I have relation in the Billings Mt. area and after a family reunion a few of us went to the LBH and I visited a couple of times thereafter. A Great Aunt always had a suspicion that the family had a relative that died there and later a techy young family member working on the family tree traced us back to Lt. Algernon Emory Smith. I visited his grave at Fort Leavenworth.
In 2016, I attended the Red Bird family LBH reenactment near the Crow Agency with the hope of maybe learning something new about the Indian perspective, I did not. However, what I came away with is I smelled and tasted Montana dust, smelled horse sweat and gunpowder, heard the squeal of horses, scream of the eagle bone whistles and Indians, the hooves pounding the ground, tink of saddle accouterments and bugler.
On another side of the family tree I have another connection to LBH, a Great Uncle served in the US Army during World War I and was a quartermaster in Europe where he met George Lone Hill, who was also in the same office. Lone Hill was from the Cheyenne Reservation near Busby, Mt and my uncle lived between Lewistown and Hilger MT. After they got mustered out they stayed in touch.
About 1924 or 1925, my uncle received a letter from Hill informing him that the US Government planned on eliminating 1000s of horses from the reservation and if he wanted any. He notified Hill that he and his brother were coming to look over the horses and they took a train from Lewistown to Crow Agency and met up with Hill and the owner of the horses, Sammy Akecheta (Soldier). My Uncle purchased three mares and one stud, loaded them in a cattle car at Crow Agency on the C B & Q RR which I believe transferred on to the Milwaukee Road and offloaded them at Lewistown. Some of the offspring of those four horses were registered at the AIHR (American Indian Registry) in the 1960s. Do we know for sure if bloodline was actually from horses at LBH, no. That is the problem with the fog of war and history, but I try to make sense of it the best I can.
