Kramer Family Tree » Maj. Fellows "David" (Fellows "David") Pease (1834-1920)

Personal data Maj. Fellows "David" (Fellows "David") Pease 

• First name Fellows "David".
• He was born on March 16, 1834 in Tioga Co., Pennsylvania, Verenigde Staten.
• Census on August 5, 1870, Deerfield, Tioga Co., Pennsylvania, Verenigde Staten.
• (Namesake) June 1875 in Fort Pease, Pease Bottom, Treasure Co., Montana, USA.
• He died on October 20, 1920 in Montana, he was 86 years old.
• He is buried in Rosebud Cemetery, Stillwater Co., Montana, Verenigde Staten.
• A child of Oliver Pease and Huldah Bowen

Household of Maj. Fellows "David" (Fellows "David") Pease

He is married to Margrete Wallace.

They got married in the year 1859 at near Berthold, Ward Co., North Dakota, Verenigde Staten, he was 24 years old.

Child(ren):

1. Laetus Pease  ± 1861-????
2. Lavantia M. Pease  1864-1955
3. George Hamilton Wallace Pease (Aka Bear Breast)  1866-1916 

Notes about Maj. Fellows "David" (Fellows "David") Pease

An excerpt from the book:

 

Montana, Its Story and Biography: A history of Aboriginal and Territorial Montana and Three Decades of Statehood – Volume III

The American Historical Society - 1921

 

 

Major Fellows D. Pease. Eighty-six years of age, and all but the first twenty spent in the far west, Major Fellows D. Pease of Lodgegrass was at the time of his death probably the only man in Montana who could tell from personal experience and witness the main outline of events connected with the earliest white occupation of the territory.  His life since the Civil war was spent within the confines of Montana. He was on the ground long before either the territories of Idaho or Montana were a matter for serious consideration.  Indian fighter, Indian agent, friend and adviser of the red men, steadily through all the years he has endeavored to do justice to the original occupants of the land and promote the welfare of the two races in their relations.

Major Pease was born in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, March 16 1834.  His father, Oliver Pease, was descended from an Englishman who with two brothers were followers of Oliver Cromwell, and at the downfall of their leader two were imprisoned.  They were released by their sailor brother and brought to America, landing on the Island of Martha’s Vineyard.  The sailor brother married with the daughter of a chief of a tribe of Indians on the Atlanticcoast, and from this union descended Oliver Pease, according to family tradition.  Oliver Pease was a farmer, a fanatic Methodist, and widely known as the“praying evangelist farmer.”  It is not certain where he was born, but he moved from New York State into Pennsylvania when a young man and married Hulda Bowen, daughter of Emma Bowen, a prominent farmer of Tioga County and one of its earliest settlers.  The Peases and Bowens were old line whigs in politics.  Oliver Pease and wife had seven sons and eight daughters, Major Pease being the eight child.  Three of the sons, Emmer, Ashbel and Laetus were killed while Union soldiers in the Civil war.  Another son, Walter, was also a Union soldier and is now living in Tioga County, Pennsylvania.  Benjamin followed his brother Fellows into the West, and in the early ‘60’s piloted a party of hunters and trappers from Minnesota into the Canadian northwest, and finally settled in Eastern Washington, rearing his family and passing away near Ellensburg.

Major Pease grew up in Steuben County New York, had a rural school education, and at the age of nineteen turned his face toward the West.  Reaching Chicago, he went down the old canal to Joliet, thence by train to Rock Island.  This was in 1853.  Reaching the banks of the Mississippi River, he fell in with a party of New Englanders going to the Wisconsin pineries, and he joined them and spent a year or so in the forests of Wisconsin.  He helped correct the boundary line between Minnesota and Iowa, and with an outfit of ox teams engaged in hauling and freighting and trafficking with the Sioux Indians.  When the Abercrombie party was sent out to meet General Harney he sold his teamsto the Government and joined the outfit at Fort Ridgeley.  This party intercepted General Harney’s command at Fort Pierre after it’s battle with the Sioux at Ash Hollow.  The General had started his expedition from Fort Leavenworth, marching through Nebraska and north to the Canadian line, and had inflicted the first punishment given the Sioux nation by Uncle Sam, starting a war which continued through a period of almost thirty years, ending with the subjugation of the nation and its confinement to various reservations in the Northwest.

