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Steamboats, Woodhawks and War on the

Upper Missouri River
Article in Montana: the magazine of western history June 2011

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STEAMBOATS,
WOODHAWKS,
VWAR
ON THE
UPPER MISSOURI RIVER
by Greg Gordon

Haynes Fnd. Coll., MHS Photograph Archives, Helena, H-342

Photographer F. Jay Haynes called this view of the steamboat Helena, taken in summer 1880,
Wooding Up in the Mountains. The piles of wood stacked on the shore, visible behind the pilots
house, illustrate the amount of wood necessary to fuel the steamboats that traveled between
St. Louis, Missouri, and the upper Missouri River. In the four decades that the Missouri served
as a primary transportation link, competition for the wooded bottomlands along the waterway
pitted woodhawksthe men who cut and sold wood to the steamboatsagainst the Assiniboine,
Blackfeet, Gros Ventre, Crow, and Lakota. Standing Elk, a Lakota, in 1862 noted that the whites
had, for a long time, been killing off the Indians buffalo and cutting down their timber. The time
had come, he said, to stop all intercourse with [whites] and drive them out of the country.

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MONTANA THE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN HISTORY

HE UPPER MISSOURI RIVER was a strange place to find a woodcutter. The country
seemed to be more sky than earth, and the earth was more like an endless sea of grass than
anything resembling a forest. This was a land where winter temperatures plummeted to forty
degrees below zero, where winds exceeded eighty miles an hour and could drive a person insane with
their relentless howling. Summer heat could top one hundred degrees in the shade, except there was
no shade. In July, the whole prairie was dry and yellow, the least motion, even of a wolf crossing it
raised the dust, the traveling German prince Maximilian of Wied wrote in 1833.1
Maximilian and his companion, artist Karl Bodmer,
had traveled up the Missouri to the confluence of the
Yellowstone River aboard the steamboat Yellow Stone.
The previous year, the Yellow Stone had become the
first steamboat to penetrate the upper Missouri River
country. Bringing fifteen hundred gallons of whiskey
and returning with thousands of beaver pelts and
bison robes, the Yellow Stone wedded the industrial
revolution to the fur trade.2 For the next four decades,
the Missouri River served as the gossamer thread
linking the northern plains frontier with the global
market. This linkage, however, depended upon a reliable energy source, and for steamboats, that meant
firewood to fuel the boilers to provide the steam to
power the giant paddle wheels.
Fortunately for the steamboat companies, along
much of its course, the Missouri wound a sinuous
path across a floodplain that supported groves of
cottonwood, ash, and oak. These bottomlands also
provided crucial habitat and winter refuge for bison,
deer, elk, turkey, and other wildlife that Native Americans depended upon for subsistence. These ribbons
of forests set into the Great Plains allowed both
people and animals to combine the advantages of
very different resources and habitats. Furthermore,
winter survival for Indians depended upon finding
shelter among the bottomlands. Army officer Richard
Dodge noted that a day which would be death on
the high Plains may scarcely be uncomfortably cold
in a thicket and that Indians, settlers, and animals all
fly to shelter at the first puff. Not surprisingly then,
it would only be a matter of time before the needs of
Native Americans and steamboats would clash over
diminishing resources.3
Even thirty years after Maximilian and Bodmer
recorded a battle between the Blackfeet and Assiniboines at the fur trade post Fort McKenzie, Ameri-

cans still barely understood the dynamic of the

shifting coalitions of native tribes in a landscape that
had been under contention for centuries. While the
United States laid claim to the region on the map, the
land itself was in de facto control of various tribes,
all jockeying for positions of power. The federal
government attempted to use treaties to define
boundaries between each tribe and establish territories while permitting the military to build forts
and roads through Indian-controlled land. Although
the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 designated the land
between the Musselshell and Yellowstone Rivers as
Assiniboine territory, this area was actually a contested
hunting ground of the Blackfeet, Gros Ventres, Crows,
and Lakotas as well as the Assiniboines. Whichever
tribe controlled the rich hunting ground of the upper
Missouri and Yellowstone also controlled the fur
trade.4 The fur trade, in turn, transformed the Missouri into a year-round production center, concentrating both whites and Indians along the narrow
river corridor.
In addition to shelter, the bottomlands provided
security for Indians and forage for their horses.
When camped on the open plains, Indians had
to travel farther and farther to find grass for their
horses, exposing themselves to attack and weather.
The drought cycles and harsh winters of the northern plains could devastate Indian horse herds as the
short grasses of the open plains lost half their protein
in winter. To compensate, tribes brought their horses
into the bottoms, where tall bunchgrasses produced
up to twenty times more volume per acre.5 Horses
could also eat cottonwood branches and seedlings,
which Indians routinely fed to their herds to help
them survive the winter. To increase cottonwood
regeneration, Indians cut the tops of the saplings,
which then sprouted more branches in the spring.
GREG GORDON|SUMMER 2011

31

Not only were horses a measure of wealth and

status, they had become the fundamental means of
procuring food, as well as bison robes, which netted increasingly desired trade items. By the 1850s,
Indians on the high plains averaged five to six horses
per person, with some bands ownership exceeding
fifteen horses per capita. Consequently, after several
decades, the large horse herds began having an impact
upon the bottomlands. One small camp wintering
over with just thirty-eight horses could consume all
the wood for six hundred yards in either direction,
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MONTANA THE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN HISTORY

Denver Public Library, Denver, Colorado, Z-3560

The Missouri Rivers floodplain

supported groves of cottonwood,
ash, and oak that provided
habitat and winter refuge for
bison, deer, elk, turkeys, and
other wildlife that Indians
depended on for sustenance.
Above, Sitting Bulls camp near
Standing Rock Agency sits on
a bench above the river, which
shows up as a thin silver ribbon
in the background. Between
the camp and the river lies the
fertile wooded bottomland. At
right is William de la Montagne
Carys Indians Killing Buffaloes
in the Missouri River (1874,
wood engraving, 9" x 14"),
a depiction of Indians hunting
bisonswimming, in canoes,
andin a bull boat.

both for cooking fires and forage. This abrasion of

resources was calamitous for plains Indians, writes
historian Elliott West.6 The most significant impact
to the bottomlands, however, came with the arrival
of the steamboats. Instead of going into the horses
mouths, cottonwood now went into the insatiable
maw of the steam boilers.
Indians saw the conversion of cottonwood into
steamboat fuel as directly threatening their very survival as well as their horse culture. James Morley,
traveling up the Missouri in 1862 aboard the steamboat

George Catlin, North American Indians, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1926), 2: plate 160

D. F. Barry, photographer, Denver Public Library, Denver, Colorado, B-773

By the steamboat era, horses, like those painted by George Catlin (above), had become the Indians primary means
ofprocuring food and bison robes as well as signifiers of wealth and status.

