Homestead Days in Montana
as told by Bee B. Knapp
It must have been about 1914 when we left Oklahoma. By golly, we made up quite a wagon train. Dad drove one wagon. I was a teen ager and a pretty good teamster. I drove Dad’s second wagon. Buster and Leone usually rode with me. Press McNeil had two wagons. He drove one and Charlie Sherod drove the other. Uncle Press had big horses. Myrtle, John, Glenn, Roy and Wade were with him. Some of our teams were mules, and I had Old Bill, my saddle horse.
We went across Kansas and on into Nebraska. One day when we stopped on the Platte River, we met some folks going back to Missouri. They had spent a winter in Montana. "It’s snow and cold and wind. Nothing up there for us," they said. They wouldn’t stay.
The young Missourian and his Uncle Ed were great fiddlers. So Dad invited them down to the Knapp-McNeil camp. We joined forces and had a real hoe-down. Dad was a great fiddler in those days. Sometimes I played the banjo.
Our wagon trains stayed there three or four days. We washed clothes, checked horse shoes, mended harness and repaired wagons. Then each outfit went their way – one back east, the other to the northwest.
My saddle horse was of Dan Patch stock. Old Bill was a big bay and could outrun almost any horse going. One place where we stopped we raced the best horses that a tribe of neighboring Indians had. They offered up to five horses for Bill, but couldn’t get up a trade.
Well the McNeil's and Knapps finally reached the Missouri River in Montana. Shortly after we got there I landed a job with the B. D. Phillips outfit north of the Missouri River. Phillips was big into running horses, cattle and sheep. He had several bands of sheep and I got on as Camp Tender. Phillips had several ranches that I worked out of. One was the Black Ranch. It was near the Little Rockies up by the towns of Zortman and Landusky.
Both these settlements had started as mining camps. Landusky was around the mountain from Zortman and it still carried memories of being a wild west place. Some years before it had been founded by Pike Landusky. Landusky was a wild west man with a hair trigger temper. Folks said that he carried a tobacco pouch made from an Indian’s bladder. The story is that when he was a prospector and a wolfer he was captured by some Sioux Indians. All went routine with the Indians and their captives until one of them tried to take Landusky’s meat. Then, by golly, Landusky threw a tantrum. He hit the Indian with the frying pan, jerked his breechcloth off and whipped him over the head with it. His partner seized a loaded weapon and the two escaped. Pike Landusky then went on a rampage against the Indians that even outraged the whites.
Landusky’s settlement became a hide out for gunmen and claim jumpers. The Curry brothers, Henry, Johnny, Harvey and Loney holed up there. That Curry gang had a bad reputation all over this area. Then they got into a feud with Landusky. At that time, I think, Pike was a deputy. He arrested Harvey (that was Kid Curry) and his brother John. He locked them up on a charge of altering brands. He kept them chained to a wall and beat them. They were later released for lack of evidence, but bad feelings were getting worse.
One Christmas (1894) the whole town had a big celebration. It was peaceful at first, but trouble was brewing. A few days after Christmas Pike Landusky went into Jew Jake’s Saloon. Jew Jake was one of Landusky’s friends. A few minutes later Kid Curry came in and slapped Pike on the back and floored him with a punch to the jaw. Landusky raised up and drew his pistol but Kid outdrew him. I don’t know if this was the first time anyone outdrew Landusky, but it was the last time. They carried his corpse to boot hill.
It is told that Kid Curry left for Missouri where he joined Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. He may have then escaped to South America. Loney died when Pinkerton men caught up to him near Kansas City.
One year the Curry gang celebrated the fourth of July early by holding up a Great Northern passenger train.
The government sent reinforcements to help the posse round up the gang. They surrounded the ranch and moved in from all sides ready to start shooting. A few horses were in the corral, but the buildings, barns and bunk house was empty. The Curry’s had flown the coop.
The saloon at Landusky carried marks of the past including bullet holes in the home made door. At the Black Ranch, where I worked, there were more reminders of a rough mining frontier. The log walls were pockmarked with bullet holes and filled with lead where the ranch hands had practiced driving nails or exterminating flies.
One old timer I knew had been the corral tender for the Curry outfit. He was the chore boy. He saddled their horses and had them ready for the outfit to ride. One day he said to me, "Slim, I want to show you something."
The fellow took me to the barn at the Black place and pointed to a saddle. "My saddle," the old man explained. "I just want you to look at the back of it."
