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https://www.mtmemory.org/nodes/view/73864

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https://scholarworks.umt.edu/mtwomen_oralhistory/44/

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Stories Behind the Objects | Bozeman Roundup

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Over the course of the 1970s, handheld electronic calculators transformed the way tens of millions of people did arithmetic. Engineers abandoned slide rules, business people gave up desktop calculating machines, and shoppers replaced simple adding machines and adders. Educators asked how much students should even learn written procedures for multiplication, division, and taking square roots. Parents bought new toys that offered both instruction in arithmetic and other games for their children.

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In the course of the 1970s, handheld electronic calculators transformed the way tens of millions of people did arithmetic. Engineers abandoned slide rules, business people gave up desktop calculating machines, and shoppers replaced simple adding machines and adders.

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Drawing for a Calculating Machine - DocsTeach

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This is the printed patent drawing for a calculating machine invented by William S. Burroughs.

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Photograph of World’s First Computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator - DocsTeach

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The online tool for teaching with documents, from the National Archives

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Photograph of ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator) - DocsTeach

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The online tool for teaching with documents, from the National Archives

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Buckley Bomb

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Interview with Gloria Transcript

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How to Watch KSPS Documentaries

KSPS Documentaries is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.

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Insight into Thompson's early experiences in the fur trade.

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The fur trade was a booming business in North America from the 1500s through the 1800s. When Europeans first settled in North America, they traded with Native Americans. The…

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When we talk about the fur trade, we mean a time starting in the late 1600s when companies based in Europe spread throughout what is now Canada. They traded with Indigenous people for animal fur, mostly from beavers but from other animals, too.

The Hudson's Bay Company, often called HBC, is one of the oldest companies in the world. It got its start trading furs in 1670. Others such as the North West Company followed, and so did bitter fights over furs.

Canada would be a very different place without the fur trade, but the lives of Indigenous people would also be completely different. The fur trade brought them useful tools as well as hard times. And a new people, the Métis, emerged as the fur trade reached its height in the 1700s and 1800s.

Knowing about the fur trade and how it shaped Canada helps us understand who we are as a country and how we got that way.

This edition of Kayak shares some amazing stories and examples of how the fur trade worked, who kept it going, and the impact it left behind.

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kayak: canada’s history magazine for kids

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This edition of Kayak shares some amazing stories and examples of how the fur trade built and shaped this country. PLUS you'll have access to free lesson plans and resources. Kayak's fur trade issue is aimed at Grades 2-7. Please note that this issue is only available in digital format.

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The Hidden Figures Beyond the Movie: Lesser-Known Black Women Mathematicians at NASA. - Scientific Inquirer

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The essay highlights Black women mathematicians at NASA whose groundbreaking contributions, often overlooked, transformed space exploration and inspired future generations.

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Montana’s Participation in World War II |

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Article Series (U.S. National Park Service)

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Series: Park Paleontology News - Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring 2025

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History of the fur trade. The earliest and most important industries in North America.

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Trails of the Past: Historical Overview of the Flathead National Forest, Montana, 1800-1960 (The Fur Trade)

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Furs, particularly those of sea otters and fur seals, lured the first European explorers, and later Americans, to the Pacific Northwest and the Columbia River. They came by sea. In the mid to late 1700s, the thick, luxurious and water-repellent furs of sea mammals were highly valued in China as well…

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By W. Raymond Wood

The North American fur trade was well-established long before Lewis and Clark led an expedition up the Missouri River. The captains were intent on switching Native American loyalties from European-based companies to those working under the authority of the young United States. Were they successful in changing the fur trade after the expedition?

Figure 1

John Evans Maps with Annotations by Clark

North and South Dakota Boundary

To see labels, point to the map.

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, Yale University.

The Missouri River from the modern North and South Dakota border and the Heart River, the "heart" of traditional Mandan country. The river at upper left is labeled "Chiss-chect R" in Clark's hand; the next southern tributary down the Missouri was also crossed out by Clark.

Sometime in August 1807, Meriwether Lewis penned a long essay that Nicholas Biddle published in the appendix to his 1814 paraphrase of the captains' journals as "Observations and reflections on the present and future state of Upper Louisiana, in relation to the government of the Indian nations inhabiting that country, and the trade and intercourse with the same." It was an insightful commentary on the conditions of trade during the former Spanish regime, and a remarkably accurate prediction of the future problems facing the new territory. He foresaw that a main evil confronting the region would be subsistence hunting by whites on Indian land, incidents, he predicted, that would be "the most frequent causes of war, hostile to the views of civilizing and of governing the Indians." He went on to say that "the first principle of governing the Indians is to govern the whites," and noted the impossibility of this without a military presence. Also, he pointed out the dangers of traders introducing "whiskey or ardent spirits" without government knowledge, presaging the later ban-with indifferent results-on importing alcohol into Indian country. During the winter at Fort Mandan, William Clark drafted a proposal for a network of twelve military posts "to protect the Indian trade and Keep the savages in peace with the U.S. and each other." He estimated that a total of 1,805 frontier soldiers would be required (who would also act as boatmen), which by itself would have been hard to meet, in view of President Jefferson's Military Peace Establishment Act of 1802, an economy move which limited the standing army to 3,289 officers and men, a force which was already so widely dispersed among posts east of the Mississippi that none could have been spared. But even 1805 soldiers would hardly have been adequate to a peace-keeping role, in view of Clark's own estimate of 17,660 Indian warriors in the upper Louisiana territory. Needless to say, both mens' strategies would most likely have been doomed to failure.

