Amy Wortman, south east of Big Sandy provided an old paperback book by Jim Arthur called, “Retracing Kipp Trails”.
Tavie Kipp married into the famous Kipp family when she married Jim Kipp who was the son of Joe Kipp, an icon of Glacier National Park and James Kipp who was instrumental in opening the upper Missouri to trading.
In her later years Tavie Kipp joined the Chinook History Group and it is suspected it was then she wrote several stories of her life in Montana.
In this story she talks about coming to Montana. We take up the story when she enters Montana for one of the first times.
My Life in Montana
By Tavie Kipp
The first town we came to was Ekalaka in the southeast corner of Montana. Old Dan Russell lived near there and we rested there for a few days. The town was named after his wife and is a Sioux word though I never found out what it meant. I spoke some Sioux, or did at that time and my dad talked it real good. My mother never learned to speak Sioux.
It took us 30 days to reach Wilder, Montana. About 20 days of actual travel. When we found a nice camping place we would lay over for half a day or even a whole day. Wash, bake bread, iron and bathe. All our horses stood the trip well. No tender feet as we never traveled on hard roads. One night we camped about six miles from the Pine Hills south of Miles City. We crossed the Yellowstone at Miles City but turned west from there and did not go toward our old Crooked Creek place. We crossed the Big Dry at Cohagen which was just a store and post office. Camped one night at the old Bill Cherry place down the Dry. Cherry was an old time cowman who had lived there for years.
Then our troubles began. We followed a dim road down the creek. I think they called Lodge Pole, to the Musselshell River, the going was rough. Down the river we went for a ways, stopped and sold some saddle horses to a rancher. We came to a creek called Crooked Creek that came in from the West and started up that. At one time there had been a road up the creek but the crossings were all washed out by high water. We shoveled the road at these crossings. I believe we crossed it every half mile. My dad was wondering how we could get out to the north as we were headed for Rocky Point or Wilder where there was a ferry across the Missouri River. We camped about six miles up and our scout, old Jim Griffin went ahead to see what he could find. He came back about dark and said the old road turned up the hill about three miles up but had caved in and we would have to do a lot of work to get our wagons up.
We had filed our fifteen gallon water keg at a spring on Lodge Pole Creek. There was a little water in holes on Crooked Creek but it was alkali and not fit to drink. We were ready to start at daylight. We were on the ridge between Crooked creek and the Missouri by noon. We made a dry camp. No water for horses and they were restless. We camped at noon by a butte which I later found out was called Button Butte. After dinner my dad took the top buggy and went ahead to see what he would find. The going was not bad as we had a dim road to follow. The boys had orders to always keep the horses behind the wagons. They were thirsty and hard to handle. After miles we came to a little plainer road that went toward the river. This road was travelled some and led from the river to the Judith Mountains and Lewistown. We turned toward the river and after a little while the horses smelled the water and they rushed past the wagons. It almost causes Hike’s four to run away. He was having a hard time anyway with four horses on a wagon around those sharp turns. When we reached the river, about three miles, the horses were belly deep in the river drinking and soaking it up. Our teams would hardly let us unharness them when they saw all that water.
We were tired but with our system we were soon camped. Hike and Jim built a rope corral like the cowboys use on the roundup. This was ready with formed sticks and pegs and they soon had up their small tent. My sister and I put up our tent and took care of our horses. The two other boys, Lucky and Gill put up the cook tent and stove while my mother peeled potatoes and in thirty minutes we were all set up. Not long after we would be eating venison, fried potatoes and baking powder biscuits with syrup for dessert.
Rocky Point, at one time, had been a busy place. Soldiers were stationed there from Fort Maginnis. There had been a telegraph line from there to the fort bout forty miles south in the Judith Mountains. Never found out why soldiers were there but steamboats got wood there, perhaps it was to protect them. The government had built a lot of large log buildings for barracks. There was still two standing. Some people by the name of Turner lived there and ran the ferry, also a post office. The mail came from Zortman in the Little Rockies once a week by team. George Shepherd, an old man who afterward lived with my folks until his death told us many times of how wild is was. They gambled and drank and fought. That was where Pike Landusky first landed when he came to Montana. He was from Missouri. The town of Landusky, in the Little Rockies, was named for him. Back of the building was a ridge not very high. I walked up there and saw ten or twelve graves. George Shepherd told me only one, a breed, died from natural causes. The rest were killed in gun fights. Across from the buildings an old man lived. His name was Tex Alford. He carried the mail from Zortman to Rocky Point. He ran a saloon also. My Dad talked with him all the next morning, In the afternoon we crossed our wagons one at a time on the ferry. Then put the horses in the river just below the ferry. My Dad stripped to his underwear and bareback followed them across. The river is deep there and they had to swim most of the way. The boys helped him start the horses in. Then he sent them back to cross on the ferry as it was dangerous in case the horses turned back and surrounded the rider. Everything went fine.
