58 also an aspirant for statehood, unless New Mexico should be admitted at the same time. Thus hopes and fears had their turn. Meanwhile, the newspapers, of which there were now thirty-eight in Idaho, asserted truthfully that never had there been so many new enterprises inaugurated as in this year of 1889; irrigation schemes that would cost millions; new mining camps as fast as they could be built and machinery could be 'freighted' to the mines; homestead filings for the year, 861; homestead proofs, 463; preemption filings, 841; preemption proofs, 441; desert filings, 294; desert proofs, 841; timber culture filings, 293; timber culture proofs, 5; mineral filings, 72; proofs, 62. All these meant so many times 160 acres improved, or about to be. The total amount of land surveyed in Idaho was 8,500,000 acres; of land patented or filed on, 4,500,000 acres; and land in cultivation, surveyed and unsurveyed, 600,000 acres. Idaho contained about 55,000,000 acres, 12,000,000 of which were suitable for agriculture, while nearly as much more could be made so by irrigation. There were 5,000,000 acres of grazing land, 10,000,000 acres of timber, and 8,000,000 acres of timber land. Idaho had indeed advantages unsurpassed in any quarter of the globe. Railroads, irrigation, and statehood would make this evident. Such was the voice of the Idaho press, and such, by their vote on the constitution, was the voice of the people. 58 Free Press, Grangeville; Star and Mirror, Moscow; Teller, and Stars and Bars, Lewiston; Times and Review, Cœur d'Alêne City; Sun, Murray; News, Wardner; Courier, Rathdrum; Messenger, Challis; Citizen, Salubria; Leader, Weiser; Recorder, Salmon City; Keystone, Ketchum; News Miner and Times, Hailey; Press, Bellevue; State Journal, Shoshone; Register, Eagle Rock; News, Blackfoot; Herald and Republican, Pocatello; Enterprise, Malade City; Times, Albion; Independent, Paris; Bulletin, Rocky Bar; Progress, Nampa; Tribune, Caldwell; Statesman and Democrat, Boisé; World, Idaho City; Avalanche, Silver City; Independent, Burke; Free Press, Wallace; Post, Post Falls; Observer, Montpelier; and Mail, Mountain Home. Rept of Gov. Shoup, 1889, 100. HISTORY OF MONTANA. CHAPTER I. NATURAL WEALTH AND SETTLEMENT. 1728-1862. THE NAME-CONFIGURATION AND CLIMATE-GAME-STOCK-RAISING ADVANTAGES-MINERALS AND METALS-CATACOMBS - MAUVAISES TERRES EARLY EXPLORATIONS-FUR-HUNTERS AND FORTS-MISSIONARIES AND MISSIONS OVERLAND EXPLORATIONS - RAILROAD SURVEY - WAGONROADS EARLY STEAMBOATS-GOLD DISCOVERIES-THE CATTLE BUSINESS FIRST SETTLERS-NEW COUNTIES OF WASHINGTON. MONTANA, mountainous or full of mountains,1 is a name, as herein used, no less beautiful than significant. From the summit of its loftiest peak-Mount Hayden-may be seen within a day's ride of each other the sources of the three great arteries of the territory owned by the United States-the Missouri, the Colorado, and the Columbia. From the springs on either side of the range on whose flanks Montana lies flow the floods that mingle with the North Pacific Ocean, the gulf of California, and the gulf of Mexico. The Missouri is 4,600 miles in length, the Columbia over 1,200, and the Colorado a little short of 1,000; yet out of the springs that give them rise the Montanian may drink the same day. Nay, more: there is a spot where, as the rain falls, drops descending together, only an inch asunder perhaps, on strik Many infer that the word is of Spanish origin, a corruption, perhaps, of montaña, a mountain, but it is purely Latin. It was a natural adoption, and the manner of it is given elsewhere. ing the ground part company, one wending its long, adventurous way to the Atlantic, while the other bravely strikes out for the Pacific. These rivers, with their great and numerous branches, are to the land what the arteries and veins are to the animal organism, and whose action is controlled by the heart; hence this spot may be aptly termed the heart of the continent. From New Orleans to the falls of the Missouri there is no obstacle to navigation. Wonderful river! Could we stand on Mount Hayden, we should see at first nothing but a chaos of mountains, whose confused features are softened by vast undulating masses of forest; then would come out of the chaos stretches of grassy plains, a glint of a lake here and there, dark cañons made by the many streams converging to form the monarch river, rocky pinnacles shooting up out of interminable forests, and rising above all, a silvery ridge of eternal snow, which imparts to the range its earliest name of Shining Mountains. The view, awe-inspiring and bewildering, teaches us little; we must come down from our lofty eminence before we can particularize, or realize that mountains, lakes, forests, and river-courses are not all of Montana, or that, impressive as the panorama may be, greater wonders