On 26 September 1806, Lewis and Clark returned to St. Louis and had been met by a tumultuous welcome. The news they brought with them of the furs to be obtained in the west was of great interest to the participants in this great mid-continental center of the fur industry. But its entrepreneurial residents had not waited for the return of the expedition with this news, for they had been exploiting the river for decades. Indeed, on their way up the Missouri in 1804 the Corps of Discovery met several traders on their way back to St. Louis with furs obtained on the Upper Missouri. Some were returning with prizes, though the two Frenchmen they met below the Mandans complained that they had been robbed of their furs by that tribe near present-day Bismarck. By the time the Corps returned, dozens of men were going up the Missouri to seek their fortunes. Indeed, John Colter was given permission to leave the Corps on its return and accompany two such traders, becoming one of the first of the famous "mountain men."

The Fur Trade After the Expedition

Figure 2

Heart River to Knife River

To see labels, point to the map.

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, Yale University

The Missouri River from the Heart River to the Knife River, showing the location of the Mandan and Hidatsa villages at the terminus of the more than 200-mile-long "Mandan trail" to the Qu'Appelle River used by Canadian traders. The explanation of the "Track o the Catepoi river"-the Qu'Appelle ("who calls?") River-was written by James Mackay. "Village Chiss.chect" and "Wah hoo toon-Wind" are in Clark's hand.

The Louisiana Purchase and the lure of its beaver population led to a veritable flood of traders and trappers moving toward the Upper Missouri and the Northern Rocky Mountains. On the other hand, the increasing traffic from St. Louis in what was now American territory led to the slow abandonment of the overland trade in the United States by Canadian and British interests. By 1822 these economic invaders from the north had given up their interests in the Mandan and other residents of the new territory held by the United States.

In 1803, General James A. Wilkinson, the first governor of Louisiana Territory, was instructed to select a site for a military installation and a government trading post, and he established Cantonment Belle Fontaine, a few miles northwest of St. Louis (see Camps Dubois and Belle Fontaine). In 1805, Wilkinson also sent out two expeditions-Lt. Zebulon M. Pike up the Mississippi, and Pierre Chouteau to the Osage Indians, to explore the newly-purchased region and choose sites for new trading posts. When Governor Wilkinson was removed from office in the summer of 1806 he was replaced by Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark was appointed the United States Indian Agent for all of the tribes in Louisiana except the Osages. Both men were popular heroes in the region, and indeed throughout the nation.

Lewis's new administration was concerned about the possibilities of Indian warfare in the western frontier. When he arrived in St. Louis as governor in 1808, Lewis found that the Sac and Osage were upset at their treatment by the government.

That July, Governor Lewis wrote to Secretary of War General Henry Dearborn, advocating strong measures to counter them. Because Dearborn was not in Washington when the letter arrived, President Jefferson wrote to Lewis to express his own ideas on American-Indian relations, in which he decried war on Indians, commenting that "commerce is the great engine by which we are to coerce them & not war." This approach was surely prompted in part by the small size of the American Army, and essentially was followed until after the Civil War, when sufficient troops were available. The Indian Wars that followed reduced the Plains tribes to reservation wards.

Lewis's two most competent advisors were William Clark and Pierre Chouteau, agent for the Osages. Clark supported the establishment of federally-run government trading posts. Belle Fontaine was closed in 1808 because it was too distant from its intended customers, and William Clark established Fort Osage on the Missouri not far from present-day Kansas City, and Fort Madison on the Mississippi. Both posts were to be short-lived, and both were abandoned by 1813. Indeed, all such government posts were abolished in 1821.

Manuel Lisa

Small companies and independent traders blossomed in the years following the return of Lewis and Clark, though these entrepreneurs soon would be overshadowed by large, organized companies. Two men dominated the trade for many years: first, a maverick Spaniard in St. Louis, Manuel Lisa, and later the German immigrant John Jacob Astor. Manuel Lisa was the first private trader to lead an organized party upriver.

After founding the Missouri Fur Company (1807-1814), in which William Clark was a participant, Lisa left St. Louis for the Upper Missouri in 1807. Pressing far upstream, he established Fort Raymond at the mouth of the Big Horn River on the Yellowstone River in present-day Montana. He returned again in 1809, building a second post above the Mandan and Hidatsa villages. He made two more trips to exploit the richness of the northern Rockies, and he dominated the upriver trade until 1820, two years before his death. His profits stimulated other parties to focus on the Missouri River but, despite much opposition, he maintained a near monopoly on the river for thirteen years.

One of Lisa's most famous posts, Fort Manuel Lisa, was built almost astride the modern boundary between North Dakota and South Dakota. Occupied for only a few months, it was abandoned in 1812 when its residents fled back downriver, including Toussaint Charbonneau, whose Lemhi Shoshone wife Sacagawea had recently died there of "a putrid fever." The War of 1812 with England disrupted the fur trade along the Upper Missouri, and trade continued principally with groups along the lower Missouri. Furthermore, the costs of upriver operations required great outlays of cash.

Lisa's voyages up the Missouri, like those of most of his contemporaries, had been aboard keelboats-a craft admirably designed for travel on the Missouri. These ungainly craft were some 50 to 60 feet long, 18 feet wide, with a pointed prow and stern, and a low cabin amidships. They carried a mast, but were usually manhandled upriver by means of long poles or a long rope that the men used to drag it bodily upstream in the shallows near one bank or the other.