Spread Eagle, noted that much fallen cottonwood

lay about, having been cut by the Indians to subsist
their horses. Taking advantage of the opportunity,
the men on the steamboat spent two hours loading
the downed wood, which they cut up on board and
fed to the boilers.7 After the steamboats had passed
though in spring and summer, Indians returned to
find the bottomlands stripped of the timber they
needed to survive the winter. Not only did Indians
depend on cottonwood as forage for their horses,
they also relied on it as fuel for cooking and warmth.
Decades of depletion of the cottonwood groves by
both Indians and whites eventually hindered regeneration. This appears to be one of the factors that
eventually drove Indians to the agencies.
With the discovery of gold in Montana in 1862,
steamboat traffic skyrocketed, bringing hordes of
gold seekers and more than fifteen thousand tons of
freight, including mining equipment, sawmills, and
saddles along with staples like sugar, flour, coffee,
and most importantly, whiskey. The mining trade
soon eclipsed the Indian fur trade, at least in terms of
tonnage at Fort Benton. In addition to furs, the boats
now returned to St. Louis laden with gold dust.8 The

increased traffic during the 1860s not only meant even

more cottonwood consumed, it also led to increased
contact and conflict between Indians and whites. The
two factors were not unrelated.
By 1862, the Sioux regarded the steamboats as
an intrusion. When preeminent fur trader Charles
Chouteau and Indian agent A. S. Reed presented
annuities accompanied by a speech to several hundred warriors at Fort Pierre, they were stunned by the
response. The Indians refused to accept the goods
and stated that they, in fact, did not appreciate the
guardianship of the Great Father. The whites were
trespassers invading their country, they said, and
the time was close at hand when they would put
a stop to [white traffic] up and down the Missouri
River. Furthermore, Standing Elk, a Lakota, added,
the whites had, for a long time, been killing off the
Indians buffalo and cutting down their timber. The
time had come, he said, to stop all intercourse with
[whites] and drive them out of the country. He then
informed Chouteau that the trading days were over
and you may consider us your enemies.9 Sioux
attacks on steamboats did indeed increase dramatically over the next eight years.
GREG GORDON|SUMMER 2011

33

As a result of the negative consequences of an

increased American presence, both military and
civilian, Sioux belligerence soon pervaded the entire
region. In 1860, Little Elk, a Lakota, informed Lieutenant Henry Maynardier at Fort Berthold, We dont
want to see any white people or any steamboats,
because the goods the steamboats bring up make us
sick. A week later, 250 Lakota rushed Fort Union, less
than a hundred miles upstream, killing twenty-five
cows and setting fire to the lumberyard, outbuildings,
and two mackinaw boats. When defenders killed one
and wounded several others, the Indians withdrew.
At Fort Union, Edwin Denig reported that Hunkpapa
chief Little Bear threatened to burn the forts, forgo
the robe trade, and return to their primitive mode
of life. While Denig attributed the conflict to bad
council, the Indians themselves pointed to the
steamboats, which brought disease and whiskey and
depleted game populations and timber.10

Above the Niobrara River, the Missouri River corridor was little more than an ephemeral strand of American presence through vigorously defended Sioux
territory, which had recently expanded north and
west to encompass the entire region from the North
Platte to the Milk River. Although most of the Sioux
tribes rejected the white presence, the Assiniboines,
Gros Ventres, Arikaras, Mandans, Crows, and Blackfeet continued to engage in the fur trade. Fearful of the
Sioux, all but the Blackfeet sought protection from
the U.S. military. With the eruption of Red Clouds
War in 1866 as a result of the Fetterman fiasco, the
army proved incapable of providing even minimum
security for whites. When Colonel William Rankin
denied Fort Berthold Indian agent Mahlon Wilkinsons request for protection in the winter of 186667,
Wilkinson turned instead to the Assiniboines at Fort
Union for safety. As one observer noted, the soldiers
in all these forts on the river are kept penned up by the
Detail, D. F. Barry, photographer, MHS Photograph Archives, Helena, 955-147

Steamboat boilers burned large quantites of cottonwood as the boats traveled upriver in the spring and summer,
and groves were depleted when the Indians returned to winter along the river. The Rosebud, seen here in 1886 at
Dead Man Rapids, has piles of various lengths of wood on its top deck as well as stacks of wood on the first deck.

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MONTANA THE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN HISTORY

Haynes Fnd. Coll., MHS Photograph Archives, Helena, Stereo Coll. B.14

Haynes Fnd. Coll., MHS Photograph Archives, Helena, Stereo Coll. B.19

Photographers Bailey, Dix, & Mead took these two views in Sitting Bulls camp in 1882: a winter camp
among leafless trees and women transporting wood.

Indians like so many cattle. The situation had gotten

so hazardous that steamboat captains began armoring
their wheelhouses with sheet metal to fend off arrows
and bullets.11
With the Lakotas having effectively closed the
Bozeman Trail, the overland route to the Montana gold
mines, argonauts instead turned toward the Missouri.
Consequently, 1867 marked the peak year of steamboat
travel on the upper Missouri, when seventy steamboats and twenty-two hundred passengers journeyed
to Fort Benton. Such a high volume of traffic, both
in freight and passengers, led steamship owners to
take excessive risks. They pressed ships into service
that were unsuitable for the treacherous waters of the
upper Missouri and attempted to extend the shipping
season into late summer, well past the peak runoff.12
The river journey to Montana usually began at
St. Joseph, Missouri. Eager with anticipation, passengers crowded onto the steamboats. Although a
jovial crowd began the journey, they soon discovered,
why the Missouri River was called the Harlot, as it
changed beds so often. The deepest channel could
instantly switch direction, heading into a bank or a
sandbar, and sometimes water rushed over a sandbar,

creating a wave train that could swallow small boats.

