“Deep in the sod they wrote their story. A record of adventures, grim or gay; Deep in the mud or hard baked ‘dobe coulees runs the saga of the traders’ reckless day. Now fields of waving wheat obscure their imprint; time heals the scars, and grass hides sunken graves; Along the war paths of the painted braves. What worth shall we today accord their efforts? What reverence give their half-forgotten lore? What blame or credit weigh against their record? They were the vanguard! History demands no more. (Beth Volbrecht, 1953)
The west has its history. Often this history is contains some mighty rousing adventures. Come join us down a trip of memory lane about a half-forgotten lore. The following narrative originates from a chronicle written by Beth Volbrecht in the 1950’s.
“During the 1860’s to ‘90’s goods and trade supplies came up the Missouri River from St. Louis and were transferred from steamboat to wagon freight for inland distribution. In 1868 a freight trail was opened from Ft. Benton to a trading post in Canada, near the present site of Lethbridge.
There being no serious law enforcement to hamper unscrupulous traders, Canadian Indians were deluged with strong medicine of inferior quality. They joyously swapped fur for fire water, and went on a protracted binge that won for the Canadian post the name, ‘Ft. Whoop-Up’.
It was the precursor, in reverse, of the Canadian rum-running channels of the Noble Experiment era. Though its principal furthered the trading headaches for hides, it did gain a modicum of respect by becoming supply route for a few legitimate wares consigned to Ft. McLeod.”
So reads the roadside legend on the historical marker on Highway 91, a few miles from Conrad to the north. Years ago the Montana Historical Society retraced the course of the old trail and placed the highway marker as a tribute to these long forgotten legends.
Some say the reason the trail became known as the Whoop-Up Trail was because the bull train drivers used the word, “Whoop,” when they urged teams forward. Others say the Indians whooped it up after they bartered their buffalo hides for intoxicants. The most likely reason for the name of the trail and fort to begin being used was when a trader, Johnny LaMottee, responded with “They’re still whoopin’ ‘er up” when asked by John Power about trade activity at the fort in Canada.
The deep ruts cut by the creaking wheels of the heavy “bull wagons” are fading now, although on a few places they can be found on the sod, overgrown with grass and giving no hint of the arduous traffic hazards they once presented. In most places along the trail they have been completely eradicated by the plow and today grain waves, where once the long teams of oxen toiled over the rock-strewn hills, and where the campfires glowed in the night’s chill.
So too are the memories of this history fading from the memories of the few old-timers who traveled the trail, and knew the freighters and Indians who used the route. One was a frail, little old lady of Cut Bank – Mrs. Ida May Ingram. She was born at the Ft. McLeod Agency and made many trips over the Whoop-Up Trail when she was a girl. Her father was Charles Thomas, her mother a woman of the Blackfeet.
Charles came to Montana in the year 1862, panned gold for a while at Bannock and later went north to take of “bull whacking” on the trail that had been opened into Canada. In a few years he had acquired his own oxen and wagons, and had established a store at what is now McLeod. Twice a year he made the trip to Fort Benton to buy stock for the store, each time on the southward journey carrying a load of furs, buffalo hides, and later, blankets bought from the Hudson Bay Company for trade in Montana.
Charles Thomas and Joseph Kipp built Fort Kipp, north of the confluence of the Old Man and Belly Rivers in what is now the province of Alberta. Joseph Kipp, the man who killed Calf Shirt, the almost legendary Indian of the Blood Reserve, was a life-long friend of the Thomas family. He was the son of James Kipp of the American Fur Company, and Earth Woman a member of the Mandan tribe.
Kipp also built Fort Stand Off on the Whoop-Up Trail on the Canadian side of the line. In this latter project Kipp was associated with John Healy, another notable of the fur-trading, rum-running days and friend of the Thomas family. These forts were built in defiance of the Hudson Bay Company and for a time, took most of the trade with the Blackfeet Indians from that great organization.
Fort Stand Off, or Standoff, was the first of the two forts built. The story of how it came about has become rather well known, but Mrs. Ingram’s version of it is as her father told it to her.
In the 1870’s the people of Fort Benton depended on the trade with the Indians and miners for their profits, and were doing very well at it when they could trade a very poor grade of whiskey for very valuable furs of beaver, wolf, deer, elk, and buffalo. Wolf fur was quite valuable, and many white men had taken to poisoning and hunting wolves for their pelts. They, as well as the Indians, insisted on whiskey as part of their pay for pelts, along with various trade articles.
Then in the midst of this flourishing trade, a United States Marshal was sent to Fort Benton, with instructions to stop the trading of whiskey to the Indians. No whiskey at all was to be shipped into the Indian country, and by Indian country it was meant all the territory around Fort Benton, and north to the Canadian line. Only there were no definite markings of the Canadian line at the time. It was vaguely known to be somewhere about the north fork of Milk river and close to Chief Mountain. South, the Indian country extended almost to Helena, but Helena was not in it.
The Blackfeet and Gros Ventres and Piegan Indians held a council, and decided to present their side of the question to Joe Kipp whom they trusted to fix things up for them so they could continue to trade for whiskey or else, they said, they would take their trade to the Hudson Bay company, who would furnish the whiskey they craved.
Kipp thought it over, and then put it up to Charles Thomas, with whom he had worked before back in the days when they panned for gold together. He and Thomas planned to go across the line and build a fort where the Marshal couldn’t touch them. Thomas was doubtful whether they could get their whiskey the hundred and fifty miles to the border without the marshal catching them. But Kipp had a scheme.
He rode to Helena and bought seventy-five cases of high-proof alcohol, had it re-cased in heavy wooden boxes, and delivered to the Missouri River bank, a few miles below Helena. The marshal, whose name was Harding, had followed Kipp to Helena and was keeping a close watch on him.
Kipp bound the cases with wire, lashed them together to make a raft, and started them down the river. Kipp hired a man named George Scott to ride his horse out of town to toll the marshal away, and he went with the raft, pushing it off sand bars, getting very wet, and in general having a most unpleasant time. The third day he arrived at the mouth of the Sun River, where Thomas was waiting for him with three four-horse teams and wagons, and two teamsters. Scott arrived with Kipp’s horse and agreed to join the outfit as cook. The whiskey was unloaded on the shore, loaded onto the wagons and they started north over the old Indian trail that was later known as the Sun River stage road.
A day or so later Kipp looked back and saw a lone horseman coming after them on the trail. He knew it was the marshal and decided to stand him off. When the marshal came up to the wagons he attempted to arrest Kipp, but Kipp very confidently told him that he was too late; that they had crossed the Canadian line just a few minutes before when they had crossed the Milk River.
The argument waxed hot for a few minutes, both trying to bluff and neither knowing just where the boundary was. Finally Harding, uncertain of his ground and having no authority in case Kipp was right about having crossed the line already, turned his horse and rode off toward Fort Benton. (There were five of the traders and only one of him). Later when the line was surveyed the spot where the argument had taken place was found to be half a mile south of the line.
Stay tuned for further adventures of the Whoop-Up Trail.