass Huff] and others, almost fifteen in all. They came up through the Kicking Horse Pass to Banff and are said to have washed their shirts in the Bow River just below the present Canadian Pacific Railroad (C.P.R.) Hotel. From here they tried a cross-country route, from Banff to Rocky Mountain House, but as there was no trail and travelling was too difficult they returned to Banff and followed the Bow River east to open country. Here they had a disagreement; some thought the Bow was the Saskatchewan, so they split into three parties, one going south to Montana, one working on the Bow and the other, consisting of Sam Livingston, Tom Smith, James Gibbons and Big Tex going north toward Rocky Mountain House.

They had started out with lots of provisions and ammunition, but drifting about looking for the trail, lost time, used up their provisions, and by amusing themselves with seeing who could shoot off the greatest number of heads of fool hens (prairie chickens) they soon found themselves scarce of ammunition. By October, they had to turn to eating their own horses, and for a month mainly subsisted upon these. “Pretty hard living,” was Mr. Gibbons’ only comment. A party of Blackfeet stole what horses they had left, and the men, after caching their bedding set out on foot through the bush.

They followed a travois trail on the snow with no knowledge of where it led and at last, more dead than alive, weak with hunger, they reached Rocky Mountain House. Within the fort, Chief Factor [Richard] Hardisty gave the miners a hearty welcome, and gave them the best he had, rabbit stew. After a week’s rest at [Rocky] Mountain House, the party pushed on to Edmonton on snowshoes, eating rabbit stew for food again.

It was December 1864, when they reached Fort Edmonton, then in charge of Chief Factor Christie. [They were turned away so went seventy miles down the Saskatchewan River to the Methodist Mission under Reverend George McDougall. Wintered there. Mined in the spring for gold.]¹³

Adventurous Indian trader John J. Healy. Overholser Historical Research Center.

MEET ADVENTUROUS JOHN J. HEALY

With his group of prospectors, Sam Livingston mentioned a colorful American adventurer, John J. Healy, who came west with army dragoons and discovered gold at Florence, Idaho Territory. After prospecting in British America in 1864, Healy operated a trading post at Sun River Crossing with his brother Joseph, and in 1870, with partner A.B. Hamilton, Healy moved across the Medicine Line into the new North West Territory to open Fort Hamilton trading post. John J. Healy became the most prominent player in Whoop-Up Country. He later wrote a series of articles, published by this author in Life and Death on the Upper Missouri: The Frontier Sketches of Johnny Healy, about his years as a free trader on the Upper Missouri. He wrote briefly about his gold prospecting expedition in 1864 into British America in a very different tone than that of Sam Livingston.

Bucking the Hudson Bay Company

The term “Free Trader” has an easy, go-as-you-please swing; but in the old pioneer days of the sixties and earlier it carried a meaning that can hardly be understood in these peaceful times. It meant war—and war to the knife! The man who started out to buck any of the big trading companies went against the stiffest kind of warfare that was to be found in the whole wilderness.

The stories of the men who went down would furnish the darkest page in all the pioneer history of the Northwest. Of course, all this has changed: but there are some experiences in the fights waged by “free” trappers and traders that stick in the memory of the men who went through them. I confess that, for one, I haven’t forgotten the struggles of this sort, and I believe they should be given a place in history of the old trading days. One of the toughest trips I ever made was in bucking the Hudson Bay Company, for it amounted to that before I wound up the experience.

That was in 1862 [sic, 1864], and I was then only twenty-three years old and had plenty to learn. Like all the traders and trappers in the Northwest States I listened to the tales of gold brought down by the Indians from the Dominion, and they tickled my ears. However, I was not the only white man whose head was turned by these rumors of how the Indians traded a gun barrel full of gold dust for a gun barrel full of powder. So, I determined to cross the line and look for gold in the Fort Edmonton country.

Luck seemed to be on my side at the outset of the undertaking. There was no excitement on the trip north, and when I struck the district where I intended to prospect. I stumbled on Brazos and Flet [Brazeau and Flett], two good men I had known on the Missouri. They came from Carondelet, the French settlement just below St. Louis. Brazos had been with the American Fur Company, but the Hudson Bay folks had induced him to bring his trade over to them about thirteen years before. Brazos gave me the best he had, and also told me the things I wished to know about the country.

“If you send any of your men up here,” said he, “have them bring what they’ll need in the way of food.” That was as straight a hint as anyone would need from the trader of a H...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. The Wild Times: Fort Benton and the Free Traders
• 2. A Vengeful Invasion: Fort Whoop-Up and the Whoop-Up Trail
• 3. A Stampede Follows: Fort Stand Off, Fort Kipp, Other Trading Posts Emerge
• 4. Trading for Their Lives: The Wolfers, Spitzee Cavalry, the Battle of Cypress Hills
• 5. The Conquering Heroes Arrive: The Great March West of the North West Mounted Police
• 6. Scrambling for Order: The Extradition Trial, Old Waxy and the Fort Garry Prisoners
• 7. Remembering Shared Bonds: Tales of Whoop-Up Country
• Notes
• Bibliography
• About the Author