PLAINS RIFLE

ca. 1850

X1910.02.01

This rifle is a doubly exciting artifact because of the fame of its one-time owner—mountain man, guide, and scout Jim Bridger (1804—1881—and because this type of Plains rifle, made about 1850 by St. Louis gun maker Samuel Hawken (1792—1884), has itself become an icon of the western American frontier. We do not know the exact date or circumstances under which Bridger obtained this rifle. In 1866, however, he sold it to Pierre Chien (1829—1877), for sixty-five dollars at Fort C. F. Smith in southern Montana Territory. Chien, who was an interpreter for the Crow tribe for thirty years, kept Bridger's Hawken until just before his death, when he gave it to frontier guide and scout J. I. Allen (1839—1929) who, in turn, donated it to the Historical Society of Montana in 1910.