High winds could kick up at any time and shove the
boats sideways or even push them back downstream.
One steamship, the Dora, lost both chimneys in a
windstorm and caught fire, which luckily was soon
extinguished. Shipwrecks and fires spelled an all-toocommon end to a journey. By 1895, the Missouri had
claimed 295 shipwrecks, the majority caused by running into submerged logs. Clearly, steamboat travel
on the upper Missouri was no picnic.13
Three themes pervade travelers accounts of
steamboat travel on the Missouri: the monotony of
the journey, the constant delays from getting stuck
on sandbars or loading fuel wood, and the profusion
of wildlife. Coming up behind the Imperial on the
Zephyr, Stephen Spitzley repeatedly penned in his
diary, Nothing of interest. We are making very slow
progress. He noted with frustration that it took his
steamboat seven days to travel from Fort Rice to Fort
Berthold when the Indians walked there in just two.
In a letter to his family, Danish immigrant Hans Peter
Koch wrote, Had I known that it would take this
long to go up to Montana, I never would have taken
this route.14
GREG GORDON|SUMMER 2011

35

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MONTANA THE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN HISTORY

W. Hook, photographer, MHS Photograph Archives, Helena, Stereo Coll.

Nearly daily, the journey was interrupted to procure fuel wood. Steamships consumed a prodigious
quantity of wood, twenty-five to thirty cords every
twenty-four hours. Below Sioux City, settlers, as well
as Indians, quickly capitalized on this situation and
established wood yards along the lower Missouri.
Mtis and Indian women ran most of these woodlots,
charging $7.50 per cord for green cottonwood and
$9.50 for hardwoodor up to $20, depending on the
desperation of the steamboat. Above St. Joseph, the
rich bottomlands of cottonwood, hickory, and oak
stretched out for a mile or more beyond the river. But
as the steamboats chugged upriver, high bluffs flanked
the forested bottomlands, the wood yards petered
out, and the steamboats had to rely on the crew and
passengers to get wood. On one such occasion, passenger Stephen Spitzler groused, Have to chop it
ourselves which delays us considerable. Those
who couldnt afford the three-hundred-dollar fare
for a cabin slept on the decks for half price and often
earned extra money as temporary woodhawks,
collecting fuel wood for the boat en route.15
Above the Niobrara River, however, the Sioux
would readily attack and drive off steamboats
attempting to load wood. When fuel was needed, the
woodchoppers leapt ashore and loaded as much as
they could as quickly as possible, leaving the large
pieces to be cut on board ship. To avoid detection
by Indians, they often loaded wood under cover of
darkness. Passenger Daniel Weston reported that
they night wooded twice near Cannonball River
where another boat had been driven off by Indians
while attempting to get wood. Another time, they
collected a fine lot of wood cut down by Indians to
browse their ponies.16
Despite the ever-present possibility of Indian
attack, here and there along the river some enterprising soul would set up a wood yard. Above Fort Union,
at the junction with the Yellowstone, fuel wood averaged fifteen dollars a cord, and a hardworking young
man could clear two hundred dollars from a single
steamboat. Many would-be gold seekers, weary of the
The number of steamboats traveling upriver skyrocketed
in 1862 with the discovery of gold in Montana. The
increase in steamboat traffic also meant much greater
demand for wood tofuel them. At left, freight sits on
thebanks of the Missouri at Fort Benton, the head of
navigation on the river.

GREG GORDON|SUMMER 2011

37

interminable journey and discouraged by the rumors

of poor mining prospects, thus aborted their expedition in favor a potentially profitable life along the river.
Others drifted in from the goldfields of Helena and
Virginia City in hopes of establishing trading posts.
Unfortunately for such woodhawks and traders,
the fur trade had also peaked and was in decline.
The sudden loss of government contracts in 1865
prompted Charles Chouteau, whose family had long
dominated the Missouri River fur trade, to close
out his business. Several new outfits rushed in to
fill the void, including Durfee and Peck, an upstart
company that established seven trading posts along
the Missouri, including Fort Buford and Fort Peck,
and employed about a hundred men, many of whom
actively hunted and trapped. The Indians considered
this an infringement upon their economic livelihood
and became exceedingly hostile.17
Fort Peck, at the junction of the Missouri and Milk
Rivers, was a highly desirable spot for both steamboats and Native Americans. Perched on a ledge
above the river, the post was ideally placed for rearwheel steamboats, which could dock up right at the
fort to load wood and furs. The confluence formed
a two-mile-wide valley filled with cottonwoods and

wild roses. This served as a crucial spot for loading

fuel wood for the long badland stretch upstream,
where the hills were entirely bare, looking like fresh
earth as thrown up on public works. The confluence
also sat on a bison migration route. When he passed
by the Milk in 1833, Maximilian commented on the
great numbers of bears, elks, deer and wolves on
the bank. Not coincidently, it also appealed to the
Gros Ventres and Assiniboines. Although the site
was favored by topography, Dufree and Peck could
not have chosen a worse place for safety as this was
the very epicenter of the contested zone of the 1860s.
With no federal military presence for the four hundred miles between Fort Buford and Camp Cooke
on the Judith River, woodhawks in this region placed
themselves at suicidal risk.18
Farther upstream, Fort Benton merchant
Thomas C. Power believed a city would be established at the mouth of the Musselshell River and dispatched George Clendenin to lay out a townsite in
1868. By the next winter, some fifty people had settled
in the area, nearly all of whom set up wood yards to
supply the steamboats. With the Gros Ventres and
Crows arriving to trade, during the summer of 1868
all was bustle and activity.19
Granville Stuart, artist, MHS Museum, Helena, 1968.43.01

Red Clouds War of 1866 effectively closed the overland route to the Montana goldfields, and MissouriRiver
steamboats became the primary means of transportation for the miners, delivering
twenty-two hundred passengers in 1867 to Fort Benton (above).