These labor-intensive craft carried trade goods upriver and cargos of furs downstream in far greater quantities than the pirogues and other small craft used by individual traders.

Astor's American Fur Company

Figure 3

John Jacob Astor

From a drawing by Pierre Morand (1842). Half-tone plate engraved by C. W. Chadwick.

The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Vol LXVII, No. 6 (April 1904).

Astor, founder of the monopolistic American Fur Company in 1808, became America's first millionaire. He began building his fortune in the fur trade (see Fig. 3). In 1816, he entered another lucrative market, selling Turkish opium first to China and then to England. In the 1830s he turned his energies to real estate development on Manhattan Island. After retirement, he spent some of his wealth toward cultural interests, supporting John James Audubon, for example, and Edgar Allen Poe. At his death his fortune amounted to more than 20 million dollars, part of which was used to create what later became the New York Public Library.

Lisa's success in the trade, albeit short-lived, led to the formation by others of the Missouri Fur Company (1812-1830), one of the first of many successive and overlapping American companies dedicated to the pursuit of fur bearers in the Central and Northern Plains. In 1808 John Jacob Astor (Fig. 3) founded the American Fur Company (AFC), and in 1810 he tried to establish Astoria, a permanent post in the Pacific Northwest, but the post soon fell into British hands. But he focused his attention on the Missouri River, and in 1827 he bought out the Columbia Fur Company, established in 1822, and formed the Upper Missouri Outfit. The monopolistic company, under Astor's leadership, soon dominated the trade in the region, for its ruthless business tactics quickly bankrupted its smaller competitors. His business acumen led to great profits, and he became the head of one of the first multinational corporations, with agents in Europe, China, Canada, and the United States.

The story of the St. Louis-based fur companies is a complex one, complicated by the many companies involved, and by the shifting business alliances that led to dissolutions, mergers, and reorganization until the Upper Missouri trade evaporated in 1867. By 1831, a string of AFC posts and those of their short-lived competitors lined the Missouri River and its major tributaries. The most important AFC posts were Fort Pierre, nearly opposite the present city of Pierre, South Dakota; Fort Clark, above modern Bismarck, North Dakota, and Fort Union (Fig. 8), near the present North Dakota and Montana boundary.

Figure 4
Astoria in 1813
Drawing by Harry Fenn after a sketch by Franchére, a clerk in Astor's American Fur Company.

The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Vol LXVII, No. 6 (April 1904).

Astoria was John Jacob Astor's fort at the mouth of the Columbia River. It was built in 1811 to obtain furs for trade with China, but the War of 1812 forced the Astorians to sell the post to the British North West Company. Renamed Fort George, it was retained by the NWC until it merged with the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821.

Figure 5
The Steamer Yellow-Stone
on the 19th April 1833, after Karl Bodmer (1809-1893)

Aquatint 44 x 60 cm (17¼ x 23½ inches).

Courtesy Everett D. Graff Collection, The Newberry Library, Chicago.

Near Fire Prairie, just below what would become Fort Osage, the Yellow Stone was stopped by dangerous snags in the Missouri River that had to be sawed away, and the crew had to land part of the cargo on shore to help free the steamer. A far more placid river is depicted in Bodmer's original watercolor.

Other Competitors

Competitors soon appeared near the AFC posts on the Missouri. For example, in 1858 Frost, Todd, and Company built Fort Atkinson at Like-a-Fishhook village, the Hidatsa and Mandan settlement that had enjoyed the AFC's monopoly since the village was founded in 1845. Though the individual traders in the two posts remained friendly rivals, they often resorted to dirty tricks, and the practice of the AFC was to undercut the prices of its rivals, so that within two years it had been driven out of business. Fort Atkinson became Fort Berthold II when the original Fort Berthold was destroyed by fire in 1862.

Native Americans were not passive participants in the trade, for they had traded extensively among themselves for generations before the arrival of Europeans and Americans. They were shrewd traders and demanded quality goods. But they had not welcomed the arrival of white traders, for the tribes of the upper Missouri had a flourishing and lucrative intertribal trade. Indeed, one of the principal reasons for the near-altercation between the Sioux and the Corps of Discovery at the mouth of Bad River had been stimulated by two fears: that the traders would provide guns to their enemies, and at the same time diminish their role in a lucrative intertribal trade.

Ashley and Henry

Figure 6

by Frederic Remington (1861-1909)

The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine Vol. 36, No. 6 (October 1888), Courtesy of Denver Public Library.

Dressed for a Rocky Mountain winter, this mountain man cradles a Hawken rifle, prized above all others in the West for its sturdiness and large caliber. His packhorse carries its load balanced on a standard sawbuck packsaddle.

In 1823 William H. Ashley and Andrew Henry founded a large party to ascend the Missouri to a point near its source, but the expedition was attacked by the Arikaras and forced back downriver. To avoid such conflicts, Ashley initiated what was to become a fur-trade landmark: the rendezvous (see Fig. 9). In the spring of 1825 he carried goods to the Rockies and there exchanged them for the furs obtained by the daring and resourceful "mountain men" who thereafter assembled annually to meet him. These trade fairs lasted for only 16 years (until 1840), but they became the stuff of legend because of the colorful individuals involved and their antics during the rendezvous, men that included such notables as John Colter and Jim Bridger.

The men traded the pelts they'd obtained the previous winter, refitted themselves for yet another year and, contrary to popular belief, returned to the mountains in groups, breaking into small parties only to run their traps. Within three years Ashley became rich, and in 1826 he retired and successfully ran for Congress.