That evening we moved up the river to the mouth of Rock Creek. No one lived there then. The next day Old Tex took my Dad and they went on horseback about 25 miles up the river to Gus Anderson’s place (Black Gus) and we leased a four room log house from him (he lived in a cabin). This place had been owned by some company in Helena and their man by the name of Fiske had built the house. They went broke in a few years before so there was the house just waiting for us. Not much of a road up there but we made it by following the river to Joe Doney’s place, then up the hill, down a ridge to our new home. The Joe Doney place is just two or three miles below the new Fred Robinson Bridge on Highway 19.
We were soon settled in our new home. We turned our horses out in the bad lands. They stayed all winter. Horses will start to their old homes in the spring. We still had Brummer but no one ever rode him anymore as he was too old.
My folks then went to Malta with a wagon and four horses after winter supplies about 85 miles. They went to Glasgow to visit Mack and Mattie Hunter who now lived north of the Missouri about four miles from the Fort Peck Dam.
We bought two black cows from Joe Doney, so we kids stayed home to milk the cows and get ready for winter.
It was a beautiful fall. My sister and I would take the team and buggy and go to Rocky Point after the mail and camp out and come back the next day. After awhile we got to know the Turners better and would go on horseback and stay with them. There were very few women. Mrs. Turner came from the east and missed neighbors.
Black Gus raised alfalfa seed, built a small corral, threw the alfalfa in there and chases his old team around and around till it was threshed out. Rather a primitive method but did the work. Then ran it through a fanning mill turned by hand till the seed was clean.
The Turners planned a dance for Christmas, an unheard of thing down there. We all went. There were six women there. We danced all night. There were plenty of men. Perhaps twenty. Joe Fayant played the violin. It was at this dance that I met Jim Kipp who was to be my future husband. He had been in Elko, Nevada where he met Jim King. The Kings had a place across from King’s island just below the bridge. The two Jims were both part Indian and originally from Browning. They were Piegans or Blackfoot. When Jim Kipp heard of this wild country he was anxious to see it so came home with Jim King.
Jim Kipp’s grandfather, also James Kill, came up from Fort Union in 1832 for the American Fur Company and built Fort Piegan at the mouth of the Marias in hopes he could establish trade with the Piegans. They traded some but it was not a success. The next year after Mr. Kipp went back, the Piegans burned the fort. Later Fort Benton was built. Mr. Kipp was married to a Mandan woman. His son Joe Kipp (my father-in-law had trading posts along the Missouri. He finally ended up at Fort Benton. He married a Piegan woman who was, of course, my Mother-in-law (though I never saw here as she died young.)
The next spring Jim went to the mouth of the Musselshell to work for the F Outfit, a big cattle company. Their called roamed between the Missouri and Milk River. I worked for a lady, Mrs. Skardon in Zortman until the Fourth of July when without anyone knowing it we caught the stage from Zortman where there was a celebration going on a get married in Chinook the next day. No delay. No blood tests or waiting. Just get your license, two witnesses and that was that.
We went to Browning the same day where I met my father-in-law and the rest of the family. Mr. Kipp was an educated man, half Scot and half Mandan Sioux. He was also a wonderful man and a busy one. Owned a livery stable, hotel and had three mail contracts, one out to Babb forty miles away.
Those were busy times, we lived in the old hotel. That was the year the Reclamation built the big canal east from St. Mary’s Lake. It was forty miles about twice a week Jim took a load of men out in a wagon with four horses. He usually had a load coming back as someone would quit. Mr. Kipp wanted horses broke to use on the stage lines. We would hitch up one gentle horse and one bronc. We had them on an old stage coach and away we would go across country. That old coach would rock and roll. It was a lot of fun but Mr. Kipp would give him fits for talking. He did not know that all of his daughter-in-law knew was horses.
In the fall my dad moved to Hilger with my sister and brother so they could go to school and he bought a place about twenty miles up from Black Gus place. Really a rough country but on the banks of the Missouri at the mouth of Cow Creek in what is now Blaine County. He must have forgotten about Canada.
