Ekalaka

The board's Indian girl was Ijkalaka, an Oglala Lakota, daughter of Wombalee We-chosh, Eagle Man; her name is given as restless, or moving about. Born in 1858, she met David Russell at sixteen, and he gave her father eight horses and a hundred pounds of sugar. They came to this valley in 1881 with four children and raised nine more, Florence the bronc rider among them. When the post office opened in 1885 it took her name, spelled as it sounded. She died of smallpox on May 16, 1901 and lies in the Russell cemetery south of town.

What the plaque says

Ekalaka Some people claim an old buffalo hunter figured that starting a thirst emporium for parched cowpunchers on this end of the range would furnish him a more lucrative and interesting vocation than downing buffalo. He picked a location and was hauling a load of logs to erect this proposed edifice for the eradication of ennui when he bogged down in a snowdrift. "Hell," he exclaimed, "Any place in Montana is a good place for a saloon," so he unloaded and built her right there. That was the traditional start of Ekalaka in the '80s and the old undaunted pioneer spirit of the West still lingers here. When it became a town it was named after an Indian girl, born on the Powder River, who was the daughter of Eagle Man, an Oglala Sioux. She was a niece of the War Chief, Red Cloud, and was also related to Sitting Bull. She became the wife of David H. Russell, the first white man to settle permanently in this locality.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carter County Museum — 1.0 mi
  Montana's first county museum, built in 1936 by a ranch county to keep the dinosaurs its own ground kept giving up.
• Medicine Rocks State Park — 10 mi
  Sandstone towers worn full of holes, holy ground to the Lakota and Cheyenne and a stone register of everyone who came after.

More markers nearby

• A Fantastically Beautiful Place: The Medicine Rocks — 10 mi