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MONTANA THE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN HISTORY

Courtesy Peter Rutledge Koch

W. H. McLeod Jr., Collection, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library,

University of Montana, Missoula, 88-0008

Spreading themselves up and down the river,

the woodhawks were a curious lot. Nearly all were
young, unmarried white males. Historian H. Duane
Hampton pegs their average age at thirty years and
notes that there were four women at the makeshift
settlement at the mouth of the Musselshell.20 Others,
such as former slaves and Mtis, who fit into neither
white society nor Indian, found they could make a
living, of a sort, by running a woodlot. White society
traveling up the river, however, disparaged woodhawks as degenerate, filthy, ignorant, shiftless, conniving, cheating extortionists. While a few were probably
sociopaths who regarded woodcutting as a means to
escape society, most woodhawks saw their work as
means to make a grubstake, a stopover on the path
to greater riches. Seeking cash and adventure, they
spent a season, rarely more, bucking firewood to feed
the insatiable appetite of the steamboats.
One such young man was Hans Peter Koch, a
young Danish immigrant who had traveled up the
Missouri to seek his fortune. When he arrived at the
Musselshell in August 1869, Koch encountered a
scene calculated to shock the nerves of any eastern
tenderfoot. Along the brink of the river bank, on both
sides of the landing, a row of stakes was planted, and
each stake carried a white, grinning Indians skull.
Off to the side stood Liver-eatin Johnson, who,
Koch observed, was leaning on a crutch, with one
leg bandaged, and the day being hot his entire dress
consisted in a scant, much shrunk, red undershirt,
reaching just below his hips. His matted hair and

Two young men who sought their

fortunes as woodhawks, Hans Peter
Koch (left, circa 1869) and Andrew
Hammond (right, circa 1880s), both
recorded attacks on woodcutters
during their time living on the upper
Missouri. As soon as the Indians
were discovered they went away
after exchanging a number of shots,
whether anyone was killed on either
side or not, Koch wrote.

bushy beard fluttered in the breeze, and his giant

frame and limbs, so freely exposed to view, formed an
exceedingly impressive and characteristic picture.21
Despite the grisly scene, the genteel Koch stayed
on at the Musselshell and began his eighteen-month
career as a woodhawk. Literate and well educated,
Koch also worked as George Clendenins bookkeeper
and clerk. Kochs detailed diary, along with his letters,
provides a rare and poignant insight into the life of a
woodcutter on the upper Missouri.22
Two years before Kochs arrival, another fortuneseeking young man, disheartened by the news that
he had arrived too late for the Montana gold rush,
disembarked at Fort Peck. Like Koch, Andrew Hammond was a relatively well educated immigrant,
looking to amass enough money by selling wood to
steamboats to get his start in the West. While cutting
wood, Andrew and his companions had pitched their
tents far from the relative safety of Fort Peck. A lone
Indian arrived, and thinking he posed little threat, the
woodcutters let him into the tent. Before they realized
what was happening, he had pulled out a tomahawk
that was concealed under his blanket and killed one of
the men. He then made a quick escape. Understandably, this put the woodcutters on guard the rest of the
season; they lived in constant fear of Indian attack
and never went anywhere without having one man
to protect the other. Even traveling between their
winter cabins, they carried guns, and no one left the
house a hundred yards without throwing a cartridge
into his rifle. The objective of the Indians seemed to
GREG GORDON|SUMMER 2011

39

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MONTANA THE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN HISTORY

they had a chance and annoyed the wolfers in every

possible way. The Crows would frequently steal the
wolfers horses and their belongings, forcing them to
walk back to the post, which could be dangerous on
the open plains where they were exposed to winter
blizzards. According to Peter Koch, the Sioux would
just as soon slay a wolfer as a woodcutter. A few years
after his woodcutter winter, he wrote, Since leaving
the place I have often wondered that we were not all
killed.26
The Sioux tribes had special contempt for the
woodhawks, whom they regarded as depleting a valuable resource. In his council with the Hunkpapa band,
Jesuit priest Father Pierre-Jean De Smet received an
earful of complaints. Black Moon justified his hostility toward whites, stating, They ruin our country;
they cut our timber with impunity. The Lakotas also
regarded the white intrusion as having both economic
and spiritual consequences. De Smet reported that
Sitting Bull opposed woodcutting along the Missouri
River as he was particularly fond of the little groves
of oak, and had a reverence for them.27
It was not only the Lakotas who were taking
up arms to protest the gold seekers and settlers. A
band of Blackfeet killed a dozen woodcutters on
the Marias River in 1865. Three years later, Shirley
Ashby found that his attempt to build a trading
post on the Marias River was met with aggressive
displeasure by the same band. Ashby blamed the
whiskey traders; the Indians, however, made their
grievances clear. Ashby reported, The
Indians would get drunk, jump on their
horses, with nothing but hair lariats, and
when they would arrive, they would say,
You miserably dirty white dog. You are here
with your cattle eating our grass, drinking our
water, and cutting our wood. We want you to
get out of here, or we will wipe you out.28

During the winter months when steamboats

could not run, woodhawks became wolf hunters,
collecting pelts to sell in the spring. They killed
bison and poisoned the carcasses with strychnine to kill the wolves lured to the bait. This
practice too directly affected Indians. They
watched their dogs die after eating the
poisoned bait and lost horses when they
ingested grass coated with strychnine that
the wolves had vomited up before dying.

