Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A • W I N T E R 2 0 1 8 74 Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, painting by George C. Bingham, 1845, Metropolitan Museum of Art Father Nicholas Point, one of the founders of St. Mary's Mission in 1841, drew a sketch of Jesuits in a primitive grass shelter. A newcomer which likely arrived with the first ships from the Old World was the rat, specifically Rattus norvegicus. It had needed no invita- tion to explore the northwest. As it had for millennia, it simply followed a meal ticket when trappers and traders moved up the Mississippi and onto the Missouri. And what a meal ticket it was! Between pelts and food supplies, the rodents had a moveable feast. As the fur trade diminished, the rats found new providers—in uniform. By 1866, the army established Camp Cooke where the Judith River emptied into the Missouri. Roughly 50 miles north of present-day Lew- istown, the camp requisitioned twice its required food supply in anticipation of rats eating half. Four years later, Camp Cooke was abandoned to the rats where the waters of the Judith mingled with those of nearby Dog Creek (one of several so named) as they joined the Missouri. Quietly stepping into this new world of barking and gnaw- ing was the cat, Felis catus, neither as cherished as the dog nor as uninvited as the rat. People are fond of claiming "firsts" and in 1921, the Great Falls Tribune published the tale of a man who believed he had brought the first cat in Montana. "First, biggest, only…" Such claims are always open to contradiction. He said that in the summer of 1862, the John White party had made their big discovery of gold in southwest Montana on Grasshopper Creek at Bannack. Bannack's hopeful handful of miners was joined within months by 500 others. Ira Myers left Denver to join the stampede in 1863 with a well-provisioned wagon and $100 worth of plug tobacco, which he had been advised would be traded for the gold that miners were finding in such abundance. All these preparations left him with only $20 in his pocket. e first night out of Denver, he camped near some settled ranches and went to one to see if he could buy a little milk. ere he saw a cat with seven kittens and offered $2.50 for one kitten. is offer was refused but the rancher's wife offered the old cat and all the kittens for the same price. He declined, but on returning to camp was talked into the deal by others in his party. His clothes L E T T I N G T H E C AT O U T O F T H E B A G BY LYNDEL MEIKLE L EWIS AND CLARK BLAZED A TRAIL THROUGH MONTANA IN 1804. It may be assumed that Lewis's Newfoundland dog, Seaman, marked the territory as well. Although it was a matter of exploration for these particular humans and dog, the land was already well-known to both species. Humans, of course, had been here for at least 12,000 years, and fossil remains of dogs predate the advent of Europeans with estimates ranging back from as few as a thousand years to nearly ten thousand. ere can be no doubt that many tribes were familiar with Canis familiaris. D E PA R T M E N T H E R I TA G E

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