By KIM BRIGGEMAN of the Missoulian
Oct. 11, 1809
Lewis and William Clark led the expedition that explored the vast regions of the Missouri River headwaters and Columbia River basin from 1804-1806. Upon his return, he was named governor of Louisiana Territory, which included all of what is now Montana east of the Rockies.
A moody, solitary bachelor, Lewis was on a journey from his office in St. Louis to Washington, D.C., in the autumn of 1809 to clear up debts to the War Department he had incurred as governor.
Lewis was feverish and agitated when he and his small travel party stopped for the night at a frontier tavern called Grinder's Stand on the Natchez Trace, about 70 miles from Nashville. John Grinder was away from home at the time. His wife later reported Lewis was acting strangely and refused the bed she made for him, preferring instead a pallet and his buffalo robe on the floor.
Mrs. Grinder said she heard two gunshots in the night, and he was later found by servants with wounds in his head and side. He reportedly whispered, “I am no coward, but I am strong, so hard to die.” He died just as the sun came up.
Whether he was murdered or took his own life has not been established.
Oct. 11, 1876
William Andrews Clark, future copper king and U.S. senator, gave the keynote address on Montana Day at the nation's Centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia.
Montana Territory had leaped into the nation's consciousness a few months earlier when news was received of the 7th Cavalry's fatal encounter under Col. George Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
The 37-year-old Clark, who was born in Pennsylvania, spoke on the origin, growth and resources of the territory. He compared Montana with his vision of it in 100 years: “Now in the freshness of youth, her valleys sparsely settled, her mineral treasures not half revealed; then in the imperial dignity of statehood, on the transcontinental highway of the world's commerce, the smoke of a thousand furnaces rising up to mingle with the pure air that envelops her mountains, and the fame of her riches extended to all the ends of the earth.”
The day kicked off the final month of the six-month exposition, the first official World's Fair in the United States. The exposition featured the first public displays of Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, Remington's typewriter, Heinz Ketchup and Hires Root Beer.
Oct. 8, 1909
The famed XIT cattle ranch in eastern Montana threw a farewell barbecue, signaling the end of the Texas outfit's 20-year operation in Montana.
O.C. Cato, range manager for the Texas outfit, tendered the barbecue at the XIT's range headquarters north of Fallon. The XIT held over three million acres in Texas and leased two million more between the Yellowstone and Missouri River in Montana in 1890. A myth arose that the brand referred to “Ten in Texas” - the number of counties a cowboy could cross in the Texas Panhandle and not leave the ranch. In truth, it was designed to discouraged alteration by rustlers.
The XIT sent thousands of Texas longhorns north to Montana each year to be topped off before shipping to market in Chicago. Some 16,000 were shipped the fall of 1909. Cato, a Texan himself, was a highly respected cattle man who bought out the XIT's holding in Montana. He later served as a Montana state senator and sheriff of Custer County.
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