Marvin Schwend is an Old-timer in these parts, his family owns and operated a large ranch in the Pryor Mountains, so naturally he took an interest when an old pioneer cabin on top of one of the mountains was to be burned down. He conjured up a conversation among the long dead pioneers and this is the article as it appeared in a local paper in 1988. It was a little difficult for me to understand, since I am not familiar with all those cowboy expressions, if you are, skip right ahead to the story, I'll explain the expression a bit for the rest of us. I didn't know that cattlemen don't like sheepmen and vice versa. To rimrock animals means to let them run off a cliff to their death. A latch string was used as a door lock. Shadow lands is the land of the dead. Liver Eatin' Johnston used to be the sheriff in Red Lodge who ruled without a gun. Meeteetse is a trail from Red Lodge to Wyoming. "Ceding" is moving the boundary of the Crow reservation back. Absarokee is a town south of Columbus, about 30 miles NW of Red Lodge. A travois are two poles pulled by a horse with a blanket stretched in between to carry loads. A "freighter" is not a ship as I thought; it is a man running a freight coach as opposed to a stage coach. Chaps are protecting your pants as your ride through the brush, razing means kidding and brass are top bananas (now I wonder if my translation needs translating). Here some more photos I took on my trip out the property which is for sale.
Click on any photo to see it full size (it will open a new browser)
"The Latch String is always out" at Bainbridge Cabin
by Marvin Schwend
I had the honor of attending a meeting of distinguished Pryor Mountain area citizens to discuss the United States Forest Service's decision to burn or lock-up Bainbridge cabin.
"All the people," as Chief Plenty Coups, chief of the Crows, would have said: "have crossed the slippery log to the shadow lands."
There were groups of sheepmen talking to cattlemen. I sensed many stories floating around, of the rough times and the good. All having long past forgotten their differences, leaving behind their legacy.
Some cowboys were reminiscing about when they trailed a herd of cattle from the mountain to Liver Eatin' Johnston at Meeteetse. They wondered what ever happened to the 'ole boys' who rimrocked a herd of cattle off the Big Horn Canyon, since they had altered the brands and couldn't sell them with the law closing in. They recalled several cowboys rimrocking a band of sheep. Why? When Pryor is sliced with deep limestone cliffs and canyons and sheep not where they were suppose to be? It just seemed the right thing to do.
1 heard one group talking about the grand sight of the last big Indian move, when after 1882 the reservation ceded back all the land from Big Timber to the present boundary for $986,000. Absarokee was the Crow Agency then. All the tribes that had settled around the Agency put their possessions on travois and headed for Pryor. The Indians coming up old Bridger Canyon and heading south down Pallor Gap was quite a sight. Bridger Canyon was later called "The Yellowstone Trail," which was the route tourists took to get to Cody and to the Yellowstone Park. In years past advertisements of drugs, haircuts, shaves and livery stables could still be seen painted on the rocks in the canyon wall. Leftovers of the "Tourist Trade."
Jim Bridger was razing Till Graham, (a freighter in 1880, who freighted from Billings to Meeteetse) Jack Hash, (stage driver from Toluca to Thermopolis in the 1890's) and even the Burlington and Quincy Railroad brass, (put in the line from Toluca to Cody in 1901) that they couldn't have done what they did if he hadn't blazed the trail earlier for them. I believe I heard Jim say he brought a gap with him up from Salt Lake to use it just for Pryor Gap (which is an opening between the mountains used as a trade route and later for the rail road).
Allen Graham started the meeting saying, -1 was born in 1809, in I 895 they laid me down in the Bowler Cemetery; an almost forgotten resting place of 40 plus pioneers. A western cemetery covered with sage and cactus and a big 'old rattler' guarding the premises and retreating down into one of several prairie dog holes in the graves.
He said, "My wife Julie (Clark) is there also, she being a direct descendent of Lewis Clark of Lewis and Clark expedition." He said he was aware of the forest service management plan of October 1986 Chapter two management direction, "Goal of cultural resource management is to maintain and enhance historical and prehistorical cultural resource values." Till Graham spoke up and said, "If that is the case how come there was mention of burning it?"
