Dupuyer Creek was called Osaks itukai, meaning Back fat, by the Blackfeet, referring to a choice cut of buffalo meat the Indians relished. French Canadian fur trappers translated the name to Depouille, the French word for hide, and over time it became Dupuyer. Whiskey traders Joe Kipp and Charlie Thomas settled here to raise cattle in 1874 and sold their holdings to Jimmy Grant in 1877. By the 1880s, Dupuyer had become a colorful frontier cattle town and a stop on the Fort Shaw-Fort Browning Trail, and it is the oldest town between Fort Benton and the Rocky Mountains. To the west, along the base of the mountains, lies one of the oldest trails in the United States, first used by early North American natives as a primary north-south route. Jim Bridger and the fur trappers knew it as the Old Travois Trail, and when white traders bootlegged whiskey into Canada in the 1870s and 1880s, it became known as the Pondera Trail. Refugees of the Riel Rebellion came to Dupuyer Creek in 1885, and many remained to make the area their home. The Home Ranch of Dupuyer Creek was headquarters for the famous Seven Block Cattle Company of brothers Charles and William Conrad and a frequent stopping place for Montana western artist Charlie Russell.