Old Missoula

Pirates on the Jocko
Reminiscence of 1865

One day in the summer of 1865 there stepped into the office of the Flathead Agency, a person in appearance half soldier and half brigand. He was a very tall man, with an educated fierce look in his eye, which was supported by a trained and martial moustache. He wore a slouched hat, army breeches and a woolen shirt, while his only ornament was a huge dragoon revolver suspended from a cavalry belt. His self-made introduction to the person in charge was brief; “I am Captain –, late of the Federal volunteers, a Hungarian by birth, and now in the U.S. service as a special deputy collector of customs. I desire to be furnished immediately with a government building in which I can stow away smuggled goods, coming from beyond the boundary, that I intend to seize and confiscate.”
The captain’s bearing being very haughty and peremptory, he received but little notice and was shortly told that there was no building at his service just then, and that he would have to wait a day or two for the arrival of the agent.
When the two officials met, it transpired that many merchants and traders in the Kootenai mines were preparing to re-ship their merchandise to the American side, which at that particular time afforded a better market, and the collector for the district, on Puget sound, having received information of the facts, deputized Captain S –, a resident of W. T., to proceed to the Kootenai frontier and stop all parties coming across the line with articles subject to duty, until lawful clearances could be obtained through the regular collector. However, the deputy, all alone, deemed it his duty to regard all merchandise coming from the British Possessions without proper documents, as smuggled and subject to forfeiture – and the animals that carried the same liable to seizure, and he acted accordingly. The Indian Agent gave him possession of a large empty cabin near the old mill-site on the Jocko and then left again for the upper country.
No time was lost now by the valiant captain – he at once appointed a number of deputies and assistant deputies, at large salaries; and operations were not long delayed. The Agency employes having an eye towards the goods liable to be confiscated – appointed the agency physician (now of this city) a collector on their part to receive the proper rent for the cabin furnished.
The first move on part of the excise officer was to bring over from Hell Gate a wagon load of whiskey that had already been seized; and which was badly needed to invest the new station with dignity and supply the men with courage. Each day a party, led by their chief, sallied out down the Jocko and at some convenient point laid in ambush until an unfortunate pack-train came along and passed. Then they would quietly ride up behind, chat socially with the packers or owners, and jog along until the trail forking to the “Custom House” was reached. Here the captain produced his appointment and seized the train “upon authority, against any protest whatsoever.” The merchandise was then stowed away in the cabin and the animals given in charge to a herder. In this manner an outfit, of some kind, was captured almost daily for several weeks, and about the last and most important one taken, belonged to a Jewish merchant named Levy, a citizen of Montana. Captain S –, refused to take bonds for a release; but was always willing to receive a liberal amount of gold dust, give a common, private receipt therefore and then liberate a train. Thus a Spanish packer weighed out one morning $1,900, merely as security for his mules which he needed to fill a contract. It was the last time the Spaniard looked upon his gold.
After the capture of Levy’s train, the officials generally stayed at home and passed their time in overhauling bales and packages in the crowded cabin. They alleged to be searching for opium, and their modus operandi caused the merchandise to settle down, so that there was soon plenty of elbow room – and the drawing of large salaries caused the spirits in the kegs to lower down so that the vessels gave forth a hollow sound. Our doctor collected a liberal rent regularly, and one day when he made them a visit just before the dinner hour, he found two or three deputies busily engaged in examining one of Levy’s packages of nicely canvassed hams, as usual “searching for opium” and to judge from their actions they probably had analyzed some whisky a little while previously. Said one, ”Here doctor have a ham.” Another objected to giving things away so openly; but the first speaker threw over the ham with the remark: “that d—d Jew had no business to be packing pork all over the country.”
Some of the employes made daily visits to the camp and got drunk on smuggled whisky – smuggled from the Custom House. And articles of commerce found their way into circulation that had been captured from the captured trains.
Now while the delicacies of the Jew were being discussed on the Jocko, the Jew was by no means idle, but ably pleaded his case and the situation before the U. S. court at Deer Lodge. The consequence was that a writ was placed in the hands of some deputy marshals which commanded them to proceed to the Jocko and there and then to attach and seize all the alleged contraband goods, confiscated and held in possession by custom house authorities, and deliver the same at Deer Lodge. The writ was promptly served and several wagons and teams were in readiness to convey away all the “ill-gotten gains.” At first the captain was in for defending his authority with blood but as that seemed to be playing into X’s [John Biedler] hands he quietly surrendered, under protest, to superior circumstances, and merely appointed a non-English speaking foreigner to accompany the goods at a nominal salary of $8 per day.
Much to our regret the custom house was now abolished, for to us at the agency it had been a source of comfort. But the Jew and other interested parties rejoiced to receive back their merchandise, although at a heavy loss.
The noble deputy first above mentioned fled with his golden sacrifice across the boundary, where he remained until after much negotiation a compromise was affected and he was permitted to return to his home – a respected citizen. C. S.

