Thomas Leforge
Encyclopedia
The Century Company
The Century Company was an American publishing company, founded in 1881.It was originally a subsidiary of Charles Scribner's Sons, but was bought and renamed. The magazine it had published up to that time, Scribners Monthly, was renamed The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine.The Century Company...
at the hand of one Thomas Marquis, and republished by the University of Nebraska Press
University of Nebraska Press
The University of Nebraska Press, founded in 1941, is a publisher of scholarly and popular-press books. It is the second-largest state university press in the United States and, including private institutions, ranks among the 10 largest university presses in the United States...
.
Early years
Born in Portsmouth, OhioPortsmouth, Ohio
Portsmouth is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Scioto County. The municipality is located on the northern banks of the Ohio River and east of the Scioto River in Southern Ohio. The population was 20,226 at the 2010 census.-Foundation:...
July 9, 1850, he moved with his family to Missouri, then to Kansas, before they finally left in 1864 for Virginia City, Montana
Virginia City, Montana
Virginia City is a town in and the county seat of Madison County, Montana, United States. In 1961, the town and the surrounding area was designated a National Historic Landmark District, the Virginia City Historic District...
in search of gold. His family set out in prairie wagons with experienced guides on the Bridger Trail
Jim Bridger
James Felix "Jim" Bridger was among the foremost mountain men, trappers, scouts and guides who explored and trapped the Western United States during the decades of 1820-1850, as well as mediating between native tribes and encroaching whites...
variant of the Bozeman Trail
Bozeman Trail
The Bozeman Trail was an overland route connecting the gold rush territory of Montana to the Oregon Trail. Its most important period was from 1863-1868. The flow of pioneers and settlers through territory of American Indians provoked their resentment and caused attacks. The U.S. Army undertook...
.
The white Indian
Leforge joined the Montana militiaMilitia
The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
in 1867 in the Bozeman, Montana and Livingston, Montana
Livingston, Montana
-Geography:Livingston is located at , at an altitude of 4.501 feet .According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which, of it is land and 0.38% is waters.-Climate:-Demographics:...
areas, acquiring both military experience and acquaintance with native Americans tribes and ways (including raiding parties by Piegan Blackfeet
Blackfeet
The Piegan Blackfeet are a tribe of Native Americans of the Algonquian language family based in Montana, having lived in this area since around 6,500 BC. Many members of the tribe live as part of the Blackfeet Nation in northwestern Montana, with population centered in Browning...
, his father working near Fort Ellis, Montana
Fort Ellis
Fort Ellis was an early United States Army outpost established August 27, 1867 to the eastern side of present-day Bozeman, Montana. The fort was established to protect and support settlers moving into the Gallatin Valley. The post was named for Civil War Colonel Augustus van Horne Ellis who was...
. (These and all other narrative details herein derive from Leforge's own account).
In 1868 he attached himself to a party of Crow Indians under Yellow Leggings (a counselor of Blackbird) and befriended his son Three Irons. He acquired the Indian name of Fast Runner for sprinting, but was later renamed Horse Rider for equestrian skill, which name he would be known by in the tribe for the rest of his days (and unknown by his white name). Yellow Leggings formally adopted him in a camp in the Livingston area. Occasionally visiting his parents, Leforge divided his time chiefly between the Crow camps and Fort Ellis, becoming a camp follower
Camp follower
Camp-follower is a term used to identify civilians and their children who follow armies. There are two common types of camp followers; first, the wives and children of soldiers, who follow their spouse or parent's army from place to place; the second type of camp followers have historically been...
during hostilities with Indians and closely befriending the young Sioux
Sioux
The Sioux are Native American and First Nations people in North America. The term can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or any of the nation's many language dialects...
-French guide Mitch Bouyer
Mitch Bouyer
Mitch Bouyer was an interpreter and guide in the Old West following the American Civil War. General John Gibbon called him "next to Jim Bridger, the best guide in the country"...
(whose name his book spells Buoyer). Bouyer also lived among and married into the Crow, and joining Leforge in numerous actions. Leforge associated himself with the Mountain Crow, as distinguished from the River Crow, who tended to live to the north of the Yellowstone River
Yellowstone River
The Yellowstone River is a tributary of the Missouri River, approximately long, in the western United States. Considered the principal tributary of the upper Missouri, the river and its tributaries drain a wide area stretching from the Rocky Mountains in the vicinity of the Yellowstone National...
.
