Stillwater Stories

Major F.D. Pease, the last surviving Missouri River fur trader
of the '50's, passes away at the age of 85

Reprinted from the December 2, 1920 Big Timber "Pioneer":

A few days ago, at Medford, Oregon, at the age of 85 years, death removed Major F.D. Pease, one of the best known Montana pioneers of the 1860's and 70's, and the last living fur trader who operated on the Missouri river in the 1850's, a decade before gold was struck in Montana. For some years Major Pease's home had been at Absarokee in Stillwater county. Last May the Crow nation formally adopted him as a member of the tribe, as he had married the daughter of a Crow Chief, following the custom of many of the leading frontiersmen of his day.

Major Pease, whose health had been failing for some time, went to Oregon with some of his family. Up to the day of his death he retained his mental faculties, and his memory is said to have been remarkable for a man of his years.

Forty years ago the name of Major Pease was known to every one in Montana because of his thrilling adventures at Fort Pease, on the Yellowstone river.

The story of Major Pease and Fort Pease is one which every Montana schoolboy should know, and yet it has never been heard by most of the present generation of Montanans. As a youngster he was an Indian trader in Wisconsin and Minnesota when those states were in the wilderness. As early as 1856 he was trading with the Sioux and other tribes on the Missouri river, and in 1861 he was operating on the Yellowstone, which was then infested with hostile red men. As a trapper, scout and Indian fighter, his life for much of its length was filled with adventures and thrills. In latter years he was interested in large coal land developments. Four of his grandsons served in the army and navy in the late war.

Major Pease's history

Major Pease was born in Tioga county, Pennsylvania, in 1835. In 1853, at the age of 18, he pushed westward and became an Indian trader among the Chippewas in Wisconsin on Black river. In 1854 he helped survey the boundary between Minnesota and Wisconsin, and the following year he engaged with an old Indian trader, William D. Gray, in Minnesota. Thus at the age of 20 he had considerable frontier experience, and was capable of handling himself in most situations of danger that called for a cool head and a knowledge of the wilderness and its ways.

In the fall of 1856 he left Minnesota with one of the Sully expeditions, under Colonel Abercrombie, and was sent west to join General W.S. Harney in Dakota, for whom he became the chief of scouts. General Harney had made a reputation as an Indian fighter the previous year in the battle of Ash Hollow, on the Platte, when he defeated the Indians who had wiped out Lieutenant Grattan's command in the Platte valley the year before. General Harney, who was one of the finest types of officers in the army during the 70's, had taken charge of old Fort Pierre in Dakota just before Major Pease joined him there. The following year General Harney built the important post of Fort Randall and was able to keep the Sioux within bounds for some time.

Pease with the "Opposition"

In 1861 Major Pease entered the Yellowstone valley and was one of the organizers of the fur trading company known as the "Little Opposition" because it was in competition with the American Fur Company. This company was successful in its operations, and in 1863 joined with the Northwest Fur Company, which soon after bought out the American Fur Company.

Major Pease remained in the fur trade until 1868, when he was offered a position under General Sully as special agent in the Blackfeet country. During his stay in the Yellowstone and along the Missouri, and for two years later while among the hostile Blackfeet, Major Pease's life ws filled with adventures that would fill several volumes. In 1870 he ws appointed agent of the Crow Indians, whose agency was on the east side of the Yellowstone, near the present site of Livingston. Four years later he was relieved of his agency for the purpose of establishing a new agency in the Judith Basin, but by reason of Congress' failure to appropriate funds, the agency was never established.

In 1875 Major Pease left Bozeman with Paul McCormick, C.H. Daniels and more than 30 others, known as the Fort Pease expedition, to establish a proposed head of navigation on the Yellowstone river at the mouth of the Big Horn river. This idea had been suggested by a report that the voyage of the steamer Josephine that year had proved the Yellowstone to be navigable to the mouth of the Big Horn.

General Forsyth expressed the opinion that, owing to its gravel bed, stable banks and islands and its freedom from snags, the Yellowstone offered a much better highway for commerce from Fort Buford to the settlements of western Montana than did the shifting and dangerous Missouri from Buford to Fort Benton. His judgment was probably correct, although the opportunity never came for demonstrating because the coming of the railroads soon after put an end to all through river traffic.

Building of Fort Pease

The report of General Forsyth aroused enough interest in Montana, however, to inspire Major Pease and his associates to make an effort to establish a town at the mouth of the Big Horn, as stated above, and the expedition reached that point without any fighting or consequences with the Sioux.

