Tag Archives: Indians

Do You See Me

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Crow rider impressing the 7th cavalry with his riding skill

The parade of the troopers showed their massed formation with each cavalry member dressed in their best uniforms, and carrying their newest weapons and using their military bearing to its best advantage. They wanted to appear to be invincible to the tribes who didn’t utilize this type of concentrated warfare.

There were times before the situation between the tribes and the whites became too adversarial that the two soon to be warring parties had contact. When this happened it was an occasion for them to impress each other with their strength and abilities, and especially their power.

The Indians on the other hand fought a more individual style of warfare with warriors banding together in large or small groups, but with each individual having his own style of riding and fighting, and they used their body paint as both a protection and a warning to all seeing them how powerful they were. Taunting their enemies with war cries and declarations of their strength and bravery were common even if they didn’t understand each other’s language.

The rider above is showing his prowess by his horsemanship and daring with his riding skill while calling out his challenge to the troopers watching him. “Do you see me? I am not afraid of your bullets. I welcome meeting you in Battle”. There was no fighting this day but it wasn’t long before each side would test their style of combat for better or worse.

Which Way, Brothers

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Crow Warriors – Crow Reservation Click to see large version

It was a confusing day for everyone involved that fateful day of Jun 26th, 1876. The battle that was going to go down in history as the most devastating defeat for the American troops of the 7th cavalry they had ever faced, and the greatest victory for the massed Indian tribes gathered in the valley of the Greasy grass had just begun. It would be forever known as the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

The troops of the 7th cavalry had made contact and everyone on that side was gathering up their weapons and racing to get on their horses if they weren’t already mounted, while the Indians had already joined the various groups they were going to fight with and were heading out to different areas where they would meet their foe.

Some of the younger warriors were not affiliated with any warrior group yet but were determined not to be left out of the action. They formed their own small groups of family members and friends and against the advice of the older men were not going to be left out of the fighting. It was their time to become men and they were going to show what they were made of. They were going to battle, but first they had to find it.

As they raced out of the village the first challenge they ran into was, Which way, brothers. Which way to meet their destiny.

Ghost Child

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The battle at the Little Bighorn was a tremendous victory for the gathered tribes against the white soldiers of the United States Western Frontier Army entering their hallowed ground. There had been many smaller engagements between the two adversaries with the Indians normally realizing small victories if any. This time it was different. The overwhelming number of warriors engaged the soldiers and took the victory in fairly short order, handing a defeat to the cavalry unlike any they had ever seen before.

The number of the soldiers of the 7th cavalry killed in the battle at the Little Bighorn river is placed at approximately 260 killed and buried in place where they fell. The number of Indians that were also killed is not exactly known although they were far, far less than their adversaries numbering perhaps in the dozens if that many. Most if not all of the bodies of the slain warriors were removed from the field of battle immediately after the fight was over and taken back to the camp and their families.

The battlefield became a quiet eerie place where the only sounds were the rushing of the wind through the tall Montana grass where the dead had lain and the occasional call of a raven flying overhead. The gunshots, battle cries and the screaming of the victors over the moaning of those still alive after it was over were long gone. Silence reigned supreme over the Greasy Grass. It became a place where the spirits wandered over the low hills and along the riverside. It was a place of big medicine.

As time passed there were the occasional reports of things that couldn’t be explained occurring. A shadowy figure riding slowly in the near dark of impending dusk. The sound of hooves breaking the surface of the gently moving river. A pale rider just visible in the light of a full moon as he crossed slowly from one bank to another. It is unknown whether the young rider was a participant in the battle, becoming a casualty, or simply a dream produced by the medicine of the battle. In any case if you happened to be there now on that long ago battlefield, and by chance stayed until the river was illuminated by the light of a full moon, you might see the ghost child riding on his endless vigil. Remember there is big medicine there. And there are things that cannot be explained.

The Laughing Mule

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Mules are different than you and me. I mean they’re different from me. I’ve never seen you so I can’t say for certain, but I suspect given that you’re here reading this that they are.

