The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-06-27
Mountains and Feuds.

M printed in any newspaper car
' ries a more astonishing infer
ence that the recent talk of the Phila-
delphia Press on what might be termed
the relation of mountains to family
feuds. That newspaper calls attention
to the recent warning among rival
Kentucky clans, and it remarks that
this is only because that state has a
larger area of mountainous, inaccessi-
BILE country than most other states east
of the Mississippi river @
1t is true that Kentucky has devel-
oped more than its share Of this style
of warfare: it has had, as the Phila-
delphia Press points out. the Craig
Tolliver fued, the Baker Howard rows,
and all sorts of minor complications,
involving rival families, some of these
almost as famous as the Hatfield Nc
Coy disturbances in West Virginia.
But if the Philadelphia Press theory
proves anything, it proves too much
it proves that the larger in proportion
the inaccessible mountain country in a
given state, the larger, In proportion to
population, the possible percentage Of
family feuds. Indeed, after saying that
Kentucky is prolific of feuds "only be-
cause that state has large area of
mountainous inaccessible country" the
| Press adds that 'the same conditions
! have produced the same results in
| other states"
This absurd theory cannot stand for
a moment. If there were logic in 1t,
! you might look to the states which
| sible mountain country as the ones
where in proportion to population, the
| family feud would be in its strong
hold. Our own state of Montana is in
clear disproof of the Philadelphia
| theory In fact, if mountains had any
| thing to do with it, the other condi-
tons were such as to have made this
state the focus and center for family
feuds.
The elements that made up Mon
| tana's pioneer population came in two
distinct streams-one from the East
| and one from the Pacific coast. Mon
tana was what in diplomacy they call
| buffer state. These two streams rep
| resented elements quite unlike in re-
| spect to a good many significant So
cial matters. Then, too, this state re-
ceived large body of early settlers
| just at the time when civil war d.
vided the American people into two
well-defined elements. In the immigra-
ton to Montana both of these elements
| Nd he
South. And the migrations into the
territory of Montana occurred at a
time when the tension between these
| elements was the seyerest. If noun
tains, plenty of them and arduously
inaccessible, had anything to do with
it, these dissimlar elements could
easily have developed, beyond the like
of it in any other state, the personal
and social and political differences that
would have ripened into family feuds
t carried from generation to generation
The fact is that the inaccessible
mountains have nothing whatever to
do with the case. The history of sew
eral southwestern states has been
made a matter of careful study in re-
spect to some rather remarkable social
features of a period that runs back
at least 60 or 70 years. Life in these
states, for a good proportion of theil
| pioneers, was singularly uncouth. The
| population included raw, uneducateG
element, not always vicious, but, as
rule, untamed. an fact, the early ex,
] periences in these states were strong
4 IL,
years of Moptana's development. Thu
region where we live dealt vigorously
| and effectively with its lawiess eie