Fort Musselshell

Fort Musselshell stood on the Missouri River about 35 miles north of here and served as a trading post in the eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies, giving it a brief but colorful career. In that part of the state, the only whites were woodchoppers for the Missouri River steamboats, wolfers, trappers, and Indian trappers. River Crows and Gros Ventre Indians traded there, where a buffalo robe brought three cups of coffee, or six cups of sugar, or ten cups of flour, making it a tolerably profitable business from the traders standpoint. The Assiniboine and Sioux regarded the post as an amusement center where bands of ambitious braves could lie in ambush and get target practice on careless whites. Musselshell also became a cattle rustlers hangout, but after a Vigilance Committee stretched a few of them they seemed to lose interest.

Montana · United States