Charles M. Russell, The Wolfer, MHS Museum, Helena, 1952.01.01

be a campaign of harassment in an effort to close the

Missouri to steamboat traffic. As soon as the Indians
were discovered they went away after exchanging a
number of shots, whether anyone was killed on either
side or not, Peter Koch reported in describing a typical encounter.23
With the passing of the last steamboat in September, the woodhawks scattered up and down the river
to eke out a living by cutting fuel wood, trading for
hides, and poisoning wolves for their pelts in anticipation of the arrival of steamboats the following spring,
when they could cash in their work. Isolated in small
clusters once the ice jammed the river and prevented
traffic, the men endured hard winters. They had little
to eat but catfish and game. Koch summed up his life
in his diary, twenty-five years old and poor as a rat.24
During the depths of winter, the woodhawks were
comparatively safe and forayed afield to obtain wolf
pelts that they could sell for three dollars apiece.
Working in pairs or small groups, the wolfers set out
for buffalo country but avoided known Indian hunting grounds. Upon discovering a herd of bison, and
taking care not to startle them, the wolfer would shoot
one, then dipping a porcupine quill in strychnine,
he would blow it into the veins of the dying animal.
The still-beating heart pumped the poison
throughout the body. A mile or so away, the
wolfers would kill another bison, repeating the
process until they had thirty or forty poisoned
carcasses in a great circle. Returning a few
days later, they stacked the frozen dead
wolves into a big pile to keep the magpies
from ruining the pelts, while awaiting
milder weather to skin them. Where
Indian presence might prove dangerous,
wolfers returned only in the spring to collect the dead wolves, sometimes getting
more than a hundred off a single bison.25
Even the Gros Ventres and Assiniboines, who were on friendly terms with
the traders, had little regard for the wolfers and their wanton destruction of bison.
Indians also witnessed their dogs being
poisoned by the bait. Even greater was the
loss of their horses when they ingested the
grass coated with strychnine that the wolves
had vomited up before dying. In retaliation,
the Indians cut up the wolf skins whenever

The open warfare sweeping across the western

plains led the United States to create a peace commission to negotiate safe transportation corridors to
the Montana mining camps. Having effectively shut
down the Bozeman Trail following the Fetterman
fiasco in 1866, the Sioux were able to negotiate from
a position of strength. With thousands of argonauts
traveling up and down the Missouri, Lakota leaders
were especially adamant in wanting the steamboat
traffic stopped. They recognized the upper Missouri
as a game-rich region and specifically blamed woodcutters for spoiling our game. At Fort Rice, ManThat-Goes-in-the-Middle told the commission, If

taken down by passengers who shot recklessly and

wildly, trying to kill a buffalo and the deck hands laid
down on deck trying to kill them with axes. All the
guns were emptied but not a buffalo did they get and
the river seemed to be a river of blood.31
Unloading fifty rounds, passengers aboard the
Zephyr actually managed to kill an old bull bison that
was mired in the mud. Not all were so bloodthirsty
though. When he killed a cow bison, A. H. Wilcox
wrote in his diary, I did not however feel very proud
of the exploit.32
While the Sioux protested the presence of the
whites, the Crows objected to the presence of both

If you want to make peace with me, you must move this
post...and stop the steamboats.
you want to make peace with me, you must move this
post this year and stop the steamboats. Bull Owl tied
white intrusion to game depletion, stating, We dont
like to have the whites traveling through our country
and bringing steamboats up our river. I hope you will
stop this, so that the buffalo will come back again.
Commissioner General John Sanborn dismissed
these concerns, telling the Indians, There are thousands of whites who would rush in there were it not
for the river posts. . . . The steamboats that run on the
river do not disturb your game.29
Passenger diaries, however, were filled with
accounts of steamboats plowing into herds of bison
as they swam across the river, the paddle wheels
often striking and wounding the animals. Most bison
deaths, however, came from gunshots. With the first
sighting of the great beasts, the crack of gunshots
and acrid smell of gunpowder punctuated the air.
Captains even used their steamboats to pin bison
herds against the riverbanks to prevent their escape
as the men unloaded their guns. Aboard the Imperial,
John Napton reported, the wheel was reversed, in
order to hold the boat amongst them, and everybody
commenced shooting with pistol, shot gun or rifle
and the buffalo swimming frantically in every direction to get away.30
A passenger on another steamboat wrote, We
saw herd after herd of buffalo; in one there must have
been several thousand, and the noise made by them
sounded like thunder in the distance. . . . [Guns] were

the gold seekers and the Lakotas, who had pushed

the Crows out of the Powder River and into the region
south of Missouri between the Judith and Musselshell
drainages. At the council at Fort Laramie, Chief Black
Foot told the Peace Commission, You would be mad
if we were to go into your country and kill all your
stock. I can not go anywhere without coming on
some of your people. . . . Your people going through
the country looking for gold are the ones who cause
us much trouble. Unlike the Sioux, Wolf Bow suggested, If any of your young men want to seek for
gold, let them travel on the river. He also implored
the United States to put the Sioux Indians in their
own country, and keep them from troubling us. The
Crow leaders perceived the war as being between the
whites and the Lakotas and attempted to negotiate for
their own interests.33
In 1868, the commissioners formally agreed to
close the Bozeman Trail and remove the forts in
exchange for peace on the Missouri. Woodcutting,
however, remained a sticking point for many Lakota
leaders who regarded the cottonwood bottomlands
as tribal property. Two Bears of the Lower Yankton
Sioux told the commission, I want to make peace,
yet I dont want to sell my land to the whites. . . . I
dont give permission to any white men to chop wood
and get hay in our country . . . tell these men to stop
chopping our wood. His counterpart representing
the Blackfeet Sioux, The Grass, added, I want us
to be paid for that wood which is being taken out of
GREG GORDON|SUMMER 2011

41

bottomlands than part of a negotiation strategy.

Near Fort Union, eight young men had established
a wood yard. Koch noted in his diary, A few weeks
later the boat on which they had come up the river
returned from Fort Benton just in time to bury their
bones. The remains of their cabins were still smoldering when the boat returned. James Wells, a woodhawk on the Musselshell, counted fifty-eight whites
killedmost picked off in small skirmishesbetween
the Yellowstone and Judith Rivers in the summer of
1868. Come fall, nearly all of the wood yards below
Fort Peck had been abandoned. According to Wells,
that December, three hundred Santee Sioux attacked
his party of twelve who were on their way to salvage a
sunken steamboat below Fort Peck. Four of their party
were killed, while the rest escaped only by taking
refuge in a coulee. Then in March, a much smaller
Sioux war party descended upon the Musselshell
settlement. In the ensuing melee, Jennie Smith, the
only white woman in the region, was caught in the
crossfire between the Indians on the hillside and
thewoodhawks at the stockade. After she went down
with a shot in the neck, one of the warriors ran up

Passengers filled their travel diaries with accounts of steamboats plowing into herds of bison as they swam across
the river and of on-deck shooters targeting the animals in the water. Charles M. Russell depicted such an encounter
in this illustration, Buffalo Holding Up Missouri River Steamboat.