Till and Joseph Harvey Graham came to Montana in 1879 before their parents. They freighted with two teams of oxen until the animals starved to death at Forty Mile while on the Little Big Horn. Then they started using mules. Since they came from Missouri they knew the mule skinner tricks. I heard them tell about going by the Custer Battle of 1878 before the dead had been buried. They said, "We squatted on most of upper Sage Creek and on Bowler Flats. Not one of our structures remain to perpetrate what we contributed to our fellow man."
Ada "Ma" Brown said, "I don't think the forest service really planned to burn since a survey started this year, 1988, on 700 plus sites on Forest Service land to evaluate FS owned buildings for eligibility to the National Register of Historic Places (Rl-88-12) and costing the public over $350,000 for the survey, includes the Bainbridge cabin as well as Bents Line Cabin built in 1892 and is now the Ranger Station. It also includes the green guard shack (1940)."
Toots, Ada's son, a good man but tough, said: "if it's burned, then you don't have to spend the time evaluating it, do you?"
Toots grew up tough cause his folks raised him that way. Prior to 1895 his folks brought him as a baby from California where they had settled, just coming from Wisconsin. After arriving at the ceded strip Cyrus, Toots' father freighted on the Blue Water Freight Route for a while, then headed on to Canada, leaving Ada and Toots behind.
Toots was 16 in 1910 when he and Mike Rote got in a skirmish with some Indians they believed to be stealing horses. Well, it ended with two dead, one wounded, and Mike and Toots to do a little time in Leavenworth Prison.
George Bainbridge spoke up and said, "The Korand Survey of 1983 recommended our cabin to be preserved or nominated to the National Register."
George did most of the hard work since his sister, Mary, was crippled and had a wooden foot. Billy, his brother, also was crippled. Mary liked to let people know she had Royal blood.
"Well," George said, he was up there on his mountain before the USFS came, which was around 1906. He left to spend some time in the Navy. Upon returning he found a "foreigner" occupying his land, he was going to prove up on. George made it clear if he (the stranger) stuck around there was going to be a whippin'.
George won out and eventually got it filed on. He tried to raise the feed for 87 cattle and 40 horses. However, the 7,900 feet elevation proved all he could use the homestead for was pasture. In the early twenties he mortgaged it to the United States National Bank and lost the property. The bank resold it.
Jack Bowler a soldier of the 7th calvary, settled on the flat in 1892 and started a freight station. He moved in 1901 to accommodate the CB&Q Railroad and again after the railroad was torn up. He even got the flat named after him.
He spoke up, telling of a Boston writer, David Harvey, who recommended Bainbridge cabin for the National Register in 1979. Harvey also recommended Bowler's own store, "had not some thoughtless, enterprising, individual corporation decided to burn it down."
Bert and Wallace Bent were cowboying for the O-Z & WL cow outfits in 1884 and settled on Pryor
in 1893.
Wallace served five sessions on the Montana State Legislature. Later they sold their holdings to the Indrelands.
They wanted to know the policy of the Forest Service: "Seems funny, first they spend hundreds of thousands to build a road to the ice cave, then close it to the public. Spend money to put curbs and toilets at Dryhead Overlook, then tear it all out. Then federal dollars are spent financing three or four surveys and such as Bainbridge Cabin recommended for the National Register and still mention destroying it."
Tony Garcia "Mexican Tony," spoke up and said he had heard of this right brain, left brain thing and maybe that was the problem. Our bureaucratic red tape and different departments don't know what is happening all the time. Tony came up from Texas with a wagon train. Indians annihilated them all with Tony the sole survivor. His mutilated wife and baby made Tony vow to kill every Indian he saw. Finally after several years he gave up and settled on the ceded strip in 1893.It may have been Tony who conducted the tannery up by the Cheese factory since he raised some angora goats, along with sheep. The goats he sold for angora chaps.
