American Indians said to have called it ‘Evil Mountain’

By The Standard Staff - 05/31/2008

Editor’s note: The following article about Big Butte was taken from the June 13, 1954, edition of The Montana Standard.

The headline read, “Big Butte Known to Indians as Evil Mountain.” “Big Butte, as is well known to all in the least familiar with the history of Butte, is the peak which gave its name to the city when the camp was in its infancy.

No one knows where the peak got its name but by that it has been known ever since the foot of white man trod the surrounding area.

There’s a story that before the white man came into the Butte region the Indians had given Big Butte the name Evil Mountain. It seems that they had a fanciful legend to the effect that it was once a part of the main range and that many centuries ago, when the Indians were under the special favor of Heaven, a powerful tribe suffered the loss of its young chief by an enemy’s hand upon Big Butte (then the highest peak of the main range, occupying all of what is now Elk Park, and possessing magic powers for the protection of the great chiefs;) and that thereupon the chief medicine man cursed it and ordered its banishment from its sister peaks and its removal into the valley.

During the night, the Indian legend goes, the peak was torn from its imbedding and hurled toward the valley. It struck near where Walkerville now stands, its base forming “the hill” in which nearly all of the great silver and copper mines were located, while the peak, much reduced in height by what crumbled from its base, slid along to its present position, leaving behind it the ridge still connecting it with the high ground at Walkerville.

Thereafter no more trees grew on Big Butte, and it bore the name of Evil Mountain. In those days if a dissatisfied Indian sought relief from his troubles by self destruction he chose Big Butte for his parting view of earth. With the coming of the white man its present and more fitting name came into use, and nothing was more natural than that it should become the title of the great mining city which grew up at the mountain’s base.”