User:Sagredo/history

The Missouri River is formed by the confluence of three rivers, the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin. In 1805, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and the Corps of Discovery camped at the headwaters of the Missouri River. They named the southern fork Gallatin in honor of Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury; the middle fork, Madison, in honor of James Madison, Secretary of State; and the northern fork, Jefferson, in honor of President Thomas Jefferson.

The Missouri and the three rivers that combine to from it made the headwaters area a natural crossroad for Native American tribes such as Blackfeet, Crow, Flathead, and Shoshone long before the arrival of the white man. The area was also a hunting ground; buffalo were killed at the nearby pishkun at Madison Buffalo Jump, now a state park.

In this area, several Lemhi Shoshone girls, including Sacagawea were kidnapped by a group of Hidatsa in 1799. Sacagawea was then taken to a Hidatsa village near the present-day Washburn, North Dakota. Because she spoke Shoshone, her husband was hired as an interpreter by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Returning with the Expedition six years later she assured Meriwether Lewis that they were indeed approaching the long sought after "Three Forks of the Missouri."

A member of the Expedition, John Colter, returned to the area in 1808 to hunt beaver. He was captured by Blackfeet Indians, 500 to 600 in number. Colter was then released, unarmed and unclothed to chased down. Colter's run, as his successful escape became known, began with with a footrace, Colter running naked and barefoot through prickly pear cactus across a six mile long plain. He managed to kill one of his persuers and then hid under a raft of driftwood in the Jefferson River. After nightfall, he swam silently downriver, and after seven days, arrived naked and sunburned at Lisa's Fort, on the Bighorn branch of the Roche Jaune (Yellowstone) River.

http://www.lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=2613

Colter returned to the area 1810 with George Drouillard, also a Lewis and Clark Expedition member, and thirty men of the Missouri Fur Company. They established Fort Henry in the Headwaters area, but the fort was abandoned in a few months because of o

http://www.lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=2616#Note2