The Wolf Point herald. (Wolf Point, Mont.) 1913-1940, 1924-02-21
NEW SIDE-LICHTS
ON OLD
THE "REMINISCENCES OF ALEX
TOPONCE, FREIGHTER OF THE
OGDEN TRAIL, REVIEWED

Romantic Ride of Colonel Broad
water, From $50 Miles East of
Fort Benton to Helena, With Au-
thor, to See Fiancee.
TT is a remarkable fact that no
two men in a crowd witnessing
an exciting event will tell the
story afterwards in the same way
Newspaper reporters and lawyers who
have listened to the testimony of
the witnesses in many murder trials
are familiar with these strange lido
~syncrasies of human interest and OBJ
%servation. l have already referred
briefly to 1.-THE "reminiscences of Alex
Toponce," recently from the press.
/ know of no writer of early day Mon
tana who saw things with the eyes
of this old freighter who died in Og-
den last May, writes r. r. Kilroy in
the Anaconda Standard. His book,
published a few months after his
death, will never bring him fame as
an author, but as a chronicler of the
simple fact he has contributed an in
valuable fund of incident and per-
sonal experience to the history of the
Northwest.
= = =
l was attracted by a paragraph in
the preface which relates that Top
once was 1.-THE associate and fellow
pioneer of James Bridger, Father De
Smet, Kit Carson, Joe Rubideaux,
Father Ravalli, John G. Fremont, DIR.
John Mclaughlin, Brigham Young,
Jean Richeaux, Ben Halliday, Father
~Palladino, Gen. Albert Sidney john
ston, Ben McCulloch, o. ]. Salisbury,
Gen. Thomas Francis Meagher, Gen.
Philip H. Sheridan, Gen. George Gus
ter, Fred J. Kiesel, Gen. P. E. Conner,
Gen. Nathan Kimball, Buffalo Bill,
Bishop futile, Bishop Lawrence Scan
Ian, John Guthrie of Corinne, Marcus
DAILY, w. A. Clark, John w. MacKey,
Jim Fair, Judge c. G. Goodwin of
Nevada, John F. Bishop, Charles Ma
guire, Granville Stuart, Aaron Ross,
F. X. Biedler, Neil HOWE, w. N.
Shilling, Stanton G. Fisher, B. F.
White, Lorin Farr, Dan Ensign,
Charles Nelson, and scores of others
who in the by-gone years made his
tory for Oregon, Utah, Idaho, Wyom-
ing, Washington, Colorado and Mon
tana, who mostly now, like him, sleep
in the dreamless sleep"
+ +
The theater of his experiences ex-
tended east as far as Fort Union at
the junction of the Milk and Missouri
west to Missoula and south to
Salt Lake City and there is hardly
a pioneer whose name figures in the
early life of what is now the state of
Montana whom old Alex does not in
clude in his story.
One of the most thrilling chapters
tells of a ride Colonel Broadwater
and Toponce made from a point about
$50 miles east of Fort Benton to Hell
ena. They were coming through with
a big train of freight from Fort
Union when Broadwater, who wish
ed to see a very charming young Hell
ena lady named Chumaseero, whom
he afterward married." proposed that
they take a couple of thoroughbred
horses they had brought from
st. Louis and ride ahead. The "train"
making only IS miles a day and
Broadwater couldn't wait to see his
The country was full of
hostile Indians. They rode at night
and "hid up" during the day. They
had reached a point near what is now
Big Sandy on the third day and had
made 60 miles when Broadwater sug-
they camp at Sand creek, 10
miles farther.
They rode fast and their horses
we're almost played out when we
at the edge of a coulee and
ooked down. There, lined up close
lnder the bank, was a row of 80
3lackfeet braves, each one armed and
standing beside his horse, all grin
Their parley with the Indians,
Who took their thoroughbred mounts
way and gave them "a couple of the
worst looking old skates I had ever
cen, one a little scrawny NUT and
he other a fat lazy old mare that
lad rheumatism and had been used
" the squaws as a travois animal to
laul wood; their tortoise-gait jour
ley-"two miles an hour"-to Fort
their ultimate arrival at Hell
ma, where they "found Miss Chum-
seero radiant, happy and glad to see
IS" is all we'll told.
There are two amazing chapters on
irginia City, where Alder gulch gold
yorth $3.50 an ounce, was being
AIKEN out in millions. The other gold
ust from thes Silver Bow, Frying
an, Iowa Bars Last Chance and Con-
Gulck brought only s14 and
old voyageur tells several rafting
God tales of his experiences with the
exchange rates of the period.
Toponce was a spe%culator on a
Lrge scale. He bought and sold OK
aims, dealt in supplies which he
auled from the rail-end al Corinne
nd the steamboats, at Fort Union
nd Fort Benton.