In 1905 or 1906, Forsyth met a fellow photographer and New Yorker who would have an enormous influence on his work. Frederic Edwin Peeso, born in Syracuse in 1881, came to Butte in 1905 after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, ostensibly to work as a mining engineer. But his real passion was anthropology, specifically that of Montana’s indigenous peoples.[1] He nurtured a relationship with the “Landless Indians” of the Chippewa-Cree encampment at Timber Butte, just south of the city, and in 1906 took a series of photographs in what was known locally as the “Cree Village”.
Peeso’s friendship with Forsyth, and his romance with Forsyth’s young studio assistant Lillian Plint, is documented in numerous postcards and photographs now held by their grandson Bill Hagerty.[2] It can be no coincidence that there was a pronounced shift in Forsyth’s focus around this time, away from Butte’s diverse immigrant population, and towards the state’s original inhabitants.
In a series of advertisements placed in The Daily Missoulian in November and December 1909, Forsyth listed his available sets as “Flathead Indians”, “Morrison Cave”, “Lake M’Donald” and “Buffalo Views”.[3] These advertisements are convenient synopses of his work up to that point, and by their absence they also allow us to date his Blackfeet and Crow images to 1910 and later.
While it is difficult to specifically date Forsyth’s Flathead images, a small number of them are copyrighted 1907 and 1908,[4] though some may have been taken earlier. A postcard to Peeso places him in Kalispell as early as July 1906.[5] Surviving contact sheets and negatives of many of these views are dated correspondingly.
The majority of Forsyth’s Flathead stereographs were taken during this period. Today these count among his most collectible views, and as with his Butte images, they have been reproduced as illustrations countless times over the last century.
Morrison Cave, renamed the Lewis and Clark Caverns in 1911, was a subject to which Forsyth would return repeatedly as both a photographer and tour guide. The caverns were first developed as a tourist attraction in 1905 by Dan A. Morrison of the Jefferson Lime Company of Whitehall.[6] Forsyth was an early visitor,[7] and between 1910 and 1922 he would lead dozens of excursions to the caverns.
The Lake McDonald collection is perhaps Forsyth’s rarest, soon superseded by “Glacier Park Through the Stereoscope” after the creation of the National Park in May 1910. A 1914 article in The Plainview Republican claimed that a set of Forsyth’s Lake McDonald stereographs was presented to the US Senate as part of the deliberations which led to the creation of the park.[8] Some of the earliest views, which were included in both sets, are copyrighted 1908. As with Morrison Cave, Glacier was an area to which he would return repeatedly in the following years, with both camera and tourists in tow.
“Buffalo Views”, sold as “Wild Buffaloes Through the Stereoscope”, is a fascinating set for numerous reasons. The definitive record of the Pablo bison roundup, it also marked the start of Forsyth’s friendship with C.M. Russell, and documented a near-death experience which would assure his place in Montana folk history.
The origins of the Pablo herd can be traced to the 1860s, when the American bison was on the verge of extinction. During a hunt east of the Continental Divide, a Pend d’Oreille man named Atatiće (Peregrine Falcon Robe) proposed that a small group of orphaned bison calves should be transported west and reared on the Flathead Reservation. Tribal elders disagreed, deeming the animals a hindrance, and it was not until a decade later that Atatiće’s son Łatatí (Little Falcon Robe), inspired by his father’s vision, would bring six calves to the Flathead.
In 1884, Łatatí’s stepfather Samwel Walking Coyote sold what was by then a herd of 12 or 13 bison to ranchers Michel Pablo and Charles P. Allard. When Allard died in 1896, their numbers had increased to approximately 300, and by 1907 Pablo was managing a herd of between 700 and 800. With the Flathead Allotment Act of 1904 it was no longer possible for the bison to roam freely on the reservation, and after trying and failing to sell the herd to the U.S. government, Pablo turned to the Canadian government, who agreed to pay $250 a head. All that remained was to drive the herd to the railhead at Ravalli, where they would be put on trains to Alberta.
“The Last Great Buffalo Roundup” began in the summer of 1907, and word eventually reached Forsyth in Butte. That September he headed to Pablo’s ranch, just in time to see the enterprise abandoned for the year as the scale of the task became apparent. Though it seems he did manage to take a few stereographs, which are copyrighted 1907, he sent a postcard to Peeso on September 21st, declaring the roundup a failure and announcing his return to Butte.[9]
The majority of the views in Forsyth’s “buffalo” set were taken in 1908[10] and 1909, by which time Pablo had streamlined his operation, though it would take until 1912 to complete.
