Sieben Ranch

The Sieben Ranch encompasses a vast 115,000 acres in Lewis and Clark County. It has a rich archaeological history that includes fragments of the roads that brought miners to Montana’s goldfields. Trader Malcolm Clarke was the first to settle on a knoll overlooking Prickly Pear Creek in 1864 where he ran a stage stop.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 941-761

Clarke, embittered over his expulsion from West Point because of an altercation with a fellow student, had come west with the American Fur Company in 1841. The itinerant trader finally settled down on his ranch to raise horses and cattle. A dispute with Clarke’s Blackfeet in-laws and trouble in Fort Benton between whites and Blackfeet led to his murder at the ranch in 1869.

Malcolm Clarke's ranch. Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 941-762

Clarke’s family buried him on a gentle rise north of the house. Pioneer rancher James Fergus added the Clarke ranch to his large holdings in 1875. General William T. Sherman, an overnight guest at the Fergus house in 1877, stumbled upon Clarke’s grave. He was saddened to discover Clarke’s fate. The two had been classmates at West Point and Sherman had long wondered what became of the promising young cadet. Henry Sieben purchased the ranch in 1897, and it remains in the Sieben-Baucus family today, still a working sheep ranch with a legacy its owners treasure.

John L. Clarke

Artist J. K. Ralston said that when John L. Clarke finished carving a bear, you could smell it. Clarke was a gifted wood carver, highly celebrated in his own lifetime. John D. Rockefeller even purchased eight of his carvings. The grandson of trader Malcolm Clarke and his Piegan wife, John was three-quarters Blackfeet. His grandfather Malcolm was killed in 1869 over a dispute with his in-laws. His father, Horace, was shot through the head during that incident but recovered. When John was a toddler, scarlet fever claimed five of his brothers and left him profoundly deaf. He was sent away to schools for the deaf in the 1890s and educated at North Dakota and at Montana’s state school at Boulder. There he learned wood carving. Clarke mostly communicated through sign language and was known by his Blackfeet name, Catapuis, which means the Man Who Talks Not.

John L. Clarke with A Blackfeet Encampment, 1956, wood frieze,  Montana Historical Society, X1959.12.01.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 941-735

Despite his handicap, Clarke was highly gifted, largely self-taught, and spent most of his life carving spectacular wildlife at his studio in East Glacier. His work includes clay sculpture, paintings, sketches, and the famed mountain goat insignia of the Great Northern Railway. His last work was a carving of a grizzly bear freeing itself from a trap. Clarke did this remarkable carving almost entirely by feel, his ninety-year-old eyes so clouded with cataracts that he could hardly see. Clarke’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States and in London, England. President Warren G. Harding commissioned an eagle holding an American flag that he displayed in the Oval Office during his presidency. The John L. Clarke Western Art Gallery and Memorial Museum in East Glacier commemorates the work of this exceptional artist who was one of Montana’s finest native sons.

Elizabeth Lochrie

The U.S. Treasury Department, the State of Montana, the Ford Motor Company, New York Life Insurance Company, and the First National Bank of Seattle were among the distinguished patrons of Deer Lodge native Elizabeth Lochrie. Formally trained as an artist at the Pratt Institute in New York City, she graduated in 1911 and settled in Butte. From the 1920s to the 1950s, Lochrie established herself as a fine portrait artist. She also painted local rural and urban landscapes and scenes. During 1924 and 1925, Lochrie painted eighteen children’s murals for the Montana State Hospital at Galen. She also created murals for several post office buildings.

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 80-61

In 1937 Lochrie won the U.S. Treasury Department’s competition for News from the States at the Dillon Post Office, depicting the historic arrival of mail in that community. At Glacier National Park, Lochrie studied under Winold Reiss and then served as artist for the Great Northern Railway from 1937 to 1939. While other artists documented the vanishing Indian lifeway, Lochrie did more than that. She immersed herself in Indian culture and learned to converse in various dialects. She traveled the lecture circuit and often used her fees to buy clothing and other items for needy tribal members, especially Blackfeet. In 1932, the Blackfeet Nation adopted her and named her Netchitaki, Woman Alone in Her Way. When she died in 1981, Lochrie left a legacy of more than one thousand paintings, murals, and sculptures. She was one of Montana’s most outstanding twentieth-century artists.

