A Dispute Over Horses and Guns

By editor

Conrad, Pondera County, Montana

The evening of July 26, 1806, found Meriwether Lewis and three companions--Reubin Fields, Joseph Fields, and George Drouillard--camping beneath the towering bluffs that descend toward the south bank of the Two Medicine River. Here, amid the rugged folds of what is now Pondera County, Montana, they encountered a party of eight Blackfeet warriors. The meeting took place in a landscape shaped by ancient forces: sedimentary layers of the Kootenai Formation, laid down some 80 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period, rise nearby in steep escarpments. The river below, fed by the northern Rocky Mountain snowmelt, courses through a narrow valley rimmed with ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), their needles whispering in the evening breeze.

Meriwether Lewis, recently returned eastward from the Continental Divide, had detached from William Clark’s group, which was navigating the Yellowstone River to the south. Lewis’s mission was to explore the Marias River, seeking to determine whether its waters extended far enough northward to provide the United States with a legitimate claim to the fur-rich basin of the Saskatchewan River drainage. This was no mere curiosity; the fur trade promised wealth and influence, and the young nation was eager to assert its presence in the vast interior.

The Blackfeet, a formidable nation whose ancestors had roamed these plains for centuries, regarded Lewis’s presence with a mixture of suspicion and strategic calculation. Their territory was a mosaic of grasslands and river corridors, supporting bison herds (Bison bison) and deer, as well as the mountain goats and bighorn sheep of the nearby ranges. Their livelihood and culture depended on control of these resources and the trade routes that connected them to other tribes and European traders.

That evening, the two parties gathered in a shelter formed by the Blackfeet warriors beneath the bluff’s overhang. Lewis, ever the naturalist and diplomat, smoked tobacco with them, showing off his compass and distributing medals and miniature American flags. He spoke of the trading posts being established east and south, hoping to foster friendship and peaceful commerce. The Blackfeet listened carefully, measuring these strangers and their strange customs.

Yet beneath the calm surface lay tension. The night concealed the undercurrents of fear and mistrust that had shadowed many encounters between Native Americans and Euro-American explorers. The next morning, just before dawn on July 27, this fragile peace shattered. According to Lewis’s journal, “Being bearheaded, I felt the wind of his bullet very distinctly,” describing the moment when one of the Blackfeet warriors fired at him during the skirmish that ensued.

Joseph Field, perhaps carelessly, had laid his rifle aside in the shelter. A young Blackfeet man seized the weapon, a symbolic act that would have conferred considerable prestige within his tribe. This act signaled his companions to take other rifles and horses from the expedition. Horses were the lifeblood of the plains, essential for hunting and warfare, and firearms represented power and security in an increasingly contested world.

The attempt to seize these items provoked a desperate struggle. Reubin Fields stabbed one warrior, killing him, while Lewis fired upon another who was trying to drive off their horses, wounding him severely. The firefight was brief but violent. The Blackfeet withdrew, leaving Lewis and his men shaken but alive. They wasted no time, riding hard for the Missouri River, near what is today Fort Benton, Montana. They covered nearly 100 miles in a single day, a remarkable feat over terrain carved by ancient glaciers and crossed by swift rivers.

This incident at the Two Medicine River was the only hostile encounter involving injury during the entire three-year Lewis and Clark Expedition. It has been the subject of debate ever since, with perspectives differing on who bore responsibility for the outbreak of violence.

Wolf Calf, a Blackfeet survivor of the encounter, recalled the events with clarity decades later. He described the initial surprise and fear upon seeing the expedition but emphasized their decision to act in a “friendly fashion” initially. It was only when Joseph Field laid down his rifle and the young warrior took it that tension escalated. Wolf Calf’s account, preserved through tribal oral history, reveals a clash not merely of weapons but of cultural protocols and misinterpretations.

The natural setting itself framed the encounter with its own harsh realities. The Two Medicine River valley, carved by relentless glaciation during the last Ice Age--some 15,000 years past--was dotted with rugged outcrops of limestone and shale. The land tested the endurance of men and animals alike. The flora, including chokecherry (Prunus virginiana) and wild rose (Rosa woodsii), blossomed in July, releasing scents into the dry air. Raptors circled overhead, and the distant rumble of thunder from summer storms mingled with the tension of human conflict.

Lewis’s journal entries provide a window into his state of mind. He wrote, “I never was more surprised or alarmed in my life,” describing the suddenness of the attack and the confusion of the struggle. His words convey the sharp reality facing explorers who ventured into unknown lands, where diplomacy and survival coexisted uneasily.

The Blackfeet’s wariness was well founded. By 1806, the tribe had endured decades of upheaval caused by European contact, disease, and shifting alliances. Their firearms and horses had altered the balance of power on the plains, but the arrival of American explorers threatened their autonomy and control over trade routes. The young man’s act of taking the rifle was not merely theft but a challenge and a claim to strength in a rapidly changing world.

After the skirmish, Lewis and his men pressed southward, crossing the vast prairies toward the Missouri. Their journey continued to the confluence of the Marias and Missouri Rivers, where they rejoined Clark’s party. Despite the violence of that morning, the Corps of Discovery completed their mission, bringing back detailed maps, scientific observations, and ethnographic records that would shape the understanding of the American West.

Yet the encounter at Two Medicine remains a stark reminder of the complexities faced by explorers and Native Americans alike. It was a moment when the forces of nature and human ambition intersected sharply--under Montana’s vast skies, amid ancient rivers and mountains shaped by geologic time.

See also

• A Dispute Over Horses and Guns at Conrad, Pondera County
• Lewis and Clark Pass at Lincoln, Lewis and Clark County
• Reaching Familiar Territory at Lincoln, Lewis and Clark County