await us in detail. The real Montana with which I have to deal consists of a number of basins among these mountains, in which respect it is not unlike Idaho. Commencing at the westernmost of the series, lying between the Bitterroot and Rocky ranges, this one is drained by the Missoula and Flathead rivers, and contains the beautiful Flathead Lake, which lies at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, in latitude 48°. From the lake south for fifty miles is a gently undulating country, with wood, grass, and water in abundance, and a good soil. The small valley of the Jocko, which is reached by crossing a range of hills, is a garden of fertility and natural loveliness. But true to the character of this montane region, another and a higher range must be HELLGATE AND BITTERROOT. 591 crossed before we can get a glimpse of the grander and not less lovely Hellgate Valley, furnished also with good grass and abundance of fine timber. Branching off to the south is the valley of the Bitterroot, another fertile and picturesque region. The Hellgate and Bitterroot valleys are separated from Idaho on the west by the Bitterroot range, on the lofty peaks of which the snow lies from year to year. These mountains have a general trend south-east and northwest, and cover an area of seventy-five miles from west to east, forming that great mass of high, rough mineral country so often referred to in my description of Idaho, and which is covered with forest. Passing out of the Bitterroot and Hellgate valleys to the east, we travel through the pass which gives its name to the latter. This cañon is forty miles in length, cutting through a range less lofty than those on the west. Through it flows the Hellgate River, receiving in its course several streams, the largest of which is the Big Blackfoot, which heads in the Rocky Mountains, near Lewis and Clarke's pass of 1806. At the eastern end of this cañon is Deer Lodge Valley, watered by the Deer Lodge River, rising in the Rocky Mountains south and east of this pass, and becoming the Hellgate River where it turns abruptly to the west after receiving the waters of the Little Blackfoot, and which still farther on becomes. the Missoula. Other smaller streams and valleys of a similar character go to make up the north-western basin, which is about 250 miles long by an average width of 75 miles. It is the best timbered portion of Montana, being drained toward the north-west, and open to the warm, moisture-laden winds of the Pacific, which find an opening here extending to the Rocky Mountains. The name of Hellgate Rond was given to a circular prairie at the mouth of a cañon, the passage of which was so dangerous, from Indian ambush, to the fur-hunters and trappers, that in their nomenclature they could find no word so expressive as Hellgate. Virginia and Helena Post, Oct. 14, 1866; White's Or., 289. The north-east portion of Montana,3 bounded by the Rocky Mountains on the west, the divide between the Missouri and the river system of the British possessions on the north, and by a broken chain of mountains on the south, is drained toward the east by the Missouri River, and is a country essentially different from the grassy and well-wooded regions west of the great range. It constitutes a basin about 400 miles in length and 150 in breadth, the western portion being broken occasionally by mountain spurs, or short, isolated upheavals, such as the Little Rockies, the Bear Paw Mountains, or the Three Buttes, and taken up in the eastern portion partly by the Bad Lands. Its general elevation is much less than that of the basin just described, yet its fertility is in general not equal to the higher region west of the Rocky Mountains. There is a belt of grass-land from ten to twenty miles in width, extending along at the foot of the mountains for a hundred and fifty miles, backed by a belt of forest on the slopes of the higher foothills. The lower plains are for some distance along the Missouri a succession of clay terraces, entirely sterile, or covered with a scanty growth of grass of inferior nutritive quality. Through this clay the rivers have worn cañons several hundred feet in depth, at the bottom of which they have made themselves narrow valleys of fertile soil washed down In Ingersoll's Knocking around the Rockies, 192-202, there are some bits of description touching Montana's physical features worth reading, though taken together, no very clear notion of the country could be obtained from the book. The following table shows the relative positions and climatic peculiarities of these two natural divisions of Montana: Summit of Bitterroot range, near the pass. Feet. 5,089 Junction of the Missoula and St Regis de Borgia rivers. 2,897 Bitterroot Valley, at Fort Owen... 3,284 Big Blackfoot River, near mouth of Salmon Trout Fork. 3,966 |