BROWNING, Mont. — Wandering about what is called the “Hi-Line,” U.S. 2 and the tracks of the Great Northern Railway, I came upon this obelisk monument to Lewis and Clark. It was erected on a hill a quarter mile north of the highway. I drove by it before I had the good sense to investigate. It marks an area where U.S. Army Captain Meriwether Lewis and three of his men realized that the Marias River (named for Lewis’ cousin Mariah) did not originate north of the 49th parallel and, therefore would not drive back the Canadian (British) border. Under the provisions of the Louisiana Purchase treaty, the U.S. was entitled to the entire watershed of the Missouri River. If Lewis could find a “Canadian” tributary of the Missouri, the U.S. would be entitled to reduce the amount of land claimed by Britain in the northwest.
The obelisk is one of the less well-known monuments on the Lewis and Clark Trail and it was — and still is — erected in the heart of Blackfeet country. Lewis and his undermanned crew learned this the hard way on July 27, 1806, when the eight young Blackfeet men they were camping with (more out of necessity than choice) jumped the sleeping expedition members at first light and attempted to abscond with their firearms and horses. In the skirmish that ensued, Lewis and his men killed two of the young Blackfeet men, probably still well within their teens. This was the only bloodshed on the entire Lewis and Clark Expedition, which was notable for its largely harmonious relations with the 50-plus Native tribes they encountered.
The obelisk is a kind of eerie reminder of that trespass. Local revisionists have defaced the monument in several ways to make sure the Blackfeet narrative is commemorated. With spray paint someone has written “Pikuni Blackfeet Land.”
However much one may lament the disfiguring of the obelisk, it seems to me appropriate that the Blackfeet people insist that visitors be aware of their narrative. A nearby highway sign, so far unrevised, explains that the Great Northern Railway erected the obelisk in 1925 to commemorate the farthest northern penetration of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The highway sign makes no mention of the sovereignty dispute between a people who had been on that land for centuries, perhaps longer, and the brash newcomers who believed that a white man in France who had never been to America could sell 828,000 square miles of land to a white man in Virginia who never traveled farther than 75 miles west of his birthplace.
The Blackfeet might have plucked the obelisk down or blasted it with dynamite. So far, they have settled for black spray paint. One question is who owns the West. Another question of more immediate importance is who owns the narrative.