88 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[July 21, 1906. 
In the Lodges of the Blackfeet. 
XXXIV.—Later Years. 
The very last of the buffalo herds disap¬ 
peared in 1883. In the spring of 1884 a large 
flotilla of steamboats was tied up at the Fort 
Benton levee; among them the Black Hills 
and Dacotah, boats of great size and carrying 
capacity. The latter came up but once in a 
season—when the Missouri was bank full from 
the melting snow in the mountains—and this 
was their last trip for all time to come. Not 
only was it the last trip for them, but for all 
the smaller boats. The railroad was coming. 
It had already crossed Dacotah, and was creep¬ 
ing rapidly across the Montana plains. Tying 
up at night, using enormous quantities of 
wood fuel in order to overcome the swift cur¬ 
rent of the Missouri, the steamboats could not 
compete with the freight carrier of the rails. 
When the railroad did finally enter the 
Rocky Mountain country, a branch running to 
Fort Benton, Great Falls, Helena and Butte, 
the main line crossing the divide through the 
Two Medicine Pass, it brought in its coaches 
many immigrants from the “States,” at whom 
the old-timers laughed. “What are they com¬ 
ing here for?” they asked. “What are they 
going to do—these hard-hatted men and deli¬ 
cate looking women?” 
They soon found-out. The new-comers set¬ 
tled here and there in the valleys, and took 
up the available water rights; they opened 
stores in the towns and crossroads places and 
reduced prices to a five-cent basis; they even 
gave exact change in pennies. Heretofore a 
spool of thread, even a lamp-wick, had been 
sold for two bits. The old storekeepers and 
traders, with their easy, liberal ways, could 
not hold their own in this new order of things; 
they could not change their life-long habits, 
and one by one they went to the wall. 
The men married to Indian women—squaw- 
men as they were contemptuously called—suf¬ 
fered most, and, strange to say, the wives of 
the new-comers, not the men, were their bit¬ 
terest enemies. They forbade their children 
to associate with the half-breed children, and 
at school the position of the latter was un¬ 
bearable. The white ones beat them and.called 
them opprobrious names. This hatred of the 
squawman was even carried into politics. One 
of them, as clean-minded, genial, fearless and 
honest a man as I ever knew, was nominated 
for sheriff of the county upon the party ticket 
which always carried the day; but at that 
election he and he alone of all the candidates 
of his party was not elected. He was actually 
snowed under. The white women had so 
badgered their husbands and brothers, had so 
vehemently protested against the election of 
a squawman to any office, that they succeeded 
in accomplishing his defeat. And so, one by 
one, these men moved to the only place where 
they could live in peace, where there was not 
an enemy within a hundred and more miles of 
them, the Reservation; and there they settled 
to pass their remaining days. There were 
forty-two of them at one time; few are left. 
Let me correct the general impression of 
the squawmen, at least as to those I have 
known, the men who married Blackfeet 
women. In the days of the Indians’ dire ex¬ 
tremity, they gave them* all they could, and 
were content so long as there remained a lit¬ 
tle bacon and flour for their families; and 
some days there was not even that in the 
houses of some of them, for they had given 
their all. With the Indian they starved for a 
time, perchance. Scattered here' and there 
upon the Reservation, they built for themselves 
neat homes and corrals, .and fenced their hay 
lands, all of which was an object lesson to the 
Indian. But they did more than that. They 
helped to build their red neighbors’ cabins 
and stables; surveyed their irrigating ditches; 
taught them how to plow, and to manage a 
mowing machine. All this without thought of 
pay or profit. If you enter the home of a 
Blackfoot, you nearly always find the floor 
clean, the windows spotless, everything about 
in perfect order, the sewing machine and table 
covered with pretty cloths; the bed with clean, 
bright-hued blankets; the cooking utensils and 
tableware spotless and bright. No Govern¬ 
ment field matrons have taught them to do 
this, for they have had none. This they learned 
by observing the ways of the squawmen’s 
wives. I have seen hundreds of white homes—- 
there are numbers of them in any city—so ex¬ 
ceedingly dirty, their inmates so slovenly, that 
one turns from them in absolute disgust; but I 
only two steers, and what is that?” 
In their opulent days, under a good agent, 
and when they had numbers of steers to sell, 
they bought much furniture, even good car¬ 
pets. There came to me one day at that time 
a friend, and we smoked together. “You have 
a book with pictures of furniture,” he said, 
“show me the best bedstead it tells about.” 
I complied. “There it is,” pointing to the 
crib. “All brass, best of springs; price $80.” 
“Send for it,” he said, “I want it. It costs 
only two steers, and what is that-” 
“There are others,” I went on, “just as good 
looking, part iron, part brass, which cost much 
less.” 
“Huh!” he exclaimed. “Old Tail-feathers- 
coming-over-the-Hill has one that cost fifty 
dollars. I’m going to have the best.” 
Without the squawmen, I do not know what 
the Blackfeet would have done in the making 
of their treaties with the Government; in get¬ 
ting rid of agents of whom the less said the 
better—for the squawmen fought their battles 
and took all the brunt of the trouble. I have 
known an agent to order his police to kill a 
certain squawman at sight, because the man 
had reported to Washington his thievery; and 
others to order squawmen to leave the Reser¬ 
vation, separating them from their families, be- 
eaus'e they had spoken too openly regarding 
their underhand doings. But at intervals there 
were good, honest, capable men in charge, 
under whom the Indians regained in a meas¬ 
ure the prosperity they had lost. But such 
men did not last; with a change of administra¬ 
tion they were always dismissed by the powers 
that be. 
One thing the squawmen never succeeded 
in doing—they were never able to rid thd 
Reservation of the great cattle kings’ stock. 
The big men had an “understanding” with 
some agents, and at other times even with 
the officials of the Department. So their stock 
remained and increased and fed down the rich 
grasses. Most of the Indians and most of the 
squawmen carefully tended their little herds 
in some favorable locality as near as possible 
to their home; but always, once in the spring, 
once in the fall, the great round-up of the 
cattle kings swept like wild fire across the 
Reservation. Thirty or forty swift riders 
would swoop down on one of these little 
herds. Some of their cattle would be mixed in 
with them; but they did not stop to cast them 
out; there wasn’t time; and they drove them 
all to some distant point or branding corral, 
and the owner of the little herd lost forever 
more or less of them. At last, so I am told, 
the Indians prevailed upon the Department to 
fence the south and east sides of the Reserva¬ 
tion in order to keep the foreign stock out, 
and their own inside. There was no need of 
fencing the west and north sides, for the Rocky 
Mountains form the western boundary, and 
the Canadian line the northern. It cost $30,- 
000 to build that fence, and then the cattle 
kings obtained permission to pasture 30,000 
head of cattle within it. But perhaps it is as 
well. It is only hastening the end a bit, for 
the Blackfeet, as I have said before, are to 
have their lands allotted. Then will come the 
sheep men, desolation in their wake, and then 
the end. It has been nearly the end for them 
this past winter. The Department decreed 
that no able-bodied person should receive 
rations. In that bleak country there is no 
chance of obtaining work, for the white men’s 
ranches are few and far between. Even if a 
man obtained three months’ work in summer 
time—something almost impossible—his wages 
could not by any means support his family for 
a year. A friend wrote me in January: “I was 
over on the Reservation to-day and visited many 
