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<\/a>In 1881, Martha Edgerton Rolfe Plassmann, the daughter of Montana\u2019s first territorial governor, made her way down the Missouri River from Fort Benton aboard the steamboat Far West.<\/p>\n<\/a>In 1881, Martha Edgerton Rolfe Plassmann, the daughter of Montana\u2019s first territorial governor, made her way down the Missouri River from Fort Benton aboard the steamboat Far West.<\/p>\n
In a detailed account of the journey, she wrote of the alarm she and other passengers felt when they learned that the Far West was to stop at Fort Buford, near present-day Williston, to pick up Sitting Bull and his band of Sioux Indians and transport them to Standing Rock Agency, south of Bismarck.<\/p>\n
In spite of her fears, she paid close, sensitive attention to the Indian passengers, as in this description of a gathering at sunset:<\/p>\n
\u201cThey swayed gently side to side, now and then half turning round, and meanwhile chanting what sounded like \u2018Hi-yi-yi,\u2019 repeated again and again. Their voices were good, and I discovered that there was a real melody to what they sang. \u2026 There they stood, their splendid, almost naked forms outlined against the glowing sunset. As they sang, shrill boys\u2019 voices from the lower deck took up the burden of the song in another key, but with similar intervals. It was a concert never to be forgotten, on a stage impossible of reproduction, and hung with curtains of celestial hue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plassmann\u2019s recollections take up 11 full pages of Ken Robison\u2019s new book, \u201cYankees & Rebels on the Upper Missouri<\/a>,\u201d published this month by the History Press. Turning to the notes and then the bibliography, I found that the passage came from Plassmann\u2019s \u201cMemories of a Long Life,\u201d an unpublished manuscript in Robison\u2019s possession.<\/p>\n Ed Kemmick<\/p><\/div>\n That is the great value of Robison\u2019s growing collection of books about Fort Benton and the Upper Missouri River: His tireless research continues to unearth buried nuggets of unknown or forgotten Montana history, much of it concerning people traditionally ignored by historians.<\/p>\n As in his other<\/a> two books<\/a> dealing with Civil War-era Montana Territory, Robison is particularly good at finding and telling the stories of African-Americans. In this book, their ranks include Mary and Maria Adams, sisters who served the family of George A. and Elizabeth Custer as, respectively, cook and housemaid.<\/p>\n Possibly the toughest person in the book is Millie Ringgold, who was born a slave in 1845 and accompanied the family of Gen. Nelson B. Sweitzer when he was sent out to command Fort Ellis, near Bozeman. She would remain in Montana the rest of her life, first as the proprietor of a boardinghouse in Fort Benton and then of a restaurant, saloon and small hotel in Yogo City, in the Little Belt Mountains.<\/p>\n There is also the fascinating story of another ex-slave, Mattie Bell Bost, who ended up marrying a white man, John K. Castner, a freighter and coal mine operator in Helena. They later moved to Little Pittsburg and built the first log cabin there. It would become a well-known traveler\u2019s inn and Little Pittsburg would become the town of Belt.<\/p>\n A few chapters earlier, Robison tells a sad little tale related to the Castner family. It seems that a woman by the name of Florence B. Franklin once had plans to publish a book called \u201cCradled in Dixie,\u201d partly about the life of Mattie Bell Bost Castner, whom Franklin had known as a child in Belt.<\/p>\n \u201cThe mystery of why \u2018Cradled in Dixie\u2019 was never published was answered,\u201d Robison writes, \u201cwhen this author discovered an article on the proposed book in the vertical files of the Great Falls Public Library. Written on the article in the handwriting of legendary African American librarian Alma Jacobs was the following explanation:<\/p>\n \u2018This book has not been published. Mrs. Franklin told me in June 1970 that Castner heirs threatened her with a lawsuit if she published because the descendants did not want to be earmarked as having Negro blood.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Ole](\"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/1Kemmick.mug-copy-19.jpg\")
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<\/a><\/div><\/div>One can only imagine the thrill, and the disappointment, Robison must have felt when he stumbled upon that evocative fragment of Montana history.<\/p>\n