USA > North Dakota > Early history of North Dakota: essential outlines of American history > Part 19
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"Window tracery, small and slight, Woven of the willow white, Lent a dimly checkered light; And the night stars glimmered down,
Where the lodge-fire's heavy smoke Slowly through an opening broke, In the low roof, ribbed with oak, Sheathed with hemlock brown"
EXPEDITION OF MAJ. SAMUEL WOODS
In 1849, in accordance with a suggestion of William Medill of Ohio, United States commissioner of Indian affairs, to send an exploring expedition to the Red
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River Valley, Thomas Ewing, of Ohio, United States secretary of the interior in the administration of President Zachary Taylor, of Virginia, approved the undertaking, believing that the best way to prevent anticipated and remedy exist- ing evils-such as the illegal traffic in liquor carried on by the British traders with the Indians-would be to purchase a moderate portion of the Indian country and open it to settlement. Another object was to investigate the danger to the settlements reported to be threatening on account of the destruction of their main dependence, the buffalo. It was also a part of the project to select a site for a military post which afterwards became Fort Abercrombie on the Red River in Richland County.
The expedition, conducted by Brevet Maj. Samuel Woods, captain Sixth United States Infantry, then stationed at Fort Snelling, at the head of navigation of the Mississippi River, near St. Paul, Minn., consisted of Second Lieut. Ander- son D. Nelson, Sixth United States Infantry quartermaster and commissary, having in charge a mountain howitzer, Second Lieut. and Brevet Capt. John Pope of the topographical engineers, and Dr. James Sykes, acting assistant surgeon, medical officer. Lieut. John William Tudor Gardiner and Second Lieut. Thomas F. Castor, with Company D, First Dragoons, numbering forty men, were to meet him at Sauk Rapids, and were intended for the garrison of Fort Gaines, later known as Fort Ripley, then a military post on the Mississippi opposite the mouth of Mohoy River ten miles below the Crow Wing River, about forty miles above Sauk Rapids. As directed by George W. Crawford, of Georgia, then secretary of war, Major Woods was to select a point for the military post not exceeding 200 miles west of Fort Gaines.
They left Fort Snelling June 6th, proceeding to the Turtle River country northwest of Grand Forks, thence north to Pembina at the northern frontier of the United States, where they arrived August Ist, and returned to Fort Snelling September 18, 1849.
Jonathan E. Fletcher was Indian agent on the Upper Missouri, having a vast extent of country in his charge, and he had reported that some attention must be given the Red River country in order to prevent injustice being done to American traders by unlawful and injurious interference by British subjects, and to put a stop to our Indians being supplied with ardent spirits, and the great destruction of game by persons from the British side of the line.
He called attention to the great and wanton destruction of the buffalo, caus- ing discontent among the Indians, leading in one or two instances to murder of persons so engaged. The buffalo, it was alleged, was almost the only means of subsistence of some sixty thousand Indians in that region and the Upper Missouri, and it was apparent that they must soon disappear under the prevailing condi- tions, through their destruction by other than Indians. He was confident that it would result in sanguinary and exterminating wars among the Indians, or cause them to precipitate themselves on the advanced settlements in order to procure the means of subsistence.
He spoke of the considerable military post being maintained by the British across the line, then known as Fort Garry, for the protection of its citizens, and the preservation of peace and good order which suggested the propriety of a military post on the American side of the line.
Mr. Fletcher dwelt particularly on the evils of the trade in ardent spirits
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among the Indians, introduced by British subjects. The liquor was supplied in some instances with a view to breaking down the business and the influence of the American traders; to annoy and discommode them by purchasing with whisky all of the surplus provisions the Indians had to sell, but more especially to keep the Indians from obtaining furs, well knowing that they would not hunt or trap while they could obtain liquor. It was said that the Hudson's Bay Com- pany would not sell liquor to anyone, and it was true that they would not sell to the Indians at any price for money, but they did exchange it for anything the Indians had to sell in the way of furs or provisions.
