GEOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR. 239 
creek is а small prairie stream, rising near the Highwood range, and running northwest empties 
nearly opposite the tort. Highwood creek has the same origin and general course, but is a 
larger stream, emptying twenty miles southwest of the fort. It is the stream by which the 
Fur Company obtain their lumber from the mountains. Belt Mountain creek empties six miles’ 
higher up, and has the same general course, but is a larger stream, and probably rises much 
further up, or perhaps within the basins lying beyond the Girdle mountains. At its mouth 
Mr. Tinkham found some difficulty in selecting a place shallow enough for his mules to ford in 
November. Its navigation, if any, is, however, cut off from that of the Missouri by rapids 
below its mouth. Smith’s river, still further above the Falls, is said by Lewis and Clark to 
be eighty yards wide at its mouth, and as flowing through a charming valley from the southeast, 
visible for twenty-five miles before it was hidden by mountain spurs. It is supposed to be the 
same stream struck near its source by Lieutenant Mullan in going west from the Muscle Shell, 
about eighty miles southeast of the Missouri, where it had beautiful green meadows in its 
valley, which is there from a mile to a mile and a half wide, the stream fifty feet in width, and 
having many tributary branches and valleys. He travelled down its course for a day, finding 
it to improve as he descended it. | 
The Blackfeet have often desired to have farming locations. Through this region are many 
landmarks which will attract the especial attention of the voyageur. South of the Missouri, 
the Highwood, Girdle, and Judith mountains furnish an inexhaustible quantity of mountain 
pine, and make the southern limit of the plateau. Besides these, there are prominent buttes 
near the line of travel, often of striking and fantastic forms, such as the Boque d’ Otard, Knee, 
and Trunk, between the Marias and Teton; the Oksut, south of the Teton ; the Big Knees, 
Crown Butte, and Bird Tail rock, near Sun river ; and Heart mountain, (of which a sketch is 
given,) near the sources of Elk Fork. There is much excellent land and abundant groves of 
cottonwood on these many streams. The plateau itself is arable in many portions, though not 
often continuously so. There is no reason why Indian corn skould not attain great perfection 
throughout the whole country from Fort Union to near the divide of the mountains, that is, to 
Medicine river. There is nothing to prevent a good crop of any of the cereals. Vegetables 
of all kinds will thrive here. This is an extraordinarily fine grazing country. The quantity of 
buffalo who find their sustenance over this plateau, and thence down to Fort Union, is almost 
inconceivable. The winter homes of the Blackfeet, some six to seven thousand in number, are 
on the Teton, the Marias, and Milk rivers. They are the owners of great numbers of horses, 
and they find sustenance for their animals and food from the buffalo through the winter. It has 
been the habit of the fur companies to have winter posts on Milk river at the point known as 
Hammell’s Houses, and also at the forks of the Marias river. So we have all the results of their 
twenty-five years’ observation for the estimate of the number of Indians and the mode of their 
sustenance, as well as how their animals thrive. The country in the vicinity of the Girdle, Belt, 
and Highwood mountains, and thence southward along the upper waters of the Missouri and of 
the Muscle Shell, to the three forks of the Missouri and the extreme upper waters of the Yellow- 
stone, abounds in wood, is well grassed, and furnishes arable land. About the forks of the 
Missouri there are rich, extensive, and beautiful prairies, which are described by Lewis and 
Clark as follows, they having reached this point on their upward voyage on July 27, 1804: 
Here the country suddenly opens into extensive and beautiful meadows and plains, ola 
on every side with distant and lofty mountains. On the right side of the Missouri a high, wide, 
