University of Notre Dame associate professor Mark Johnson discusses the tensions in wood harvesting around Butte in the early 1880s in The War of the Woods: Chinese Wood Choppers and Unlikely Allies, Montana 1880–1900, sharing the story of a clash between Chinese and white woodsmen and the Butte constable who intervened.

Brigham Young University history professor Andrea Radke-Moss presents Our Citizens Don’t Think Much of the Indians: Montana Women and Representations of Native Americans at the Chicago World’s Fair. Through the stories of Eliza Rickards and Emma Cowan, shel examines how Montana women portrayed Indigenous people in 1893, focusing on their settler colonial narratives and Montana boosterism.

Chief Earl Old Person, Life-Time Chief of the Blackfeet Tribe, sat for an interview in 2002 to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of North American Indian Days in Browning on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Norma Ashby interviewed Chief Old Person for KRTV of Great Falls as he commented on the meaning and celebrations of Indian Days, one of the largest powwows in Montana. Filmed by photographers Lindsay McNay and Tim Luinstra, the video special was sponsored by Dr. and Mrs. Dan Fiehrer.

Author and historian Bob Bigart explains how cattle exports from the Flathead Indian Reservation in the early twentieth century supported tribal members and made it possible for the tribes to avoid dependence on general rations from the federal government.

University of Colorado PhD student Kerri Clement examines horse herd restoration efforts on the part of Crow Agency superintendent Robert Yellowtail. While Yellowtail concentrated on particular breeds and worked to obtain high-bred horses, this short-lived project reflects the longer and deeper history between Crow people and equines. Between 1875 and 1910, cattle raising on the Flathead Reservation grew from supplementing a tribal economy based on hunting and gathering to the foundation of a new economy.

Retired MHS museum technician Vic Reiman begins with a short sketch of the development of black powder and firearms—going all the way back to China—and then concentrates on the first four models of lever-action rifles made by Oliver Winchester and their use by American Indians, settlers, and bad men on the western frontier.

As an integral and formative part of the Rocky Mountain West, mining helped shape public attitudes toward the land, labor unions, cultural and social mores, and community development. The ways in which mining history is preserved and presented does the same. Dr. Dayle Hardy-Short, professor of communication studies at Northern Arizona University, provides a preliminary overview of topics, organizational structures, and historical approaches used in mining museums in Montana and elsewhere across the West.

Montana State University adjunct humanities faculty Dr. Dan Hanson examines how Bannack State Park utilizes haunting as a commercial attraction and historical teaching tool in its annual “Ghost Walk.” Understanding haunting’s functionality within this heritage site is important as Bannack continues to reflect and shape the real and imagined West.

Shortly before 10:00 P.M. on the night of January 15, 1895, a watchman noticed smoke coming from the Kenyon-Connell Commercial Company warehouse and summoned the fire department. Unbeknownst to firefighters, other rescue workers, and curious onlookers, the burning building contained not only stoves, sheets of corrugated iron, pipes, coils of wire, and iron wheelbarrows, but also a large supply of dynamite. Within minutes, a series of devastating explosions rocked the Mining City’s warehouse district. Butte Historical Memorials board members Lindsay Mulcahy, Judy Chadwick, and Karen Henningsen tell the story of this largely forgotten tragedy that resulted in the deaths of fifty-eight people.

Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, thousands dreamed of leaving Bohemia(then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) for the country of endless hope. They were driven by a vision of better living conditions and quick riches, as well as a desire to escape political, religious, and national oppression. In History of the Czechs in Montana and Elsewhere in the Northwest, Dr. Martin Nekola, coordinator of the Czechoslova Talks Project, focuses on the Czechs—more than 350,000 of whom lived in the United States at the outbreak of World War I—who settled in this region.