Fort Assinniboine

The panel gives Pershing's nickname a kinder origin than the record does. He served here with the 10th Cavalry, one of the Black regiments, from 1895 into 1896. When he went back to West Point as a tactical officer in 1897, cadets who resented his discipline gave him a racial slur built on that service, and reporters covering him in the First World War softened it to Black Jack. The version on the panel is the newspapers' one.

What the plaque says

Fort Assinniboine Established in 1879, Fort Assinniboine was one of the most strategically-placed U.S. Army posts in the northwest. Headquarters for the District of Montana, the fort and military reserve encompassed the entire Bears Paw mountain range. The 18th U.S. Infantry under the command of Colonel Thomas Ruger constructed the post with brick manufactured nearby. When completed, the fort's substantial brick buildings included officers' quarters, barracks, a large hospital, chapel, gymnasium, officers' club, stables, and warehouses. The US Army intended the fort to protect settlers to the south from possible raids by Sitting Bull's Hunkpapa Sioux, who fled to Canada after Custer's defeat on the Little Big Horn in 1876. The military's fears proved groundless, however, as no serious Indian disturbances occurred in the area. General John J. Pershing served here in the 1890s, earning his nickname "Black Jack" because of his association with the Afro-American 10th Cavalry - the famed "Buffalo Soldiers." For many years, Fort Assinniboine soldiers worked with the Canadian Mounties to control smuggling across the border. The War Department abandoned the post in 1911. A few years later, the landless Chippewa and Cree Indians found a home on the southern part of the military reserve when it was set aside as Rocky Boy's Reservation. The State of Montana purchased the fort's remaining buildings and 2,000 acres for use as the Northern Agricultural Research Center of Montana State University - Bozeman.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Assinniboine — 0.6 mi
  The brick border post whose Buffalo Soldiers deported the Cree in 1896, and whose land became the Cree's reservation twenty years later.
• Wahkpa Chu'gn Buffalo Jump — 5.3 mi
  Two thousand years of bison kills in a bluff behind a Havre shopping mall, with the bones left lying where they were found.
• Havre Beneath the Streets — 6.3 mi
  Basement storefronts under a railroad town that burned twice in one January day in 1904, furnished now as a tour.

More markers nearby

• Havre — 5.5 mi
• The Havre Air Force Station — 5.5 mi
• An Island on the Plains — 27 mi