Montana State
Before the white settlers arrived, two groups of Indian tribes lived in the region that is now Montana. The Arapaho, Assiniboine, Atsina, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, and Crow tribes lived on the plains. The mountains in the west were the home of the Bannock, Flathead, Kalispell, Kootenai, and Shoshone tribes. Other nearby tribes (such as the Sioux, Mandan, and Nez Perce) hunted in the Montana region.
Much of the region was acquired by the U.S. from France as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The northwestern part was gained by treaty with Great Britain in 1846. At various times, parts of Montana were in territories of Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Dakota, Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
First explored for France by Franois and Louis-Joseph Verendrye in the early 1740s. The American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led their expedition across Montana to the Pacific Coast in 1805. They returned in 1806 and explored parts of Montana both going and coming. By 1807, Manuel Lisa set up Montanas first fur-trading post.
In 1841 missionaries built St. Marys Mission, the first attempt at a permanent settlement. In 1847, the American Fur Company built Fort Benton on the Missouri River. This town is now Montanas oldest continuously populated town.
The U.S. claim to NW Montana, the area between the Rockies and the N Idaho border, was validated in the Oregon Treaty of 1846 with the British. Montana was then still a wilderness of forest and grass, with a few trading posts and some missions.
Cattle raising began in Montana in the mid-1850s, when Richard Grant, a trader, brought the first herd to the area from Oregon. Gold was discovered in Grasshopper Creek in 1862. Thousands of prospectors built mining camps throughout Montana as gold strikes were discovered. Some of these include Bannack, Diamond City, and Virginia City.
The mining camps had almost no effective law enforcement. Finally, the citizens took the law into their own hands. One famous incident involved the two biggest gold camps–Bannack and Virginia City. The settlers learned that their sheriff, Henry Plummer, was actually an outlaw leader. The men of Bannack and Virginia City formed a vigilance committee to rid themselves of the outlaws. These vigilantes hanged Plummer in January 1864. They adopted as their symbol the numbers “3-7-77.” These numbers may have represented the dimensions of a grave: 3 feet wide, by 7 feet long, by 77 inches deep. Many outlaws were hanged or driven from Montana by the vigilantes.
A large number of early prospectors came from the South, particularly from Confederate Army units that broke up in the Civil War (1861-1865). One of the major gold fields was called Confederate Gulch, because three Southerners found the first gold there.
During the boom years, gold dust was the principal money. For example, missionaries did not pass collection plates at church services. They passed a tin cup for gold dust. Chinese laundrymen even found gold in their wash water after they washed the miners’ clothing.