Fort Shaw
[8][9] The first Blackfeet Indian Agency office, established in 1854 by Isaac Stevens (Governor of the Washington Territory), was also nearby.
[5][11] On July 4, 1867,[11] the United States Department of the Army issued orders to have the name of the encampment changed to Fort Shaw in honor of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, a Union Army officer who commanded the all-black 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War.
[5] But only half of the post hospital was erected before cold weather forced construction to halt and the men to enter winter quarters.
The interior walls of the seven officers' quarters were finished in white plaster, and had glass windows set in white-painted wood casements.
[19] The military reservation extended along the length of the Sun River Valley from present-day Vaughn, Montana, upstream for 10 miles (16 km).
A limited supply of fish was obtained from the Sun River, which at that time was a clear, swift-running stream with a stony bottom.
Since the strong drainage inhibited the growth of grass, hay had to be imported from elsewhere in Montana, primarily the Missouri River valley to the east.
[24] Lieutenant Colonel G. L. Andrews was regimental second-in-command,[24] and named headquarters commandant, overseeing the operations of the fort itself.
[12] One of Colonel Reeves' first actions was to disarm the Montana Militia, a short-lived paramilitary organization formed by Acting Governor Thomas Francis Meagher in 1864 and supplied with arms by the U.S.
He began surveying and constructing a road between Fort Shaw and Camp Baker (near present-day White Sulphur Springs) to provide better communications with that post and to better monitor the movements of Native American groups and bands.
A gold rush occurred in 1875 and 1876 in which thousands of white miners and settlers flooded the area in violation of several treaties guaranteeing that the Black Hills would belong to the Lakota people.
Responding to pleas from whites, President Ulysses S. Grant decided to clear the Black Hills of all native people.
After reaching the Yellowstone, he was to move downstream until he rendezvoused with a "Dakota Column", under the command of General Alfred Terry.
[42][43] In April, Gibbon left Fort Ellis with both infantry and cavalry (totalling about 450 men and officers), heading for the Yellowstone.
[44] General Terry ordered his subordinate, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, to proceed south along the Rosebud and then west to the Little Bighorn River.
[45] Subsequently, Gibbon's Fort Shaw soldiers did not participate in the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25–26, during which most of Custer's command was famously wiped out.
Gibbon entered the valley of the Little Bighorn on June 27, where the Fort Shaw soldiers assisted in burying the dead.
For many years, several bands of the Nez Perce people lived in the valley of the Wallowa River in northeast Oregon.
Yet, in the Battle of White Bird Canyon on June 17, 1877, a force of about 80 Nez Perce warriors defeated a unit of 200 of Howard's artillery, cavalry, and infantry.
[47] Colonel Gibbon hastily assembled a force of about 200 artillery, cavalry, and infantry and proceeded up the Bitterroot River into the Big Hole Basin to stop them.
In the fall and summer of 1882 and 1883, at least two companies from Fort Shaw were kept in the field at all times, observing Native American movements and discouraging raids on white settlements south of the Piegan Blackfeet reservation.
Soldiers from Fort Shaw became roaring drunk during the day, and fired several cannonballs down Central Avenue (the city's main street) around midnight.
The 25th Infantry Regiment, under the command of Colonel George Lippitt Andrews, took up station at Fort Shaw in May 1888 in its stead.
[58] By the 1880s, the United States government undertook a major initiative to pacify Native American tribes through nonviolent means.
[67] Students at Fort Shaw usually spent their first two years at the school learning English and "white" cultural norms.
Fort Shaw's curriculum ended at the eighth grade, but students in their late teens (indeed, some as old as 25 years of age) could be found studying there.
[72] It was unable to reproduce that record in the 1903–04 season, as the team could not secure appointments for games with any other high school in the state that year.
After each game, the girls donned traditional native ceremonial garb and charged a fee (50 cents) for a program of dance, music, and recitations.
[citation needed] Today, most of the existing buildings and grounds of Fort Shaw, with the exception of the school and playground are under a long-term lease by the Sun River Valley Historical Society.
[81] The National Park Service considered adding Fort Shaw to its system after proposals by the Sons and Daughters of Montana Pioneers in 1936 and 1938.
