Russell Rowland

When the Central Pacific Railway got the contract to complete the western leg of the transcontinental railroad in 1862, they faced the challenge of finding enough men to complete the enormous task. The gold rush was well underway, and the pressure to finish the job quickly forced them to look across the ocean to China for affordable labor.

In the fifteenth century, several popes issued a series of edicts, which came to be known as the Doctrine of Discovery. The basic tenet of this document was that it gave the church the moral authority to take over any land that was owned by people who were not Christian, or white.

Last month, 56 Counties told the story of how Chief Joseph's father, also named Joseph, instilled in his son the importance of never giving up the land where they had lived their entire lives. The government had other ideas, however, and when the Nez Perce Reservation was reduced by ninety percent, the Wallowa Valley, where Joseph tribe had settled decades before, was no longer part of the reservation. When Joseph was forced to leave, the results led to one of the most dramatic pursuits in American history.

Most people are familiar with Chief Joseph and his epic journey across much of the northwestern US to escape capture by the US government. But as with many Montana stories, what's even more fascinating are the events leading up to that moment in our history, as well as what happened to Joseph and his tribal members afterward.

In the early morning hours of August 1, 1917, a black car pulled up in front of the Steele Block, a boarding house in Butte, Montana. Five men dragged a man, still in his underwear, from his room and stuffed him into the car.

In 1897, when tensions were still running high after the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the establishment of the reservation system in Montana, a sheepherder named John Hoover was murdered on the Tongue River Reservation, now known as the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. The murder became a nationwide story, involving a former Senator, who represented two of the defendants, and a donation from the Secretary of the Interior for one of the appeals, as it involved many of the issues that were causing friction between the Native and non-Native communities at the time. Once the crime was solved, the controversy led to some significant legislation to try and improve conditions on the Tongue River Reservation, and try and prevent similar incidents in the future.

When the Copper Kings lorded over Montana's business and political world, one of the main resources they used to maintain that control was the state media. Most people have no idea that The Anaconda Copper Company quietly maintained ownership over most of the major newspapers in Montana well into the 1950s.

In the early 20th century, in the northeast corner of Montana, newly arrived homesteaders were struggling to make a living in a land where the Homestead Act had attracted them to a place that wasn't delivering on the promise of an abundant lifestyle. As farmers looked for answers to how they were going to survive, a charismatic newspaperman named Charles E. Taylor appeared in Sheridan County, starting a paper called The Producer's News, and he gave people hope.

E.C. Waters was a businessman who moved to Montana in the late 19th Century and got into the hotel business, owning the first hotel in Billings. He eventually became enamored with Yellowstone Park and was hired to manage the five hotels that existed in the park around that time.

Two years after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the U.S. government decided to force 1,000 members of the Northern Cheyenne tribe, led by Chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf, to move to Oklahoma, even though they were not involved in the battle. After a year down south, they had lost nearly 100 members of their tribe to disease and starvation.