In Montenegro, very little is known about thousands of our emigrants who settled, lived and worked throughout North and South America in the past two centuries. In fact, knowledge is very limited, although it is known that there were once many of our people who worked hard in the mines. Unfortunately, information about their way of life, organization, true torments, Golgothas, are still completely unknown to us.

At that time, the largest Montenegrin colonies were in Montana (Butte, Billings), Pennsylvania-Hazelton in the USA, Tandil, General Madariaga and Colonia La Montenegrina in Argentina, and the two largest Montenegrin cities in the Diaspora were Deroit and Buenos Aires. There was also a large concentration of Montenegrins in California, Chicago and Alaska. There was almost no larger city in both Americas where groups of our emigrants could not be found.

The life and survival of many colonies was tied to the industrial or natural resources found there. So, for example, the places that were once the most inhabited by a large number of our emigrants were near mines and quarries. These places gradually, over time, became smaller and people later re-emigrated to other regions. This was the case in Tandil, Argentina, and in numerous mining settlements in Montana, USA. It was different with those colonies that were engaged in agriculture, they only increased over time. This is the case, for example, in La Coloia, Montenegro, in Argentina.

Montenegro.com was the first to start discovering and exploring the Diaspora in a modern way. We managed to come up with a large number of discoveries. Thanks to the cooperation with Mr. Jorge Machado, from Stanford University, for the first time we presented to the Montenegrin public the great work of Nikola Petanović, certainly the greatest thinker, creator in the Diaspora of his time, otherwise completely unknown in the homeland to which he owed so much.

When leaving the mining settlements, the Montenegrin settlers did not leave many things behind, primarily because they did not have any. Mining life was hard, and it literally allowed for more than just survival. The lifespan of miners was very short, both due to frequent accidents in the mines, and due to the large number of diseases that occurred as a result of long-term stay in mining shafts. Today, Montenegro.com reveals to you another, so far little-known page in the history of our emigration. Without many words, with pictures that speak for themselves. Bear Creek tombstones with inscriptions that tell far more than any story. Silent witnesses of past times.

We owe a big thank you to Mr. Cleve Kimmel who allowed us to obtain the rights to publish these unique images. We owe him thanks not only in our name, but also in the name of all our people, because with his enthusiasm he managed to save from oblivion, for all of us, very valuable data.

During the month of June 1988, a group of young YGF members visited the Bear Creek Cemetery, located a few miles outside of Red Lodge, to collect cemetery data and information from the surrounding area. The images before you were taken by Bill & Corky Knebel for the Carbon County-Montana Cemetery Records. The originals are kept in the Genealogy Department - Parmley Billings Library. Gordan Stojović www.montenegro.com