Yellowstone River - History

History

The name is widely believe to have been derived from the Minnetaree Indian name Mi tse a-da-zi (Yellow Rock River) (Hidatsa: miʔciiʔriaashiish'). Common lore states that the name came from the yellow-colored rocks along the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, but the Minnetaree never lived along the upper stretches of the Yellowstone. Some scholars think that the river was named after yellow-colored sandstone bluffs on the lower Yellowstone, instead. The Crow Indians, who lived along the upper Yellowstone in Southern Montana, called it E-chee-dick-karsh-ah-shay (Elk River). Translating the Minnetaree name, French trappers called the river Roche Jaune (Yellow Rock), a name used by mountain men until the mid-19th century. Independently, Lewis and Clark recorded the English translation of Yellow Stone for the river, after encountering the Minnetaree in 1805. With expanding settlement by people from the United States, the English name eventually became the most widely used. The river was explored in 1806 by William Clark during the return voyage of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Clark's Fork of the river was named for him.

The Yellowstone River had long been an important artery of transportation for Native Americans. In the 19th century, European-American settlers depended on it as well, entering the region by riverboat. The region around the Big Horn, Powder and Tongue rivers is the traditional summer hunting grounds for numerous Native American tribes: Lakota Sioux, Crow, Cheyenne and Cree. Gold was discovered near Virginia City, Montana in the 1860s, and two of the primary routes for accessing the gold fields were the Bozeman Trail and the Bridger Trail both of which followed the Yellowstone for a short length.

Native American anger at settler intrusion into the hunting grounds lead to Red Cloud's War. He led the Indians to victory over the United States Army. They settled the conflict with the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, by which the US granted the territory of the Black Hills and the Powder River Country to the Lakota people. This region included the drainages of the Big Horn, Powder and Tongue rivers. The discovery of gold in 1874 in the Black Hills, however, attracted thousands of miners who invaded the sacred grounds, and conflicts broke out with the Sioux.

The new competition and violence led to the Great Sioux War of 1876-77. The US sent in troops to protect the miners, although they had violated the treaty, and defeat the Sioux. In 1876, Colonel John Gibbon led a column of men from Fort Ellis near Bozeman, Montana and traveled down the Yellowstone to meet up with General Alfred Terry's Dakota Column, which had traveled upstream from North Dakota. Terry formed a base of operations at the mouth of Rosebud Creek on the Yellowstone, but the US miscalculated the strength of the Lakota who had gathered by the thousands along the river. General George Armstrong Custer departed from Rosebud Creek with the 7th Calvary on the expedition that ended in his overwhelming defeat by the Lakota at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The army ferried its survivors down the Yellowstone to Fort Abraham Lincoln on the Missouri River. The US continued the war and forced tribes onto reservations. In the decades after the war, the US created the Crow Indian Reservation and Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation south of the Yellowstone in Montana.

Many of the early expeditions to the area that would later become Yellowstone National Park traveled along the Yellowstone River, including the Cook–Folsom–Peterson Expedition and the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition. In the early 1870s, the Northern Pacific Railroad attempted to extend rail service along the Yellowstone to Livingston from Bismarck, North Dakota, a route proposed to cross the last of the Lakota buffalo hunting grounds. This route was finally completed in 1883. By the early 20th century, Northern Pacific was providing train service along the river to the north entrance of the park near Gardiner.