History of Garfield County

A place that the Hell Creek formation is exposed is in the area where it got its name. The Missouri River, cutting through the over lying Fort Union formation, exposed the fossils of dinosaurs in northern Garfield County. In 1902 the American Museum of Natural History sent noted dinosaur collector,  Barnum Brown, to this region. What he discovered was the first skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex.  In fact what he discovered was not one skeleton but two. The Jordan area was now famous to those whose interest was dinosaurs.

Another famous geological land mark is in the Jordan area. About 50 million years ago igneous rock pushed up through the Fort Union formation forming Smokey Butte. Igneous resists erosion much better than the sedimentary rock so that Smokey Butte stands about 450 feet above the surrounding plains. A French mineralogist, looking at samples taken from Smokey Butte, has found in it a mineral called armalcolite that has been known to exist in only one other place–the moon!

Another geological event that left its mark in the area was the ice ages. As the ice sheets moved down from the north it blocked off the Missouri River causing a large lake in the Great Falls area. Along the front of the glacier were other small lakes including Lake Musselshell and Lake Jordan in this area. Icebergs would break off the face of the glacier and float across these lakes. As the iceberg melted it would drop the granite rocks that it was carrying with it, which is why one will find a large granite rock all by itself in the middle of nowhere. As the glacier began to melt and retreat, the large lake at Great Falls overflowed its boundaries and surged to the east cutting the channel the river now runs in and exposing the Hell Creek formation.

For more information about geology in the area read Roadside Geology of Montana by David Alt and Donald W. Hyndman. More information about Smokey Butte is in Petrography and Petrology of Smokey Butte Intrusives by Robert E. Matson.

Lewis & Clark Expedition

The members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition are the first known white men to view what is now Garfield County. They spent fourteen days on the Missouri River along the north edge of the county on their journey west in 1805 and three days on the return trip in 1806.

The expedition was sent west by President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 to explore the country and find a passage to the Pacific Ocean. It was commanded by Meriwether Lewis who was the President’s secretary and William Clark who had been Lewis’ commanding officer in the army. In 1803 Lewis left Washington, DC, collected supplies in Pittsburgh, and headed west, meeting up with Clark in Clarksville, Indiana Territory. As they traveled west they selected the men that they wanted for their expedition and spent the winter of 1803/1804 at Camp Dubois across the Mississippi from the mouth of the Missouri. The winter of 1804/1805 was spent at the Mandan village in present day North Dakota.

On April 7, 1805 the party left the Mandan village and headed up the Missouri River in two perogues and six canoes. On the night of May 8, they camped a mile or two above present Fort Peck Dam, probably in Valley County. Highlights and excerpts from their journal entries for the next fourteen days follow:

Thursday May 9^th 1805. "Today we passed the bed of the most extraordinary river that I ever beheld. It is as wide as the Missouri is at this place or one half mile wide and not containing a single drop of running water. . .This stream (if such it can properly be termed) we called Big dry river".

A large number of elk and buffalo were seen. For supper Charbono cooked boudin blanc which was made with the muscle from under the shoulder blade chopped extra fine, a good portion of kidney suet, salt, pepper, and flour. This mixture was stuffed into the lower six feet of the large gut of a buffalo, which had been cleaned and turned inside out. It was then boiled, followed by frying in bear grease. Lewis called this "one of the greatest delacies of the forrest."

They traveled twenty-four and a half miles that day and camped that night at a creek they called Werner’s Creek, present Duck Creek in Valley County.

Friday May 10^th 1805. After traveling only four and one quarter miles the wind became so violent that they had to spend the rest of the day on shore. Soon after they landed a dog came across the river to visit them, but they could see no sign of Indians. Hunters went out and returned in the evening with two mule deer, one longtailed deer, two buffalo, and five beavers. They also saw several elk and three sheep.

