Captain Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, accompanied by three of his men, explored this portion of the country on their return from the coast. On July 26, 1806, they met eight Piegans, or Blackfeet, whom Lewis mistakenly identified as Gros Ventres, and camped with them that night on Two Medicine Creek at a point northeast of here. The next morning, when the Indians attempted to steal the explorers' guns and horses, a fight broke out in which two of the Indians were killed. This was the expedition's only hostile encounter with Indians during its entire journey from St. Louis to the Pacific and back. Lewis also unwittingly brought alarming news to the Piegans that their traditional enemies, the Nez Perce, Shoshoni, and Kootenai, were uniting in an American-inspired peace and would be receiving guns and supplies from Yankee traders, threatening the Blackfeet's twenty-year domination of the Northern Plains made possible by Canadian guns.