The Life of the Afterlife in the Big Sky State: A History of Montana's Cemeteries by Ellen Baumler

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Life of the Afterlife in the Big Sky State: A History of Montana's Cemeteries by Ellen Baumler Annette Stott Baumler, Ellen – The Life of the Afterlife in the Big Sky State: A History of Montana's Cemeteries. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. 186 p. This slender volume by the former interpretive historian of the Montana Historical Society, Ellen Baumler, covers a lot of ground. It reviews varied types of human burial and commemoration occurring over several millennia across the land that has become the state of Montana. Rather than an in-depth study of any particular part, Baumler gives the reader a broad overview of the subject, stopping to recount fascinating stories she has collected in the past two decades as she travelled through the state. Very few books consider Indigenous deathways or settler cemeteries and grave markers between the Mississippi River and the West Coast states. Baumler helps fill that gap with this engaging survey of Montana, written with a popular audience in mind. The first quarter of the book considers Indigenous burials, from the oldest discovered remains—dating to about 11,000 years ago and now known as the Anzick child—to tree and platform burials of the 1800s. A chapter about epidemics of smallpox and other diseases that decimated tribes after contact with Europeans is compelling. Indigenous death and surrounding practices have become especially sensitive subjects in recent years. Although Baumler mentions NAGPRA—the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act that seeks to respect Indigenous peoples by returning human remains and certain cultural artifacts from museums to tribes—and introduces the Montana Human Skeletal Remains and Burial Site Protection Act, the format of the book necessarily precludes a detailed, nuanced treatment of these topics. The endnotes and bibliographic essay, however, provide places where the interested reader can learn more. With a loose chronological approach, Baumler next considers the early emigrants to Montana, from fur traders and gold seekers to settlers and soldiers, whose actions often led to violent death. As she recognizes, "There is a vast difference between the ambience of cemeteries, where loved ones are carefully laid to eternal rest, and places where lives were lost during violent events" (p. 57). Battlefields such as Little Bighorn served as impromptu burial grounds and are briefly considered, primarily from non-Indigenous perspectives. Some of these burials were moved to cemeteries, but many remain unmarked. In fact, a large number of early graves in Montana Territory were unmarked, including those of outlaws and those without family or financial means, but Baumler provides some of their stories from old newspapers and other accounts. She explains that the first actual cemeteries in Montana were found at trading posts and forts (p. 60) as well as missions. Gold mining camps also buried their dead, usually in boot hill-style cemeteries on high ground. [End Page 181] Montana, like other western territories, has ghost towns and entirely lost towns whose cemeteries are the only remnant marking the place where a community once thrived. In other cases, whole cemeteries have been moved to make way for urban development. Forgotten graves are regularly unearthed and urban legends add to the complexity of the historian's task. The Life of the Afterlife recounts some of these tales, reminding the reader that "eternal rest" is anything but eternal. Another section of the book looks at the development of planned, landscaped cemeteries and Montana's first gravestone makers. Baumler identifies the Helena shop of Kirkaldie and Carr as one of the very first to advertise in 1878, and many other stone cutters and monument firms soon followed. In 1883, when the railroad came to Montana, importation of both raw marble and carved monuments became much more affordable. Residents of Montana's principal cities and several towns will find mention of their cemeteries here. These cemeteries testify to the vast diversity of peoples who settled in Montana from all over the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Veterans' cemeteries, prison and hospital cemeteries, church cemeteries, private family burial grounds, pet cemeteries, potters' fields for the indigent, and disaster site monuments all receive notice in this sweeping history. She focuses on the earlier...