Montana 1889: Indians, Cowboys, and Miners in the Year of Statehood

When Montana became the 41st state in 1889, an old pinoeer lamented, “Now she's gone to hell,” but most Montanans embraced statehood as the inevitable culmination of one of the most rapid and dramatic transformations in United States history.

Only twenty-five years after becoming a territory, Montana was profoundly different: the buffalo slaughtered and gone, the Indian wars fought and ended, the tribal nations confined to reservations, cattle and sheep raised by the tens of thousands, Butte...