[1] The name is attributed to French boatmen who commonly comprised keelboat crews[2] traveling on the upper Missouri River in the very early days of the fur trade (the first decades of the 1800s).
[citation needed] In his book "Floating on the Missouri" James Willard Schultz[4] reports that the ridge was a site of an event critical in Piegan history.
Little Dog's Piegan warriors not only feared him as he ruled them with an iron hand, but they were also jealous of the many favors and gifts showered on him.
One day four or five of the boldest warriors held a secret counsel and determined that if the tribe were to maintain their record for scalps and plunder, they must kill the chief.
As one man they leveled their rifles and fired at thim, and he fell from his horse without a cry or groan, stone dead.
"[6] Relieved from the restraint of Little Dog's unbending will, Schultz reports the Piegan returned to a systematic warfare against lone trappers and hunters, the "woodhawks" along the river, travelers on the trails and others.
This was a branch line off the former Great Northern Railway (later absorbed into the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad or BNSF), as it left the main line at Havre and ran to Fort Benton, and on to Great Falls, Helena, with a terminus in the mining city of Butte, Montana.
This line was built in order to allow ore from the different Butte mines (and particularly those not affiliated with Anaconda and its smelter) to be brought through Helena to Great Falls where the multiple dams on the Missouri River generated electric current used in plants to reduce and refine the ore, and the connecting rail road line then allowed the resulting products to be conveyed to Havre, when they went either east or west to the industrial centers on the east or west coast of the U.S. traveling on the Great Northern, also known as "Jim Hill's Big Railroad".