Friday Photo: Pitamakin Pass

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 956-850

A group of riders pauses at the top of Cut Bank Pass (now Pitamakin Pass) in Glacier National Park in 1915. Mount Morgan is in the background.

St. Ignatius

St. Ignatius Mission on the Flathead Reservation was founded in 1854. At one time—from 1875 to 1900—the mission had a shop with a printing press which produced "Narratives from the Holy Scripture” in the Kalispell language and a Kalispell dictionary. A lumber mill, an agricultural and industrial school for boys, and a boarding school for girls and the mission church once sprawled across the landscape on the Flathead Reservation. Church officials laid the cornerstone of the present mission church in 1891. The quaint little church has a surprising treasure. Its walls and ceilings have sixty-one original paintings done by Brother Joseph Carignano, an Italian Jesuit who was the longtime cook and handyman at the mission. Although he had no formal art training, Brother Carignano painted the interior with murals of scenes from the Old and New Testaments and portraits of some of the saints. He did this magnificent work all in the little spare time he had from his many duties at the mission. His paintings are so astonishing that they have been described as miraculous. The beautiful Mission Mountain Range forms a spectacular backdrop behind the Mission Church.

Some believe the art Brother Carignano created at St. Ignatius Mission was a miracle.

Peter Ronan, for whom the town of Ronan was named, was superintendent on the Flathead reservation from 1877 to 1893. He and his wife, Mary, were devout Catholics and often employed graduates of the mission school in their household. The Ronans and their eight children visited the mission on special feast days. Mary looked forward to these visits. The seventeen-mile journey took several days. Peter and the boys would stay in the house of the Jesuits while the Sisters of Providence welcomed Mary and her daughters. The sisters were good friends. It seemed to Mary that the efficient and selfless mother superior embodied all that a mother should be. “Those visits,” Mary wrote, “shine in my memory as bright incidents and precious…”

The Sisters of Providence built this convent where Mary Ronan found respite in 1864.

Helena’s First Decoration Day

Decoration Day, later called Memorial Day, was a tradition that sprang from the tremendous loses both the north and the south experienced during the Civil War. The tradition of decorating veterans’ graves took root in different states at different times from the 1870s through the early twentieth century. On May 30, 1883, Helena observed Decoration Day for the first time with a mile-long procession that assembled at Harmonia Hall on Broadway. It made its way out of the city to the cemetery on Benton Avenue. Nearly 1,500 people participated in the march, including some fifty veterans of the Civil War and a few veterans of the war with Mexico, accompanied by the Silver Coronet Band. Ladies and gentlemen in carriages joined the crowd at the cemetery, and flowers and evergreens were laid upon the graves of veterans. Wilbur F. Sanders gave a lengthy address while the Reverend T. V. Moore officiated as chaplain. This observance, the Helena Daily Herald pointed out on June 2, 1883, brought to light the deplorable condition of the city's protestant and Catholic cemeteries whose wooden head and foot boards had deteriorated and could not be deciphered:

Some of the noblest men and women... lie buried there; yet their resting places cannot be identified. After considerable inquiry, we do not find that plot of the lots… is kept. The county gravedigger keeps no record of interments. He digs a hole and covers a corpse and the name of the dead is buried in the same oblivion as is his body….

The only known historic photo of a Helena cemetery is this undated one of the Catholic Cemetery on Oakes, also known as St. Mary’s Cemetery. By the 1920s, it was abandoned. Robinson Park, created in 1972, covers some 1100 burials that still lie beneath the sod. Courtesy Charleen Spalding.

Only one-fourth of the graves in the city's several cemeteries were marked. This informal tally included the now-forgotten graves that remained in the old City Cemetery near the grounds of Central School and the Catholic Cemetery on Oakes, now Robinson Park. At this time in Helena’s history, the only well-tended burial ground was the Jewish Home of Peace, now tucked next to Capital High School.

Friday Photo: Skeleton Teacher

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 74-104.256 GP

I'll bet a lot of teachers start to feel this way toward the end of the year. This undated photograph was taken by Edward Reinig, most likely in a Helena classroom. Does anyone recognize the location?

The Discovery at Last Chance Gulch

With the first greening of spring in 1864, John S. Cowan of Georgia, D. J. Miller of Alabama, John Crabb of Iowa, and Reginald (Bob) Stanley of Nuneaton, England, set out from Alder Gulch to prospect along the Little Blackfoot River. They had no luck and headed over the mountains. After several miserable days of wandering cold and wet in the mist, the sun emerged and they reached the Continental Divide. Pushing down the eastern slope, they camped in a narrow gulch where a stream trickled through gravel. The men passed the evening panning. They did find color, more than they had found elsewhere, but they were anxious to find better diggings and pressed on. Six weeks later, they had found nothing. The discouraged miners began to talk of the little gulch on the east side of the Divide. Nearly out of provisions, the men returned to take one last chance. It was the evening of July 14, 1864. Stanley later wrote:

…while my partners dug some holes near the mouth of the gulch, I took pick, shovel and pan and made my way up stream looking for a bar on which to put down a hole likely to have bedrock. [It was] a fine still evening with the charm of treading the unknown and unexplored.… A tiny stream rippled under gravel banks…. I commenced a hole on the bar and put it down to bedrock, some six or seven feet. Taking a pan of gravel from the bottom, I clambered out and panned it in the little stream close by. Three or four little flat, smooth nuggets was the result; nuggets that made the pan ring when dropped into it….