We did not like the Browning country, too cold and windy. Mr. Kipp had a Velie car---about the first car in the country. The man that drove it was Chan Smith. He would take me to the depot to meet trains. It was really something to ride in a car in those days.
Jim was lonesome for the Missouri River badlands by spring. As for me I had been lonesome for them all winter. He had some horses, about thirty head and twenty-five or thirty cattle left over from his mother’s estate. In April we gathered horses, bought a wagon and started for the Missouri It was about 240 miles. We had a good trip with a man to help us. Soon after Jim filed on a homestead about one mile from my folks. Then in June he went back after our cattle to ship them by rail to Harlem. He took my brother who was twelve and met them in Harlem with saddle horses and a camp wagon. Harlem was about eighty-five miles away. Camped there two days till the cattle came. We would build a smudge with sage rush for the horses and ourselves as mosquitoes almost set them wild.
We built a log cabin on our place, later a nice little log house and were so happy. That December---1913---Mr. Kipp passed away.
In the spring of 1919 Jim and my dad decided to buy more cattle. We owned 150 head then and did not owe anyone. So we bought 465 more from a man in the Sweet Grass Hills. That is a level country. Then came a hard winter, deep snow and we lost over 100 head as these cattle could not take care of themselves like the ones we raised down there. We bought a carload of oil cake and brought it down the river on flatboats. But that is another story. In the spring we wrote the bank to come and get the cattle. All were mortgaged and we were flat broke.
Before this happened we would get our supplies from Ed Smith who came down the river in a flat boat once a month in good weather. He brought most everything in the line of groceries. It was a great day for us when the boat came. Coffee was 35 cents a pound, sugar was $7.00 a hundred pounds. We raised a garden, went to the Little Rockies for service berries and chokecherries. That was twenty-five miles away and we all went and picked. We traveled with a team and stayed two days. Had lots of time and fun. In later years we bought a car we never had time to pick berries.
It was during this time that I met Jim Thornhill who was a friend of the Curry brothers. Also Wallace, Bob and Walter Coburn who had a big ranch on Beaver Creek. Wallace had written a poem which he called “Yellowstone Pete’s Only Daughter”. In 1916 they decided to make a movie of it. The main actors were brought from St. Paul and our leading lady was Marjorie Daw from Hollywood. Cowboys and horses were gathered here. My sister Jessie Jones doubled for the leading lady and Johnnie Mayberry for Wallace Coburn who was the leading man. My Dad, Jim, Joe, Rose and Clayton Snyder were cowboys. We camped a month in Camp Creek near Zortman then moved to Malta for another month. It was a lot of fun. Of course this was the time of silent movies. They showed this picture in Malta later on and we had lots of good laughs to see our local people perform.
After we went broke in the cattle business Jim worked in Ruby Gulch in the mines. He also drove stage (mail stage) from Zortman to Landusky. About that time the oil fields were booming in Casper, Wyoming so we bought an old car and went down there for a year. That was not Jim’s kind of work so we came back to Montana, bought a few head of heifers then back to the ranch. Most winters Jim worked in the mines at Landusky. When we saved enough money we would buy one more cow. Cattle were cheap. By the early 30’s we had built up quite a bunch of cattle. Then the drought hit, no grass, no hay so we sold all but eight head of cows, paid our depts. And were broke again. Cows sold for $20.00.
Then we got 200 sheep on shares from Eddie Cuerth and things began to pick up. The next year we bought the Cuerth sheep and 140 more. By herding them ourselves we saved our cattle and again built them up. In the early 40’s we moved to Big Warm Creek on the Fort Belknap Reservation but kept our Missouri River range for summer for our cattle. We were raising two grandchildren. Sent the boy to Chinook to high school where he graduated in 1947. The girl went to Ursuline Academy in Great Falls. This took money so we sold the sheep but kept the cattle.
We lived near Lodge Pole for twelve years. We raised quarter horses and Shetland ponies. Jim took sick with a heart condition and was sick for four years. He passed away in 1956 and is buried in Landusky. I would not ranch alone so I sold the horses and moved to Hays where I lived alone for six year. I have two sons, ten grandchildren and twenty-seven great grandchildren. I spend my time doing beadwork which sells good during the tourist season. I belong to the Chinook History Club, the Montana Institute of the Arts, Christian Mothers Club and the Cold Cow Girls Association of Great Falls.
