blackfoot-valley

Most cattle in Montana, before the 1880s, were shorthorns brought in from Pacific Coast states and from Utah to western Montana. The first permanent white settlers came to the eastern Montana plains during the 1870s. Grasses they encountered were largely gramma, blue, buffalo, needle, and western wheatgrasses. Earlier it had been thought unwise to carry cattle through the winter so far north, so ranching development lagged well behind that of the southern Great Plains. But gradually it was realized that, the Montana plains being lower in elevation than those of Wyoming and Colorado, the winters were essentially no more severe, and storms no worse in intensity and dura- tion than in those more southernly parts. Big herds began to be driven to Montana in the late 1870s and early 1880s from Texas, including longhorns, on what came to be called the Texas Cattle Trail. Other herds were driven from the Pacific Coast states. During the same period, cattle raised in Mon- tana were driven to Chicago and other Midwestern markets. Cattle were the major, but by no means the only, stock that was raised. During the 1880s, Montana became famous for its fine horse herds. Sheep had been introduced as early as the 1850s at the St. Ignatius Mission in the upper Flathead Valley not far north of the Missoula Valley. Like cattle, sheep were slower to be brought to the Northern Plains in numbers, but by the 1880s in southeastern Montana, one in five operations raised sheep. The no- madic shearers gained a reputation as fluent drinkers - they were reputed to drink a quart of whiskey a day, and many mixed marijuana with their cigarette tobacco. (Not that cowpunchers were abstainers!) 81 “The Roundup” by Charles Russell