Miners in gum boots panned streams across Montana looking for gold. Drawing from the Helena Board of Trade, 1887.

Digging pits to bedrock describes the “Georgian method” of placer mining the four miners employed and explains why they were known thereafter as “the Georgians.” According to Stanley, the discovery site was “on bar ground back of the present site of the First National Bank.” In 1886, the Colwell Building replaced the bank. The discovery site is today’s south parking lot. By 1869, successful placer mines at Last Chance and other local gulches collectively yielded nearly $18 million worth of gold or $310 million in modern currency.

Sidney Edgerton

Helena City Commissioners have proclaimed the week of May 17, 2014, Sidney Edgerton Week in tribute to the man who helped create Montana Territory and for whom Lewis and Clark County was originally named. Sidney Edgerton’s contributions to Montana’s earliest history have been largely forgotten. Appointed chief justice of the supreme court of Idaho Territory, he arrived at Bannack in September, too late to cross the Continental Divide. He soon learned that Idaho’s governor had snubbed him by assigning him to the territory’s most remote district area east of the Divide. Edgerton became committed to the creation a new territory to include the recently discovered gold fields in what became Montana. He traveled to Washington carrying two thousand dollars’ worth of gold dust sewn into his clothing to plead the case.

Sidney Edgerton, Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 942-074

The new territory was already under consideration, and on May 26, 1864, Congress created Montana Territory. President Lincoln appointed Sidney Edgerton the territory’s first governor. On February 2, 1865, the territorial legislature established Edgerton County as one of Montana’s original nine counties with Silver City as its county seat. Helena residents, however, had quickly garnered more population than any other community in the county and wanted to claim that designation for itself. Legend has it that attorney Wilbur Fisk Sanders, Governor Edgerton’s nephew, rode to Silver City and stole the scant county documents. With the papers in his saddlebags, he rode to Helena and thus unofficially transferred the county seat. Politics were fickle, however, and Edgerton County’s name changed to Lewis and Clarke County in December 1867 with a legislative vote of 7 to 0. Civil War rivalries were vicious. Montana had some radical Republicans like Sanders and Edgerton, but by now Democrats outnumbered them. Republican Judge Hezekiah Hosmer noted in the December 28 Montana Post that the change came about only because of “partisan spleen.”  The change underscored bitter territorial politics.

Heikkila-Mattila Homestead

Finnish immigrant Gust Heikkila homesteaded along the Little Belt Creek coulee in 1902. Soon other Finnish settlers homesteaded the area, calling it Korpivaara, meaning “dangerous wilderness,” for its remote wooded surroundings. Here the Heikkilas raised eleven children, expanded their holdings, and were among the first to shift from farming to ranching. The skills of Gust and local Finnish builders Victor Mattila and Matt Maki reveal an outstanding folk vernacular building style that transferred the Finnish farmstead to a New World setting. The men showcased their traditional skills, building a sauna, residence, and other structures using Old World tools like the broadaxe and awl. The result is a classic Finnish farm with log buildings around an open courtyard. In 1938, the sons of Victor Mattila, who helped build the homestead, bought the property from the Heikkalas. The brothers, trained in woodworking by carpenter Matt Maki, expanded some of the buildings and also built new ones.

Barn built by John Mattila. Photo by Dena Sanford in Montana The Magazine of Western History, Winter 2013

The result is American in design but Finnish in construction. The 1938 barn, in particular, represents a masterful blending of the two cultures by second-generation Finnish builders. This unusual homestead, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is one interesting example of building by Montana’s diverse European homesteaders.

Growing up in Butte

Butte, the mining camp that became an industrial hub, was as unique for its children as it was an anomaly. Copper king W. A. Clark’s Columbia Gardens, which boasted one of the nation’s first Ferris wheels and a spectacular roller coaster, was his gift to the community, and children especially loved it. Mining camp ruffians and children of prominent mine officials rubbed elbows on the streetcar that took them all to the gardens each week for Children’s Day. Children by the hundreds enjoyed the entertainment. At the end of the day, they would pick huge bouquets of pansies to take home to their mothers.

Children pick pansies in Columbia Gardens. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, ST 001.120

But it was not all fun and games. Butte boys who reached puberty and could chew a plug of Peerless tobacco without throwing up were considered man enough to work in the mines. In the 1930s, a sign on the fence around the red light district read “Men under 21 keep out,” acknowledgment that young boys in Butte became men long before they reached legal age. Of all the mining camps, Butte was probably the most dangerous place for youngsters. This made Butte’s children tough and unusually daring. They seemed to thrive in the polluted air and unsanitary conditions frequently noted in reports to the Board of Health.