Thomas Lazor, who lived on Sage Creek, felt the cabin should be retained for future generations. He said, "Our generation should leave something for future generations to appreciate." He said, "I don't know the importance of my trespass of some cattle and hogs running at will on FS lands May 1,1924, but it's recorded, as well as most of the early day settlers on the mountain at one time or another for trespass (NA Seattle, 94, Custer N.F. 60-Are 1194). A preserved piece of what we accomplished would do us more justice."
Bessie Tillet was there from the Dry Head country which she called "The country God forgot." Carolyn Lockhart rode over with her from her Dryhead ranch. She was a writer from the Boston Herald covering Buffalo Bill's episodes. She was a story by herself.
Hank Lane another Dryhead resident and also a bachelor, claimed he had 99 girlfriends and when he found the 100th he would get married. You could tell Hank was one of the last of the old time cowboys cause when he put on his pants they never came off 'til next year. With his Swedish accent, he punctuated his sentences with "I wheel be gaud damn." Hank, like many early folks, came to the area cowboying for the large cow outfits. In his case it was for E.L. Dane who had bought part of Frank Heinrich's antler outfit, which in 1887 had massive leases on the Crow Reservation.
Frank was sitting at a table visiting with his brother-in-law George Tschirgi, along with Bill Greenough and Sappy Jean McDowell, his foremen, who settled in this part of the country.
Harry Snyder, who had 25 bands of sheep on the mountain, delivered supplies out of Sayder Commissary situated on top of the mountain and on reservation land. He was jabbing them about sheep but they said, they still didn't like them.
Others who I saw in the crowd were:
Charlie Lufkin, who helped buld Fort Custer. His hewing ax is in the little museum at Meeteetse. Strakey Teepees, first cowboy to conquer the unridden Belgrade Bull. Tom Rule who trailed a herd of horses from Oregon to Red Lodge. Ruby Peaplow who loved to walk the mountain and enjoyed nature, especially on a moonlit night because she said, "You get closer to nature then."
Pop Adams was there and Jordan Bean, you could still see his scar where he'd been scalped down in Utah. Bronk Savage who after a roundup was having a little cowboy fun at Miles City. He roped the smoke stack of a train and tied hard and fast. The life of him and his horse was in the balance, but luck had it and all he got was a broken hip; the reason he always limped
Clad Yost, another cowboy turned homesteader was there; Clab Young, Texas gunfighter; Teton Jackson made his last ride up Pryor before being captured in 1886 in the Big Horns; Hough Kelsey, who probably befriended many of the outlaw boys before his own cabin disintegrated back to the earth. Butch Cassidy's name was carved on the door jam.
The Schwend boys, Claud and Ed who came to Montana when it was still a territory, and had a sawmill going by 1901 in the Pryors. The list of people who helped settle the area is endless and most of those I mentioned came to Montana when it was still a territory. All of them had cabins or camps on the mountain and most all are now gone. When they lived, white civilization was closing in on this wild land, land the Indians knew was God's country. They traveled to the high lofty cloud covered peaks to speak to their God.
Here we have a hearty pioneer who struggled for his place in life. Everyone mentioned earlier knew of the Bainbridge cabin and most of them had dinner there since the latch string was always out and still is. They also thought anyone who took the time and effort to do a little repair should be highly commended.
My family Shirley, Ty, Chad and Kimberly, having spent many nights at different cabins on the Pryors, agree with the following:
If you use your imagination on a starlit night looking out over the Big Horn Basin from the Bainbridge Cabin, you might still smell sweaty horse flesh, sweaty leather, a newly built cabin with fresh peeled logs and hear the creak of wood, steel and leather.
Most of the stories told around the campfire are lost to the wind. But you can for a time, slip out of our fast-paced ride, and slip into their world, leaving out their problems they thought were insurmountable, and truly get with yourself, nature and God.
(Editor's Note-Marvin Schwend's ancestors settled in the Pryor Mountains and have been instrumental in preserving the history of the Pryor Mountain area for many years. Marvin was mentioned in 1988 for assisting Daniel V.Vickorek in his book "Montana's Homestead Era" published by Montana Magazine.)
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