Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1898-02-18
New Light on the Custer Fight.

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p. M.
New Light on the Custer Fight.
Pioneer Press: Judge H. N. Mcguire
and Lie. Waller of Spokane are in the
city on their way to Chicago to get ma
chinery for the Lost Cabin gold mine, a
Couer d !Alene gold proposition. Mr.
Waller was chief Of police at Bismarck
in the SOS, and Mr.. Mcguire was Judge
of Gallatin county, Mont, when the
district included the whole of the yell
lowstone valley and extended to the Da-
kota border. He was also United States
commissioner for this territory. He
participated in the opening of the first
mining camp in Idaho and Montana and
later of Washington and British Column
bia, and was ono of the first to enter the
Black Hills, when he represented the
Pioneer Press and Chicago Times as
special correspondent. He organized
and led an expedition to the Black Hills
from Bismarck in the spring of 1876 for
the Northern Pacific railroad company,
which was supplied with two mountain
howitzers, the Sioux Indians then being
on the warpath and ~massacreing emf
grants on all the roads and trails leading
to the Black Hills. From boyhood
Judge Mcguire has been in the gold and
silver mining camps of the Pacific
coast.
"The facts constituting the cause of
war against the Sioux in which Custer
lost his life are not reported" said
Judge Mcguire, Sin the records of the
war department. The settlers of the
Gallatin valley, in fact, opened the war
against the Sioux in 1874, or two years
before the troops entered the field in re-
taliation Of their marauding expeditions
to steal stock and occasional massacre
of whites who had ventured into the
Yellowstone country from the Gallatin
settlements to hunt and prospect. The
troops stationed at Fort Ellis, under
command of the lamented Col. E. M.
Baker, were heartily in sympathy with
the settlers, the colonel extending them
all the protection he could consistently
with his orders from the war depart
ment.
SIN the spring of 1875 a strong armed
expedition of settlers organized at Boze-
man and moved down the Yellowstone
and up the Big Horn, knowing the In
dians under the willy Sitting Bull
would oppose their advance at all
points. The hope of nearly all compos-
ing this expedition was to force their
way into the Black Hills, the existence
of gold there having long before been
known to the Montana. frontiersmen,
but the business men of Bozeman and
the Gallatin valley, who provisioned and
equipped the expedition, had in view
another and still more important object.
At the time their communication with
the outside world was around by the
Union Pacific railroad, reached by a
trip of 500 miles to Corinne, in Utah.
They wanted a direct outlet to the east
by way of St. Paul. They felt they
could only realize the hope by them
selves taking a hand and solving the
problem of Sioux opposition and acted
accordingly. The Bozeman expedition
of settlers against the Sioux in 1875, a
year before the government troops en-
tered the field, forced its way down to
the mouth of the Big Horn and then
eastward as far as the site of old Fort
Fetterman. 1t had several pitched bat
ties with the hostile Indians, whipping
them in every conflict, and returned to
Bozeman with a loss of but two men.
They built a block house at the mouth
of the Big Horn, and a detachment of
brave and determined men remained in
it. When Custer reached the point in
1876 it was still held by representatives
of the Gallatin valley settlers, with the
national colors floating over it.
"The settlers of the Gallatin valley"
concluded Judge Mcguire, shave never
been accorded the credit due them for
the important part they played in sub
jugating the blood-thirsty Sioux and
opening eastern Montana and western
Dakota to settlement and civilization"