The Last, Best Place

Tuesday, September 26, 2000
The airplane swept low over the Rocky Mountain Front, cleared the cloudy, snow-draped peaks and glided into sunlight gleaming off the autumn-colored plains. The mighty Missouri River's serpentine track revealed itself, bordered by golden cottonwoods, as the plane dropped for a landing at the Great Falls airport.

My destination was the Fort Belknap Agency, home to the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine tribes, located in northcentral Montana. The agency's land totals nearly 1 million acres and is bordered by the Milk River on the north and the Little Rocky Mountains to the south. Not a bad piece of property by today's standards, but when you think that at one time the boundaries of these nomadic people were truly limitless, you begin to feel and understand their loss.

Leaving the airport, our big Chevy 4x4 headed northeast, shadowing portions of the Lewis and Clark trail. Recalling passages of Ambrose's Undaunted Courage, I recognized the junction of the Maria's River outside Loma.

Lewis named the river for his cousin. When the Corps of Discovery reached this junction, many among them believed that the Maria's was the actual continuation of the Missouri. Lewis formed a scouting party and hiked up the Maria's for more than 30 miles on foot. Finally, its northern direction swayed him to believe that it was not the main branch of the Missouri.

I had come to hunt this fine country for antelope, buffalo, prairie dogs and coyotes--species first recorded by Lewis and Clark and representative of America's northwest wilderness. I had come to reap a high plains harvest.

Wednesday, September 27
The morning light was almost indescribable. Red and yellow, pink and blue, peach and violet, all spread across the eastern sky like a painter's palette. In fact, it was these very colors that first attracted Charles M. Russell to Montana over a century ago.

Called Nee-Toe-Nan by the Gros Ventre and Wah-Tonk-A by the Assiniboine, the agency's buffalo have returned. The tribe's 600 buffalo live today on 12,000 acres surrounding Snake Butte. They live much as they did in centuries past. And, as in centuries past, the Gros Ventre have come in the fall to hunt them, to put up meat for the long, cold winter. But this time the Gros Ventre have three white men as guests.

This day, two old buffalo bulls will fall. We find the first just below Snake Butte's cliffs. The hunting party belly-crawls into position. Joe lies prone, taking a steady rest from a lichen-covered rock. The vastness of the prairie seems to silence the sound of the shot from the Kimber Model 89 rifle, but there is no mistaking the dust displaced on the bull's flank as the .338-caliber Barnes X-Bullet hammers home.

The hunters approach the fallen bull and are awed by its immensity. This mountain of meat, hide, gut, bone and sinew has the potential to feed, house and clothe many. It is now easy to understand what their near extinction meant to the plains tribes, and the awful waste of those who once took only their humps, robes and tongues.

Between two rocky hills, two bulls are found. One is old and heavy-horned. His curly robe covers his massive shoulders like a woman's shawl. I decide that this old bull will be the only buffalo that I will kill. He will become my link to the past. My symbol of all those who have hunted these lands before me. My gift from those great plains ghosts.

Balancing my Kimber Model 89 rifle on the shooting stick, I pick a spot of hide behind the bull's shoulder and press the trigger. The shot hits home, but the bull remains standing. I fire again. This bullet almost touches the entrance of the first. Still the bull remains on his feet.