MacDonald's Battle

Finan McDonald was a huge red-haired Scot, called McDonald of the Buffalo for wrestling a bull to death, and the Snake Country still wore him down. His 1823 brigade lost one man shot at a parley with Piikani (Blackfeet) and seven more in a pitched battle, and he was wounded himself by an accidental shot from one of his own Iroquois. He came home, refused the next year's command, and wrote that when that country saw him again the beaver would have gold skins. The Blackfeet were pushing into Shoshone country then, and the brigades met them armed.

What the plaque says

MacDonald's Battle Whooping and yelling, Blackfeet Indians and white trappers "fought like deamons" in the defile before you in 1823. After the Hudson's Bay Company trappers burned the Indians out of a strong position by starting a large brush fire, the Blackfeet lost ten warriors in a hot battle. Though he came out the victor, Finnan MacDonald decided that before he would return to trap anywhere around here again, "the Beaver will have a Gould Skin." 312 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lemhi Pass — 11 mi
  Lewis walked up a Shoshone road looking for the Pacific and saw only more mountains.
• Sacajawea Interpretive, Cultural and Educational Center — 14 mi
  In the valley where she was born, a center that spells her name the way many of her people say it.

More markers nearby

• Lewis and Clark — 2.5 mi
• Sacajawea — 2.5 mi
• Fort Lemhi — 2.6 mi
• Lewis and Clark — 4.3 mi