42

MONTANA THE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN HISTORY

William W. Cheely and H. Percy Raban, Back-Trailing on the Old Frontier (Aurora, Colo., 1990), 21

our country. Both men insisted that the tribes should

choose who could cut wood, essentially granting a
concession to men who have lived in our country ten
years, that have Indian families whom they are supporting.34 Essentially, unlike Black Moon and Sitting
Bull, these men regarded the timber as an economic
asset over which they wanted control. But rather
than give up their nomadic life for woodcutting, they
instead wished to provide economic opportunity for
those who had married into the tribe. Indeed, Mtis
and other mixed-bloods ran many of the long-term
woodlots below the Yellowstone.
While insisting upon the safe passage of the
steamboats, General Sanborn agreed to take steps
to have your own people cut the wood on the river
for the boats, or so that you shall receive the benefit of
it.35 Congress, however, failed to ratify the Sanborn
agreements, and the Indians came to view this as yet
another empty promise.
Throughout the peace conferences, Indian attacks
on woodhawks continued unabated, although this
was undoubtedly more in response to the increased
white presence and the depletion of the cottonwood

Courtesy James S. Brust

At Fort Musselshell, shown here circa 1870, the Woodhawk War came to a head on May 8, 1869, when
Lakotasattacked a small party of woodcutters and met a much larger force than they had expected. Some forty
woodhawks armed with new breech-loading Henry rifles pursued them to, in the words of Cornelius Lee,
give them a lesson they would remember.

and scalped her. When he met her a year later, Koch

reported that she was apparently none the worse for
her adventure.36
The Woodhawk War, as it came to be called, came
to a head on May 8, 1869. Spring brought anticipation and apprehension to the woodcutters. With the
breakup of river ice, woodhawks looked for the arrival
of the first steamboat and the chance to sell the stock
of wolf hides and fuel wood they had amassed over
the winter. The warmer weather also signaled an
increase in Lakota attacks, and with the events of the
recent winter, the woodhawks, wolfers, and traders
who had been scattered throughout the country
began to congregate at the mouth of the Musselshell,
both for safety and commerce.37
Unaware of the unusually large gathering, the
Lakotas, as per their strategy of harassment, fired
upon a small party of wood gathers. According to eyewitness Cornelius Lee, dozens of woodhawks came
pouring out of the cabins and exchanged fire with
the Indians, who dodged behind the cottonwoods.
Peter Koch noted, Ordinarily this [standoff] would
have ended the affair, as the Sioux always left as soon
as they were discovered and the whites were usually
perfectly willing to let them do so, but this time was
different. Never before had so large a number of men
been together at Musselshell and this was too good
a chance to get even with the Indians. Some forty

woodhawks armed with new breech-loading Henry

rifles set out in pursuit of the Indians to give them a
lesson they would remember.38
Surprised by the show of force, the Indians
dropped into a coulee for protection. Thus ensconced,
they returned fire, keeping the woodhawks at bay. But
soon the weather turned foul, and after a few hours,
the long rain had rendered their flintlocks nearly
useless and destroyed the elasticity of their bows. At
the same time, four of the woodhawks managed to
cross the Musselshell, which was at the height of the
spring runoff, and work their way to a vantage point
opposite the coulee. They opened fire. Surrounded,
some Indians attempted to dig shelter with their
knives before they were cut down. Others leapt out of
the coulee and made a mad dash to escape. Cornelius
Lee described the end of the battle:
When the boys made the last rush upon the
Indians, several of them were still able to sit up,
but no questions were given or received. A rifle or
revolver placed along side of their head soon terminated their earthly career, and perchance before the
body was done quivering, the scalp was dangling at
the wampum of some desperate individual who was
anxious to preserve some trophy of the fight. John
Johnson set the example of mutilating by cutting off
the head of one that he declared was his meat and
GREG GORDON|SUMMER 2011

43

D. F. Barry, photographer, MHS Photograph Archives, Helena, 955-112

by cutting him open and taking a piece of the liver

to put a taste in his mouth.39

The skulls of the thirteen dead Indians soon

ended up on the stakes along the steamboat landing,
while the survivors escaped to rejoin the rest of their
tribe at Fort Peck. By their own account, thirty-three
Indians died as a result of the battle, either outright or
from wounds. Only two of the ninety-eight emerged
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MONTANA THE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN HISTORY

unscathed. On the other hand, the woodhawks had

lost one man; one was wounded. Although the Sioux
vowed eternal vengeance, other than a few small
skirmishes, that battle essentially marked the end of
the Woodhawk War.40
While technology proved decisive in this battle,
the Lakota Sioux remained masters of the country
and likely could have wiped out the woodhawks.
Despite their military prowess, however, events far

The waning of the Montana gold rush and the

completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869
effectively marked the end of the Woodhawk War as
river traffic plummeted. Even so, steamboats such as
the Far West continued to ply the Missouri for several
more years. The vessel is pictured here laden with
stacked wood. Famous for bringing the wounded from
the Little Bighorn to Fort Lincoln (920 miles in fifty-four
hours) in 1875, the Far West continued in service until it
sank inOctober1883.