When Maury Mulcahy was growing up in Butte in the 1930s and 1940s, mine officials came around to his elementary school and showed the kids what a blasting cap was, how to extract the explosive powder, and then warned them not to pick them up. After the lecture, every boy went out in search of caps. They would pour the powder into a bottle with a wick, put it on the train tracks, and try to explode it as a train passed by. Mulcahy knew children who lost limbs to this form of play. The extreme danger made the game that much more fun.

Friday Photo: Barn Raising

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 2008-23.9

Edith and Edelbert Morrissette built this barn on their homestead on Whittman Coulee northwest of Hardin circa 1912. On the back is written, "Mr. Gibbs, Edelbert and Mr. Curtis putting up the roof." Edith herself took the photo.

Montana’s Death Penalty, Part 2

The cruel and unusual punishment argument again surfaced in 2006 with the impending execution of David Thomas Dawson. Dawson kidnapped and killed Monica and David Rodstein along with their eleven-year-old son Andrew in a Billings motel room in 1986; police rescued their fifteen-year-old daughter Amy who survived. Dawson fought his conviction for years, but gave up the fight in 2004 to become a willing participant in carrying out his death sentence. A month before Dawson’s scheduled execution, the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana led a coalition arguing that the state’s method of administering lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment. The law stipulates that the executioner need not be a physician, registered nurse, or licensed practical nurse but only someone selected by the warden and trained to administer a lethal dose. The dissenting groups claimed that the lethal substance, if improperly administered, could cause excruciating pain and thus violate the U.S. and Montana Constitutions. The Montana attorney general decided, however, that there was no indication that lethal injection had caused pain and that the groups had nothing personally at stake. They thus had no reason to be involved. Dawson wanted the execution to go forward and not to do so would infringe upon his constitutional rights. The courts had no right to infringe on Dawson’s rights in the attempt to uphold the concerns of others. Dawson was executed by lethal injection on August 11, 2006.

The Ryegate Gallows, on display at the Old Prison Museum at Deer Lodge, was used in one of Montana's last hangings in 1939. Its thirteen steps leading up to the platform are chilling reminders of frontier justice. Photo by J. M. Cooper

Montana has legally executed seventy-five individuals since Montana Territory carried out its first legal hanging in 1875. There are currently two men on Montana’s symbolic “death row.”  The Montana legislature considered abolishment of the death penalty in 2007, with the passage of a repeal bill in the Montana Senate, but the legislation died in State House committee by a single vote.

Montana’s Death Penalty, Part 1

It seems that with the botched Oklahoma execution in the news, people might be interested in Montana's execution laws and procedures. This is adapted in two parts from my Montana chapter in Gordon Bakken's book Invitation to an Execution.

Montana’s last hanging was in 1943. In 1983, the legislature amended the law to allow the condemned to choose hanging or lethal injection. Changes also made county executions obsolete and specified the Montana State Prison as the place of execution. These changes essentially overhauled Montana’s death penalty. These changes were untried until the execution of Duncan Peder McKenzie Jr. in 1995. Sentenced in 1975 for the murder of teacher Lana Harding, McKenzie appealed numerous times. Governor Marc Racicot wrestled with his pleas for clemency. A converted house trailer at the Montana State Prison at Deer Lodge became the death chamber. Wearing orange prison overalls and lying on a gurney, McKenzie had no last words. He was the first in Montana to die of lethal injection.

The Montana State Prison does not have an official Death Row; the term is symbolic. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 78-57.125

When the 1997 Legislature further amended the law to eliminate hanging as an option, Terry Allen Langford had already been on “death row”—a symbolic term as there has never been a formally designated “death row” in the Montana State Prison—for nine years. He received the death penalty in Powell County for the kidnapping and brutal slayings of Edward “Ned” and Celene Blackwood at their ranch near Ovando in 1988. Langford's execution was set for January 17, 1992. He chose hanging but then moved for the District Court to declare hanging cruel and unusual punishment and a violation of his constitutional rights under the Eighth Amendment. The court declared the position moot since Langford himself elected the method.

Years passed. As Langford initiated further proceedings, the legislature removed hanging as an option in 1997. Hanging passed into the annals of the state’s history. Langford then argued that the amending of the law deprived him of his choice of death by hanging—and the final opportunity to avoid the death penalty. If the Supreme Court had agreed that hanging was cruel and unusual punishment, the law would not have allowed his execution. Langford, also convicted of the murder of an inmate during a prison riot in 1991, lost this argument and became the second person in Montana to die by lethal injection in the converted house trailer on February 24, 1998.

Friday Photo: Columbia Gardens Roller Coaster

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archvies, ST 001.135

Columbia Gardens in Butte boasted one of the nation’s first Ferris wheels as well as this spectacular roller coaster, built in 1906. Photo by N. A. Forsythe, circa 1906-1911.