Marias River

Fort McKenzie had witnesses in its first summer. Prince Maximilian of Wied and the Swiss painter Karl Bodmer came up by keelboat on August 9, 1833. At dawn on August 28 a war party of Assiniboine and Cree fell on a Piikani camp outside the stockade; the survivors were let inside until a larger Blackfeet force rode in. Bodmer worked the fight up later in the studio for the plates of Maximilian's book. The party left on September 14, and the prince's journals and Bodmer's watercolors lay in the family archive until after the Second World War.

What the plaque says

Marias River The Lewis and Clark Expedition camped at the mouth of the river just east of here June 3, 1805. The Piegan people called it "The River that Scolds at all Others," but Lewis named it Maria's River in honor of his cousin, Miss Maria Wood (over time the apostrophe was dropped). Until exploration proved otherwise, most members of the party believed this river to be the main channel of the Missouri. On his return trip from the coast in 1806 Capt. Lewis explored the Marias almost to its source. In the fall of 1831 James Kipp of the American Fur Co. built Fort Piegan at the mouth of the river, as a trading post for Blackfeet Indians, and acquired 2,400 beaver "plews"or skins by trade during the post's first 10 days. In 1832 the company abandoned the post and the Indians burned it to the ground. The company built Fort MacKenzie about six miles up the Missouri River in 1833. The fort closed in 1844 after post factors Francis Chardon and Alexander Harvey killed several Blackfeet and wounded many more who had come to the post to trade.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Decision Point — 0.2 mi
  The rise where Lewis and Clark spent ten days in 1805 deciding which river was the Missouri, against nearly every man in the party.
• Shep, Fort Benton — 11 mi
  A sheepdog who met every train at Fort Benton for five and a half years, waiting for a master who had gone home in a coffin.

More markers nearby

• The Manitoba Railroad — steps away
• A Montana Crossroads — 3.1 mi
• Fort Benton — 10 mi
• Fort Benton and the Mullan Road — 10 mi