beyond their control changed the dynamic on the

upper Missouri. The waning of the Montana gold
rush and the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 created a precipitous drop in steamboat
traffic, rendering profits from woodcutting negligible.
The next year, steamboat traffic plummeted to a mere
eight vessels, and over the next few years, Montanas
mineral production dropped to $4 million. Out of
the several hundred cords that Peter Koch and his

partner bucked during the winter of 1869, they sold

fewer than twenty-five. Economics, more than hostile Indians, drove the woodhawks off the Missouri.
Their abandoned cabins and woodlots continued to
feed the occasional steamboat for years to come.41
While many woodhawks lost their lives during
the Woodhawk War, Peter Koch, Andrew Hammond,
James Wells, Cornelius Lee, and Liver-eatin Johnson
all escaped from the Missouri quagmire. While Lee
disappeared from the historical record, Wells moved
to Fort Benton to work for Thomas Power. Johnson
took his reputation to Red Lodge, Montana, where he
was made sheriff. (In the 1970s, Johnson was reborn
when Robert Redford provided a new visage for him
as Jeremiah Johnson.) Peter Koch headed to Bozeman, where he eventually became an officer of the
First National Bank and cofounder of what is today
Montana State University. Andrew Hammond ended
up in Missoula, where he became the driving force
behind the Missoula Mercantile Company and the
Bonner Mill. Thus, at least two of Montana Territorys
leading citizens began their careers as woodhawks.
Later in life, Koch and Hammond reflected on
their time on the upper Missouri. In 1884, Koch could
afford a romantic memory. He wrote that, despite the
rude and repulsive features of life on the upper Missouri, so easy is it for man to relapse into barbarism
that even men of education and refinement become
infatuated with its untrammeled freedom and found
it difficult to tear themselves away after once becoming accustomed to it.42 Hammond, who went on to
establish one of the largest lumber companies on the
West Coast, took a more pragmatic lesson from the
Woodhawk War. Metaphorically, he often told his
managers, Never let an Indian in your tent, meaning
never take someone into your counsel who may not
be 100 percent on your side. Indeed, for the rest of
his life, Hammond drew almost exclusively upon his
relatives to compose his inner circle of managers.43
GREG GORDON|SUMMER 2011

45

Dan Dutro, photographer, MHS Photograph Archives, Helena, 955-134

The Woodhawk War on the upper Missouri can be seen as a microcosm of a worldwide phenomenon:
the perpetual struggle over natural resourcesand the Josephine, at the FortBenton levee in the 1880s
with its decks crowded with people and heavy with woodas its symbol.

Intertribal warfare had prevented the exploitation

of both bison and cottonwoods by excluding rival
tribes. The fur trade, however, transformed bison
into a commodity and congregated the various contending tribes along the Missouri River. The Montana gold rush then dramatically increased steamboat
traffic. The steamboats prodigious demand for fuel
wood, combined with the breakdown of intertribal
relations, turned both bison and cottonwoods into
an open-access resource available for the taking. The
Lakotas, in particular, loathed this white intrusion
and, seeking to establish their own control over the
region, attempted to close the Missouri River corridor as they had the Bozeman Trail and to reestablish
communal tenure over bison and cottonwoods.
Although the Woodhawk War was a short-lived
and relatively minor episode during the Indian wars of
the late nineteenth century, it was nonetheless highly
significant in that it illustrates that the long-drawn-out
conflict between Native Americans and white settlers
was less a clash of cultures or of opposing ideologies
than it was about control over and access to natural
resources. For the Indians, cottonwood provided
shelter and fuel wood for warmth and cooking and
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MONTANA THE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN HISTORY

was vital to the survival of their horses. For EuroAmericans, cottonwood provided the energy source
for the primary mode of transportation, thus providing the bedrock of the frontier economy.
As the statements made during the Peace Commission meetings made clear, many Indians readily
understood the economic value of cottonwood
and, rather than object to its use for steamboat fuel,
sought instead to assert their ownership over it, so
that the profits might better serve the needs of their
communities. Thus, instead of a historical footnote,
the Woodhawk War on the upper Missouri becomes
a microcosm of a worldwide phenomenonthe
perpetual struggle over natural resources.

Greg Gordon  received

his PhD from the University

of Montana and teaches in the Environmental Studies
program at Gonzaga University. He is the author of
Landscape of Desire: Identity and Nature in Utahs
Canyon Country (Utah State University Press, 2003)
and Money Does Grow on Trees: A. B. Hammond and
the Age of the Lumber Baron, which will be published
by the University of Oklahoma Press next year.

Steamboats, Woodhawks, and

War on the Upper Missouri River
1. Maximilian zu Wied, Travels in the
Interior of North America 18321834, ed.
Reuben Gold Thwaites, vol. 23 (Cleveland, Ohio, 1906), 47.
2. Ibid.; http://steamboattimes.com;
http://www.nal.usda.gov/s peccoll/
images1/bodmer.html#expedition,
accessed Feb. 17, 2011.
3. Elliott West, The Contested Plains:
Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to
Colorado (Lawrence, Kans., 1998), 36, 62;
Richard Irving Dodge, Our Wild Indians:
Thirty-Three Years Personal Experience
among the Red Men of the Great West
(Hartford, Conn., 1884), 503.
4. Dan Flores, Wars over Buffalo:
Stories vs. Stories on the Northern
Plains, in Native Americans and the
Environment: Perspectives on the Ecological Indian, eds. Michael Harkin and
David Rich Lewis (Lincoln, Nebr., 2007),
15372; Richard White, Its Your Misfortune and None of My Own (Norman,
Okla., 1991), 94.
5. James Sherow, Workings of the
Geodialectic: High Plains Indians and
Their Horses in the Region of the
Arkansas River Valley, 18001870, Environmental History Review, 16 (Summer
1992), 6184.
6. West, Contested Plains, 89; Montana
Historical Society, Not in Precious Metals
Alone: A Manuscript History of Montana
(Helena, Mont., 1976), 13.
7. James Henry Morley diary, 1862
1865, p. 5, SC 533, Montana Historical
Society Research Center, Helena (here
after MHS).
8. William Lass, A History of Steamboating on the Upper Missouri River (Lincoln, Nebr., 1962), 39; Joel Overholser,
Fort Benton: Worlds Innermost Port (Fort
Benton, Mont., 1987), 171, 64, 56, 149.
9. The Indian response to Chouteau
and Reed is recorded in A. H. Wilcox,
Up the Missouri River to Montana in
the Spring of 1862, p. 5, SC 981, MHS.
10. William Raynolds, Report on the
Exploration of the Yellowstone River,
40th Cong., 2nd sess., S. Exec. Doc. 77,
148; Barton Barbour, Fort Union and
the Upper Missouri Fur Trade (Norman,
Okla., 2001), 212; Edwin Thompson
Denig, Five Indian Tribes of the Upper
Missouri: Sioux, Arickaras, Assiniboines,
Crees, Crows (Norman, Okla., 1985), 27.
11. Barbour, Fort Union, 215; Dennis Smith, Fort Peck Agency Assiniboines, Upper Yanktonais, Hunkpapas,
Sissetons, and Wahpetons: A Cultural
History to 1888 (PhD diss., University
of Nebraska, 2001), 43; Lass, History
of Steamboating, 48. Quote from Paul
Phillips, ed., Upham Letters from the
Upper Missouri, 1865, by Hiram D.