Saturday May 11^th 1805. A very cold night with a white frost in the morning. Hills were observed in the distance on both sides of the river that appear to have some Timber. Clark walked to them and found them to be pitch pine and dwarf cedar. At about 5 P.M. their attention was drawn to one of the members of the party running at distance toward them and hollering. They went to the shore to meet him and learned that he had shot a grizzly bear which immediately turned on him but the bear was wounded bad enough that it could not overtake him. Lewis took seven men with him and trailed the bear about a mile through rose bushes and willows and killed it with two slugs through the skull. In skinning the bear out they learned it had been shot through the middle of the lungs and was still very much alive over two hours later. Lewis reported that "I must confess that I do not like the gentlemen and had reather fight two Indians than one bear."

By the time they returned the sun had set and they determined to camp there for the night. They rendered the bear fat down and stored the eight gallons of oil in kegs. They had traveled seventeen miles that day and camped that night in Garfield County.

Sunday May 12^th 1805. A very windy day with light rain after sunset. Lewis walked along the shore and described chokecherries in "blume". After traveling eighteen and three quarter miles they made camp in Garfield County because of the wind.

Monday May 13^th 1805. Because the wind continued to blow they did not set out until 1:00 p.m. Captain Clark and some other members went hunting and got both deer and elk. The principal use of the deerskins was for clothing and the elk skins were reserved for use in covering a metal frame boat when they got above the falls in the Missouri. Traveled seven miles and camped in Garfield County about one or two miles above the former entrance of today’s Crooked Creek.

Tuesday May 14^th 1805. Passed high black bluffs and saw immense herds of buffalo, also elk, deer, wolves and antelope. They passed three creeks (all dry) and named them Gibson’s Creek (today’s Sutherland Creek in Valley County), Stick Lodge Creek (Hell Creek), and Brown Bear Defeated Creek (Snow Creek.)

In the evening the men saw a brown bear lying in open ground about 300 paces from the river. Six of them went out to attack him and snuck within 40 paces of the bear without being seen. Four of the hunters fired at the same time and all of them put their bullet through him, two of the balls going through the lungs. The bear charged them and the two hunters who had reserved their fires discharged their guns at him. One wounded him slightly but the other broke the bear’s shoulder, which slowed him up only slightly. The men did not have time to reload and they ran for the river with the bear nearly overtaking them. Other hunters had reloaded their guns and fired at the bear but it only served to direct the bear to them. The bear chased two of the hunters so closely that they had to jump off a twenty foot bank into the river. The bear was so enraged that he jumped into the river after them when one of the hunters who remained on shore shot the bear through the head killing him. When they skinned the bear out they found that eight balls had gone through different parts of his body.

The same evening Charbono was at the helm of the White Perogue when a sudden squall came up and upset the boat. The boat was tipped on its side for about half a minute until someone took the sail in and the perogue righted itself. Charbono, who could not swim, and whom Lewis called "the most timid waterman in the world", was calling to his god for mercy and would not take hold of the rudder again until Cruzat threatened to shoot him. Clark reported that "the articles which floated out was nearly all caught by the Squar (Sacajawea, though he doesn’t name her and misspells squaw) who was in the rear."

They had traveled sixteen and a half miles and that evening they camped on the north side of the river several miles above the mouth of today’s Snow Creek. Lewis wrote: "We thought it a proper occasion to console ourselves and cheer the sperits of our men and accordingly took a drink of grog and gave each man a gill of sperits."

Wednesday May 15^th 1805. They spent the day in camp drying out their articles from the boat accident the evening before.

Thursday May 16^th 1805. They stayed in camp until 4:00 p.m. to dry their possessions. Two of the men fired on a panther that had killed a deer. After traveling seven miles they camped, probably in Garfield County.

Friday May 17^th 1805. Got an early start and used a "toe line" to pull the boats up the river. The river was getting narrower and the country rugged with the high hills covered with pine and cedar. They passed several creeks with little water in them. One of them they called "Rattle Snake Creek" in their entries, but called it "Burnt Lodge Creek" on their map. It is today’s Seven Blackfoot Creek.

Captain Clark walked along the shore and was almost bitten by a rattlesnake. He also saw an Indian fortified camp that had been recently occupied.

They traveled twenty and a half miles and camped a little upstream from Seven Black Foot Creek. After going to sleep they were awakened by the Sergeant of the guard and warned that their campfire had gotten away and started a tree on fire. They quickly moved and the tree crashed where their lodge had been.

Saturday May 18^th 1805. Used the towline and traveled twenty-one miles before camping about two miles up stream from the present Devil’s Creek.

