Label Writing for Poaching Case

This morning, I met with Bob Flather, a retired park ranger and historian who has spent years researching army scouts and snowshoe cabins. He was able to provide me with a lot of useful information and clarify some important details for me. Bob recommend that I concentrate on the difficulty, hardship, and danger of being an army scout.

After meeting with Bob, I concentrated on object labels for the case on poaching and army scouts. I was able to come very close to finishing my labels for that case. The only label I have left to write will summarize the case as a whole. Here are some examples of labels I wrote today:

Skis, Date Unknown
YELL 1956
YELL 1957

Army scouts patrolled Yellowstone’s backcountry on cross country skis, called “snowshoes.”

Mud Volcano Cabin in Winter, 1913
F.J. Haynes, Photographer
Courtesy Haynes Foundation Collection, Montana Historical Society, Helena, MT
YELL 127295 (Reproduction)

Before the first snowshoe cabins were built in 1890, army scouts slept outside with no shelter from the elements. Equipped with stoves and mats for sleeping, the tiny cabins provided limited comfort and protection from the weather. On occasion, unfortunate scouts would arrive, shivering and exhausted, to find their cabin burned by poachers or the roof caved in from the weight of the snow.

Scouts on Patrol Trip to Fall River, 1897
Photographer Unknown
YELL 7147 (Reproduction)

“I never knew until I had seen the Park itself in all its immensity, its impenetrableness, its forbidding and awful regions of forest, precipice and crag, until I had traversed with weary feet some of those endless miles of bottomless snow; until I learned how utterly small, lonely and insignificant a man looks and feels in the midst of solitude so vast, so boundless, so tremendous and so appalling.”

-- Emerson Hough, reporter for Forest and Stream magazine

Capture of Poacher Ed Howell, 1915
Photographer Unknown
YELL 1659 (Reproduction)

“When I saw him he was about 400 yards away from the cover of the timber. I knew I had to cross that open space before I could get him sure. I had no rifle, but only an army revolver, .38 cal. the new model… Howell’s rifle was leaning against a dead buffalo, about fifteen feet away from him… I thought I could maybe get across without Howell seeing or hearing me, for the wind was blowing very hard. So I started over from the cover, going as fast as I could travel. Right square across the way I found a ditch about ten feet wide, and you know how hard it is to make a jump with snowshoes (skis) on level ground. I had to try it, anyhow and somehow I got over. I ran up within fifteen feet of Howell between him and his gun before I called to him to throw up his hands, and that was the first he knew of anyone but him being anywhere in that country.”

--Army Scout Felix Burgess on his capture of poacher Ed Howell

Army Officers with Buffalo Confiscated from Poacher, circa 1900
Photographer Unknown
YELL 7757 (Reproduction)

A cache of eight buffalo heads was discovered by Army scouts at Ed Howell’s campsite just before capturing the notorious poacher.

Camera, 1895
The Blair Camera Co., Model 2367
Used by Army Scout Peter Holt
YELL 7148

“an old camera that I carried for many years in my pack on snowshoe trips…”
--Peter Holt, Letter to Chester Allinson Lindsley, December 1925

I know some of the labels are a little long, but the exhibit is very small so I am hoping people will take the time to read them. The rest of the labels will be very short or "tombstone" labels only to make up for the length of the text in some of these. I think the first person accounts will make the exhibit a lot more engaging, especially Felix Burgess' account of capturing the famous poacher, Ed Howell.