A Sketch of Lewistown, Montana History

(Indian Days – 1884)

Part I

BY

Anna R. Zellick & John R. Foster

April 1980

Long before Lewistown was founded in 1879, Central Montana was the domain of the Indian and the buffalo. By the terms of the 1855 Stevens’ Blackfeet Treaty, negotiated near the mouth of the Judith River, all of was set aside for the Blackfeet. But, as it turned out, it never became their exclusive territory. The Crows from the south, Nez Perces from the west, and later the Sioux from the east also used this vast area as a great crossroad on their hunting and raiding expeditions. They also used it as a retreat whenever conditions on their own home grounds became unfavorable. Clashes among them were many. Central Montana served these Indians well having the beautiful giant springs, Spring Creek, and the abundant supply of wild game.

Eighteen years after the 1855 Treaty, the federal government entertained still another idea. This time it made an agreement with the Crows for them to settle in the Judith Basin. Never carried out, this agreement of 1873 is important, nevertheless, because it brought the economic potential of Central Montana to the white man’s attention for the first time. A reservation meant that there would be an agency, which in turn, would require supplies.

From Bozeman came Peter Koch. He built a post (Fort Sherman) approximately on the site of the Meadows Apartments in December of 1873 for Nelson Story and Charles W. Hoffman.¹ When it became apparent that the plans for a Crow reservation in Central Montana would never materialize, Story and Hoffman were no longer interested in keeping the trading post they had just built. They sold it to Theodore I. Dawes.

The following year, 1874, interest was centered on Central Montana because of the new Carroll Trail. The shortest route between Carroll on the Missouri and Helena, it crossed the Big Spring Creek, known as Carroll Crossing, on the place now occupied by Herman Lode. To provide military protection, Company "F" of the 7^th U.S. Infantry established a temporary post where J.C. Penney is now located.² It was named Camp Lewis after Major Wm. H. Lewis.

When the Carroll Road was laid out, Dawes, realizing that his post was about two and one half miles away, sold it to Alonzo S. Reed and John J. Bowles. They moved the post down Big Spring Creek at or near the Carroll Crossing. Known as Reed and Bowles Trading Post or Reed’s Fort, the post operated from November 1874 until 1880.

During this period the main business consisted of trading with Indians, chiefly in Indian liquor – a very small amount of low grade liquor liberally spiced with plug tobacco, red pepper, and other warming ingredients, and a generous supply of spring water. The traffic in liquor with the Indian was outlawed by the Federal government; as a result the post was a bootleg joint in Indian country. Except during the summer months of 1874-1875 when soldiers were sent to guard the Carroll Trail, this post was some one hundred miles beyond the reach of organized law.³

As the only station between Martinsdale and Carroll, a distance of around 150 miles, the Reed and Bowles Trading Post was a regular stopping place and a center also for trappers and traders. Big game hunters from the East and even from Europe came here to hunt.

The proprietors were self-avowed kings, maintaining their position and prestige by guns. Reed was known as "Major" by virtues of having served four months as Indian agent at Milk River Agency in 1870, even though he was summarily dismissed. Bowles served as assistant in Reed’s various projects for many years. Even in a day when gunfire was an accepted method of end many arguments, the men had a reputation throughout the Territory.

Known widely by the Indians as Reed and Bowles were, it is no wonder that Chief Joseph remembered them on his famous retreat to Canada in 1877. With his band of Nez Perces consisting of about "300 warriors and an equal number of women and children, and up to 2,000 horses, he camped near Reed and Bowles Stockade, their accustomed trading post, on the night of September 21^st."

Footnotes

¹ According to Robert L. Dissly.

² Ibid. For additional information on the Carroll Trail and Camp Lewis the reader is referred to Capt. Michael J. Koury, Guarding the Carroll Trail, Camp Lewis 1874-1875. Edited by Glen C. Morton. (Published for Central Montana Historical Assoc., 1969).See also Lee Silliman, "The Carroll Trail: Utopian Enterprise" Montana: The Magazine of Western History, XXIV, No. 2, 2-17.

³ C. B. Worthen and Oscar O. Mueller, "Central Montana", A History of Montana by Merrill G. Burlingame and K. Ross Toole. (3 volumes: New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., Inc. 1957) II, 146. The three following quotations pertaining to Reed and Bowles, Chief Joseph, and the Metis are also from the same source, 146-147.