Sunday May 19^th 1805. A very heavy fog delayed them until 8:00 a.m. Captain Lewis’s dog dove into the river after a beaver and was bitten in the hind leg cutting the artery. Captain Clark walked on the shore and in the distance saw the Musselshell River and the Little Rockies. They camped near, or at, the later Long Point.

Monday May 20^th 1805. Got an early start, as usual, and after two and a quarter miles passed a creek they named "Blowing Fly Creek" (today’s Squaw Creek) after the insect that infested their meat while roasting or boiling and they had to brush them off to eat.

At 11:00 a.m. they came to a "handsome bold river" which they took to be the one the Minnetare Indians had told them about and called the Musselshell. It was 110 yards wide (the Missouri was 222 yards wide) and entered the Missouri 2270 miles from its mouth.

The expedition continued west reaching the Great Falls of the Missouri on June 13^th 1805; the Three Forks of the Missouri on July 25^th 1805. They crossed the Rocky Mountains and down the Snake and Columbia Rivers and on November 6^th, Clark reported in his journal "Ocian in view! O! the joy."

They made their winter camp on the south side near the mouth of the Columbia River at Fort Clatsop. They spent the winter refining salt, visiting with Indians, working on their notes and journal, and watching it rain. On March 23^rd 1806 they left Fort Clatsop and headed east again. On July 3^rd, near present Lolo, Montana the expedition divided with Captain Clark crossing the mountains and hitting the Yellowstone River near Livingston. Lewis took a route that took him near present Roger’s Pass and onto the Missouri River. On August 1^st he again was at the Musselshell River.

Friday August 1^st 1806. A thunderstorm came up the evening of July 29^th and had continued on since that time. At 11:00 a.m. they passed the entrance to the Musselshell River. It had been raining for several days so at 1:00 p.m. they were about fifteen miles below the Musselshell and halted at an abandoned Indian lodges built of sticks to dry out their equipment.

Saturday August 2^nd 1806. They stayed in camp and continued to dry their baggage. Hunters went out and killed several deer.

Sunday August 3^rd 1806. Set out by 6:30 a.m. They caught up with the Field brother’s who had killed twenty-five deer during the last day. Being in a hurry to get to the mouth of the Yellowstone and meet up with Clark, they decided that they would cook enough extra in the evening that they would not have to fix meals during the day. They camped in Valley County below the mouth of Cattle Creek.

Monday August 4^th 1806. Set out at 4:00 a.m. and at 11:30 passed the mouth of the Big Dry River , which had 60 yards of shallow water this time. By 3:00 p.m. they were at the mouth of the Milk River where they paused only a few minutes before traveling on to a camp in farther down the river.

They arrived at the mouth of the Yellowstone on August 7^th and found a note that Clark had been there on August 4^th. The two captains were reunited on August 12^th and on September 23^rd 1806 they returned to St. Louis, Missouri.

The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition have been published several times and edited versions also exist. Many of the edited versions don’t have many entries about the time spent along Garfield County, so the best copy is volume four of the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition edited by Gary E.Moulton.

The Indian tribes that are familiar names in this area were not here 500 years ago. As the whites settled the east coast of North America, and then moved westward, they pushed Indian tribes ahead of them. When Lewis and Clark traveled through this area they encountered bands of Blackfoot, Gros Ventre and Assiniboines. At that time the Cheyenne and Sioux were still in the area of Minnesota

In the Treaty of Fort Laramie of September 17, 1851, the Assinaboin Nation’s territory was described as "Commencing at the mouth of Yellowstone River; thence up the Missouri River to the mouth of the Muscle-shell River; thence from the mouth of the Muscle-shell River in a southeasterly direction until it strikes the head-waters of Big Dry Creek; thence down that creek to where it empties into the Yellowstone River, Nearly opposite the mouth of Powder River, and thence down the Yellowstone River to the place of beginning".

