Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire On the road again.

If ya would have asked me where the "Missouri Breaks" were before this trip, I woulda thought "in Missouri", fortunately we had the time to stop in at Fort Benton again on the return trip in a vehicle. Fort Benton today ain't even an hour from Great Falls and they have music festivals and such there, about where L&C were debating whether the Marias or what we now know today was the Missouri all along was the real Gateway to the West.

It was here too, that Lewis and three companions felt "unspeakable satisfaction" when they heard the signal shots of their company on the river below, they had just got done with a 24 hour flight after killing two young Blackfeet men after said Blackfeet had treacherously tried to steal their rifles during a parlay. Dunno whether said Blackfeet considered stealing a capital crime at the time, material objects often changed hands among the Indians, dunno for sure either if it was those two killings sparked the implacable hostility of the Blackfeet, but the Blackfeet would be the trappers' nemesis and the bad boys on the Northern Plains for another thirty years, up until the great smallpox epidemic of 1837/38 absolutely devastated both them and the Mandans, leaving a power vacuum for rival tribes to occupy, those familiar tribal names from the 1870's.

I gotta say the Lewis, Clark and Sacajawea statue on the riverfront in Fort Benton is maybe the most aesthetically pleasing statue I have ever come across (or maybe second after those bare-breasted young women kicking out the filibuster William Walker in downtown San Jose, Costa Rica)....







Here's the river at that point, IIRC the highest point of navigation for a paddle-wheeler, hence the port....



...and the fort, IIRC built in 1840....




....and a minor footnote of history from 1877: The Nez Perce on their bid to escape to Canada passed close to Fort Benton, and a group of fifty "Irish Fenians" from around Fort Benton sallied out to intercept them, bringing a mountain howitzer on a boat. Not sure why they would, but when they DID find the Indians one Irishman was killed and another wounded, the other 48 finding Indian wars to be not as much fun as they had anticipated.