They are incredibly observant for one thing. They don’t always look like it but they are watching everything around them, cataloging it, storing it in their mule data base at the bottom of their brain pan under the “this’ll get ’em” section for later use when it benefits them the most.

They have incredible memories. They remember everything with an unusual clarity that they trot out every now and then just to amuse themselves or embarrass you.

They laugh with their whole body and since mules are big that’s a lot of laugh. You can always tell when a mule remembers something funny. They’ll plant their feet, lean back a little and let it fly. They’ve got no filter, when they think it, out it comes. You can hear that raucous laughter for miles. Many a mule rider wished for one with no sense of humor while in Indian country.

They love to tell embarrassing stories about their riders. The more embarrassing the better. Here this mule is relating to the rest of the crowd how his rider, well, I’ll let you hear it in the mules own words. “Remember that time when we was down near that Chiricahua camp but we didn’t know it and you was bragging about how you could tell if there was any Indians about and you said “They ain’t no Indians for three miles in any direction and you looked up at the ridge and there was about 40 of ’em. You still can’t sit straight from that arrow that stuck in your backside. If I hadn’t a run like a deer parts of you would still be decorating their lodges.” Like I said mules don’t cut anybody any slack.

Once they like you, if they ever do, they like you forever. They’re your new best friend and they’ll watch out for you, cart you all over hell and back, carry your stuff without complaining, uhmm, I need to rephrase that, They complain all the time, at least some of them do. They can be world class complainers. The other ones, who just complain a little, just look at you with that “You think I’m carrying any more of that? You carry it. See how you like it.” or simply ” I ain’t going in there.” and they mean it. You’ve heard “Stubborn as a Mule.” Well that wasn’t made up because they cheerfully do whatever you tell them to.

By an large though, mules are OK, even if they are different from you and me. I for one like mules. I like their attitude. I like their independence. I like the fact that they use their no holds barred sense of humor to get through life. I just like them. Maybe if you met a couple of them, got to know them, had a chance to talk with them for awhile you’d like them too. Try it, see how it goes.

Oh yeah, one more thing, they’re sensitive about their ears. As they can make your life pretty damn miserable don’t say anything about their ears. I’m serious it can ruin the whole damn trip.

Scouting New Country

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During the 1830’s there was a lot of movement by those courageous men seeking opportunities in the west. Trappers, traders, adventurers, and others, stricken with the desire and wanderlust of being first to see what was over the next mountain, or lying at the bottom of the innumerable valleys between them. What riches could be found, what adventures were lurking just around the next bend waiting to change their lives forever.

Everything was new to them and usually dangerous. This group of men on the scout were picking their way through the high country, perhaps looking for new trade routes, or a likely place where gold or silver might be found. Or possibly marking the area where the Indians had set up their camps as places to be avoided.

One thing for certain, they were the ones scouting this new country for whatever opportunities presented themselves in this time where new beginnings could bring wealth and a better life in this big, new country of the West.

The Hanging

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My name is Rafe McCleary and I’ve been running this livery stable here in Mothersell, Montana for the last 32 years. I’ve seen a lot of folks come and go, eager to make their fortune or simply to set a while and figure out what comes next. The story I’m about to tell you ain’t pretty and is one of the most heart breaking events ever to happen here in Mothersell and to this day it still makes me maudlin and close to tears when I think back on the dark deeds done that day. It involves a family of farmers from Sweden that stayed for most of the winter and the effect they had on the town and the effect the terrible events that happened to them changed us all. And the hanging. The hanging I’ll get to in a minute but first I need to tell you why we had a hanging. It is this story that is a dark stain on Mothersell’s history and one that makes us sad to hear recounted to this very day. It’s about a family, a wonderful family that was visited by the worst luck ever I knowed about.

The Olstrom Twins were one of those rare moments of beauty that occurred in the West occasionally. Twelve years old at the time Ansgar and Blenda Olstrom were part of an immigrant party that passed through Montana on their way to the wilds of the far northwest where they intended to begin farming in the hard dry earth in what is now the panhandle of Idaho.

