History Alive! Features 'Yellowstone Vic Smith' At Fort Buford State Historic Site

Williston, ND – Buffalo hunter Yellowstone Vic Smith will appear at Fort Buford State Historic Site near Williston the weekend of June 6-7.  Portrayed by Arch Ellwein in the popular History Alive! program, Yellowstone Vic Smith will discuss his life as a buffalo hunter, frontier scout and service as a hunting guide for Dakota Territory entrepreneur, the Marquis de Mores.

The free History Alive! performances are part of the summer programs sponsored by the state’s history agency, the State Historical Society of North Dakota.

Ellwein is an advertising consultant and Williston-Sidney area actor and children’s theater director.  Since 1996, Ellwein has been bringing historical figures to life for audiences in nine western states, including Captain Grant Marsh, probably best known as the Missouri River steamboat captain of the Far West, which brought back the wounded after the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876; Sergeant John Ordway, the First Sergeant of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803-06; and President Theodore Roosevelt.

Yellowstone Vic Smith, born Victor Grant Smith (1850-1925), was a buffalo hunter, trapper, dispatch rider, scout and storyteller.  He was hired as a hunting guide by the French aristocrat and cattle baron, the Marquis de Mores, during the Marquis’s time in the frontier town of Medora in Dakota Territory in the 1880s.  During the winter of 1881-82, he reportedly killed more than 5,000 buffalo in southeastern Montana.  Later in life, Smith wrote that he wished “my aim hadn’t been so good.”  In his memoirs, The Champion Buffalo Hunter: The Frontier Memoirs of Yellowstone Vic Smith, he chronicled his encounters with notorious outlaws, buffalo and bear hunts, Indian fights, and natural disasters, as well as such frontier personalities as Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer, Sitting Bull and Theodore Roosevelt.

The State Historical Society of North Dakota sponsors the History Alive! program to explore the lives and times of decades gone by.  Begun in 1988, the unique program combines the theater arts with history.  The character monologues, about 20 minutes in length, are based on original letters, diaries and other documents, many from the archives of the State Historical Society of North Dakota.

The Saturday, June 6 and Sunday, June 7 performances of Yellowstone Vic Smith will be at 2 and 4 p.m. Central Time.

For more information, contact Fort Buford State Historic Site at (701) 572-9034 or the State Historical Society of North Dakota at (701) 328-2666 or visit the agency’s web site at www.history.nd.gov.

History Alive! Museum Theater Program Yellowstone Vic Smith Summer 2009 Schedule

June 6-7, 2009  - Yellowstone Vic Smith, Fort Buford State Historic Site   at 2 and 4 p.m. (Central Time)

June 27-28, 2009  - Yellowstone Vic Smith, Chateau de Mores State Historic Site at 10:30 a.m., 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. (Mountain Time)

July 18-19, 2009 - Yellowstone Vic Smith, Chateau de Mores State Historic Site at 10:30 a.m., 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. (Mountain Time)

July 25-26, 2009 - Yellowstone Vic Smith, Fort Buford State Historic Site  at 2 and 4 p.m. (Central Time)

August 15-16, 2009 - Yellowstone Vic Smith, Chateau de Mores State Historic Site at 10:30 a.m., 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. (Mountain Time)

September 5-6, 2009 - Yellowstone Vic Smith, Chateau de Mores State Historic Site at 10:30 a.m., 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. (Mountain Time)