w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m
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H
me an old cottonwood tree and pointed out across the Teton
River to large grooves that head into the river.
The ridge above the river is a buffalo jump, he told me,
and the grooves are from years of travel from the buffalo
crossing toward greener grass. The Blackfeet considered
this area sacred, and the cottonwood was a burial tree; the
family worked their irrigation pivots around it so that the
cottonwood is a very prominent feature in the center of their
flourishing fields. He said every so often, after a heavy rain,
buffalo skulls will wash up onto the shore. I asked if they had
ever found anything that might be from the Lewis and Clark
expedition, and he said they sometimes find pieces of old
metal, but not much.
We parted ways, and I headed to Big Sandy to meet up
with a retired shop teacher Bob Nelson.
I met Bob at Pep's Bar, instantly picking him out by the
books he was carrying. Bob said he has always enjoyed study-
ing the history of the expedition, and there is one part that
intrigues him in particular. "When the expedition in April
hit Slaughter River, called Arrow Creek now, what always
bothered me was when [historians and archivists] Ambrose
and Moulton came by and rewrote the journals, everything
Lewis and Clark said was gospel. Except that day, they hit
the river and the pishkuns (buffalo jumps)—the problem was
they didn't know where it exactly was, so they found what
they thought it was and put that down. But after going there
and doing my own research, I found the spot it actually was,
which isn't what Ambrose put down."
Bob told me he has gone back to that site plenty of times,
and that he reckons the journals are off by about three weeks,
offering by way of proof a Bodmer painting done when
Prince Maximillian went through the area that apparently
