Iroquois Indians, employed by the fur companies to teach the mountain Indians to hunt for furs, taught them also the Catholic religion. The Salish Indians sent four separate delegations to St. Louis to bring back the "Black Robes," and Father P. J. De Smet returned with the last of these in 1840. In 1841 he founded St. Mary's Mission in the Bitter Root valley.
A number of settlers trickled into the Bitter Root valley be tween 1850 and 186o, but the real rush of immigration came only v hen gold was discovered. The first strike was made in 1858 on Gold creek by James and Granville Stuart, and in 1861 and 1862 a little colony of pioneers was panning the sands of the stream. The latter year saw a richer strike made on Grasshopper creek, in the Beaverhead country, where Bannack sprang up, the liveliest town in the region in 1863. Also in 1863 gold was dis covered in Alder Gulch, one of the richest placer areas the world has known, where Virginia City grew up and soon outdistanced all its rivals. At Virginia City in 1864 the first newspaper, The Montana Post, appeared. The same year Last Chance Gulch, the site of the future capital city of Helena, was discovered. And finally, in that year Montana was organized as a separate Ter ritory, Sidney Edgerton was appointed its first governor, and the first legislature met at Bannack.
New placer discoveries were constantly made during the next few decades of Montana's history until there were camps in hun dreds of gulches. By 1876 gold to the value of $144,400,000 was produced. Metalliferous quartz was discovered at Helena, Philips burg and Butte, at the last two places containing silver veins. The Philipsburg district was especially prosperous until the decline of silver values forced many of the mines to close. Not until the early '8os was the copper discovery made at Butte which was to result in the place becoming one of the world's greatest mining camps. The large influx of miners brought difficulties with the Indians. It had been to the interest of the fur traders and the missionaries to keep peace with and among the various tribes, but no such mutual benefit relations existed between the Indians and the gold hunters. The Sioux and Cheyennes united in trying to prevent immigrants from passing over the Bozeman trail, and this important short cut to Montana from the Platte had to be closed by the Government. The Sioux were again on the
war-path in 1876, because the miners had invaded their Black Hills reserve, and that year they annihilated Gen. Custer's five companies of cavalry on the Little Big Horn river. So many of the Indians were killed, however, that their power was broken. The Government began to make treaties with the different tribes, in which the boundaries of the Indian country were carefully de fined; the Indians were ordered to stay on these reservations. The last disturbance came in 1877 when Chief Joseph of the Nez Perces refused to stay on the reservation and attempted to escape with his followers into Canada. After giving desperate battle in the Big Hole country and conducting a masterly retreat over more than i,000 m., he was surrounded in the Bear Paw mountains, and was forced to surrender to Gen. Miles.
During all these years the eastern three-fifths of the State was unsettled, and settlement came only when agriculture and the live stock industry began to expand eastward. The first stock and the first crops were raised near the mines and sold to the mining camps. Prices were high, and disappointed miners found the production of food a lucrative business. The first drive of cattle from Texas to Montana was made in 1869. The first rail ship ments were trailed from western Montana to the Union Pacific at Ogden, Utah. After the Indians were quieted in 1877, most of the shipments were driven to Cheyenne, Wyo. The completion of the Northern Pacific railway through the State (1879-83) immensely stimulated the cattle industry. In 1885, 79,089 head were shipped to market; in 1891, 250,000 head; and from then to 1912, the shipments amounted to more than 200,000 head an nually. Sheep raising was developed in Montana even before the cattle industry, because it was not so dependent upon transporta tion. Large quantities of wool were shipped by flatboat down the Missouri and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans and thence by steamer to Boston. Sheep increased from 4,212 in 1870 to 249.978 by 188o, to 1,990,000 in 1890, and to 6,170,00o in 1900, when the wool clip of Montana exceeded that of any other State. In the first decade of the present century the encroachment of the homesteaders began to be felt by the stockmen, many of whom sold out as agricultural development increased land values.