Dan Connolly: The Cowboy Rode Off

From the Great Falls Tribune. (January 22, 2006)

Daniel Brian Connolly, 88, a rancher and horse trader from Starr School, died of natural causes Thursday at a Browning hospital.

Services were Monday at Little Flower Parish, with burial in Willow Creek Cemetery. Whitted Funeral Chapel of Cut Bank handled arrangements. Condolences may be sent to the family at www.whittedfuneralchapel.com.

Survivors include his wife of 43 years, Phyllis Connolly of Starr School; a daughter, Brenda (Jim) Johnston of White Sulpur Springs, sons Ron White, Jack Connolly and Kalvin Brian (Karen) Connolly, all of Browning. Seven grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. he is also survived by two sisters, Nora Lukin and Ruby Horn, and brothers Charles, Victor, and Bud, all of the Browning area.

Dan was born February 9, 1917, in Browning to Brian and Ida (Johnson) Connolly and grew up in the Crown Butte/Meriwether area. He attended grade school at Blackfoot, Cut Bank John School and the Cut Bank Boarding School. He married Phyllis Horn in Fort MacLeod, Alberta, on August 17, 1962.

Dan was an active rancher and horse trader all his life. He enjoyed participating in rodeo, hunting, fishing, working with leather, cutting studs, branding colts, sharpening knives, berry hunting [in earlier days, when he could get up and down the hills, he picked them by the bucket], picnicking with family and friends, and story telling.

The family suggests memorials to the Circle of Life in Browning.

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Dan Connolly was the kind of man that is usually portrayed in the movies by some long lean charismatic actor. Usually he’s supposed to be a loner who never really belongs anywhere, but that wasn’t the case with Dan. He was both Blackfeet Indian and horse-centered cowboy. (The split between sheepmen and cowmen was sociological in early days -- but once again Dan was inclusive, raising both sheep and cows. The split between cowmen and horsemen is different, though being Blackfeet has something to do with it. A matter of the heart.) One of his childhood friends testified that when they played “cowboys and Indians,” Dan was both, on horseback.

East of Browning and north of Highway 2 is a complex country full of ranches and buttes, mostly grazing land. Kids out that way grow up on horseback and often get an early start on rodeo. Descent, one of the famous bucking horses, grew up out there and so did his relative Playboy, who was Bob’s best posing horse and had the best gait of any of his horses, but bucked everyone off, including Bob.

Darrell Kipp grew up out that way in what some call “Del Bonita country” and others call “God’s Country” and remembers Dan as the “chief” though no one used that term. He wasn’t elected or certified by some professional body -- he just WAS the man who knew what to do and the man who could get it done. If you were about to undertake something big or risky, you’d be smart to drop by and ask Dan what he thought about it.

Once Bob and I and the grandkids were trying to haze our little remuda of five horses into a corral. They were frisky on new grass and not at all inclined to go in -- we were on foot. We ran and ran until we fell flat in the grass with exhaustion. About then Dan came riding up, his long legs almost wrapped around his horse. “You folks tryin’ to put them horses in that corral?” he asked. (It’s always good to ask -- maybe we’d just invented a new form of tag.)

“Yes, yes!” we cried in unison, and Dan put ‘em in there in about three minutes. Of course, the horses took one look at Dan and knew they’d better do what he wanted.

Darrell tells about a school out that way that confused all the school records from that early time. On paper sometimes kids went to Higgins School and sometimes to Connolly School. Turned out that the little one-room school was on skids and when there were more Higgins kids attending, the building was dragged over to the Higgins ranch. But if there were more Connollys, the building traveled back to their ranch. Dan said he went to Higgins school, but Charlie and Nora are sure there wasn’t a Higgins School until afer Dan had finished with school. The early school, which Nora and Dan attended, was known as Cut Bank John, after John Kipp rather than a Connolly. The school was held in the upstairs of the Kipp home, one of the few two story houses around, probably originally built as a rooming house in the years when Blackfoot town was the rail head and crews stayed over while the trains were turned around.

Dan had that wonderful characteristic of ranchers around here of teaching as they go through the day. Darrell says Dan taught them to always remove the bit from their horses’ mouths when they were letting them graze. “How would you like to eat with a spoon tied crosswise in your teeth?” he asked. In late years Dan made it a point to encourage the work of Piegan Institute, crossing the cafe to say a few words in the morning.

Herman Whitegrass at the funeral mass told about borrowing a stock rack from Dan for his pickup when he was hauling some horses. When he got back and went to take the rack out to return it, he picked up some wire cutters. He’d wired it in and thought he’d just cut the wire. Dan nudged him aside, produced pliers and carefully unwound all the wires. “Saves wire,” he said. But this man said he had the uncomfortable feeling that if he’d gone to unwind the wire, Dan would have said, “You’re wasting time!” and produced wire cutters.

Dan loved kids and instructed them as well. They were to pull their weight, keep quiet, and be polite. He didn’t care whose kids they were -- if one was rebellious, they got settled down. He loved horses but was unfinching about cutting, branding, and canning them when they weren’t good for anything else. During WWII his canner horses fed the French people.

Dan came by his knowledge, sense of propriety, and passion for horses through his middle name, Brian, which was for his father, “Briney.” The nickname was quite appropriate for such a salty character. It would be hard to find a more colorful reservation force. Sometimes on the Tribal Council and sometimes afflicting the Tribal Council, he prospered and therefore was the object of accusations and jealousy. Prosperity is a Connolly characteristic but they have no need to cut corners. Dan would go to a stock auction, sit and listen for a while, then -- while others were working their charts and pocket calculators, he’d make some figures on the back of his Copenhagen tin, bid, and come away with a better deal than anyone else.

There are variant spellings of the Irish-based name: Connolly, Connelly, and Conway. On the rez the three names get slid around a bit, misspelled or incorrectly corrected and there are family opinions (linked to their Irish genes) about which is proper. Conway is more a mistake of the ear, a totally different family. But no one mistakes Dan or Briney.

Darrell says Briney bought his cars new, but within a few months they looked as though they’d been driven over a cliff. Once as a kid Darrell was thumbing rides when Briney stopped in a big old Jeep truck of some sort. As he drove, the gear shift came out of its socket, but Briney just stuck it back in. He always had a little candy or a nickel for a kid.

At the end of the Catholic mass, Jim Johnston, Dan’s son-in-law, read the poem “A Cowboy Prayer” by Badger Clark. The poem was written in 1917, the year Dan was born. The eulogy was read by Mary Lynn Lukin, Dan’s niece, who has had an admirable career at Montana State University where she supported and guided students in the Advance By Choice Program. Another descendent named Moriah Kipp (her mother is Kathy Connolly Kipp) sang a cappela “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” unerringly in a ringing soprano voice. (She is a successful contestant in high school singing competitions and a good barrel racer.) Then the guitar partnership of Herman Whitegrass (nephew-in-law) and Gabe Grant sang, “And The Cowboy Rode Off,” a favorite of Ernie Pepion.

The wind had pounded on the land all night as though it were drumming. The snow has been gone for weeks and the hills swelled tan and rough with winter grass. Huge white clouds crowded over the mountains, revealing this edge and then that edge, and left a little snow. The horses were bunched in the low places and behind buildings with their rumps to the wind. This is God’s Country.