Buffalo Robe Era

Figure 7
Old Fort Benton, 1855
John Ford Clymer (1907-1989)

Oil, 24 x 36 inches, 1967

Courtesy of Mrs. John F. Clymer and the Clymer Museum of Art

An assortment of water craft daily vied for landing space on the waterfront at Fort Benton, the American Fur Company's trading post situated on the Missouri between the mouth of the Marias River and the Great Falls of the Missouri. In the foreground a trapper and his Indian wife, in a dugout canoe towing a loaded Indian-style bull boat, paddle toward a berth among a cluster of other canoes. The graceful open boat at center is a Mackinaw skiff. To the right of it are three proper keelboats, the major freighters of the trade until the first steamboat arrived in 1860. For the next twenty years Fort Benton remained the uppermost river port and commercial center on the Missouri, more than 2,285 miles (ca. 3,677 kilometers) from St. Louis.

By the 1830s the fur trade was truly important. Instead of small craft returning downriver to St. Louis manned by a few traders, Ashley returned nearly nine thousand pounds of beaver pelts from his 1825 rendezvous in the Rockies, and In 1827 Clark noted that $290,052.39 worth of goods had been sent west for the Indian trade alone. But the mountains could not sustain such intensive harvest, and the trade collapsed in 1840 because beavers were almost extinct, not because of the introduction of silk hats. Silk had been invented and was being sold long before the first rendezvous of the mountain men in 1825. The high prices for beaver led to overtrapping that, together with flat prices, made it impossible for the trappers to make a living. By 1840 the beaver were nearly gone, and the rendezvous ended. When other skins (muskrat, raccoon and even sheep) were used in lieu of beaver it lowered the price for beaver even more. Combining these factors with the financial depression that struck the United States and Europe in 1837 spelt the doom of the mountain men and their quest for beaver.

The ungainly keelboats and the labor needed to muscle them up the Missouri were replaced almost overnight by a powerful new technology: the steamboat. These craft had been used experimentally on the Missouri as early as 1819, but in 1831 the AFC's steamboat Yellow Stone ascended the Missouri as far as Fort Tecumseh, near present-day Pierre, South Dakota. Profiting by its mistakes the previous year, in 1832 the Yellow Stone reached Fort Union (Fig. 8) the AFC post at the mouth of the Yellowstone River, 1800 miles (ca. 2,897 kilometers) above St. Louis. Steamboats soon ascended as far as Fort Benton, downstream from modern Great Falls and the foothills of the Rockies. Unlike earlier craft, steamers carried goods in both directions by the ton, eclipsing all previous trade.

Although many types of furs and skins were carried to these posts by neighboring tribes and free trappers, bison robes became the dominant product after 1830. By 1867, with fur bearers depleted and the bison all but extinct, even this trade was over. The surge westward after the Civil War brought thousands of new residents into what had been the Louisiana Purchase. The abandonment of Fort Union in 1869 after a succession of owners generally is regarded as marking the end of the fur trade era on the Upper Missouri. Most of the resident traders and their kin moved back down the Missouri River, to be replaced by a flood of settlers and their families. The sites of their abandoned forts, once the pastures for bison, reverted to prairie grasses and nourished the cattle that replaced them.

Figure 8
Fort Union
On the Missouri

after Karl Bodmer (1809-1893), Aquatint, 44 x 60 cm (17¼ x 23½ in.). Courtesy Everett D. Graff Collection, The Newberry Library, Chicago.

Fort Union was the principal trading post of the American Fur Company on the upper Missouri River. Built for the Assiniboine Indian trade in 1829 and 1830, it became the grandest of the company's posts on the Missouri. It was the only one protected by stone bastions.

Figure 9

The Rendezvous

by Paul Clark Rockwood, Graphic artist, printmaker, and lithographer, American, (1895-1972). Ink and watercolor, 30¼ x 17¾ inches.

Provided by the U.S. National Park Service, Scotts Bluff National Monument.

The famous mountain man rendezvous that began with General William Ashley in July 1825 continued through 1840, creating an indelible image of this annual fusion of cultures. American and Native American trappers met for 16 summers in locales centered on Jackson Hole to exchange their winter catches for supplies for the following year. Ashley carried away the equivalent of one million dollars' worth of furs from just the first two rendezvous.

Additional References

Chittenden, Hiram Martin. 1954. The American Fur Trade of the Far West. 2 vols. Stanford, California: Academic Reprints.

Foley, William E. Wilderness Journey: The Life of William Clark. 2004. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.

Oglesby, Richard Edward. 1963. Manuel Lisa and the Opening of the Missouri Fur Trade. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Wishart, David J. The Fur Trade of the American West, 1807-1840. 1979. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Wood, W. Raymond, and Thomas D. Thiessen, eds. Early Fur Trade on the Northern Plains. 1985. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Posted in Tagged The Fur Trade | James Mackay, James Wilkinson, Karl Bodmer, Manuel Lisa, The Fur Trade

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Fur Trade after the Expedition - Discover Lewis & Clark

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By W. Raymond Wood The North American fur trade was well-established long before Lewis and Clark led an expedition up the Missouri River. The captains were intent on switching Native American loyalties from European-based companies to those working under the authority of the young United States.

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Gloria Hewitt is an American mathematician who undertook research in algebra. She became the first African American woman to chair a university mathematics department in the United States.

