Distinctly Montana Magazine

W W W. D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA NA . C O M 85 fur trade. Complicating his French Creole heritage was the fact that St. Louis was part of New Spain when he was born, part of France when the Treaty of Aranjuez was signed in 1801, and part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. at made him a native of three different countries without even leaving town. He estab- lished Fort Benton on the upper Missouri, naming it after U.S. Senator omas Hart Benton. e fort remained a vital conduit for goods coming by steamboat from St. Louis until the comple- tion of the Northern Pacific in 1883. Pierre, South Dakota, is named for Choteau himself. • e gradual end of the fur trade and the start of the gold rush in 1862 led to a shift for many of the French. Still outdoorsmen, they took up woodcutting to provide wood for the many smelters. Over a six year period, the Anaconda copper smelter burned 196,000 cords of wood from forests west of Helena, an amount which would line the road with 8'x4'x4' cords of firewood from Hamilton to a little past Billings. When the smelters gradually switched to coal, many of the French woodcutters drifted to the logging camps of the Pacific Northwest and much of Montana's French heritage was lost. • e saga of Louis Riel and the rebellions of the Metis in Canada in 1869 and 1885 are dramatic and important, but can't be constrained within the confines of a brief article. e French and Indian Metis of Canada sought refuge in Montana and is a story in itself. While most of the early French Montanans were from French Canada, there were some notable exceptions. • French-born Michand Oxarart, foreman for Montana cattle baron Conrad Kohrs, was later rumored to have gone into busi- ness smuggling stolen horses back and forth over the Cana- dian border. e astute cattleman Kohrs certainly had trusted him. Oxarart's photo, in suit and tie and posed with a bust of Shakespeare does not conjure up an image of a rough character hightailing it over the hill with a band of cayuses. • Another of the great cattle barons of Montana, Pierre Wibaux, has a Montana town and county named after him. Born in 1858 in Roubaix, France, his imagination was caught by the tales of open range ranching in the American West. Raised to be businesslike, he came first to Chicago to study the possibilities. e flamboy- ant French adventurer, the Marquis de Mores, met him there and encouraged him to invest in the unfenced ranges of Montana and North Dakota. ough the flamboyant Marquis' ranch was in North Dakota, his reputation stretched into Montana, as well, per- haps, as his name: Antoine-Amedee-Marie-Vincent Manca Amat de Vallombrosa, Marquis de Mores et de Montemaggiore. Wibaux was less glamorous—but more successful. As more and more settlers arrived from the East and other European countries, the stories of the early French Montanans be- gan to fade. Traces remain in family names which have often been anglicized, place names, and, more vividly, in the tales of those who brought a bit of French flair to the young Montana Territory. One last candidate for "first" in the European discovery of the American Northwest is the Lost Welsh Tribe which is alleged to have arrived in 1170, led by a Welsh prince named Madoc. If you like that theory, you may have to give up the flaky French croissant, the rock-hard Spanish barra gallega and the English pease bread and bake some Welsh bara brith. Whatever your taste, they were all bread in the Old Country. S K I J O R U S A N AT I O N A L C H A M PI O N S H I P F I N A L S • M A R C H 9 T H 1 0 T H 2 0 1 9 • v Open for Dinner M - SAT, 5 PM - close // Lunch TU-F, 11:30 - 2 PM Ph: 406.577.2585 // 290 W Kagy Blvd • Please call for reservations >>> Located across S 3rd from the Museum of the Rockies <<< Hand Crafted Italian Dining Voted #1 Italian Restaurant in Bozeman!

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