Major Pease left the war party while en route and joined the “Scotch Half Breeds” bound for old Fort Union, arriving at the mouth of the Yellowstone at that old fort in September, 1856, fully seven yearsbefore the time usually accepted by historians as marking the opening of Montana history.  Major Pease soon turned to merchandising on the Missouri River as a member of the “Little Opposition” firm, comprised of eastern men of New York, Chicago and Minnesota besides himself.  This firm did business all along the river from Fort Benton to Fort Sully.  After a year it joined the Northwest Fur Company, trading with the Indians for robes and pelts and disposing of the goods to steamers coming up with supplies in the spring.  The first intimation of Montana region being a gold bearing country came to Major Pease from a party of twenty persons, including one woman, who journeyed down the Yellowstone River in flatboats, carrying some gold dust they had gathered upstream.  At a point near old Fort Berthold the boat was grounded and the party were massacred by a band of hostile Sioux, the gold being taken away and a portion of it sold to the American Fur Company.  About two years later the fur company was purchased by the Little Opposition Company, and two years later the latter company sold its interests to Peck & Durfee.

During these years the overland expeditionfor the gold fields of Montana, headed by Bridger Bozeman and by Captain Fisk later on, began the real search for precious metal.  Davidson also brought aparty into the region later, and these were the pioneers in uncovering the rich gold finds of Montana.

With the transfer of the Northwest Fur Company to Peck & Durfee, Major Pease gave up trading with the Indians and associated himself with a company supplying the Government with horses for the different expeditions against the Indians.  These horses were gathered up in Utah and Colorado.  In 1870 Major Pease was appointed agent for the Crow Indians, being the first civil agent for that tribe.  It was in that year that the Indian department was transferred from the War Department to the Department of the Interior.  Major Pease’s agency was established at the mouth of Mission Creek,almost opposite Livingston, on the south side of the Yellowstone River.  The Crows owned all that region then, the land having since been taken from them by treaty.  He remained in charge of the agency until 1874, when he was superseded.  Major Pease acquired the Sioux tongue in the early days of his residence in the Northwest, also gained a fair knowledge of the Crow language, and his acquaintance among Indians generally made him an invaluable representative of the Government.

In the ‘70’s the various military posts which had been established in Wyoming and Utah for the protection of white settlers passing to the Northwest were removed, leaving the country unprotected from the Sioux, who began a reign of terror not only among the emigrant trains but among the Crows who were less numerous than the Sioux.  The Crows were driven back into the mountainous region of Park County and the Gallatin Valley, and their presence there saved the whites from extermination, since the Crows acted as a sort of buffer.  In the spring of 1875, Major Pease, Paul McCormick of Billings and Z. H. Daniels laid plans to form a colony and establish it on Pease’s Bottom on the Yellowstone.  With about fifty men they established the colony, the mainstay of which while it lasted was Mr. McCormick and Mr. Daniels.  In the meantime Major Pease went East to secure supplies, being absent all winter.  The Custer massacre of 1876 had occurred before he returned, and also several attacks of Indians had been made on the colony.  A few were killed and the remainder abandoned Fort Pease.  The objects of the colony were first to establish a buffer with the Crows between the white settlers farther west, a trading post with the Indians when Major Pease should return with his boat load of supplies, and ultimately using the psot as a base for operating the gold fields of Wolf Mountain then known to exist, but which even yet have not been worked.

                When General Miles Came into Montana after the Custer massacre he established Fort Keogh, and Major Pease, with the arrival of his supplies, moved them to the new post, selling goods as the fort merchant until a regular settler was provided.  At that time Major Pease left the fort and began mining, trading with the Indians and looking after otherinterests.  He was also a miner in Park County.

                When Major Pease was made agent of the Crows and established his office at Fort Parker he found no Indians there.  The military had occupied the place for a time, and their presence was displeasing to the Crows, who had their main camp up the Big Horn in Wyoming.  Major Pease sent word to their leaders to come to the agency to discuss matters of importance with them.  They arrived Indian military style, and it was soon evident that many were displeased with the presence of the soldiers, and the Major realized that a more satisfactory conference could be had and with greater promise of results if the soldiers were withdrawn.  His appeal to the proper authorities gained this point.

                Some of the younger Crow warriors had been persuaded that the only ultimate safety for the Indians of the country depended upon an alliance between the Crows and the Sioux to fight the Government.  This belief had been zealously fostered by the leadingSioux chief.  However, Blackfoot, the big chief of the Crows, and his wife, a daughter of old Crazy Horse, a Sioux chief, appealed to the patriotism of the young fellows, and they were finally prevailed upon to cast their lot unrestrainedly with the white man.  It was this conference that led to the failure of the Sioux to establish the desired alliance, and the peaceable stand taken by the Crows prevented much loss of life and property by a prolonged struggle.  The chief instrument in this arrangement was Major Pease, and that act stands out conspicuously as the most important of many services rendered by him to this region and to the Crow Indians.  It is not difficult therefore to understand the peculiar affection felt for Major Pease by members of the Crow tribe, and they signalized this long standing affection in a manner constituting the highest possible award of honor when they adopted him a member of the tribe in May, 1920.