Fair blond hair, startling blue eyes, pure white skin the color of the finest alabaster, they were a sight seldom seen in the tough hardscrabble mining town of Mothersell Montana. Blenda was particularly beautiful and was called Maj as a nickname which meant Pearl in Swedish, as her skin was the same color as one of those lustrous jewels. Since they were twins it could be said that Ansgar was beautiful too but back then we didn’t speak like that about boys. But he was sure a handsome young lad and sought after constantly by the few young girls we had here at that time. The miners that lived here were more accustomed to the weatherworn, wind scarred faces of those who had survived the brutal winters and scorching summers of the high Montana mining country. To see untouched innocent beauty like the Olstrom twins was a surprise and a blessing, showing all, that beauty was possible and still existed despite the hardships of their daily lives.

The Olstrom wagon was on its last legs as were their stock and the men that drove them. The trip so far had been as arduous as any journey can be and they needed to stop and repair their equipment and their spirits before completing the last portion of their journey. Mothersell seemed to be that perfect resting spot and as Winter was fast approaching they felt it prudent to stay and continue on in the Spring. While here the men helped out around the town doing handiwork and fixing things and being good with wood in their spare time they whittled things like animal figures and spoons and carving fancy designs into wooden plates, an art form not seen in these parts and sought after by those townsfolks who wanted to add some beauty to their severe dwellings. The womenfolk took in washing, baked marvelous pastries and pies and sewed and repaired clothes. All were an asset to the town and highly thought of.

But it was the twins that were the jewels that graced the mean unlovely town of Mothersell. Brighter than any gold dug up or panned out of the streams they were blessed not only with beauty but voices that could sing the wings off an angel. Pure, high, impossibly beautiful voices that could bring hard men to their knees in a fit of crying because they had forgotten how beautiful life could be. They sung songs about the glory of God, they sung songs in Swedish that nobody could understand the words to. They learned some of the songs the miners loved to hear and sung those. They just sang, It didn’t matter what. They could hum and people would cheer. Their harmony made the sound of their combined voices even more impossibly wonderful and there was never a time when they sang that they didn’t get the whole town to turn out.

And that was their glory, and due to the devil’s workings, their downfall. Like in all towns Mothersell had its share of unsavory people. Those that you just knowed was going to cause trouble and do a mischief if they got the chance. Such was Leopold Baron von Klesser, also known as The Kraut, a soiled little weasel that did not live up to his fancy name, which some thought was made up anyway. Slight, squinty-eyed, with a nasty disposition and behavior that got him shunned by anyone who ran acrosst him he was forced to live in a ramshackle hovel some ways out-of-town and subsist on the edges of people’s good will. And he was totally and obsessively smitten with Maj. Due to some of his previous behavior he was never allowed to get in arm’s distance of any of the young children in town and was watched constantly when he showed up to get supplies or whatnot.

Then of course it happened. The bad thing. The worst thing you could ever imagine even if you can imagine bad things. There was screaming and shouting and cries of terror and grief when it was found that the twins was missing. Both of them. Groups immediately formed and went out looking. The Sheriff went door to door checking every building in town. Mine shafts were checked. The river was scouted both up and downstream for five miles in either direction. Nothing. Nothing was found. No bodies, no tracks, nothing. They was just disappeared.

But as it has to be they was found. Dead, both of them. Their bodies totally mutilated and desecrated. The beauty that was them was gone and lost forever. It looked like they was taken by Indians. There had been some Blackfeet around lately and folks thought they had done it but that turned out to be untrue. Indians didn’t have nothing to do with it. They was innocent just there to trade and see how the whites was living. No it was that bastard Leopold. He done it. He snuck in and got Maj and made Ansgar come along under some guise or other and took them way out on the prairie where he did terrible things to them and then killed them to make it look like it was Indians.

