The Musselshell Fight 
By HENRY MACDONALD 
[Mr. Henry Macdonald, who has written this vivid sketch of one of the most famous of the old-time fights in the plains country, is one of the few survivors of the 
extraordinary and exciting life of the old war days, more than forty years ago. 
In the year 1866, when not yet seventeen years old, he went up the Missouri River to near the mouth of Milk River, and in the strenuous years that followed was 
by turns, hunter, wolfer and Indian fighter. 
The horned game that he has destroyed is beyond estimate. He recalls killing more than one hundred bears. A party of five wolfers, of whom he was one, secured 
more than twelve hundred wolves in less than a month in the year 1868 at the Black Butte.. He has killed many mountain lions, sixteen of them on his own ranch. 
How abundant the game was in those old days can be faintly appreciated by thinking of the ten million sheep and the millions of cattle now feeding in W yoming 
and Montana, and recollecting how little show they make to the eye. _ _ ■ . 
it is equally difficult when one sees the Indian of to-day to imagine the picturesque, long-haired, free-moving, opulent Indian of a generation ago, much of whose 
life was given up to the skirmishes and war journeys, which made up the fights between the tribes and against the invading white people, do-day little is known of 
those matters, and descriptions of them convey no ideas to people whose experience furnishes them with no standard of comparison. 
During five years Mr. Macdonald was in twenty-three engagements with hostile Indians, and in all these the savage heroes with their primitive weapons had to 
wage unequal and hopeless combat against the improved weapons of the whites. The wild story of that time and that region is one long relation of relentless and ex¬ 
terminating war waged against natural man and beast by people who had no pity. 
Of Mr. Macdonald’s extraordinary adventures, these may be mentioned. W’ith four companions, he was once surrounded by a Sioux war party, their hotses killed, 
and they lay there defending themselves under the burning sur., with no water and no ammunition. 
Alone, one hundred miles from the nearest white man, he was run down by a naked war party. 
He was the only white man in a Crow camp on an occasion when the Sioux attacked it and captured more than eight hundred horses. He joined with his hosts, the 
Crows, and they succeeded in recapturing about half the horses, besides killing seventeen of the enemy, the Crows losing about the same number. On the return to 
the village, the Crows presented Mr. Macdonald with a fine horse, and complimented him at the scalp dances. 
On going to visit a camp of new-comers, in the country, camped on the. Missouri forty miles below his camp, he found the nine mutilated bodies of the new-comers 
where they had been killed by Indians. 
On another occasion, with two wounded comrades, he remained for ten days hidden near a hostile camp, and when the wounded were able to travel, they escaped. 
Many other startling adventures fell to his lot, the recital of which would be a monotonous tale of blood, war and massa-cre. Nevertheless, the free and easy life, 
the excitement of the hunt and of war, and the pleasures of the camp, made this an ideal existence for a healthy young man. 
When the buffalo began to .disappear, Mr. Macdonald became a stock man, and after a few profitable years retired from business. Since then a large part of his 
time has been devoted to foreign travel; but it may be questioned if he has ever seen anything to eclipse the memories of those stirring days on the Missouri. Editor.] 
Sulphur Springs, came down there for some rea¬ 
son best known to himself, with a fine train of 
mules. His mules and several horses that were 
owned by different parties were herded in a 
point formed by the Musselshell and Missouri 
rivers. The settlement was in a narrow neck 
between these two rivers, and it was. supposed 
the stock was pretty safe, as in order to get 
away with them they would have to run by the 
settlement, as it was impossible to stampede 
them across the stream. Mr. Higgins and some 
men were guarding the stock, however, when 
a mounted Sioux party rushed in on them, 
killed two men, shot Mr. Higgins in the arm 
and took every hoof of the stock. The whole 
thing was done like a flash of light. At the yell 
of the stampede men rushed out of their cabins 
and hence opened fire at the whooping Indians 
as they pursued the frantic stock, but no Indian 
was killed. One young buck, on a magnificent 
horse, after they had gotten the stock away, 
turned back and again ran through the firing 
crowd, making signs of derision as he swept by 
on his flying horse. 
One foggy, misty day, in the summer of 1868, 
the Sioux attacked the Crow camp, a short dis¬ 
tance from Musselshell, and got away with about 
800 head cf horses. I was in the Crow camp at 
the time, but it would occupy too much space to 
describe the stampede of the horses, the yells of 
the Sioux, the bitter imprecations of the Crows, 
the mounting in hot haste of the Crow warriors 
for pursuit, the harangues of the old men, the 
In 1866 a company was formed at Helena for 
the purpose of opening a route to the nearest 
point on the Missouri River, which would be 
below the rapids and other obstruction? on the 
upper river. The projectors, by examining a 
map, had selected for their point the mouth of 
the Musselshell. A more unfortunate selection 
could- scarcely have been made. The route was 
infested by hostile Indians, impassable for heavy 
teams, and seventy miles of it was a desert with¬ 
out grass or water. Several slight attempts were 
made to go through, but nothing was actually 
accomplished until the early part of 1868 . Most 
of the stockholders were undoubtedly actuated 
by honest motives, but the directors must have 
been fully aware of the rascally intentions of 
their paper city. It was founded in fraud and 
ended in massacre. The town itself consisted 
of a few straggling huts built on a miserable 
sage brush bottom, overlooked on one side by 
ghastly bad land bluffs, whose gigantic, hideous 
ravines were sparsely covered by gnarled and 
stunted pines, with twisted limbs that looked as 
if every inch had been born in agony and grown 
in torture; on another side, a dirty, slimy alkali 
creek, fitly named Crooked Creek, pours its 
noisome slum into the Musselshell. The Mus¬ 
selshell at this point was in the spring a torrent 
of had land mud; in the summer, an alkali quick¬ 
sand. Along its banks struggled for existence 
a few melancholy cottonwoods, looking like so 
many deadly Upas trees shedding their baleful 
influence, and whose withering air appeared to 
breed desolation. The few stunted blades of 
grass that sickened through the bad land soil 
were yellow and withered. The bloom of Jtme 
brought no beauty to this hideous place, nor did 
the white pall of winter give it majesty. Fit 
scene and center for the 'most frightful horrors 
and massacres. 
Why the Indians should be so hostile in this 
particular neighborhood has always been a mys¬ 
tery to me. Had they been capable of philo¬ 
sophic reflection they would have known that 
their most deadly malice could not have- been 
better gratified than by the' unmolested settle¬ 
ment there of their most deadly enemies. About 
twenty or thirty men, mostly hunters or wood- 
choppers, made this place their headquarters, and 
as they made their money at the risk of their 
lives, no one wished to leave any of it unspent 
in case he should be killed. Men living thus, 
without law or social restraints and with plenty 
of money, would be naturally engaged in some 
wild -scenes, and I have witnessed there orgies 
that would bring a complacent smile to the face 
of a leering fiend; but I have also witnessed 
acts that would add a brighter halo to the head 
of an aureoled saint. In the neighborhood and 
country tributary to it there have been more 
than thirty different massacres, the recital of 
which would be a monotonous rehearsal of dis¬ 
gusting atrocity-—a task I shall not attempt, but 
will content myself with relating a few char¬ 
acteristic incidents. 
In the spring of 1868 Mr. Higgins, of White 