Helpful Notes About
Pirates on the Jocko
Montana 1865

As with several of Charles Schafft’s stories, “Pirates On The Jocko” was somewhat embellished, but it was not fiction. Rarely were critical historical events of this period witnessed by a chronicler of Schafft’s ability, giving us a glimpse of his life in colorful, almost theatrical images. The key events he described in that story have a verifiable basis in fact, but he left out some important details. The complete story was even more dramatic than his version.
Schafft was the crippled clerk in charge at the Flathead Indian agency in 1865 when the “half soldier, half brigand” walked into his office and abruptly demanded special accommodations. This haughty “brigand” was the Fort Connah agent Captain Napolean Fitz-Stubbs who would later be sarcastically addressed as Stubbs by his nemesis, the new U. S. Government appointed Flathead Indian agent, A. H. Chapman, Schafft’s boss. Despite their close proximity, the Flathead Reservation and Fort Connah were in many respects two separate entities. Fort Connah resided on the Flathead Reservation several years before the Reservation existed. Fitz-Stubbs (Captain S in this story) had recently arrived there under the aegis of the renowned Hudson’s Bay Company, but he didn’t last long. Neither did the Flathead Reservation agent Chapman when he was shortly fired for malfeasance and escorted off the Flathead Reservation under instructions from Governor Meagher.

Schafft’s story was embedded with some real elements that appear to have been either generally overlooked or downplayed in early Montana history. As his story title implied, here were two powerful men with “Pirate” personalities – Fort Connah trader Napolean Fitz-Stubbs, and Flathead Indian Agent A. H. Chapman. Both men were convinced of the righteousness of their mission and soon clashed; at one point nearly engaging in a public duel. And both were blatantly operating with few legal boundaries, while complicit employees were acting no better. Located in the middle of remote Montana territory, there was almost nothing to stop them from bilking everybody and everything in sight. Like it or not, Schafft and his fellow reservation employees were caught up in this drama and could only watch in amazement.

In those days the Flathead Indian reservation was merely called the Jocko Agency, eponym of the beautiful stream that flows through it. In the spring of 1866, the latest Flathead agent was Augustas H. Chapman, who, after serving only a few months, was removed from the Flathead Reservation by a special territorial deputy, A. H. Barret, who was accompanied by an official territorial Customs Collector, John “X” Biedler, the famous Virginia City vigilante. Traveling in a brutally cold and snowy March, these two men spent 15 hard days getting there from Virginia City. On the way they diverted to a court in Deer Lodge, where the Jewish merchant, Levy, had filed a replevin action to recover his stolen property. At Governor Meagher’s request Barret resigned his position as chief clerk of the 1867 legislative session and was assigned to go to the Jocko reservation by the Governor who was “ex-officio” superintendent of Indian affairs. Meagher was a close friend of Barret’s.

Some 25 years later (1894) Barret gave a revealing account of that wintry trip to an “Anaconda Standard” reporter: (Barret’s entire long article is an invaluable tale of early Montana history.)
“The agent [Chapman] had about $3,600 of school funds which had not been accounted for. He had a saw mill and grist mill there and had been selling goods all over the country. He had lots of employees and showed vouchers for their wages. One man, however, had signed them all. A man named Martin Beam, who afterward committed suicide in Chicago, was his clerk and had put General Meagher onto what was going on. I asked the agent [Chapman] for the $3,600 school money and he said he sent it to his wife. He said he had receipts for the annuities to the Indians, but the next day we found all the goods for the Indians upstairs. The carbines for the leading men on the reservation he said he had sold to Captain Fitz Stubbs of the Hudson Bay company. These Captain Stubbs afterwards returned to us, knowing that the agent had no right to sell them. We went as far as Bonner’s Ferry collecting evidence, and took the agent to Missoula. He was released on parole and went over into Washington.
“I remained at the agency until the new agent arrived. Before he had got off his horse, or had introduced himself, or I had welcomed him, he exclaimed: ‘Got any whiskey?’
“Everything had been frozen solid when we made the trip to the reservation. I was there about 40 days, and when I returned the waters were high everywhere, and in many cases we had to swim streams.”

Although Charles Schafft didn’t explain it, Fort Connah was a curious anomaly that was essential to his story. A good description of it was provided by Missoula’s largely unheralded western historian, Albert J. Partol, who provided a detailed history of Fort Connah in 1939, writing a 17-page article that appeared in “The Pacific Northwest Quarterly” magazine, and which is now available @ www.jstor.org.
Almost unnoticed today, a remnant of Fort Connah sits 6 miles north of the town of St. Ignatius. It began as a frontier trading post, in existence from 1847 to 1871, owned and operated by the Hudson’s Bay Company. As historian Partol described it, “For twenty-four years Fort Connah flew the flag of the great British company on the American Salish-Blackfoot frontier on the western slope of the Rocky mountains. The fort was a survivor of the era when the fur trade ruled the wilderness and the name of the Hudson’s Bay Company appeared at times to be synonymous with empire.”
Fort Connah was not a military fort, but rather a trading enterprise originally dedicated to handling business mainly from native Americans. Its founder, Hudson’s Bay agent Neal Mclean McArthur, described it thus: “Fort Connah carried on trade in ‘Dried buffalo meat, pemmican, buffalo fat, tallow, horse accourtrements, par-fleches , and appichemous, dressed skins and raw-hide cords made of buffalo hair…’”
McArthur started building the fort in 1846 and soon turned it over to another agent, Angus McDonald, before it was completed. The McDonald family, except for a short interlude by another trader, remained at Fort Connah until its closure in 1871, and then bought the property. Members of this family still reside in that area to this day.

