The Military - Part 1

The Coming of the Soldier to Montana Territory,

and the Many Forts He Built on the Plains and in the Valleys

(by Dan R. Conway)

First printed in the Hysham Echo in the September 16, 1926 issue)

The story of the old West, almost from its very beginning, insofar is a narrative replete with activities of the military. When President Thomas Jefferson was bent on seeking out a feasible overland route to the mouth of the great Columbia river, it was two young military officers - Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark - who, with a handful of men, in 1805-06, penetrated the uncharted wilds of the Upper Missouri and Rocky Mountain regions, opening up a highway which brought the horde of fur traders, and later the miner and the settler. When the endless stream of wagon trains started their westward trek Fort Leavenworth in the later fifties, it was the trooper who preceded over the trailless plains, building crude forts and provision stations that a guardianship of these argonauts might be maintained. When the great task of building transcontinental rail and telegraph lines was undertaken, it was the American soldier who held back the threatening hordes of hostiles. All this that civilization might work out its progress.

Although it is now an established and recognized fact that many costly and tragic errors were made in the conduct of frontier warfare, insofar as military leadership was concerned, it remains that the soldier, who was in no sense responsible for the commands emanating from eastern headquarters, (in so many instances totally ignorant of frontier conditions and Indian character), unflinchingly executed these services regardless of the cost in hazard and hardship. He was the settler’s advance guard, to whom was allotted the not-altogether-pleasant task of forcing the native from his own soil in order that the white race might expand and white civilization supplant primitive methods.

The Frontier Fort

As far as eye can penetrate, and losing itself in the blue haze of the distant horizon, stretch the rolling sagebrush plains. In one direction, these, scorched and yellow, rise and fall in endless monotony, wholly void of life save for the band of ever-alert antelope roused from their peaceful grazing and now fast disappearing over yonder rise. To the right, lifting abruptly from the narrow, rock-strewn trail, is a range of rugged foothills, sprinkled with gnarled and stunted pines. To the left, bordered by a sparse growth of cottonwood, its ragged, ravine-seamed banks carving a snakelike course, the typical Montana rivulet wends its treacherous way, soon to lose itself in the mother of waters - the Missouri.

Within this little grove of cottonwoods, and close upon the stream’s bank, enclosed in a crude stockade of unhewn logs, nestle a cluster of adobe buildings; and, from a tall, white staff, flutters in the stiff plains breeze, The Flag - its bars and field of stars a harbinger of the approaching white invasion.

Beyond, and from the crest of a distant knoll, rise at repeated intervals, the small columns from the redman’s signal fire - the message of a native scout always alert to the every move of a force which his people view with greatest apprehension. Here is the typical frontier military post, recently built by a small detachment of troopers.

Brigadier General George A. Forsyth, in his contribution to “The Builders of the Nation” describes the early-day frontier military post in the following manner:

“The officers’ line or quarters is on one side of the parade ground, as the enclosed space is named. It consists of a row of small cottages containing from three to four rooms. On the opposite side are the enlisted men’s barracks, several long, low, one-storied, solid-looking log or adobe buildings with porches in front, and behind them are the mess houses, similar in design but smaller. In the center of the parade ground, a somewhat imposing structure is known as the post commander’s house. On the third side is the neat little administration building containing the various administrative offices, flanked by warehouses in which are stored quartermaster and subsistence stores. On the fourth is the sombre-looking guardhouse, small but strong. On the open space between the guardhouse and the end of the officers’ row, and old field piece or two, rotting with rust and dust, point at the horizon.

“A little distance off on the plateau, standing by itself, is the hospital; and, likewise apart, in an unobtrusive manner, is the trader’s or sutler’s store, which, until the establishment of the canteen was the soldiers’ lounging place. Down under the bank, near the water’s edge, the cavalry and quartermaster’s stables stand in a row, and not far from them are the wagon sheds and the various shops where the manual labor of the garrison is performed. Somewhere between the stream and the bluff is a group of two-room cabins, commonly eked out by tents. They are the quarters for the married enlisted men. In regions where hostile Indians are formidable the fort was generally partly or completely enclosed by a log stockade. *** From the head of a staff, rising straight and white from the parade ground, was a garrison flag proclaiming to all the presence of the soldier.”

Montana’s Military Posts

From time to time, dating back to the early sixties, and until recent years, there were erected, used and abandoned, in what is now Montana, forts, posts or camps, as they were variously termed. Their locations extended over almost the entire state from Missoula to Glendive; from Havre to Lodge Grass and from Fort Union to Camas Prairie.

Prominently associated with the coming of the military to Montana Territory, are the names of John M. Bozeman and John M. Jacobs; for, it was to protect the new route which had been opened up by these two trailblazers that the territory’s first military post was established.

During the winter of 1862-63, these men started from Bannack in search of a shorter route for incoming miners, settlers and freighting trains. The trail they had chosen wended its way through what is now southwestern Montana and north-central Wyoming, at that time an area infested with the most hostile of Indian tribes and outlaw bands.
The story of adventure and hardship experienced by these men and their parties, in command of Bozeman, is common knowledge. Suffering indescribable privation and danger, Bozeman was successful in establishing his trail leading east and north of the Big Horn mountains, up the Yellowstone river; thence through Clark’s pass into the Gallatin valley. This at once became a recognized road known as the “Bozeman Trail,” and over it trains from the far south and east, as well as from the Black Hills, made their way to the Northwest.

Forts Reno and “Phil Kearney”

When this route was first undertaken, their was no established military post nearer to its course than Fort Laramie in southern Wyoming.

Fort Connor was the first post established on this route, it being located by General Connor in August of 1865, and situated at a point in northern Wyoming not far south of the present Montana-Wyoming state line. The following spring its name was changed to Fort Reno. On July 13, 1866, a military force that started out from Fort Kearney, Nebraska, arrived at Piney creek, Wyoming, and established Fort “Phil Kearney,” around which grew much of historical episode and frontier military tragedy. As the building of these two posts was in direct opposition to the wishes of Red Cloud, then chief of the Sioux, backed by his threats at the Laramie treaty conference, that no new forts should be established, the Sioux sprang up on all sides and started the warfare which resulted in the Fetterman disaster, the Wagon Box Fight and, finally, the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

Fort C. F. Smith

Early in August of 1866, Lieut. Col. N. C. Kinney, with two companies, was sent out from Fort Phil Kearney to establish the first military post in Montana Territory - Fort C. F. Smith. This was built a short distance from the Big Horn river and not far north of the Wyoming boundary line.

It was in order to go to this Fort C. F. Smith that John Bozeman had started from Bozeman down the Yellowstone on the trip that closed with his death at the hands of Indians.

The treaty negotiated with the Indians in 1868 provided for the evacuation of these forts along the Bozeman Trail and no sooner had the government carried out its part of the agreement than the Sioux swarmed down upon the structures and burned them to the ground. This treaty of 1868 gave to the Sioux the land that the Crow nation had always held as their own, and, naturally, a bloody tribal warfare ensued between these two nations, making greater the hazard to emigrants.
Traces of the ruins of Fort C. F. Smith are still discernible in Big Horn county. It was constructed for the most part of adobe, the stockade, one hundred and twenty-five yards square, being built in such a way as to form a soldiers’ barracks, and behind this stockade on the slope towards the river, were the dugout stables, guarded from above by a row of rifle pits. Through the barracks, two driveways entered, the central portion of the enclosure serving as a parade and drill ground with three officers’ quarters at the rear facing to the south.


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