In early October 1908 Forsyth was joined by C.M. Russell, who had been invited by the Canadian government as an observer.[11] The month they spent together would leave a lasting impression on both men. Shortly before his death, Forsyth was interviewed about the roundup for The Dillon Daily Tribune, and said of Russell:
“He was the most tender hearted person I ever knew. He liked all kinds of ‘humans’. What they did was their business. He saw their good qualities only. From him I learned to see the beauties of the sunsets and the colors in flowers as I had never done before.”[12]
Their friendship was sealed after the events of November 8th, 1908, when Russell was on hand to witness Forsyth narrowly escape death under the hooves of over 100 stampeding bison.[13] The herd was being driven along the Flathead River toward a corral constructed against a bluff deemed too steep for the bison to climb, at the top of which Russell and Forsyth had positioned themselves to sketch and photograph the event. But both they and the corral’s builders had underestimated the creatures’ agility. The herd charged en masse up the bluff, and directly into Forsyth’s path. He abandoned his camera and attempted to climb a nearby tree, but in his own words “…just as I started up I found myself straddling a mad buffalo bull”.[14] He was eventually able to gain some purchase on a low hanging branch, to which he clung for his life until, “…after what seemed a week”,[15] the herd had finally passed beneath him. In Russell’s characteristically colorful and idiosyncratic description:
“we all said good by to him an figered on a funiral but lucky for him there was sim seaders there an he climbed up one coming out shy a camera hat an most of his pants”[16]
Forsyth’s camera was destroyed in the stampede, but miraculously both glass plate negatives survived, to reveal a hair-raising snapshot of the oncoming bison, which he published in the roundup set under the title “Where Forsyth Lost His Camera and Nearly His Life”. The moment was also memorialized by Russell in his painting “A Close Call”, which he presented to Forsyth as a gift in December 1908.[17]
The two men were reunited in May 1909, at the start of the third year of the roundup.[18] They were joined in June by Nancy Russell,[19] and Forsyth was subsequently invited to the couple’s summer residence at Bull Head Lodge, where he and Russell were photographed together on the cabin’s porch.[20]
After Forsyth’s death, The Montana Standard referred to him as a “close friend” of Russell.[21] While this is almost certainly overstating the case – there is no record of them meeting again after 1909 – there does seem to have been genuine warmth between them after their shared experiences.
In 1912 Russell sent Forsyth an illustrated letter recalling another incident at the roundup:
“Friend Forsyth … the above sketch will show you I have not forgot you or our buffalo days I will always remember that afternoon when the lady in brown called we were all very much embarased either that or we were not dressed to meet ladies aney how her reception was turned into a foot race. Your friend CM Russell.”[22]
The accompanying watercolor shows the “lady in brown” charging up a riverbank towards a camp, where numerous figures are seen fleeing in various directions, one of them clutching a camera. Evidently, Forsyth had no intention of sacrificing another.
Part 5: “… the well known Butte photographer” (1909-1912).
[1] “Fred Peeso Collected Stories Related by Cree Indians,” Great Falls Tribune, Great Falls, (MT) Nov. 30, 1958
[2] Correspondence with Fred and Lillian’s grandson Bill Hagerty of Arizona, June 2019
[3] The Daily Missoulian, Missoula, (MT), Nov. 28, 1909, Nov. 29, 1909, Dec. 3, 1909
[4] Contact sheets held in the Keystone-Mast Collection are similarly dated.
[5] Postcard to F.E. Peeso, Jul. 19, 1906
[6] “The Wonderful Morrison Cave and the Story of Its Discovery,” Great Falls Daily Tribune, Great Falls, (MT), Dec. 17, 1911
[7] A number of Forsyth’s photographs of the cave published in The Butte Miner in 1910 are copyrighted 1907. “Morrison Cave – An Underground Cavern Of Crystalline Wealth,” The Butte Miner, Butte, (MT), Feb. 27, 1910
[8] “The Underwood Stereoscopic Views,” The Plainview Republican, Plainview, (NE), Dec. 3, 1914
[9] Postcard to F.E. Peeso, Sep. 21, 1907
[10] It was possibly en route to the roundup that Forsyth witnessed and extensively photographed the 1908 Missoula Flood.
[11] “Russell To See Buffalo Roundup,” Great Falls Daily Tribune, Great Falls, (MT), Oct. 7, 1908
[12] “Dillon Man Tells Story Of Riding Wild Buffalo Which His Friend Charles Russell Painted,” The Dillon Daily Tribune, Dillon, (MT), Nov. 9, 1949
[13] “Secured Sketches Of Buffalo Roundup,” Great Falls Daily Tribune, Great Falls, (MT), Nov. 16, 1908
[14] “Dillon Man Tells Story Of Riding Wild Buffalo Which His Friend Charles Russell Painted,” The Dillon Daily Tribune, Dillon, (MT), Nov. 9, 1949
[15] “Dillon Man Tells Story Of Riding Wild Buffalo Which His Friend Charles Russell Painted,” The Dillon Daily Tribune, Dillon, (MT), Nov. 9, 1949
[16] Letter from Russell to Bertrand W. Sinclair, January 1909
[17] “Has Narrow Escape,” The Butte Miner, Bute, (MT), Dec. 23, 1908
[18] “Spray Of The Falls,” Great Falls Tribune, Great Falls, (MT), May 19, 1909
[19] “Of Local Interest,” Great Falls Tribune, Great Falls, (MT), Jun. 2, 1909
[20] “Charles M. Russell and Friend on Porch,” Charles M. Russell Research Collection (Britzman), Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, Tulsa, (OK)
[21] “Photographer Is Called by Death,” The Montana Standard, Butte, (MT), Dec. 17, 1949
[22] Letter from Russell to Forsyth, Feb. 22, 1912