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“To the yesterdays that are gone, to the cowboys I used to know, to the bronc busters that rode beside me, to the horses beneath me (sometimes) I take off my hat. I wouldn’t have missed…

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My search results from Montana History Portal

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Check out the results of my search at Montana History Portal

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Learning from Historical Documents Chapter 15

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Testimony from Hum Fay. Hum Fay, et al. vs. Baldwin, et al. records, 1898. Manuscript Collection 43. [box 1 folder 3]. Montana Historical Society Research Center. Archives.

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Affidavit and Flyers from the Chinese Boycott Case

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Background Although a very small number of Chinese immigrants came to the United States prior to 1850, it wasn’t until news of the gold strikes in California reached China that large numbers of Chinese men, eager to earn money, sailed for “Gum San,” or the “gold mountain.” Western encroachment and civil unrest had led to inflation, starvation, and loss of land in southern China. Many young men emigrated to the United States as a last hope for their families.

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EXTRA! Montana Newspaper Stories 1864-1922: Anti-Chinese Discrimination

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The 1870 census counted 2400 Chinese living in Montana, but by the 1880s there were an estimated 12,000 Chinese working on railroads in the…

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"Montana's Chinese: Our Forgotten Pioneers," with Ellen Baumler

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“The Coming Man From Canton”: Chinese Experience in Montana (1862-1943)

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The Chinese immigrants who came to Montana during the 19th and 20th centuries forged a new community. The goals of this dissertation were to create a historical and archaeological context for Chinese Experience in Montana, and to frame the interpretation of these results within a social organization framework that highlights the role of Overseas Chinese voluntary organizations such as secret societies. Archaeologists and historians have studied the Chinese in Montana for a little over two decades, though nothing comprehensive has ever been attempted to sew together the various investigations. In addition, there has been no attempt to inventory all the known Chinese archaeological sites in Montana, and how these fit into the broad patterns of history. Between first large-scale gold discovery in Montana Territory during 1862 until 1900, the Chinese engaged largely in placer-mining endeavors and represented the largest ethnic group during this period. Federal Exclusion laws, statewide boycotts, and pervasive racism deeply affected the Chinese experience in Montana, and led to the state’s abandonment by the bulk of this immigrant population in the early 20th century. In overseas communities, the Chinese immigrants relied on voluntary associations to replace the traditional modes of social organization found in China. These organizations provided mutual protection to their members, and helped to organize resistance to the legal and social racism encountered in the United States and other diaspora communities. This dissertation interprets the history and archaeology of the Chinese in Montana in a framework that highlights the role of voluntary social organizations in the success of this population.

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- This program was made possible in part by the Big Sky Film Grant, the Greater Montana Foundation, and Humanities Montana.

Additional funding provided by.

[peaceful acoustic music plays] [footsteps] [horse galloping] - She really paved the way for women in a very fiery way and I love now that we're finally starting to look at her and give her the credit that she's been very long overdue.

♪ - But as far as Montana athletes, I would put Fanny up there, at least in the top ten.

[crowd cheering in background] ♪ - If Montana did give the gift of Charlie Russell to the world, I think Nancy Russell is the one that gave us the gift of Charlie Russell.

♪ - Everybody, if they want to, can work really hard, but you need other skills.

And she had all those skills.

♪ [peaceful acoustic music concludes] - [Narrator] In 1878, America was a land of expansion, grit, and hard realities; a place where opportunity and struggle went hand in hand.

That was the world Nancy Cooper entered as a baby.

Born in Kentucky to a woman named Texas Annie, her father left before she was even born.

At just eight years old, Nancy's life shifted again.

When her mother remarried, Nancy was left in the care of her grandparents.

Seen more as a burden than a blessing, she was raised on a farm where affection was scarce and survival came first.

- Nancy Cooper, growing up on a tobacco farm, would have had unimaginably hard labor as a child because tobacco was one of the last crops in the United States to be mechanized.

So it was all hand labor, and it was really hard labor.

So she grew up as a child not loved and having to work very, very hard.

- When her stepfather and mother had a second child, they then decided they were going to move to Montana and they did take Nancy back.

The four of them came to Montana, and then that stepfather left.

- At the age of 12, Nancy, her mother and younger half-sister found themselves in Helena, having to make their way alone.

Texas Annie became sick with tuberculosis, and Nancy became her caretaker.

Four years later, Texas Annie died in 1894, leaving 15 year old Nancy and her younger sister completely alone.

- When Nancy's mother died, her stepfather came back and took his child, Nancy's half sister, and left Nancy behind.

She was only 15 years old.

She didn't have anywhere to go, and once again, she's on her own.

Within a year, she was taken in by a family in Cascade, the Roberts family, the first real family life she ever had.

And within a year of being taken in by them, she met Charlie Russell.

[hopeful acoustic music plays] - Charlie Russell had come to Montana when he was just barely 16 years old.

He was a pretty wild youth.

He always had a good time.

He was extremely popular.

He was he was never... even he admitted he wasn't a good cowboy, per se, but his fellow cowboys on the ranch loved him primarily because he could tell such good tales.

- On an autumn night in 1895, 17 year old Nancy locked eyes with a local artist, a meeting that would change not only the course of her life, but also leave a mark on the world of Western art for generations to come.

- She always describes meeting him that night as standing in the kitchen getting ready for dinner, and she heard boots on the porch boards outside, and then the door flew open and Mr.

Roberts said, Lila, Charlie's here.

