April 13, 1879Seventy-five years later, Montana got its own version of the Alexander Hamilton-Aaron Burr duel. This time, both parties died.
J. Littlefield had never gotten over losing the affections of an unnamed woman to A.H. Foster, a business rival in Glendale, in Beaverhead County west of Melrose. Foster married the lady, "and settled down to the enjoyments of domestic life," according to a report in the Helena Herald.
Presumably it was Littlefield who ultimately challenged Foster to the time-honored way of settling such disputes - a pistol duel of the sort that took Hamilton's life in 1804.
"Both fired simultaneously and fell in their tracks," the report said. "Littlefield was shot through the heart and died almost instantly, while Foster, who was hit in a vital part, expired four hours later."
Both men, the Herald added, "were sporting characters."
April 15, 1824
Alexander Ross made his great escape. He led a party of five to the summit of the Bitterroot Mountains after a month trapped by snow near present-day Sula.
"After a day of severe toil, we reached the other side on horse back; but being too late, and our horses too tired to return, we encamped there ..." Ross wrote in his journal.
Two days later, the rest of the trapping expedition made its way out of the valley and into the Big Hole, on a route similar to one Capt. William Clark navigated in July 1806.
A clerk for the Hudson's Bay Co., Ross had brought a large party of trappers bound for the Snake River country from Salish House near present-day Thompson Falls in March. When they got to what would come to be known as Ross's Hole, on the East Fork of the Bitterroot River, the weather turned bad.
Ross spent the next few weeks battling desertions and trying to get a road built through the drifts. They went on to trap nearly 5,000 beaver furs in the Salmon and Snake River valleys in Idaho before returning to Salish House in the fall.
April 17, 1865
Sheriff Neil Howie knew what was brewing as some 500 men approached Virginia City from down Alder Gulch. Their leader, R.S. Blake, rode a horse and held an empty flour sack on a stick as a flag.
"Gentlemen, this uprising is to get flour and pay a reasonable price for it; it is not to sack the town," Howie told them.
The first man caught stealing would be shot or hanged, he said. A certain group of men who had "fought for law and order a few months ago" was ready to fight again now to maintain peace. He referred, of course, to the Montana Vigilantes.
And so Howie effectively steered the Flour Riot of 1865 away from violence. Merchants had priced the commodity at exorbitant levels after a hard winter that drained Montana of foodstuffs. In some cases, the price of flour had been jacked from $15 for a 100-pound sack to $150 in gold. Howie had similarly defused a pending scuffle earlier in the month in nearby Nevada City.
This time the men of Virginia City respectfully ransacked the stores of the town for three days. They came up with 82 sacks and hauled them to Leviathan Hall. There the flour was rationed out, on a need basis, at $27 a sack for Salt Lake flour and $30 for St. Louis flour.
Kim Briggeman can be reached at 523-5266 or by e-mail at kbriggeman@missoulian.com.
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