Upham, Sources of Northwest History, 19

(1933), 4.
12. Michael M. Casler, Steamboats
of the Fort Union Fur Trade: An Illustrated Listing of Steamboats on the Upper
Missouri River, 18311867 (Williston,
N.D., 1999), 26; John Lepley, Birthplace
of Montana: A History of Ft. Benton
(Missoula, Mont., 1999); Overholser, Fort
Benton, 152.
13. Reminiscence, pp. 35, Shirley
Carter Ashby Papers, SC 283, MHS;
Hiram Martin Chittenden, History of
Early Steamboat Navigation on the Missouri River: Life and Adventures of Joseph
La Barge, vol. 2 (New York, 1903), 421,
438.
14. Stephen Spitzley, 1867 diary,
pp. 36, SC 771, MHS; Hans Peter G.
Koch, 18691870 diary, SC 950, MHS.
15. Spitzley diary, 12; Ashby reminiscence, 2; Lass, History of Steamboating,
13. For more on the wood supplied for
steamboats on the lower Missouri, see
David Schob, Woodhawks & Cordwood: Steamboat Fuel on the Ohio and
Mississippi Rivers, 18201860, Journal
of Forest History, 21 (July 1977), 12432.
16. Daniel Weston, 1866 diary, pp. 36,
SC 282, MHS; Wilcox, Up the Missouri
River, 1; Spitzley diary, 10.
17. Lass, History of Steamboating, 42;
Leavenworth (Kans.) Daily Conservative,
May 8, 1868.
18. Weston diary, 14; quote from
Morley diary, p. 13; Maximilian, Travels,
23:185; Smith, Fort Peck, 108; Helena
(Mont.) Weekly Herald, Sept. 19, 1867.
19. James Bradley, Account of the
attempts to build a town at the mouth of
the Musselshell River, Contributions to
the Historical Society of Montana, vol. 2
(1896), 30413.
20. H. D. Hampton, ed., Life at the
Mouth of the Musselshell: Journal of
Cornelius M. Lee, 18681874, unpublished manuscript, 2009, copy in authors
possession and in the collections of the
Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library,
University of Montana, Missoula.
21. Koch diary, 10.
22. For more on Peter Koch, see Kim
Allen Scott, ed., Splendid on a Large
Scale: The Writings of Hans Peter Gyllem
bourgh Koch, Montana Territory, 1869
1874 (Helena, Mont., 2010).
23. George B. McLeod, The Story
of the Hammond Lumber Company,
oral history, p. 3, Forest History Society,
Durham, North Carolina; Scott, Splendid
on a Large Scale, 359.
24. Paul Phillips, ed., Journal of Peter
Koch 1869 and 1870, Sources of Northwest History, 5 (1929), 14.
25. Ibid., 2021; Francis Marion Smith
reminiscence, 18671874, SC 2254, MHS.
26. Dan Flores, Caprock Canyonlands:

Journeys into the Heart of the Southern

Plains (Austin, Tex., 1990), 59; Koch
diary, 2022.
27. Two Bears, Council of the Indian
Peace Commission with the various
bands of Sioux Indians at Fort Rice, in
Papers Relating to Talks and Councils
Held with the Indians in Dakota and
Montana Territories in the Years 1866
1869 (Washington, D.C., 1910), 11011.
28. Ashby reminiscence, 56.
29. Two Bears, Council of the Indian
Peace Commission, 102, 97, 103.
30. Weston diary, 13; John Napton,
My Trip on the Imperial in 1867, SC
561, MHS.
31. Matilda Senieur, Bismarck to Fort
Benton by Steamboat in the Year 1869,
Montana The Magazine of History, 2
(April 1952), 5559.
32. Spitzley diary, 8; Wilcox, Up the
Missouri River, 7.
33. Proceedings of Council with the
Crow Indians and Others at Fort Laramie,
November 12, 1867, in Papers Relating to
Talks and Councils, 6971.
34. Council of the Indian Peace Commissions on Board Steamer Agnes, in
Papers Relating to Talks and Councils,
106.
35. Ibid., 103.
36. Koch diary, 8, 24; James A. Wells,
First connected account of the warfare waged by the Sioux Indians against
wood-choppers, Missouri River between
Ft. Buford and Ft. Benton 18661870,
pp. 26, SC 978, MHS; Hampton, Life
at the Mouth of the Musselshell, 4950;
Scott, Splendid on a Large Scale, 364.
37. Koch diary, 10.
38. Hans Peter Koch, Life at Muscle
shell in 1869 and 1870, Contributions
to the Historical Society of Montana,
vol.2 (1896), 292303. Kochs account is
reprinted in Scott, Splendid on a Large
Scale, 35264.
39. Hampton, Life at the Mouth of
the Musselshell, 54. Lees eyewitness
account is corroborated by Koch, who
arrived a few months after the event and
recorded a more detailed account, presumably from Lee, Wells, and others.
40. Ibid., 280.
41. Charles Larpenteur, Forty Years a
Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: The
Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur,
18331872, ed. Elliot Coues (Minneapolis,
Minn., 1962), 389; Barbour, Fort Union,
228; Lass, History of Steamboating, 39,
62; Koch diary, 24.
42. Koch diary, 25.
43. McLeod, Story of the Hammond
Lumber Company, 3.

GREG GORDON|SUMMER 2011

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