Canton Church: The Cowan Party
Author: Matt Nelson
Canton Church: The Cowan Party
Matt Nelson
Keith Kirscher, President - Canton Church, introduced Linda Huth, the Curator of the Broadwater County Museum, who did an excellent presentation at the Canton Church on Friday, June 13th, about the story of George Cowan and his Yellowstone Park Adventure, which occurred in August 1877, five years after Yellowstone became the first national park in the world.
George and his wife Emma, with her brother Frank and sister Ida Carpenter, were from Radersburg, as well as Charles Mann and Henry Meyers. Three friends from Helena, Andrew Arnold, William Dingee and Albert Oldham had accompanied the others as tourists to Yellowstone. They arrived on August 14th and camped near the Nez Perce Indians on August 23rd, who saw the campfires of the tourists. The next morning, all of the Radersburg party encountered the Nez Perce Indians, who had left Idaho and were heading to Canada. The Indians wanted food and horses, which Andrew Arnold started to give them. George intervened, creating hostilities with the Indians. One of them fired his rifle and hit George in his right thigh. Later another one fired at his head, and even after that, George sustained another shot in his hip. Left for dead, George managed to recover a bit and crawled for 4 days afterwards, but was very hungry. Emma, Frank and Ida were taken captive but were released the next day.
None of the Radersburg party was killed. On August 29th, soldiers under the command of General Oliver Otis Howard rescued George and informed him that Emma and the Carpenters had all been safely released.
Poker Joe, one of the Nez Perce Indians, treated members of the Radersburg party kindly, as did Chief Joseph, because although the members were all white, they were not soldiers. Poker Joe had acquired an old 1862 Holden .44 caliber rifle from someone in the group and gave it to Shumkeen (Samuel Tilden), the 10-year-old grandson of Chief Joseph.
There are two excellent online references and much more detailed information about the Cowan adventure:
https://mmarkmiller.com/2012/07/05/a-tale-gunshot-man-crawls-to-safety-george-cowan-1877-2/ has direct quotes from George and Emma of the event, and the other reference is Chapter 8 of the Nez Perce National Historical Park.
https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/nepe/greene/chap8b.htm
Linda mentioned, during her talk about the Holden rifle, that the museum has it on display. On the museum web page, there is a description regarding this rifle:
https://preservebroadwaterhistory.org/BWCOMuseumAboutUs :
“During the summer of 2024, Grady Knight of Libby, Montana, contacted the Broadwater County Museum and said that he is in possession of a rifle that is supposed to have belonged to a member of the Yellowstone Cowan Party. The rifle was taken by the Indians during their encounter with the Cowan Party. Poker Joe, who was a member of the Indians who captured the Cowan Party, later gave the stolen Holden rifle to Samuel Tilden (Suhmkeen), the ten-year-old grandson of Chief Joseph. After having been in the hands of several other owners over the years, Grady was able to purchase the rifle and did extensive research on it and was able to confirm that it was stolen from a member of the Cowan Party. When Grady Knight contacted the local museum, he offered the rifle for display, and it was decided to accept his offer. He delivered it to us in April of this year for the 2025 season.”
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PhotoCredit: Matt Nelson
Image 1 Caption: Linda Huth, Broadwater County Museum Curator, speaking at the Canton Church.
Photo Credit: Matt Nelson