And she said, there I stood with a plate of sliced ham, looking at this man with beautiful blue eyes and, and he walked over to the corner of the kitchen and splashed some water into the basin to wash up for supper.

And, when he was finished, I'm still standing there with that plate of ham!

He was drying his face, and he peeked out around the corner of the towel, and he winked at me.

Well, that was the beginning.

♪ - A year later, Nancy and Charlie were married in an intimate ceremony in the Roberts' front parlor with just nine guests.

Early on, it became evident to Nancy that if Charlie was going to be successful, she needed to help him.

Charlie didn't like charging people money for his work, but the art of business was where Nancy excelled.

- So Charlie had made a painting for the mayor's wife, and Nancy said, can I deliver it?

And Charlie said, yes, but don't you ask for more than $25 or she won't take it.

So when she got to the mayor's house, the mayor's wife loved the little painting and said, how much?

Nancy said, $35.

Wait right here.

I'll get you a check.

- Within a few years, Nancy realized they needed to go back east to expand their careers.

In New York, Charlie met artists who became his lifelong friends and mentors.

Being self-taught, his art improved because of these relationships.

Similarly, Nancy hit the pavement and started learning what this art career could mean for the two of them.

- She didn't know how to sell art.

She probably didn't even know how to describe a watercolor from an oil painting when she first started out.

But she clearly was a quick learner, whether she had a formal education or not.

- The New York trip proved very successful and Nancy's reputation of being a tough businesswoman began to circulate.

[ragtime music plays] - Nancy came from nothing.

She didn't have any money or mentoring or education; so she was pretty naive and not very elegant, I would say, about her dealings with people, but she just held her ground.

- Charlie's work began growing in fame, and Nancy arranged exhibitions throughout the U.S., Canada and England.

She was a keen manager of her husband's time and talents.

If you wanted to get to Charlie, you had to go through Nancy, and that included Charlie's friends.

[music concludes] - She didn't like them.

She didn't want them distracting Charlie from his artwork.

Nancy was only interested in people in terms of what they might do for her.

So if somebody wasn't going to be a good customer of Charlie, she really didn't want them taking up his time; and she wanted him out there painting.

And so his friends did not like her.

- I think she knew what others said about her.

She knew how others felt.

She was just too, too much of an ambitious person, too much of a driver.

And...and he knew it too.

But he always smiled.

He always looked the other way, she said.

Pretended not to see my faults.

[somber music plays] - Regardless of the friction, Charlie loved Nancy.

They always wanted children, but were unable to have children of their own.

In 1916, they adopted a three month old baby boy and named him Jack.

- The war was on, and there weren't a lot of activities in terms of art exhibits and selling art and such.

So for the first couple years of that little boy's life, he had both his parents right there with him, and Charlie was just in love with this little boy.

But as soon as the war was over and Nancy could travel again and Nancy could get out there and promote Charlie, she turned her attention to that.

- While his parents worked, young Jack was left home with friends.

To Nancy, this was a part of childhood; but this parenting style had a lasting effect on Jack.

[somber music continues] - Jack was nine years old when Charlie died.

Nancy and Jack moved from Great Falls right after Charlie died to the house that they were building in Pasadena, California.

And then they lived there the rest of Nancy's life.

- While Charlie's death greatly impacted Nancy and Jack, it did not bring them closer.

Jack was put in boarding schools most of his life, and the two had a serious falling out when he married.

- She gave him one of Charlie's masterwork paintings for a wedding present, and he sold it immediately for the money and at that point, she struck him from her will, and there was no more real connection after that.

- Nancy died on May 23rd, 1940, after years of ill health.

She was 62 years old.

- But I think that she is in some ways that pull yourself up by the bootstraps example that Americans like to hold on to.

And even if people at the time disparaged her for that, we should look back and see what she was able to do, considering the childhood that she had and the lack of social and educational and financial resources that she had.

[contemplative music plays] - She was a remarkable individual who battled her own physical health, who battled perceptions of the time, who battled a lack of education and a lack of any sort of worldliness.

She just stepped into a role and embraced it and did the best she could.

And if it was inelegant at times, she still helped to provide for us a legacy of art and stories that we would not have otherwise.

♪ [contemplative music concludes] [upbeat acoustic music plays] - [Narrator] During Montana's copper boom in the 1880s, wild mustangs roamed the mountains, and so did the people who loved them.

In the spring of 1887, Rachel and Datus Sperry welcomed their daughter Fannie in the Prickly Pear Valley.

The fourth of five children, she grew up on the family homestead and was riding horses before she could walk.

♪ - There were a lot of mustangs on the... wild horses on the side of the mountain.

The family could hear them run by at night.

And one morning she woke up.

She must have heard them run by.

And the story goes, she was about three years old, and she told her mom, I'm going to catch me a whiteface horsey.

- Fanny got her first horse when she was six.

By the time she was eight, she raced her horse to and from school with her best friend and neighbor, Christine Syness.

Fannie was a good student, but the highlight of her day was her riding.

Soon, Fannie and her brother began breaking horses and her talent started to gain the attention of the community.

- I think people noticed her talents at a very early age.

She was in her first rodeo in 1901, in Mitchell.

She wanted to ride a bronc.

And at first she was refused.

But then, she persuaded them to let her ride, and she took second place.

And so you can say that's the start of her her rodeo career in a way.

[upbeat western music plays] - At the age of 17, Fannie began her professional rodeo career.

She and three other girls formed the girls' Montana relay race team.

- And they were timed races, so it wasn't like they were racing side by side against someone like you see on the track.

