Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
from which she had been kidnapped as a girl. The Shoshones led the party down the Bit-
terroot Valley and over the mountains through Lolo Pass near the Montana-Idaho border.
The party then followed the Clearwater, Snake, and Columbia Rivers to the Pacific Ocean,
where they built a fort and spent a long cold winter on the coast.
In the spring, the corps backtracked across Oregon and over Lolo Pass and into Montana
in June 1806. The expedition then split into two parties, with Lewis taking the northeast
route toward Great Falls and Clark taking the more southern route to explore the Yellow-
stone River. The two parties met at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers
in August, and they were back in St. Louis by the end of September.
The Fur Trade and the Gold Rush
Although Lewis and Clark's famous expedition failed to find a manageable passage to the
Pacific, it opened the door to fur trading, which would come to dominate the first half of
the 19th century in the region. Trading posts sprang up along the Missouri and Yellowstone
Rivers, and fashionable beaver pelts were soon finding their way to the East and Europe.
By 1840, however, the mountain man era was over as beavers were trapped nearly to ex-
tinction and demand waned.
Catholic missionaries established posts near Stevensville and St. Ignatius and attempted
to teach the Native Americans a different way of life. Some of these missions were success-
ful, others were not, but their presence alone signaled that the traditional Native American
way of life would soon be changed forever as whites expanded farther into their territory.
If the beaver trade and missionary work marked the initial changes to the Native Amer-
ican way of life, the 1860 discovery of gold in Gold Creek near Deer Lodge signified the
end of Native American autonomy. Gold was soon found near Bannack, the first territori-
al capital, and Virginia City, the second capital, and settlers began flocking to Montana to
seek their fortunes. In 1860 there were fewer than 100 whites in the state, but by 1870 that
number had jumped to more than 20,000. Soon Montana became a postcard of the Wild
West, where miners, settlers, Indians, and thieves interacted to create a dangerous, hostile
atmosphere built on greed and fame. The Bozeman Trail, established in the 1860s as an al-
ternate to the more southern Oregon Trail, became known as the “Bloody Bozeman” for its
perilous route through Indian country and several famous battles along its path.
By the 1870s, the gold rush was in full swing and the U.S. government was waging a
full-on war against the Indians, forcing them onto reservations and land that was not tra-
ditionally theirs. Many famous battles were fought in Montana, including General George
