Route 66 thru time has become known as the original highway across the United States after it was established November 11, 1926. The truth is, the first highway across the US extended from Canada to Mexico through Teton County.
The Old North Trail is an ancient highway of mystery and intrigue “twisting and turning to follow the spine of the mountain front from the Yukon Territory in Canada through Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico all the way down to the hot deserts of Mexico”. It stretches some 3,100 miles. In Montana, the trail marks the divide between the mountains and the prairies.
“Imagine a mountain ridge that snakes like a knobbly spine all the way from the frozen Canadian Arctic down to the deserts of Mexico. The Blackfoot Indians called what we know as the Rocky Mountains and the Continental Divide ‘The Backbone of the World.’ Now imagine a footpath that runs along the base of the mountains following the ‘shoreline’ between the mountains and the plains twisting through stream gullies, unraveling over low ridges and around buttes running on for 2,000 to 3,000 miles.” So writes Peter Stark in July’s Smithsonian Magazine. Fragmentary evidence indicates that such a footpath existed, and it is/was called the Old North Trail. This ancient, sacred highway may have carried travelers from Canada to Mexico
“For 10,000 years inhabitants of North America used the Old North Trail, first on foot, then with dogs pulling cargo-laden travois, and finally with horses. Stark recreates part of the journey reflecting on what it might have been like to be an ancient traveler carrying trade goods such as obsidian for spearheads and seashells from the coast or visiting relatives, setting off on sacred missions, seeking a mate or just satisfying a curiosity about new lands.”
There is intriguing evidence that early travelers used a network of footpaths that crisscrossed North America and traveled thousands of miles long before Europeans arrived, even before the last ice age ended. As more physical evidence is uncovered along the Old North Trail, the stories and oral legends of the Blackfoot Indians take on new meaning.
“The possibility exists that the humans who crossed from Asia on the Bering Land Bridge about 15,000 years ago and populated North America might have found an ice-free corridor along the eastern slope of the Rockies, to the area where the Trail now runs. That means the Old North Trail may have carried the weight of one of the most significant human migrations of all time.”
Walter McClintock went to Montana with a US Forestry Service expedition in 1896. He spent the next four years living on the land with the Blackfeet. He was adopted into the tribe by Chief Mad Dog and got a chance to learn their traditions firsthand. In 1910 McClintock wrote the book ‘Old North Trail’.
Over a century ago Chief Brings-Down-the-Sun (Blackfeet) told Walter McClintock about the Old North Trail: “There is a well-known trail we call the Old North Trail. It runs north and south along the Rocky Mountains. No one knows how long it has been used by the Indians. My father told me it originated in the migration of a great tribe of Indians from the distant north to the south, and all the tribes have, ever since, continued to follow in their tracks.”
Many Native American cultures have passed on stories from generation to generation of a trail that stretched from Northern Canada to Mexico. Chief Brings-Down-the-Sun recalled the folklores passed down from his forefathers. “For 10,000 years aboriginal people of North America used The Old North Trail (from the Yukon Territory in Canada to New Mexico); first on foot, then with dogs pulling cargo-laden travois, and finally with horses.”
One of the best places to see the trail is off Teton Canyon Road near Choteau. Travel west from Choteau about 25-miles to find the trail’s entrance, where a sign off of highway 89 greets you with quotations from Pulitzer Prize winning novelist A.B. Guthrie marking the significance and mystery of the Old North Trail:
“Through this immediate region, hard by the mountains, ran the Old North Trail, Its starting point far to the north, its termination far to the south, its origins lost to the mists. It is a surmise that long-ago Mongols crossed the Bering Sea land bridge, found and marked their way south and became or merged with, our Indians of mountains and plains. History runs into mystery here.”
On the Blackleaf road leading to the mountain front you will find a large bolder, a road marker engraved with the name of this first route across the US, ‘The Old North Trail’. Other like markers can be found west of Dupuyer 17 miles on Swift Dam Road and out of Choteau on the North Fork of the Teton Road and South Fork of the Teton Road.