                As atribe the Crows have never been hostile toward the whites, have shown fairness in their dealings with white men and the Government, and have observed every provision of their treaties.  As a reward for their loyalty the Government in 1868 set aside a reservation of seven million acres to be theirs forever, and in addition appropriated several million dollars to be used in their behalf.  It is confidently believed by well informed authorities that not one-fourth of this sum ever reached its real object, because of the conduct of the Indian Department at Washington.  The original reservation has been reduced by subsequent purchases from the Crows to about two million acres.  Long ago it was discovered that this too would be taken from them unless vigorous measures were taken by the Government to prevent it.  A score of years ago Major Pease and his son George, a member of the tribe, undertook to arouse sentiment favoring a division of the remaining tribal lands in severalty, and at this time Congress is considering the final provision of the bill which Senator Myers and Congressman Riddick have been pushing to final passage.  This will insure the Crows a measure of tardy justice and to some extent will right the wrongs done all the tribes of Indians in the United States.  Major Pease from his long and intimate observation of Indian affairs regarded the Government Indian Department as nothing less than a curse in the administration of Indian affairs.  Having known each of the men who have held the office of commissioner of Indian affairs, from Charles Mix, the first, to the present incumbent, he looked upon the entire record as one tinged with incompetence and ignorance, if not actual malfeasance.

                Major Pease was always loyal to the politicaltraditions of his ancestors.  In 1860 he traveled from the Missouri back to Pennsylvania in order to cast his vote for Abraham Lincoln for president.  He never deviated from this partisan regularity until the national campaign of 1916.  Major Pease was made a Mason by special dispensation at Knoxville, Pennsylvania, in 1868, taking the Blue Lodge degrees there.  He was affiliated with Livingston Lodge No. 32, with the Scottish Rite bodies and Algeria Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Helena.  While living within the limits of Dakota Major Pease was elected a member of the First Territorial Legislature, and attended the sessions of that party at Yankton.  He was chosen to prepare the first Constitution of Montana as a delegate from Gallatin County, but that document was not approved.

                In 1859, near Berthold, North Dakota, Major Pease married Margaret Wallace, a half breed Crow.  Her father, John Wallace, was a noted warrior among the crows of that day.  Of herfour children three grew to mature years.  Laetus died at Seattle, Washington, leaving no children.  Lavantia, married John L. Pearson, now a resident near Absorakee, Montana, and their children are Virgie, Helen, Ethel and Leah.  George H., the youngest child, came to manhood on the Crow Reservation, spent his life here, and died at the Pease residence in Lodge Grass, as the result of an automobile accident in 1916.  He was educated in the common schools, was a farmer and stockman, and also carried on extensive trading relations with his tribesmen.  He married Sarah Walker, who is now living at Lodgegrass.  They had a family of nine sons and one daughter.  Of the sons four were soldiers, two in the army and two in the navy, one a master blacksmith, during the World war.  Six of the sons are farmers near Lodgegrass.  The daughter Helen is the youngest of the family.

                Of the noted Indian chieftains of the Northwest during the past half century Major Pease by personal acquaintance was able to relate something distinctive and characteristic of nearly every one.  He knew intimately the great warrior and statesman of the Sioux, Sitting Bull, and others of that tribe known to him were Red Cloud, Gall, Rain-in-the-Face, Strikes the Ree, Smokey Bear, Medicine Cow and Grass.  Among the Crows his personal knowledge extended to Horse Guard, Blackfoot, Two Belly, Iron Bull and Show his Face, while among the Assiniboines he knew old White Hair, Magtram, Jackson and the Fool.  His acquaintance among the Grosventres included Crow Breath, Poor Wolf, Bloody Knife or Blue Cloud.  He knew many of the Blackfeet, being their special agent for a time, and he knew Medicine Crow, the Santee and leader of the New Ulm massacre in Minnesota in 1862.  The death of Major Pease occurred October 20, 1920.

 

The online e-book version ofthis excerpt can be found here: http://books.google.com/books?id=XyY6AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1051&dq=oliver+pease&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rx0eUvztAoq_sASziIGwDA&ved=0CEQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=oliver%20pease&f=false

 

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Timeline Maj. Fellows "David" (Fellows "David") Pease

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