The remains of a man were found a few miles up the Missouri river, from the mouth of Sun river, in 1887. His identification could not be had. The opinion was that death had come from exposure.
The above are a few of the shadows that darkened the life of the pioneer.
It is human nature that every person is pleased to hear others saying something good about him. Joaquin Miller said of the pioneers of Montana that some fell from overtoil, others in battle with savages; some died even as they sat for the first time by the new-laid hearthstone waiting for wife and babes to arrive with the first flowers of spring; and that the world does not, perhaps, understand what it cost to come here in the early days.
And, as Mr. Miller says, the Pilgrim fathers set forth in the ship and landed on Plymouth Rock; the Cavaliers of Virginia sailed pleasantly up the James river and scarcely knew what a camp in the wilderness was until they sat down in their future home; the Argonauts of California, many of them, merely sailed from port to port; but Montana was a thousand miles from any ocean, a wilderness in the center of an untrodden country with savages in her every pass and valley, and so, necessarily, every man that came here among the first was in some way a soldier, yes, a veteran soldier, who had mustered, camped, marched and battled, endured hunger and exposure to all kinds of weather--all that the bravest soldier endures--before he ever came within sight of the Mecca that he was toiling to reach. He truly says that there was a great difference between the Montana veteran and the bravest of the brave in any war that has ever been; that the soldiers Caesar, Napoleon and Grant had their governments to clothe, feed, pay and pension them, but the hero of Montana stood alone.
I have just given the names of seventy-six of those heroes who fell victims to the wrath of the redskins, and of several that were wounded and died afterwards. The names of the fourteen men, the woman and the two children, I have not, but their relatives were informed of their sad death. Of the other party of men, women and children no further account of them but the finding of their bodies could be obtained. And, in addition to all, we have twenty-two unknown who were killed; not a trace of their identification could be found--no one knew either their names or where their homes were--therefore, an account of their death could not be given to friends or relatives, who may never know what has become of their dear ones who went West years before.