A Visit To The Ninepipes Museum
Of Early Montana
Usually Rick’s my Day Tripper companion, but a few weeks ago Betty Reed suggested we take a drive down to the Ninepipes Museum of Early Montana. Always ready for a road trip, I readily agreed and Betty arranged for us to have a personal tour with Laurel Cheff, who with her husband, Bud Cheff, Jr., opened the nonprofit museum in 1998.
On the drive down I mentioned to Betty that we had stopped there once with friends from New Jersey but had only walked around the trading post. Betty laughed and noted that “people think they’ve been to the museum when in fact they’ve only been to the trading post,” which shares the same building as the museum. I’m now delighted to say that the museum is well worth a visit—plan on spending a few hours discovering all that it has to offer.
Laurel met us at the door and escorted us around the gallery area of the trading post first, pointing out the works of local artists that are on sale—from Gene Scott’s paintings on feathers to Ray Miller’s photographs. She then led us into the first room of the museum and explained that one of the more unusual aspects of this museum is that both Native Americans and white settlers, traders, trappers, ranchers, miners, cowboys and cowgirls are featured. “We tried to represent all phases of life on this reservation in Montana,” explained Laurel. “We didn’t want to be either strictly cowboy or Indian—so we have a combination of both. My husband was born here on the reservation, as was his father before him; our son and grandson were also born on the same land. That’s four generations of Montana history!” The Cheffs try to change the displays every three months or so.

Laurel Cheff and her husband Roy are the founders of the Ninepipes Museum.

Many of the items have been purchased over the years by the Cheffs; others are loaned to them by local people and other museums, such as last year’s exhibit on Indian games on loan from the museum at the University of Oklahoma.
New in the room is a display of Indian beaded gloves and belts, and there are also examples of fine embroidery. “I’m always impressed with the detailed embroidery work,” Laurel stated, “like these gloves that are supposed to be Annie Oakley’s. The Sisters down at St. Ignatius taught the Indian women to embroider. They discouraged them from doing their beadwork and encouraged them to do the embroidery instead, using imported French silk threads.” The exhibits are beautifully organized and displayed on bright, white walls, in wood and glass cases, or like the beadwork belts and gloves, over wooden counters. When the Cheffs began putting the museum together, they couldn’t afford to buy new mannequins, so

Laurel approached the Bon Marche in Missoula, which donated damaged mannequins from its “graveyard” to the museum. Laurel repaired and repainted them until they looked like new. The Cheffs built the museum with security in mind. It has thick concrete walls, and is fire- and burglar-proof with a state-of-the-art security system and cameras that videotape 24 hours a day.
I asked Laurel what started her husband on his quest to collect early Montana artifacts. “When my husband was eleven,” she answered, “he and his family were going up to Martin City from this area and they had a flat tire. While his dad changed the tire, Bud and his older sister started climbing up a canyon. They found a cave there and back inside the cave they found an old war club. That was the start of his interest, along with the stories he heard from his father and grandfather and their neighbors, some of whom were Indian and some of whom were white—most were mixed.”
There’s also a lovely collection of Indian dolls in the front room—some on loan and some belonging to Laurel and Bud. “My husband worked construction, and as he traveled around he would always look in pawn shops and go to auctions,” she recalled. “He acquired quite a bit that way. It finally got to the point where we had to have a museum to put everything in!

His love of artifacts was surpassed only by his love of old photographs. Most of the photographs in our ‘Hall of Photographs’ are from our own personal collection. Many are reproductions—he would ask if the people who owned the originals would allow him to make copies. My favorite is one of a Blackfoot woman. To me she’s a real woman, not one all dressed up in finery. She couldn’t have been a very old woman, but the lines on her face show a lot of hard times.”
One side of the Hall of Photographs is taken up with photos of Native Americans; the other side shows photos of the early settlers, such as Laurel’s grandfather, who at age seventeen was a stagecoach driver between Medora, North Dakota, and Great Falls, Montana, and one of her great-aunt on a homesteaded ranch in eastern Montana near Malta. “In many of the pictures we don’t know who the people are, and we’re always on the lookout for someone to identify them for us—which has happened occasionally,” Laurel recalled.
The next room shows items ranging from Fort Connah, a trading post between Ninepipes and St. Ignatius that was established in 1846 by the Hudson Bay Company, to priest’s vestments on loan from the Mission at St. Ignatius—the current priest allowed the Cheffs to come down and choose which one they wanted; they selected one that had originally come from France.
The most astounding room in the museum, arguably, is the diorama room—there’s one display of mounted wildlife and another of an Indian camp. The former includes a mounted bison that had to be put down at the Bison Range in Moiese. The Bison Range donated the carcass to the museum and an anonymous donor paid the $4,000 taxidermist bill. The Indian camp includes an elk-hide teepee from around 1880. Although it originally came from this area, Laurel and Bud bought it in Canada, thanks to a woman named Ida Brock. She had started her collection on the Flathead Reservation, then moved to Spokane, Washington, where she lived out the rest of her life.
After she died her collection went to her children, some of whom moved to Canada and took the collection with them. When that generation died, the collection was sold at auction, and the Cheffs were able to buy the elk-hide teepee, complete with its provenance.
At this time of year the museum is open Wednesday - Sunday from 11 - 5 PM, but special tours can be organized with advance notice. The day we were there, Fish, Wildlife & Parks was bringing a group of Kalispell senior citizens down for a special tour. Laurel’s favorites are the school groups that visit. “Our biggest pleasure is when we get the school kids to come through. They’re so much fun! We’ve designed a two-page quiz of the exhibits that we call a treasure hunt—the winners get a little something from the trading post.”
Starting in June, the museum will be open seven days a week, usually 9 AM - 6 PM. Museum fees are $4 for adults, $3 for students, $2 for children 6-12, and free for children under 6 if accompanied by an adult. There is no charge to visit the trading post, and its hours are the same as the museum. If you’d like to volunteer some time at the museum, please call Laurel Cheff and offer your services—nonprofits can always use help. Next door to the museum is the newly renovated Ninepipes Lodge and Restaurant (Betty and I had a great lunch in the restaurant, and the view of the Mission Mountains from the dining room is stunning). The complex is located at 40962 Hwy 93, six miles south of Ronan, across from the Ninepipes National Wildlife Refuge. For more information call 406-644-3435, e-mail at ninepipes@ninepipes.com, or visit their web site at www.ninepipes.com. The Ninepipes Museum is a member of Glacier Country.
I’m planning on revisiting the museum soon—Rick would like to see it and I know I missed things the first time through. Plus with its ever-changing exhibits, the Ninepipes Museum of Early Montana will be a treat to return to again and again.

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