Continued from Part one in the September 30 "Mountaineer"
Most casualties resulted from accidents in the field and on post, disease, alcoholism, desertion, fights among soldiers and suicides. Some soldiers were wounded on patrol but reportedly there were no direct combat deaths.
Temporary excitement resulted from a short tour of duty in the Little Rockies on the Fort Belknap Indian reservation during the gold strike of 1884 but the miners were impossible to stop short of shooting them. Métis Northwest territories Rebellion of 1885 caused worry, yet brought no enemy, just many Cree and Métis refugees. A Cree Indian leader, I Poplar, wanted in connection with the Frog Lake-Fort Pitt murders and rebellion was killed near the fort but not by the army. The killer was a Métis civilian named James Ward, whose rifle was more accurate than the Indian's revolver in settling a horse-ownership dispute. In 1890 some of the fort's soldiers were garrisoned at the Fort Peck Indian Agency during the Ghost Dance religious upheaval at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation on Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota but they experienced no trouble.
Seemingly to justify their existence in later years, troops oversaw the already poorly off Cree, Métis and Chippewa peoples. They were of little threat to anyone: they just wanted life as it should be and a land of their own instead of subsisting on the wastes from garbage dumps and slaughter houses. But at the time the lands in north central Montana belonged to the Gros Ventre. The restrictive policy was hot and cold, however. Some commanders, such as Colonel E. S. Otis, ignored their illegally built cabins and even tried to provide food and work for them while under other commanders their cabins were burned and the refugee people marched back to Canada. This happened as early as 1881 and as late as 1896.
In the May 1896 roundup to Canada, Pershing's troop spent months and went as far south as Great Falls. The 253 Cree people and some legal residents of other tribes were sent in railroad cars to Canada. Another troop collected "renegades" around Chinook. Pershing is remembered because he rose to the status of general and commanded US Troops in World War I.
Perhaps one of the more exciting experiences the troopers had was a ceremony held for the arrival of James J. Hill's "Manitoba Road" railroad. It was held on the eighth of September, 1887. The band played and banners flew. Hill had bought the bankrupt Minnesota and Pacific Railroad in 1877 and with his Canadian, European and American backers, he reorganized it and eventually started west.
He first viewed Montana at the insistence of old St. Paul friend Paris Gibson who at the time headed the Cataract Flour Million Company. Gibson was now a successful sheepman near Fort Benton and wanted to build a city at the head of the falls of the Missouri River to be called Great Falls and to bring Hill's railroad there. Its westward progress stopped then at Devil's Lake in Dakota Territory. Former territorial representative and lobbyist Major Martin Maginnis was pressing Hill, too. Maginnis had been instrumental in securing funding for Forts Assinniboine and Maginnis. Finally after four years of Gibson's insistent letters, Hill came to Montana in 1884.
Once having viewed the area, he agreed with Gibson that it had much potential for agricultural, coal mining and water power development and he returned immediately to make plans.
His detractors said, "The old man has met his Waterloo" when he announced his westward intentions. They said he was building into a dessert and would never amount to anything.
The construction began again, only to be stopped 120 miles west of the new Minot siding. President Grover Cleveland, perhaps pressured by rival railroad officials, refused to grant the railroad access through the vast Indian Reservations. Finally, Hill and his political allies won the battle as they were granted a 75 foot right of way and small station plots every ten miles or so for fifty cents a mile.
Rail construction resumed in April of 1887, completing approximately 643 miles of track and reaching Bull Hook on September 6, Fort Assinniboine on September 8, Great Falls on October 15 and Helena on November 18. It was the most track ever laid by a single railroad in one construction season, starting from only one end of the track. During the hot dry mosquito infested month of August, crews laid 116 miles of track averaging 3 ½ miles of track in one day. An all time record of eight miles of track was laid in one day near present-day Saco. The chief contractor responsible for the rapid construction was D. C. Shepard of St. Paul.
The crew building the first railroad numbered about 9000 men with about 7000 horses, mules and oxen. First came the bridge builders, then the grading gang followed by the road bed builders, the tote teams and the tie laying gang. The graders employed six open pulling wooden scrapers across the virgin prairie that made two parallel strips each about six feet wide and separated by an untouched strip of the same width. Behind them workers with shovels and wheelbarrows heaped the resulting topsoil about three feet high on the median strip and ditched it out for about 20 yards on either side. Freighters brought them supplies, dropping them at certain intervals at the makeshift camps.
On the next day came the men unloading and hauling the heaps of rail spikes and ties from the small work train. Hours behind were the tie layers, measuring in 2 foot intervals, laying the ties and each pair of rails on top. The foremen constantly rode, urging them on and inspecting the track. These men were housed in double-deck bunk cars with attached cook cars.
Just west of Fort Assinniboine terminus, the railroad built a passenger station, section hose, small restaurant, roundhouse, and train yards. Passengers were transported from the station to the fort in Army ambulances. This location became the railroad's western divisional headquarters.
The soon to be orderly city of Great Falls, under the auspices of the Great Falls Power and Townsite Company, never experienced the boom-town atmosphere on Bull Hook railroad siding.
The railroad soon moved its headquarters from Fort Assinniboine to the Bull Hook bottoms because of the undependable nature of the Beaver Creek water supply. The bottom was situated in a shallow valley of the Milk River with three streams of Bull Hook Creek flowing through the land to the Milk River. Its wells produced an abundant source of water for the belching, thunderous iron horse steam horses. The bottoms had been a favorite place of camping for Indians and white travelers and was a major wagon and freight train road from Minnesota to Fort Benton.
Almost immediately it became the scene of a huge six block long construction and material yard for the expansion of the railroad west to Everett, Washington over the newly discovered Marias Pass on the Continental Divide.
In October of 1891 the newly named Great Northern Railway built a laborers boarding camp, roundhouse and boxcar depot at Bull Hook siding now called Havre. They were located on the north side of the tracks where a tent city had been previously established.
The land claimed by Ed Broadwater and Simon Pepin was donated to Hill with the understanding that on it would be built the railroad's western national headquarters. However, the St. Paul officials wanted a better name for the town. So the new property owners, former Diamond and P Cross men gathered to talk about it. The discussion started quietly but soon tempers flared and blows were exchanged. Meeting adjourned!
Ed. Note: And with that is the abrupt end of this interesting bit of local history.