The trade from the decade of the 1850’s changed radically with the discovery of gold in Montana territory and nearby Canadian territory. Beginning in the early 1860’s, a lucrative business arose from these new pioneers settling throughout western Montana as well as with travelers to and from the Kootenai district in Canada. Not surprisingly the increased trading activity drew negative attention to Fort Connah. Its existence was a thorn to other hungry businesses in the territory and it was also drawing the attention of Montana’s new territorial government.
In January 1865 Flathead Reservation Indian agent Charles Hutchins urged then Governor Sidney Edgerton to send an American trader to the Reservation to capture some of this new business. Early the following year in 1866 the new Flathead Indian agent, A. H. Chapman, proposed some additional controversial measures that he thought solved one problem. He wrote to his superior, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, D. N. Cooley, that the current Fort Connah trader in charge, Napolean Fitz-Stubbs, should be removed.

Agent A. H. Chapman was looking for a fight with Fitz-Stubbs and the Hudson’s Bay Company. In a letter to the Indian Commissioner, quoted by Historian Partol, “He asserted that Fitz-Stubbs, was sent there by the Hudson’s Bay Company with orders to remain there and trade until he was forcibly ejected from the reservation… If said Stubbs has no legal right on this reservation and if it meets with your approval, I will proceed to eject him and his goods from the same.”
Although Commissioner Cooley replied in language that seemed to favor the removal of both Fitz-Stubbs and Fort Connah, nothing was done. Historian Partol noted that a previous treaty had guaranteed the HBC remuneration for lost property and the fact that it was still unsettled probably stymied actions against Fort Connah.
“No drastic action appears to have been undertaken by the Montana authorities or Indian officials. The reason for this “easy going” policy may be attributed to the absence of Governor Edgerton from Montana during the summer of 1866, and to the decline of agitation when another Indian agent was placed in charge of affairs in the fall of the same year. When no forceful move was made to hinder or remove the traders, the previous policy of “sit tight” diplomacy seemed again to prevail.”

Regarding the bad blood between Chapman and Fitz-Stubbs, a Helena newspaper, “The Daily Montana Post,” said the following in 1867:
For the past few days, we have been expecting a duel to take place. The parties are an ex-Captain and an ex-Colonel of the late war. It seems the Colonel was under the impression that the Captain had reported to the Governor that the Colonel had been guilty of misconduct in the discharge of his duties as United States Indian Agent. The parties met; the Colonel charged the Captain with having reported him, using insulting language and flourishing a revolver. The Captain not being armed, retired, first informing the Colonel that he should hear from him. After much search, the Captain procured the services of a professional gentleman to act as his second; a challenge was written, and on the Colonel coming into town, a day or two after, it was presented to him. After reading it, the Colonel said he might have been mistaken; that he was excited at the time; no doubt he used bad language, and was willing to make the Amende honorable, and apologize. This being deemed satisfactory, the affair ended, greatly to the disappointment of all, as it was thought by many that the Colonel would not stand the fire.

Who profited from the most from illegal schemes perpetrated on the unsuspecting merchants during this period is unknown. Charles Schafft was undoubtedly an eyewitness to the entire Chapman/Fitz-Stubbs affair. Thankfully no lives were lost as a result of the dispute between the ‘Pirates.’ Given that Schafft wrote his article in 1883, almost twenty years after the incidents occurred, he was probably safe in revealing the bad behavior of some of the local folks.
Flathead Indian agent Colonel Augustas H. Chapman of Indiana was a civil war veteran whose wife was related to Abraham Lincoln – Fort Connah trader Captain Napolean Fitz -Stubbs was an Australian native who early on joined the British army and had participated in the Crimean war. He also had a reputation in Victoria as a daring explorer who circumnavigated Vancouver Island using a small sailing yacht. Following the above events, Chapman returned to Indiana while Fitz-Stubbs returned to Canada. Fort Connah stayed open until 1871.
While working for the Canadian government Fitz-Stubbs became a magistrate and the gold commissioner of B. C. in the 1890’s. Some relatives of Fitz-Stubbs remain in Montana to this day. He married a full blooded local American Nez Perce woman and left a family in the states that included Mrs. Cecille Tellier, his daughter, who died in Polson in 1938. She was survived by seven children.
Dr. Buker, a reservation physician who had a bad reputation, died in Missoula in 1878. He was a prominent member of the Masonic fraternity.
A.M. Levy was a prominent Deer Lodge merchant who was the secretary of the Hebrew Benevolent Society of Deer Lodge in 1871. He was likely the “Jew” who stood up to the Jocko pirates.
“Pirates On the Jocko,” which was published in The Weekly Missoulian on December 28, 1883.