Leforge became fluent in the Crow language and sympathetic to the people, marrying a girl named (in translation) Cherry and taking up residence near Fort Parker
Fort Parker
This article is about the fort in Montana; for the fort in Texas see Fort Parker massacre.The Fort Laramie Indian Treaty of 1868, which closed travel on the Bozeman Trail and the Yellowstone Valley, stipulated that the re-defined Crow Reserve would have a new “centerpoint” or agency for the Crow...
. Though hired formally as a blacksmith, he served the fort as a scout and intermediary, and the tribe as scout (or "wolf") and warrior. He was a financial intermediary for trade, a diplomat (negotiating a treaty with the Shoshone
Shoshone
The Shoshone or Shoshoni are a Native American tribe in the United States with three large divisions: the Northern, the Western and the Eastern....
, and served in other capacities. He avoided scouting in pursuit of the Nez Perce because of sympathy for their case. Though he did scout against the Bannock
Bannock (tribe)
The Bannock tribe of the Northern Paiute are an indigenous people of the Great Basin. Their traditional lands include southeastern Oregon, southeastern Idaho, western Wyoming, and southwestern Montana...
, he condemned the attacks on them during their surrender. He briefly married his wife's cousin on the cousin's request, though they separated due to white disdain for polygamy. On Cherry's death due to illness while she was away, he married Bouyer's widow Mary, in honor of a mutual pledge to look after each other's family. They would later divorce amicably when he decided to return to white society to seek a fortune in mining and timber ventures. Leforge married again, with children as in his earlier marriages, though after a few years he and this wife also parted when he decided to return to the simpler life of Crow society. Ironically, by this time it was beginning to fade through cultural assimilation.
Leforge narrowly avoided death alongside Bouyer and the other Crow scouts at the Battle of the Little Big Horn due to an injury he sustained when a pronghorn antelope calf spooked his horse. He served as the de facto leader and cultural intermediary for the original Crow scouts and headed a second group into subsequent actions.
He died in 1931.
Leforge's book
Besides Bouyer and his wife Mary, other names Leforge mentions or discusses of interest to regional history include Nelson StoryNelson Story
Nelson Story, Sr. was a pioneer Montana entrepreneur, cattle rancher, miner and vigilante, who was a notable resident of Bozeman, Montana. He was best-known for his 1866 cattle drive from Texas with approximately 1000 head of Texas Longhorns to Montana along the Bozeman Trail—the first major...
, Yankee Jim George, Barney Bravo, Chick Suce, Jim Beckwourth, Pierre Chien, Tom Bowyer, Skookum Jim, medicine man
Medicine man
"Medicine man" or "Medicine woman" are English terms used to describe traditional healers and spiritual leaders among Native American and other indigenous or aboriginal peoples...
Father of All Buffalo, Colonel Eugene M. Baker, Jim Bridger
Jim Bridger
James Felix "Jim" Bridger was among the foremost mountain men, trappers, scouts and guides who explored and trapped the Western United States during the decades of 1820-1850, as well as mediating between native tribes and encroaching whites...
, Chief Looking Glass
Chief Looking Glass
Looking Glass was a principal Nez Perce architect of many of the military strategies employed by the Nez Perce during the Nez Perce War of 1877...
, Chief Washakie of the Shoshone, Chief Joseph
Chief Joseph
Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, popularly known as Chief Joseph, or Young Joseph was the leader of the Wal-lam-wat-kain band of Nez Perce during General Oliver O. Howard's attempt to forcibly remove his band and the other "non-treaty" Nez Perce to a reservation in Idaho...
of the Nez Perce, Crow Chief Blackfoot, General Hugh L. Scott
Hugh L. Scott
Hugh Lenox Scott was a post-Civil War West Point graduate who served as superintendent of West Point from 1906 to 1910, and Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1914 to 1917, including the first few months of American involvement in World War I.-Biography:Born September 22, 1853 in...
, General Alfred Howe Terry, General John Gibbon
John Gibbon
John Gibbon was a career United States Army officer who fought in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars.-Early life:...
, Lieutenant James Bradley
James Bradley
James Bradley FRS was an English astronomer and served as Astronomer Royal from 1742, succeeding Edmund Halley. He is best known for two fundamental discoveries in astronomy, the aberration of light , and the nutation of the Earth's axis...
, and General George Armstrong Custer
George Armstrong Custer
George Armstrong Custer was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. Raised in Michigan and Ohio, Custer was admitted to West Point in 1858, where he graduated last in his class...
.
Leforge's book is replete with non-professional first-hand anthropological observations and insights into the cultural, social, military, and spiritual ways of the Crow as well as other tribes before their significant assimilation into American culture.