The point selected ws nearly opposite the mouth of the Big Horn, close to the Yellowstone river bank, and here Fort Pease was built. Like most frontier posts it was a combination of log buildings and palisades, enclosing a space 200 feet square. The buildings and stockade walls were loop-holed on every side.

The idea was to open a road between freight from the steamboats to wagons and haul it to the western settlement, as was done at Fort Benton. Upon completion of the fort, goods were assembled for trading with the Indians, several farms were located, a townsite was laid out and other preparations were made looking to the building of a river town that would eclipse Fort Benton in its palmiest days.

But the time for this enterprise was not ripe, and it was doomed to a troubled life and an early death. The Sioux war broke out, no steamers came to ply on the Yellowstone, no military post was located nearby to protect the whites, and while no additional settlers resorted to the new settlement, hordes of hostile Indians did. The Sioux declared unrelenting war upon the fort and its little band of forty men, and night and day besieged the place in an effort to capture it and kill the occupants.

The life of the garrison became one series of battles with the Indians, and at every hour of the day and night the crack of the rifle was liable to bring the men commanded by Pease to man the loopholes. The fort had an iron six-pounder piece of artillery, and occasionally the roar of it would awake the echoes of the valley and reverberate among the cliffs along the river.

This life of incessant warfare tolled heavily upon the defenders of the fort. The men inside the stockade were nearly all experienced Indian fighters and crack shots, and many a Sioux was killed. The men of the garrison did not go unscathed, however, and soon six of their number had been caught by hostile bullets and killed, while nine more suffered severe wounds, and as the Indians hung about in ever-increasing swarms, the dread grew among Major Pease's men that all might perish.

Their number had been reduced to 28 men when it was resolved to appeal to the commanding officer at Fort Ellis, near where Bozeman stands, for relief. One of the men of the fort volunteered to attempt to get through the Sioux lines and get to the military post. At night he crept silently away from the stockade. For days his comrades at the little fort waited, not knowing whether he had been caught and killed or not.

One winter afternoon, while the garrison were keeping their neverending vigil against another attack, their eyes were gladdened by the sight of a party of Mountain Crows, a tribe friendly to the whites and bitter enemies of the Sioux, who came riding toward the fort. The garrison were undergoing a long-range bombardment from Sioux stationed on the bluffs across the river when the Crows came and explained they had started out in the extreme cold weather to try and get a few Sioux scalps, and as the Sioux party across the river appeared to be few in number, they were much pleased with the situation. After eating some meat furnished them by Pease, the Crows told the garrison they would soon be rid of their persecutors and stalked into the brush, single file, their buffalo robes drawn up about them.

To fool the Sioux they walked away from the river, then made a wide detour, crossed the Yellowstone on the ice, and swinging around behind the bluffs, rushed upon the Sioux, who were too much engrossed in dropping bullets into the fort to have bothered about the Crows.

The Sioux were only three in number, and they were taken by surprise. Two were killed outright, while a third was wounded and crawled into the brush. A Crow youth, not yet a warrior, rushed in after him and killed him with his knife, taking his scalp and winning his spurs as a full-fledged brave.

After mutilating the bodies, the Crows marched back to the fort. As they entered the stockade, three of their warriors advanced, thrusting their hands from their blankets. As Major Pease and two white men grasped the proffered hands, these fell from the blankets and were left dangling in their startled grip, while the Crows burst forth into laughter. They had cut the forearms from the dead Sioux and used these gruesome trophies to announce their victory.

After this the Sioux attacks continued at intervals, and the garrison knew that the Indians were hoping to starve them out, hoping then to rush the fort and kill the defenders.

Finally one day in March, 1876, their ears were gladdened by hearing a bugle call. Looking out they saw four troops of the Second Cavalry with Major Brisbin at their head.

As a matter of fact, the Sioux had about given up the siege when the troops arrived, but Major Pease and his men saw the futility of staying longer and were glad to take advantage of the chance to leave the scene of so much fighting and wearing anxiety. The colors of the fort were left flying where they had often waved defiance to encircling Sioux, and it was also the intention to leave the walls and buildings standing, but a malcontent in the party secretly set fire to one of the buildings and it burned; the rest of the fort remained standing until the following May, when the Sioux burned it.

Thus Fort Pease became another tradition of the frontier, and another chapter of interest was added to the historic spot at the mouth of the Big Horn, whose history, so far as the white man is concerned, had begun in 1809, when Manuel Lisa built a trading post there - the first habitation of white men in what is today Montana.

Return to the Stillwater County Home Page.