RIVER
OF GHOSTS
The
American Wilderness
The
bow of my solo canoe slices the chocolate water like
a sharp knife, sending ripples purling gently toward
the shore. Kneeling in the center of the boat, I feel
the Missouri River grab the hull and pull me swiftly
towards a rough country of shattered cliffs and badlands.
Deep fractured coulees snake up into the high bluffs
and jumbled hills beyond the river banks: the Missouri
Breaks. The landscape is a maze of fissures, from
the air it must look like the spider web cracks of
a smashed windshield.
From Great Falls east toward the badlands of North
Dakota, the Missouri cuts a deep, rugged gorge across
the Montana high plains. Here, steep, eroded cliffs
gouged by the river plummet a thousand feet from
the canyon rim, revealing ten million years of geologic
history. In places, epochs of wind and rain have
washed away the sediments, exposing massive rock
crags and fantastic castles of dazzling white sandstone
looming high above the river. The labyrinth of side
canyons and coulees are rich in wildlife, including
bighorn sheep and big bodied mule deer bucks with
broad sweeping racks. In the sky, bald and golden
eagles ride the thermals, while white pelicans skim
the river surface in perfect flight formation….
One afternoon we paddle up a creek flowing in from
the north. A gentle ridge leads to the skyline, and
with a couple of hours of sunlight remaining, we take
a break from canoeing and hike up to the canyon rim.
Picking our way through prickly pear cactus and sagebrush,
we climb a couple of hundred feet up on the cliffs.
From up here the Missouri looks like a giant snake,
slithering across sere badlands towards the horizon.
Off in the distance a mountain range -the Bears Paw--
rises above a vast stretch of dry empty plains.
As we hike along the rim, we learn we aren't the first
to visit this barren ridge. At first we see only vast
distance and bleak emptiness, but when we look closer,
dozens of stone rings appear lying undisturbed in
the grass, scattered across the bluff. In the center
of some there is a depression scooped out of the dry
soil. The stones were used to hold down the buffalo
robes that covered tipis; the depressions are fire
pits in the center of the lodges. We're walking through
an Indian encampment that has rested here undisturbed
for over a century.
Descending to the river and camp, I linger in a stone
circle sitting off by itself at the tip of a long,
narrow ridge. This ring is a hundred feet below the
others, out of sight of the main Indian camp, but
with a good overview of the creek and river valleys
below. I imagine a sentry keeping watch on the creek
and the river from here. Or perhaps this was a special
ceremonial site. In any event, it's a peaceful spot
with a tremendous view, and just as I'm about to
get up and wander back down to the cottonwood trees
lining the river, six deer emerge from a narrow gulch
directly below. They walk through the sage to the
trees in single file and disappear….
Back at the river, we get underway, battling a fierce
headwind through the White Cliffs. The miles slip
under our hulls until, late that afternoon, we reach
a broad bend with a sagebrush bench sweeping back
up into the treeless Breaks. A lonesome weathered
cabin sits in the middle of the empty windswept plain.
There was once a homestead here, at this desolate
spot in the middle of the Great American Desert. Who
lived here? we wonder, and what brought them to this
particular place?
In 1909 the Homestead Act was enlarged, allowing
people to file on 320 acres, double the original
allotment. The expanded act touched off Montana's
homestead boom, and in the years just prior to World
War One and continuing through the 1920's, thousands
who had never handled a plow, nor seen the hind quarters
of a horse, flocked to Montana in search of their
agrarian dreams. They envisioned Montana's high plains
as a Garden of Eden, a breadbasket waiting for the
plow to unleash its riches. Today all that remains
are the weathered and worn cabins. Poor soils, brutal
cold, extreme heat, hail, hoppers, and drought sent
the homesteaders reeling in defeat. At the end of
the 20th century, the river is lonelier than it has
been since Lewis & Clark
passed through.
The next day we spot a ranch house on the right bank,
the first occupied dwelling we've seen in days. We
pull over, then stop to look around. Vintage cars
share a pasture with tractors, combines, and harvesting
machines dating from the turn of the century to modern
times. The massive rolling irrigation system is disconnected.
The fences are down and the gates are open. It's spring
planting season but there are no green shoots rising
from the fields. The windows in the house are intact,
but the shades are drawn.
Dan knocks on the door. Silence. We look at each
other: Okay, now what? I turn the handle and the
door opens. "Hello!" I shout. But there's
nobody home, and whoever lived here packed up and
left in a hurry. There are still clothes in the closets,
cans and boxes of food in the cabinets, empty bottles
on the tables, old stubbed out cigarettes in the
ashtrays.
