Two Indian Names, Jeannette Rankin and Grant Creek History by Will Cave 1922
Two Indian names, Jeannette Rankin and Grant Creek’s History by Will Cave 1922
The Sailish knew the stream running through the western margin of the “soough-tip-kine”[1] valley as “Inclth- ka-soo-lem,” (“wide and shallow creek”). Of the early settlers was Captain Grant, father of the late Mrs. C. P. Higgins; who located near the creek which has since borne his name. In 1878 William C. Berry,[2] affectionately known by everyone as “Uncle Bill,” tired of “batching” down on the old ranch near Superior; sent back to New Hampshire for his two nieces, the Misses Pickering. “By the way the old-time packer once told me; “I threw my first diamond hitch on the Isthmus of Panama in 1850”; and since I sometimes have wondered if perhaps it were not “Uncle Bill” who hitched the Panama to Uncle Sam.” Anyway came the nieces, and not long after one of them was holding sway over the Missoula schoolroom, where for a “term” I surely dished her up as much misery as the next among the all-age assorted roomful of youngsters. Some years later, one day I happened to “drop in” to a gladsome place on Grant creek which my one-time instructress then enjoyed with her husband, John Rankin. Nothing could do the former teacher but that her erstwhile chief mischief maker must view her four-days’-old first born. As, with the wonted ill case of somewhat bashful youth, I looked upon the tiny features of the wee tot, little did I dream that my eyes were beholding one who would one day become the very first woman to occupy a seat in the law-making councils of the greatest of all the lands on the earth, Jeannette Rankin; duly authorized representative of a commonwealth destined to be second to none in the galaxy of states.
Another of the family, Wellington D. Rankin, now our state’s attorney general, also was born at the Grant Creek home.
Drive out some evening by the old Rankin homestead to the road’s end along Grant creek, and wonder if you will why should not from such environment spring luster additional to this land of ours.
The above excerpt appeared in The Sunday Missoulian on May 28, 1922.
https://www.newspapers.com/image/352382635
[1] Cave explained this in an earlier article – the Indians referred to the Missoula Valley as the place where “the timber runs out.”
[2] A very early (and busy) Western pioneer, Berry prospected in many places, including Siskiyou, Ca., Orofino, Id., Alder Gulch, Bear Gulch and Cedar Creek, Mt. He was elected Sheriff of Missoula County in 1882.