I believe that the people living in their respective communities and no one 

 else knows what is best for them. 



When Plenty-Coups, Chief of the Crow Indians, was a young brave, he had 

 a dream. Many years later he described that dream to Frank Linderman who 

 was a contemporary and close friend of Charlie Russell's. Plenty-Coups saw 

 a hole in the ground out of which came buffalo without number. They spread 

 wide and black in the plains. Soon they disappeared and were replaced by 

 animals that were strange looking to Plenty-Coups, buffalo he thought at 

 first, but they were smaller, had longer tails, and some were spotted. 



Later Plenty-Coups was told by one of the elders of the tribe what his 

 dream had meant . 



The strange animals from another world were the cattle of the white man. 

 His dream was telling him that the white man with his cattle will drive away 

 the buffalo and would overtake the plains. His dream told him that the only 

 hope for his tribe to hold their land was to side with the whites. Because 

 of Plenty-Coups and his vision, the Crows never raised their weapons against 

 the whites. Ve in the United States are faced today with the very real pos- 

 sibility that the cattle who first represented the coming of civilization 

 to this land will be forever driven from the plains. 



This conference is but only a beginning of our efforts to see that this 

 never occurs and that the quality of life maintained to a large extent in 

 Montana by our ranchers is forever protected. 



Thank you. 



The Honorable Thomas L. Judge , Governor of the State of Montana, who hosted 

 the Governor's Conference on Montana Rangeland, is a native Montanan and a 

 graduate of Notre Dame University with a degree in Journalism. He served 

 three terms in the House of Representative prior to being elected to the 

 State Senate in ^^66. In 1968, he served as Lt. Governor to Forrest Anderson 

 and was elected Governor in November, 1972. Gtovemor Judge was the youngest 

 Montana Governor upon his inauguration in January 1975- 



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