P.S. Have you seen the Women's History Project?

Friday Photo: Blackfeet at Two Medicine Lake

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 956-503

This idyllic (and carefully posed) photo of a Blackfeet camp at Two Medicine Lake was probably used to promote Glacier National Park tourism. It was taken in 1915 by Herford T. Cowling.

Friday Photo: Grass Dance

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, ST 001.308

N. A. Forsyth called this photo "The Grass Dance of the Blackfeet." He probably snapped it between 1900 and 1911.

Journey of the Scottish Rings

William Logan came from Scotland to the United States as a young man. Before he left home, his father gave him a signet ring carved with the family crest that had been in the family for generations.   Logan always wore this ring. He also wore a masonic ring he greatly treasured. William Logan served in both the Mexican and Civil Wars. As Captain in the Seventh Infantry, Company A, he came to Montana the day after Custer’s defeat at Little Big Horn.  A year later in August of 1877, Captain Logan died at the Battle of the Big Hole. Indians desecrated the bodies of the dead. Captain Logan’s fingers were cut off and the rings taken. Logan’s wife advertised in the papers to recover the rings, but had no luck. Three years later, a Nez Perce was killed near the Canadian border; he had the signet ring. It was traded and bartered until Bill Todd, a friend of Captain Logan’s, recognized it in the possession of an old trapper. He persuaded the trapper to give up the ring and took it to Captain Logan’s son. Sometime later, the son was living at the Blackfeet Agency when an Indian woman came into the post wearing his father’s masonic ring. He bought the ring from her. She told him that a few months after the Big Hole battle, the Blackfeet and Piegans fought the Nez Perce. Her husband took the masonic ring from a fallen Nez Perce and wore it until his death. It then passed to his wife who was wearing it when Logan’s son saw it on her finger. Those rings came full circle, but they had quite a journey getting there.

Friday Photo: Glacier National Park Tour Bus

Did you hear? The Going-to-the-Sun Road is open, and the forecast for the park is calling for sixties and seventies all weekend. Wouldn't you love to take a tour?

Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, PAc 93-25 A3 214

The Blackfeet inducted western artist E. W. Deming into the tribe and named him Eight Bears for his family of eight. In this photo, the Demings pose in a tour bus circa 1914 with their Blackfeet driver, Lazy Boy, at the wheel.

The Ghost Horse Named Paint

Once there was a bay pinto, born on the prairie to an old mare who had given many foals to her Crow owner. The horse’s name was Paint. In the five years he lived with the Crow, he learned the feel of a man on his back and the ways of the buffalo hunt. One night as they camped along Painted Robe Creek in today’s Golden Valley County, Blackfeet crept into the sleeping camp to steal the horses. Paint felt a man on his back and he began to run. Gunfire shattered the night. Paint felt the man go slack and then Paint ran alone. When the horses stopped running, the Blackfeet saw that one man was missing. Their leader, Bad Wound, looked over the captive horses and noted Paint was good and strong. But then he saw the dried blood on his back. He drew his Henry rifle and fired at Paint. The horse fell to his knees and rolled on his side. Bad Wound wanted to send the dead warrior a good horse to take him on his last journey. But later Bad Wound saw Paint among the herd, dried blood on his head and neck, but otherwise sound. The bullet had gone completely through his neck, and Paint lived. But he was the steed of a dead man, and no one would ride a ghost horse. The following spring, some whites came to the Blackfeet to buy horses. Bad Wound sold Paint to a young boy whose name was Charlie Russell. Paint, whom Russell renamed Monte, was his favorite horse and the two were inseparable until the horse died of extreme old age twenty-five years later.


From Charles M. Russell, Word Painter. Original in the Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives.