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.

Bill Stockton’s Chief Joseph

Bill Stockton was a sheepman and artist who returned to Montana after World War II to settle on his family ranch near Grass Range. Art and sheep seem an odd combination, but Stockton’s tender heart, love for his animals, and closeness to the land provided a lifetime of inspiration. His legacy includes writings, sketches, paintings, and sculpture. Stockton found the plight of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perces, who tried unsuccessfully to flee from the U.S. Army to sanctuary in Canada, extremely troubling. So in the 1950s he created a haunting metal sculpture known as Chief Joseph. It depicts a head with arms upraised in poignant recapitulation.  

Stockton sent the piece to an art retailer in Billings. Thieves broke into the business and stole the sculpture and several other pieces of Stockton’s work.A year later, a young Indian man allegedly committed suicide by jumping off a bridge into the Yellowstone River. As Yellowstone County officials dragged the river looking for him, they not only recovered the young man’s body, but they also discovered Stockton’s sculpture of Chief Joseph. It had been in the river for a year. It was as if the spirit of the young man aided in the recovery of the artwork. The sculpture later was entered in the Great Falls Russell Art Show and Auction where journalist Kay Hansen saw it. She knew she had to have the piece. With only nine dollars in her pocket, Hansen bid and acquired the sculpture, paying for it in monthly installments. She has recently donated it to the Montana Historical Society. It is one of Stockton’s most important creations.