Glacier County chief., 1939-04-28
By ELMO

a portion of the country drained
by the Yellowstone, for the pur-
pose of discovering gold mines and
securing townsites, and believing
this object could be better accom-
plished by forming ourselves into
a regularly organized company, we
hereby appoint James Stuart cap
tain, agreeing upon our word of
honor to obey all orders given or
issued by him or any subordinate
officer appointed by him. In case
of any member refusing to obey an
order or orders from said captain, he
shall be forcibly expelled from our
camp. 1t is further understood and
agreed, that We all do our equal por-
pire in all cases, sharing equally the
benefits of said labor both as to the
discovery of gold and securing town.
SITES
With this semi-military agreement
signed by IA men there began a pio-
neer expedition designed for discovery
and profit, but doomed to a wilderness
trek across the territory now embodied
In three Rocky mountain states, be-
set almost from the start by hard luck,
danger and death. 1t was the James
Stuart expedition to the Yellowstone
country in 1868.
In his own diary of the trip. Stuart
was very modest as to his own part
in the leadership of the party, and
particularly as to his staunch courage
and bold decisions in emergency 1t re-
manned for Samuel T. Hauser, men,
ber of the expedition and later lead
ing figure in the Helena country, to
tell in detail Stuarts display of lead
ership throughout. Stuart promised
himself in his diary to later write
full story of the expedition, but he
never got around to 1t.
Full Story Never Told
In fact, neither man ever told in all
its vivid color the full story Of the
dangers and the hardships into which
the party was led by an ill-tempered
goddess OF luck. Both were men of ac-
tion and not gifted in the art of
dramatizing their experiences. OF the
cold facts of various encounters they
left sufficient for one to draw deeply
upon the Imagination. At that. the
story, as coldly factual as is the record,
would be rejected today as too fantas-
tical for the widest thriller magazines.
The agreement quoted was signed
Thursday. April 8. 1868, at the expedi-
ton camp near Bannack. The signers
were James Stuart, captain; Cyrus D.
Watkins, John Vanderbilt James N
York, Richard McCafferty, James
Hauxhurst, Drewyer Underwood, Sam
uel T Haused. Henry A. Bell. William
Roach. A. Sterne Blake, George H.
Smith. Henry T Geery, Ephraim Bost-
wick. George Ives. to be hanged at
Alder Gulch in December. 1863. joined
the party a few hours late and his
signature to the agreement was over
looked
The Stuart expedition was to have
been Joined in the Madison country by
the Fairweather party, but band of
Crows held up Fairweather and his
men, stealing their horses. Stuart, Won
dering at Fairweather's failure to show
up. went on. while the luckless $50 it
seemed) Fairweather crew turned back
toward Bannack. to camp on an un-
explored creek and find gold in fabu-
lous quantities and start the stampede
Just a few Indians made! To the Fair
weather party 1t meant riches instead
of tragedy and hardship that summer.
Stuart tried to follow Captain Clark's
trail through the Gallatin valley and
over the divide to the Yellowstone. but
way up what is now known as Bridger
creek. and then down Bracket. creek
to the Shields river near the present
Clyde Park thence down the Shields
to near its junction with the Yellow
stone.
Scourge of Grasshoppers
To draw parallel between 1868 and
the present decade, Stuart laments at
intervals in his record of the trip from
grasshoppers and crickets they're
Mormon crickets today were so thick
they were destroying vegetation in al
most identically the same areas in
which farmers sustained great losses
from the insects during the past few
years
On April % came the first serious
encounter with Indians, an experience
that was to be repeated many times
before the expedition reached the SAT-
ETY. of the Oregon Trail in southern
Wyoming, route of return not con-
templated at the start.
A band of some 80 crows invaded
the night camp at point on the Vel
lowstone, and asked for the captain.
Stuart announced himself in that ca
pacity. Three bucks, the principal chief
and two subordinates, stepped for
ward. The principal instructed the
white men to put all their property in
Stuart smoked and swapped lies with
the chief. according to the record, the
braves began to explore the camp, and
started a dispute as to who should
possess the best Of the whites horses.
Here Hauser enlarges on Stuart's
comments:
For several hours there was a
constant struggle and excitement in
the camp-the young bucks taking
forcible possession of our horses and
blankets, and our men by superior
strength retaking them ::
Several times they fired their guns
(each one was armed with a double