I examine a pile of magazines in the living room and
some scattered letters in the bedroom. The most recent
are dated 1983. That's when whoever lived here finally
went bust. We leave everything as we found it, shut
the door, and head back to the canoes. At another
abandoned ranch downstream the scene is repeated,
except this time the newspapers and magazines date
from 1949. A rusting Chevy waits patiently out front,
a tractor sits under the sun where it was left on
that last sad day. But there's no one here to turn
the key --no one but the ghosts watching us from the
upstairs window. Here, the dream of Eden just didn't
work out.
Late in the afternoon of day 6, near the mouth of
the Judith River, we spot a lone ranch set back a
half mile from the river. Green irrigated hayfields
suggest this ranch has not been abandoned to the ghosts.
While I set up camp Dan hikes off to see if anyone's
home. Sometime later I hear the growl of a pickup
truck in low gear, and soon I'm shaking the enormous
gnarled hand of Jerry Halter, the son of a homesteader
and a man who has worked his own place here in the
Judith country for over fifty years.
On the far side of seventy, a World War Two veteran
who fought in the Pacific, Jerry looks like the Marlboro
Man in his later years. With sun-creased brow, flowing
white mustache, and bowlegged walk, he personifies
this rugged landscape. There's a rifle on the dashboard
of the truck and a whiskey bottle under the seat.
He ushers us into the beat-up GMC and bounces us over
the sagebrush plain to the ranch, where he tells us
to make ourselves at home.
Sitting under the watchful gaze of a dozen deer and
elk heads, we talk through the night. Jerry spins
stories of the early days at Judith Landing, of outlaws
and Indians, Lewis & Clark, steamboats and ranches.
He holds us spellbound late into the night.
Of all the crossroads on the northern Plains, the
mouth of the Judith was probably the most significant.
Judith Landing was the site of important peace conferences
between the Plains Indians and American envoys in
1846 and again in 1855. The army maintained a post
here, and a battle was fought with the Sioux in 1868.
A major Blackfeet war trail led through here south
to Crow country.
As we sip another cup of strong coffee, Jerry shows
us a collection of artifacts he's found around the
ranch -gun barrels, horseshoes, and a "running
iron" used by rustlers to change cattle and horse
brands. "If you were found carrying one of these,"
says Jerry, passing the iron ring to me, "you
were hanged on the spot."
The next morning I help Jerry load some cattle into
a trailer, then we head our separate ways -Jerry
to auction in Great Falls, Dan and I downstream through
the most rugged section of the journey, the region
the early French trappers called "Les Mauvaises
Terres," --the Bad Lands.
"The Missouri was a devil of a river;" wrote
A.B. Guthrie in The Big Sky, "it was a rolling
wall …it was no river at all but a great loose
water that leaped from the mountains and tore through
the plains, wild to get to the sea."
And it still is. Two days later, as we paddle through
the Bad Lands, the river pushes with an intensity
we haven't felt before, and a strong upstream wind
blows fiercely, creating big choppy waves that threaten
to spill over our sides and swamp the boats….
Of all the sights we've seen on the river, of all
the places where people's dreams unfolded or were
crushed by forces beyond their control, the most poignant
is the battlefield at Cow Island Landing where Chief
Joseph and the Nez Perce crossed the river on their
tragic 1,200 mile flight from Oregon to Canada in
1877.
After more than four months of fighting a defensive
campaign, the fugitive Nez Perce reached Cow Island
on September 23, 1877. Here, the beleaguered Indians
found 50 tons of freight and supplies at the steamboat
landing guarded by a detachment of U.S. soldiers.
After offering to purchase supplies and being refused,
the Nez Perce attacked. There was fierce fighting
in the rocks and bluffs as the soldiers dug in and
the Indians charged. While the soldiers were pinned
down in their rifle pits, the Nez Perce took what
they could carry and burned the rest.
Just two weeks later, Chief Joseph and most of the
Nez Perce (a handful snuck across the border to join
Sitting Bull's Sioux in exile) were captured by General
Nelson Miles just north of the Bears Paw Mountains,
a mere 45 miles from the Canadian border and freedom.
On October 5th, 1877, Joseph handed his rifle to
Miles and said: "Hear me my chiefs. I am tired;
my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now
stands, I will fight no more forever."
Dan and I walk the battlefield at Cow Island and imagine
the Nez Perce coming over the ridge, riding down the
coulee and into the river canyon. Across the years
we can sense their desperation, and the fear of the
blue clad soldiers as the shots rained down upon them
from the rocks above. Suddenly, as we walk along,
we find deep, symmetrical depressions in the earth.
Grown in now but unmistakable, these are the rifle
pits where the soldiers survived at least three charges
during the night before reinforcements arrived from
Fort Benton.
I lie down in a rifle pit and take a prone firing
position where a soldier surely positioned himself
on that day in 1877. The view over the rim is essentially
unchanged, and as I have so many other times on this
long and eventful journey, I feel as though I'm in
the company of ghosts.