I looked. By golly it had a bullet hole as neat as a pin.
"Ever hear of getting your pants shot off?" the old fellow asked.
Part of my job was to drive a team and wagon from one sheep camp to the next. B. D. Phillips had some Swede sheepherders. They were good men who had to have rutabagas. I unloaded at one camp and the herder looked over the supplies.
"Yah, and where iss the rutabagas?" he asked.
He got mad because I didn’t have any rutabagas. "You yust stay here," he said. "I’m quitting."
I coaxed him into staying, but I had to make a special trip back with a sack of rutabagas.
In those days there were wild horses on the open range. Some of them were owned horses that had joined the wild bunch. The wild horses were wilder than antelope. Some of the stallions were dangerous and would attack someone riding through. A few had to be shot. One of our jobs was to round up the wild bunch if we could. We drove them through the narrows of a box canyon and branded the colts. Sometimes we cut out the three and four year olds for the army to inspect for Cavalry. A good many horses were shipped out to the Dakotas to make canned dog food.
About 1915 there were lots of homesteaders moving into Montana. There were great prairies of grass across the eastern part of the state and on into Canada. Some folks moved down from Canada, and claiming Indian blood from the States, got claims on the land. Others came from a scattering of places. A homesteader would file claim on piece of land, sometimes like 320 acres. He would then build a cabin on it and live on it as resident. He had to stay so many months a year to make it legal. One homesteader had a cabin out on the prairie, he left it in the fall and went to Miles City or somewhere back east and spent the winter. This left his cabin empty all winter. Like other cabins in the homesteading country, this one was left unlocked.
About five miles away there was a settlement established which was large enough that they fixed up a community cemetery. They even put a fence around it.
There was a family that moved in. They had a sick son. He had consumption and doctors thought the fresh air would do him good. It did. He was able to get along all right in the summer and fall, but this was the year of the flu epidemic. When the young man caught the flu about the end of January, it was too much for him. The undertaker sent his crew out to the cemetery.
The burial ground sat on a high hill which swept bare of snow. Without the cover of snow, the ground froze hard, and it froze deep. The grave diggers couldn’t get a posthole in the ground let alone something as big as a casket. Since a homesteader’s cabin was about five miles out of town, and was empty during the winter months, they carried the coffin there and set it in the cabin. It wasn’t long until another flu victim had to go to the funeral parlor. He too ended up in the homesteader’s cabin.
Along in February a traveler was running out of daylight and was still five miles from a place where he could put up his horse and find a bed. He turned into the homestead.
In those days, according to the code of the west, the draw string was always left out of the door and an arm load of kindling wood sat beside the stove. Some beans, salt and flour were kept on hand. A traveler was supposed to eat and make himself at home. This one did, but he didn’t feel at home for long. He got some snow water warming, lit a lamp, set it on one of the wooden boxes, and noticed that the box resembled a coffin. There was another box beside it. He found a hammer on the wall, pried a board loose and looked in.
By golly, the fellow was sorry he did. One peek was enough. He stared at the other box, shook it gently to see if it had something inside. It did. The traveler didn’t bother to pry the lid off this one. The cabin wasn’t big enough for three people, even if two of them didn’t do any talking. Besides, they were there first. The guy retied his bed roll, saddled his horse and rode five miles of dark road into town.
About four weeks later things started to thaw out. The homesteader returned from back East. He beat the undertaker to his cabin by a week, saw the coffins and decided he was in the wrong cabin. He walked back outside, looked things over good. It was his house after all, but, he said, he just didn’t feel at home. He saddled his horse and rode back into town. Even after two funerals were conducted the homesteader was hesitant about moving back into his cabin, and even then he walked lightly.
When our families moved to the Missouri River, our long summers became long winters. Our Oklahoma Irish neighbors were traded for homesteaders with an Arkansas background and some other characters who had bad backgrounds. My sister, Leone, who married Charlie Sherod, described the region as a hangout for moonshiners, whisky runners, horse thieves and some unsavory people. My uncle, Al McNeil, may have had the same suspicions.
Al settled on Dog Creek. His brother, Lee, batched with him. A local rider named John borrowed a 22 hi-powered rifle from Al. The fellow, a free lance stockman at best, offered to trade a heifer for the rifle. The trouble was that John didn’t have a cow herd. While the McNeil's needed a milk cow, they didn’t need a stolen one. Especially if the owner might show up looking for it.
A few days later John turned up with an unbranded heifer in the later stages of pregnancy. He gave Al a bill of sale and the trade was made. John helped stamp Al’s mark on the critter, ate a bait of groceries and left. The two McNeil's now had the makings of a milk cow for their bachelor quarters.
It was early spring. Melting snow had Dog Creek full, and ice was floating in it. The heifer lay down by the creek to have her calf. This worried Al. He didn’t want the new calf falling into the stream. He went to move the new born to safe ground, but the heifer had other ideas. She got up red eyed and twitching her tail. By golly, she sized up the situation. No two legged cowboy was going to drag her young one around. She ran Al back to the high ground. After a couple of more passes, Al decided to wait for Brother Lee. When the other McNeil arrived, Al explained the situation. He got Lee to decoy the cow so that he, Al, could pull the calf away from the stream. The new mama took a run at Lee as they had planned and Al got the calf. The dang thing bawled. Al looked back. The heifer was coming his way with steam blowing out her nose. Al took the creek, and left the cow the high ground.
Well, the next week Al’s coffee needed cream and he was ready to get his milk cow in business. He got on his horse and dropped a rope on the heifer and dragged her up to the barn. When he got off the horse the cow took a run at him. He dallied the rope around a post in the barn, and scurried into the hay mow like a squirrel climbing a tree. He then got outside with one end of the rope threaded back. Eventually he got the heifer snubbed down and drained out a few drops of milk. But she never did recognize a calling to work in a milk shed.
The Great Northern Railroad contracted to haul homesteaders west. They brought in several loads from Arkansas. Some of these Arkansas travelers would up along the Missouri River between Fort Benton and Fort Peck. The river was both their source of communication and their isolation. On the south side of the river the only way to the outside world was across the Missouri. The area below that was filled with badlands which made a barren wilderness that looked like a cross between mountains and deserts. Some of this area is now covered by the backwaters from the Fort Peck Dam.
Roads were few and poor. Heavy goods came by boat. There was one fellow who would build a raft of cottonwood logs and poles along in the winter. Then each spring he’d load the raft with flour, salt, sugar, tobacco and other staple goods from Fort Benton. Then he would start down stream unloading at each tar paper shack or cottonwood cabin. The raft was sold in eastern Montana, and the poles went into corrals. The cottonwood poles made the best kind of a corral. They were light and tough. They’d give when a horse bucked into them and then fly back into place.
Most of the year the farmers on the south side of the river didn’t have a visiting grocery man. When they ran out of tobacco things got rough until they got a fresh supply. They crossed the river to the north as best they could, hitched their wagon, and went to town, sometimes 80-90 miles away. When they got back they parked their wagon, tied the team to the back of a boat and returned to the south side with horses swimming behind them.
Lee and Al McNeil were my uncles, but we were all near the same age and more like brothers. When they took up homesteads they laid out a 320 acre homestead for me. It was about five miles from Lee and Al’s place and on high ground with good grass. One corner went down to First Creek.
Like other homesteaders, I had to build a cabin on my claim. When you built a cabin you had to locate it by guess and hope that it would be on your property after the survey went through.
Some of the homesteaders had children and they wanted to build a schoolhouse. This required about two acres of land with a fence around it. They asked Uncle Claude if they could build on him. He would have nothing to do with it. I told the homesteaders to build on my place if they wanted to. So they did. But when the survey came through the school wasn’t on my place at all. It was on Uncle Claude’s!
My folks were staying in my homestead cabin when a young lady came out to teach school. They, my folks, were the closest neighbors to the schoolhouse and the attached room for the teacherage. It was forty miles or so to town, and except for Ma and Dad there were no neighbors in sight. Dad told the new teacher that when she got lonesome she could come down and spend the night.
The new teacher said that she wouldn’t mind staying by herself. All went well on moving day until it started to get dark. A coyote was the only noise to break the quiet of the prairie. Just as day faded Charlie and Florence Knapp looked out the window and saw the new teacher coming up to the front door. They rather expected it. My mother already had an extra bed made.
One of the homesteaders had built his cabin a half a mile from his property line and had to move it. He dug a basement and located help for the house moving. When the outfit pulled up to the house site, one of the mules pulling it got too close and fell in the basement. They had to dig a trench and doorway to get the mule out.
Evelyn, Frank, Bert Robinson, Charles & Florence Knapp
Montana