Along the trail near Choteau there are 23 stone cairns, or man-made way points, etched with the words ‘Old North Trail’; which has kept the trail alive and marked. The stone markers are made out of stone carried hundreds of miles from Canada on the Continental Glacier. A lot of the stones are smooth on one side, due to Buffalo rubs. Centuries of buffalo rubbing themselves on the rocks make them smooth to the touch and kind of greasy – Buffalo grease.
The Old North Trail is now becoming overgrown with moss and grass, but it was worn so deeply, by many generations of travelers, that the travois tracks and horse trail are still plainly visible. In many places today’s roads and towns have obliterated the Old Trail.
According to Chief Brings-Down-the-Sun, “It forked where the city of Calgary now stands. The right fork ran north into the Barren Lands as far as people live. The main trail ran south along the eastern side of the Rockies, at a uniform distance from the mountains, keeping clear of the forest and outside of the foothills. It ran close to where the city of Helena now stands and extended south into the country inhabited by a people with dark skins and long hair falling over their faces.” (Mexico)
“Chief Brings-Down-the-Sun’s father once told him of an expedition from the Blackfeet that went south by the Old Trail to visit the people with dark skins. Elk Tongue and his wife, Natoya, were of this expedition, also Arrow Top and Pemmican, who was a boy of 12 at that time. He died at the age of 95. They were absent four years. It took them 12 moons of steady traveling to reach the country of the dark-skinned people, and 18 moons to come north again.
They returned by a longer route through the ‘High Trees’; or Bitterroot country, where they could travel without danger of being seen. They feared going along the North Trail because it was frequented by their enemies, the Crows, Sioux, and Cheyenne. Chief Brings-Down-the-Sun stated he had followed the Old North Trail so often that he knew every mountain, stream, and river far to the south as well as toward the distant north.”
Kevin Maki’s research affirms that many historians believe as many as 12,000-years ago, humans began migrating from Asia to North America over a stretch of land they call the Bering Land Bridge, in what is now Alaska.
Supposedly, thousands of years ago, when the glaciers were taking up all the water there was a huge land bridge across the Bering Strait. According to theory, that’s where it started. Supposedly an ice-free zone formed kind of a corridor that they could pass through.
Perhaps the most intriguing and mysterious story of the trail can be found in Choteau at the Old North Trail Museum.” There, on display is a Roman bronze coin that was found in a tepee ring near the trail. One wonders how it could find its way to a tepee ring near Choteau.
It is believed “humans began migrating from Asia to North America over a stretch of land they call the Bering Land Bridge, in what is now Alaska. This would give credit to how a Roman bronze coin dating back to Emperor Hadrian, 117 to 138 A.D., could be found in a tepee ring near the trail.”
Chapter 31 of ‘Old North Trail’ covered a story told by Chief Brings-Down-The-Sun that described the main trail running south along the eastern side of the Rockies Mountains. “The Old North Trail hugged the Rocky Mountains for four reasons: (1) Drinking water was dependable and plentiful because numerous streams drained out of the mountains. (2) Those mountain streams were easier to cross compared with farther onto the prairie where they turned into broad, deep rivers. (3) One could scout from the various rock outcroppings and ridgelines. And (4) there were plenty of places to find shelter from storms or to hide from enemies. Chief Brings-Down-The-Sun also recalled the trail ran close to where the city of Helena now stands, and extended south into the country inhabited by a people with dark skins, and long hair falling over their faces.”
In former times, when the Indian tribes were at war, there was constant fighting along the North Trail. In those days, Indians, who wanted to travel in peace, avoided it and took to the forest.
The battles between tribes are evident by an Indian burial site near Antelope Butte just north the Knowlton Ranch in Teton County. Ori Knowlton states it was a running Indian battle along the Old North Trail and the burial site is where they buried their fallen warriors.
One day follow your spirit and travel an ancient highway of mystery and intrigue, a road now less traveled by.