Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1943-01-01

Perhaps no other section of Mon
tana bears greater significance or is
more interesting from an historical
point of view than the old Fort Ben
ton community and its surrounding
territory. This is true because it was
near the site of this Missouri river
town that were, more than a century
ago, the first active posts of the Am
erican Fur Co.: 1t was here that the
white man first became acquainted
with aboriginal northern central Mon
tana.
The relocation of the site of Fort
Piegan in 1926 was of vast historical
significance, for the establishment of
that trading post at the mouth of the
Marias in 1881 was the absolute be-
ginning of things in northern Mon
tana, so far as the white man is con-
cerned.
1t was an indispensable service that
the fur traders and free trappers per-
formed to the country-a service that
no other men of their time we're able,
or at least willing, to do; they were
the explorers, the trail-makers TO
western civilization.
General Crittenden, our first au-
thority on the history of the fur trade,
says of these men: "It was the row.
ing trader and the solitary trapper
who first sought out these inhospitable
wilds, traced the streams to their
sources, scaled the mountain passes,
and explored a boundless expanse of
territory where the foot of the white
man had never trodden before. 80"
Just how much this nation owes to
these fur traders of century ago for
their successful fight to prevent the
section of the Rocky mountain country
which includes Montana from being
taken over by the Hudson's Bay Co.
for the British empire will probably
never be fully realized And, possibly
to no one man is due greater credit
for Drawing the Hudson's Bay Co. in
the unbroken wilderness and beating
the Canadian fur traders at their own
game than to James Kipp. one of the
first white men to engage in fur trad
ing in what is now known as the state
of Montana. Had it not been for this
man Montana might now be included
within the bounded confines of the
Canadian commonwealth.
Companies Battle for Trade
The climax of the war between the
British and American fur traders came
in the winter of 183O-31, when Ken
meth Mckenzie. chief factor for the
American Fur Co.. at Fort Union 10
Gated at the mouth of the Yellow
stone), decided to make bold bid for
the Blackfeet Indian trade by estab-
fishing trading post at the mouth of
the Marias river. 1t was James Kipp
who first urged the wisdom of this
course. pointing out, as he did the fact
that this great volume of profitable
trade was then going to the Hudson's
Bay Co., and that it never could be
won for the American traders unless
the dangers incident to establishing
such a post in the Blackfeet country
were braved and friendly relations de-
veloped between the savage Blackfeet
and the Missouri river traders.
Due to the bitter hostility of the
Blackfeet toward the Americans, a
hostility engendered and fostered by
the Hudson's Bay Co. as a measure of
trade, Mckenzie at first opposed the
suggestion, but he was finally won by
the force of Kipp's argument, and Kipp
was placed at the head of the expe-
dition destined to build Fort Piegan.
Building of Fort Piegan
In the spring of 1881 the party
started from Fort Union. It consisted
of "A men and a 50-ton keel boat
laden with a valuable cargo of Indian
trading goods. In due time it reached
the mouth of the Marias river. Upon
the day of arrival at this point there
was not an Indian to be seen. but the
following morning 500 lodges of the
Blackfeet Cor Piegan) Indians
swarmed down upon the traders and
filled up the valley with their lodges.