So the first gal, they start the stopwatch, she saddles her horse, jumps on the horse, races around the track, and when she comes to the finish line, then the other gal does the same thing, you know, saddles her horse, jumps on, races around.

- The one thing though that was interesting is they would wear bloomers, which is considered very shocking, these racing bloomers and silk tops.

- But the girls didn't mind, they were winning!

In 1906, they set a world record at the Minnesota State Fair.

Fannie soon shifted her focus to bronc riding, and in 1909, she entered her first professional competition at the Lewis and Clark Fairgrounds.

♪ She won, doing it her own way.

- So there were other women that were competing, but she was one of the few that rode them slick.

Now, the other gals would hobble the stirrups so they would tie the stirrups underneath the belly of the horse and keep their feet in the stirrups.

And it was supposed to be safer, but Fanny thought it was, that she could do a better ride by riding them like the men did.

- In 1912, the Calgary Stampede was the extravaganza that celebrated the old west.

At the age of 25, Fannie showed off her skills in front of 60,000 people.

This was the event that cemented Fannie's legacy.

[music concludes] - And when she got up there, she drew a horse by the name of Red Wing, which had stomped a cowboy named Joe Lamar the first day of the rodeo and killed him.

But she rode Red Wing, and the crowd loved her.

She got a standing ovation.

[crowd cheering] - Fannie won $1,000, worth about $32,000 in today's money, as well as a $300 belt buckle and a $250 saddle.

- She became the first ever lady bucking horse champion of the world.

It's a title she would win again the following year, in 1913 at the Stampede in Winnipeg.

- The rodeo world was a small one, and it wasn't long before Fannie crossed paths with Bill Steele, a fellow bronc rider and rodeo clown.

Their connection grew, and in 1913 they were married.

- [Jennifer] They traveled the rodeo circuit all over the country, including places like New York City, the Pendleton Round-Up.

They also had a stint with Buffalo Bill Cody in Chicago and performed not only rodeo, but tricks.

She could shoot a cigarette out of Bill's mouth.

They were quite a power couple.

I'd say.

[gunshot echoes] - Fannie drew big crowds wherever she performed, but the demanding rodeo life gradually took a toll on her body.

- [Jennifer] Her last competition was in 1925, although she competed exhibition bronc...on exhibition broncs until she was in her 50s.

[reflective violin music plays] After retirement, she and her husband, Bill, started a dude ranch up Arrastra Creek near Lincoln.

And they did outfitting, ran a string of horses, and packing into the back country.

- Fannie made history again as Montana's first female hunting and fishing guide.

♪ After Bill's passing in 1940, she continued guiding solo for another 25 years, carving out a legacy of strength and determination.

- [Jennifer] She shod and packed all her horses and guided people all summer long.

At the end of the season, she would train her horses all the way across the Continental Divide by herself, to the pastures near where she grew up.

♪ - In 1965, at age 78, Fannie fully retired.

After Bill's death, she learned his share of their Arrastra Creek ranch had been left to his son from a previous marriage.

Unable to keep the property, she was forced to sell her portion, a devastating personal and financial loss that sent her back to her family's homestead in the Prickly Pear Valley.

♪ Even as her world narrowed, her legacy only grew.

- [Jennifer] In 1975, she was the first woman inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame.

And she was the first Montanan inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1978.

[reflective violin music continues] - We've had five world rodeo champions, and Fanny was the first.

[crowd cheering in background] -The other thing I think about Fanny and the women who performed in rodeos and Wild West shows is that they also opened a door for all women athletes.

When people went to those Wild West shows and saw women, riding broncs and standing bareback on horses and, you know, doing all kinds of tricks, that had to make people rethink the capability of what women's bodies could do.

[soft acoustic music plays] - Fannie lived until she was 95 years old and died on February 11th, 1983.

♪ - [Jennifer] Fanny was destined to be great.

She competed in a man's world as an equal.

And she was an incredible athlete and tenacious woman.

♪ - [Mary] She found a way to make a living and have a whole life with the thing she loved best.

And that was horses.

[child laughing] [acoustic music concludes] - [Narrator] Born in 1860 in Northwood, New Hampshire.

Ella Knowles started off life with her upper class parents, David and Louisa.

- Ella Knowles is a child of farmers and we don't really know much about them, but I think that someone in that family must have prized education.

- And that someone was her mother, Louisa.

She taught Ella everything she knew, schooling her at home and shaping her sharp mind.

When Louisa fell ill and died, Ella was just 14.

- I think this might have been really impactful on her.

Her mother educated her at home until she passed away, and I think it would have been really quite traumatic for her to lose her mom.

- Ella was a gifted student who, after graduating from Northwood Seminary at just 15, went on to earn admission to the prestigious Bates College, a remarkable milestone for any woman of her time.

[violin music plays] - [Mary] And she goes to Bates College in Maine, which was one of the few colleges at that time that was coeducational.

That did not mean that there was an equal number of women.

There were very few women and very few women graduated.

- While at Bates College, Ella excelled on the debate team, earning honors for her skill.

She also made history as the first woman to serve on the editorial board of the school newspaper.

In 1884, she became one of the few women to graduate from Bates.

Despite her determination, Ella struggled with respiratory issues.

Doctors recommended she leave the East Coast, believing the high, dry air of the West would benefit her health.

- Ella moved to Montana in 1888, and she ended up in Helena, Montana.

As many women were at the time, she found work as a teacher.

So she worked for a short time as a public school teacher.