In the south east corner of Garfield County is Crow Rock which was the sight of a battle between the Crow and Sioux Indians. In his 1957 book, "Sitting Bull, Champion of the Sioux" Stanley Vestal gives the following description of the battle. "In the fall of 1869 a party of thirty Crow braves found two sioux youths hunting buffalo. They were from the camp of Sitting Bull on the Yellowstone near the mouth of the Powder River. The Crow killed one boy but the other escaped returning to the Sioux camp. Sitting Bull and 100 Sioux took after the Crow. They followed their tracks in the snow probably along the ridge between Crooked and Custer Creeks over the divide and down Hay Creek and Crow Rock Creek. The Crow, fearing to meet the Sioux in the open chose a small knoll surrounded by sandstone rocks for their defense. The battle was intense but short. All the Crow were killed, fourteen of the Sioux died and eighteen were wounded."

Following the Battle of the Little Big Horn in June of 1876 Colonel Nelson Miles was stationed near present Miles City at the Tongue River Cantonment (Fort Keogh was built the following year). Miles’ strategy was to force the battle with Sitting Bull during the winter months when breaking up the Indian camps would force them to abandon their food and shelter. On November 2, 1876, Miles received word that Sitting Bull, with thirty lodges, and Iron Dog, with and addition one hundred lodges, were camped twenty miles up the Big Dry from the Missouri. On November 5^th ferries began moving the wagon train that would accompany the expedition across the Yellowstone and the next day Miles’ command of 15 officers and 434 soldiers crossed the river. After traveling nine miles they stopped for the night along Sunday Creek; on the seventh they traveled twelve miles, and the eighth, nineteen miles. On the ninth they traveled twenty more miles before camping for the night on a tributary of the Big Dry. At this time a "blinding, thin, misty snowstorm, driven by a norther" descended upon them and the temperature fell to a minus ten degrees. They continued down the frozen bottom of the Big Dry with the mules and wagons occasionally breaking through the ice and bogging in the quick sand. On the 15^th of November they neared the Missouri and the scouts brought word that there were Indians right ahead of them. The soldiers deployed into a skirmish and continued their advance only to discover that they were agency Indians who were on the north bank of the Missouri near Fort Peck.

From information gained at Fort Peck, Miles learned that Sitting Bull was camped southwest of Fort Peck in an area called Black Buttes, about forty miles from the Missouri. Miles divided his troop and he headed west on the north side of the Missouri and Captain Snyder marched back up the Big Dry intending to meet Miles near Black Butte and catch the Indians between them. Miles left on the morning of the 20^th and on November 25 was about 110 miles west of Fort Peck opposite Squaw Creek. At this point the Missouri was not frozen and a log raft that was eighty feet long and twelve feet wide was built so they could cross the river. The next morning it was attempted by pushing it with cottonwood poles, but the current was too much and the men aboard, including Miles, were nearly knocked overboard before the raft snagged in midstream. It was stranded there until mid afternoon until a boat made from a wagon box covered with canvas, and using spades for paddles, got a rope to it and the raft was pulled to shore. Five days were spent trying to cross the Missouri before it was learned that eighteen miles upstream it was frozen solid and so they moved to that place.

Meanwhile Captain Snyder was moved up the Big Dry for his rendezvous near Black Butte. Not knowing what had happened to Miles, he waited until December 2^nd and with his forage running low, he headed toward the Tongue River. Guided by Yellowstone Kelly, he moved to the Big Dry and headed south, leaving behind wagons and animals as they got weak. He sent word ahead and Crow Indians arrived from the Tongue River with corn for the animals. On December 10^th, after logging 330 miles, they arrived back at the cantonment.

Miles crossed the Missouri on December 2^nd and came down the west side of the Musselshell River, crossing it on the 5^th, and marched back down the south side of the Missouri to Squaw Creek where they had tried to cross ten day earlier. As they reached the top of the breaks they also began to run out of forage for the animals and worry that the weather could turn even worse. Finally on December 7^th they reached Black Butte and discovered that Snyder had headed toward the cantonment and followed on his trail– sometimes by following the trail of dead animals. They arrived back at the Tongue River Cantonment on December 14^th after making much of the trip in a blizzard. The trip was not made any easier after they learned, from scouts while crossing the Missouri, that Sitting Bull had not come west from Fort Peck, but had gone east.

Further information about Colonel Miles and his trip through the area can be found in Yellowstone Command by Jerome Greene.

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