SAVING MOUNTAIN CHIEF
y great-great-grandfather Joseph Cobell, an inductee in the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame, immigrated to the United States from Italy in 1848. He married Mary Owl Child, a daughter of the Pikuni Blackfeet Owl Child. In 1867 Joseph and Mary Cobell built the Rock Creek stagecoach station in Montana Territory’s Prickly Pear Valley (near present-day Wolf Creek, Mont.). It straddled the Mullan Road, which ran west from Fort Benton to Fort Walla Walla, in Washington Territory. Their main customers were the military. Mary’s sister, Spear Woman, married Mountain Chief, a leader of the Pikuni (or Piegan) band. According to Blackfeet accounts, white settlers harassed the band because they coveted the gold in Mountain Chief’s vast territory. Owl Child’s other daughter, Kohkokina,