But she left that pretty early on to pursue her passion in the law field.

♪ - There was one hurdle standing in Ella's way, at the time women were not allowed to practice or even study law in the Montana Territory.

But with her determination in hand, Ella took her plight to the Territorial Legislature and argued that Montana women should have the opportunity to study the law.

- I don't think they thought she could pass the bar.

I think they said...they thought we can easily appease her.

We will allow her to practice law, women can practice law, and we don't think they'll be able to pass the bar.

She takes the bar exam and not only does she pass it, the examiner said that she passed it with more success than any other student he's examined.

- With that, Ella Knowles became the first female lawyer in Montana and one of only 50 female lawyers in the entire U.S.. [violin music concludes] - But having passed the bar, she still has to get clients.

[upbeat classical music plays] So the story goes that she started out, as did other early young men as lawyers, trying to collect debts.

♪ She goes to this merchant and he's clearly tired of listening to her.

And so he says, women have borrowed umbrellas from me in my store, and I want them back and if you can get them back I'll give you 25 cents for each umbrella.

And he thinks he's sent her on his way.

And she comes back with two umbrellas and then he doesn't want to pay her.

♪ And so, she turns to the other customers in the store and lays out her case, ♪ and they all agree she should be paid.

And so he gives her two 25 cent pieces, which she kept for the rest of her life as a symbol of her first paid work as a lawyer.

And subsequently he became one of her best clients.

- Her law practice grew steadily, earning her a reputation for skill and determination.

In 1894 she was commissioned to represent the state of Montana in Washington, D.C., taking on a case involving over $200,000 in contested mining interests and school property.

- And so she was the first woman to successfully vouch for a case in Washington, D.C., in front of the federal government, and she won.

[classical music concludes] - With her notoriety came new opportunities.

In 1892, she was nominated for Attorney General of Montana as a Populist Party candidate.

She ran an intense campaign during a period when women were still fighting for equality.

- At that time in the state of Montana she wins the most votes in an election for a third party candidate.

And this is also in 1892 when women don't have the vote.

So you can only kind of imagine if women had the vote at that time, she probably would have done tremendous in that election.

- Ella's tenacity and intellect remained undeniable, even in defeat.

After she lost the election, Attorney General Henry Haskell recognized her talent and appointed her as Assistant Attorney General.

Their work relationship grew into affection, and the two soon married.

- We don't know too much about what their married life was like.

It was a fairly brief life.

He decided to move to Glendive.

And I think that was just too small a world at the time for Ella.

So they divorce and she ends up moving to Butte.

- After moving to Butte in 1901, Ella quickly became an integral part of the community.

She became a member of nearly every fraternal auxiliary in Butte and spoke at numerous events.

She was also an excellent lawyer and quickly grew a very successful practice specializing in mining rights and laws.

- One of the things I think that is really notable about Ella Knowles Haskell is that she did make a lot of money, and that was also something that people didn't think women necessarily should do.

[hopeful music plays] - While thriving in Butte, Ella's health took a sudden turn when a throat infection proved fatal.

She died in 1911 at age 50.

[reflective music plays] Her passing shocked the community.

Her will was published in full in the local paper, a testament to the remarkable life and legacy she left behind.

♪ - In Ella's will, she makes provision that no less than $1,000 be expended on her tombstone.

So I think that, you know that speaks to how, what she thought of herself and that she recognized the important place that she had played in, you know, Montana's life and in the life of her family.

But she also went on and on in her gifts to people.

And it's a really interesting piece of paper because it's... it's just so thoughtful.

I mean, clearly she was a good lawyer in drawing up this will.

- Ella's generosity was on display in her death.

She provided a pension for her father, gave money to her hometown to take care of the cemetery where her mother was buried, she also gave property and gifts to several of her closest friends and colleagues.

- [Mary] So when they were making the arrangements, the Silver Bow Bar Association arranges that all of the pallbearers will be lawyers from the Butte community.

And the president of the bar association puts a notice in the paper that he expects every member of the Silver Bow Bar Association to be at her funeral.

♪ - It was a striking tribute, not just to Ella's accomplishments, but to the deep respect she earned from the legal community.

For a woman navigating an overwhelmingly male world, that kind of recognition didn't come easily.

Ella had to understand what mattered to the men around her, how the system worked, and where she could carve out a space of her own.

- And so for a woman trying to make her way in a overwhelmingly male world, she had to know what they valued, how they operated, and where she could nudge herself into that business, or find a niche in which she could be successful.

I think from the point of view of thinking as an organizer or as a person who wants to make change in society, she's kind of a model for how to do that.

[reflective music concludes] [peaceful acoustic music plays] - [Narrator] For generations, the women of Montana have pushed boundaries, broken barriers, and shaped history in quiet and extraordinary ways.

♪ - The United States was a country based on the principles of liberty and equality.

But it took generations for different groups to achieve any sense of liberty or equality.

And so I've come to think about looking at the past, for Americans in particular, to reflect upon how much work it took to get what we now think of as our basic rights, and also to look to the past to realize how fragile our hold on those rights are, and that they can be taken away in a flash unless you consciously work to protect them.

[peaceful acoustic music continues] ♪ [peaceful acoustic music concludes]

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Story of Us: The women who shaped Montana | 103: The Story of Us: The Women Who Shaped Montana

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Explore the stories of three remarkable women who helped define Montana's history.

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The Montana Experience: Stories from Big Sky Country

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"Bella Vista: An Unseen View Of WWII" (1995)

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