The Sheriff went out to Leopold’s place and found some pieces of Maj’s clothing there and after an all night session in the jail Leopold confessed. To say there was a chaotic reaction to this unfolding was the understatement of all understatements. There was talk of moving Leopold to Bannack for safe keeping until the circuit judge could arrive but the Sheriff knew that given how people felt neither he nor Leopold would make the trip to Bannack, so he just ringed the jail with deputies and told everyone that anyone trying to lynch Leopold would  be shot, even if that was what that bastard Leopold The Kraut needed more than anything.

The City Fathers came together and decided that they would hold the trial here in Mothersell and preside over it as both judge and jury given as they run the place anyway, and the Sheriff, bought and paid for by them, went along with it as he couldn’t see no sense in getting his ownself killed by the angry townsfolk over somebody like Leopold. The trial was held, Leopold Baron von Klesser was found guilty of man-killing, or in this case, child-killing and was sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead, dead, dead, the dirty son of a bitch.

Normally hangings were an almost joyous event. A bad person was made to pay for his crime, people felt good about the justice that was done and it was a chance to get together and see neighbors and friends you hadn’t seen for a while. Have a picnic, get drunk maybe. Not this time. What Leopold had done was so terrible and what he had deprived them of was so precious to their hearts that although it was one of God’s gifts to see this monster hung they could take no joy in it. He wasn’t going to be given the tumultuous celebration he craved so they all stood there in mute silence as the floor of the scaffold dropped out from under Leopold Baron von Klesser and he went to see his maker to be judged for his life and done with as God saw fit. One thing did happen. The father of Ansgar and Blenda quietly asked the hangman if he couldn’t make the noose a little loose, which was done after being slipped a gold nugget, which to his credit he refused that gold feeling much the same way as the crowd did and Leopold’s last moments were indeed terrible to behold as he didn’t have the quick clean death of that short fall and the snapping stop of a broken neck. Instead he had a very long time of dangling and kicking and gasping, making truly unholy noises until finally he swung slowly back and forth and the deed was done.

The crowd went back to their individual lives. Leopold was left to swing for the rest of the day before being taken down and unceremoniously dumped in a hole out near the landfill. No marker, no one in attendance except the undertaker and he didn’t want to be there either, in fact, in one more act of uncivility by the undertaker Leopold wasn’t even put in a box or given the courtesy of being wrapped in a shroud. Just thrown in a hole and buried like a rabid dog.

A beautiful bright spot and loss of an irreplaceable beauty was left in the town and it was a long winter indeed in Mothersell that year. The Olstrom party departed the following spring and are still raising potato’s in Idaho I hear.

So ends the story of a dark chapter in Mothersell Montana’s history. Like I said it ain’t a pretty tale to tell and the town isn’t proud of it. But it happened and as such it deserves to be remembered with the good and the bad even if it is a painful thing to recall.

Ellis McElry Goodson Gentleman Rancher

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One of the driving forces, if not the main one in the early West, was the rancher. The cowman. The man who put his money where his mouth was. He fought Indians, rustlers, the weather, bad luck, fate itself in establishing his mark on the West. It took more than determination, more than desire, it took iron resolution and the strength and courage to persevere in the face of every kind of adversity imaginable. And he did. It was men like him that created the West.

Back in the mid 1860’s you managed your ranch with an iron hand and common sense, yet with a common core of ethics, a strong sense of morality and a vision. If he was your friend he was your friend for life. And he expected no less from you. This was big land and it took a big man and others like him to settle it.

This is Ellis McElry Goodson. He was an early settler and rancher near Bannack, Montana, a mining town in Southwestern Montana and he sought his fortune in the cattle business rather than mining like everyone else. There was more than one way to strike it rich.  After all miners had to eat too. A man could make a good living for himself and his family by proving the meat for a hungry mining camp. Miners paid dearly for a good steak and the currency was gold. He was essential to the existence of many a town and that made him very wealthy and an important figure in the community. He never called himself a gentleman rancher. That would be unseemly. But everyone else did. When he was mentioned in the ever present conversation that went on in every saloon, street corner, and general store he was called Mr. Goodson, gentleman rancher. He was thought of with respect and he earned it every day. That’s the way it was in the West.