Norman W. Kittson was then a licensed trader at Pembina, and it was his estimate that the population of the Red River, on both sides of the boundary, was 6,000, that one-third subsisted by hunting buffalo, and that they killed about twenty thousand buffalo annually.
Mr. Fletcher charged that British subjects were holding councils with the Indians on the American side of the line, with a view to prejudicing them against our Government and against our system of trading with the Indians. He urged the great danger to the frontier citizens from inadequate military protection, and the importance of this feature was demonstrated by the Indian outbreak of 1862. He also urged the advantage the British traders had over the Americans by reason of their ability to purchase without paying tariff rates.
A letter from Henry M. Rice, an Indian trader, was also presented, in which he charged that the British trader at Rainy River assembled the Indians on the American side and made them presents to influence them against trading with the Americans and to prevent the Americans from trading in that country, and they sent out agents with. whisky to buy, with a view to controlling, the wild rice crop, thereby depriving the trader and his employees of the means of subsistence.
The trade was not regarded of value to the British but it was their purpose to destroy it, more especially to prevent Americanizing the Indians. They also feared to have the Canadian Indians learn the facts regarding the American sys- tem of trade among the Indians, and the low price at which they sold their goods.
Mr. Rice stated that in the summer of 1848, a party of 1,200 carts visited the country south of Devils Lake and destroyed buffalo by the thousand for the meat, tallow and tongues. Mr. Rice, afterwards an influential United States sen- ator from Minnesota, urged the purchase and settlement of the country, and that the half-breeds, British subjects by compulsion, not by choice, be encouraged to occupy the purchased portion.
The plan to open the Red River country to settlement, formulated in 1848, was enthusiastically received by the half-bloods, but was met in silence by the Indians, and was used by the Hudson's Bay Company as a means to prejudice the Indians against the Americans. The opening was consummated twenty-five years later.
At Pembina they found Father George Anthony Joseph Belcourt, located about a mile down the river from Norman W. Kittson's trading establishment at Pembina, where he had been located eighteen years, and had a school for the education of the Chippewas and the children of the half-bloods, of whom there were a considerable number ; Kittson, as stated, placing the population along the international boundary at 6,000, and Major Woods reporting 177 families in the vicinity of Pembina, 51 I males and 515 females.
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In addition to the school building which was two stories in height, there was a chapel on the grounds.
Relative to the half-bloods, Father Belcourt wrote Major Woods:
"The half-breeds are mild, generous, polished in their manners, and ready to do a kindness; of great uprightness, not over anxious of becoming rich, content- ing themselves with the necessaries of life, of which they are not at all times possessed. The greater number are no friends to labor ; yet I believe this vice to proceed more from want of encouragement, and the small prices they receive for their products, than from laziness, and this opinion is grounded upon the fact that they are insensible to fatigue and exposure, which they endure with lightness of heart when called upon to do so in the course of diverse occupations. They have much openness of spirit, and their children manifest good capacity when taught ; still we could wish them to possess a little more perseverance. They are generally gay and fond of enjoyment; they affect music, there being but few, comparatively speaking, who do not play on the violin. They are a fine physical conformation, robust and full of health, and of a swarthy hue. We see but slight dissensions in their families, which are for the most part numerous. The men commonly marry at the age of seventeen or eighteen and as a general thing are of good morals. The half-breeds number over five thousand souls. They first established themselves at Pembina, near the mouth of the river of that name in 1818, when they had with them a resident Canadian priest. They had also erected a church, and were engaged in the cultivation of the soil with great success when Major Long visited the country, and having ascertained the latitude, declared it to be south of the 49th degree. St. Louis being the nearest American settlement of any size, and the distance being very great, it was out of the ques- tion for the residents of Pembina to hold intercourse with it, except by incurring great expense as well as danger. The Hudson's Bay Company profited by the inability of the colonists to communicate with the states, to give public notice that all inhabitants who were established on the American side of the line should descend the Red River and make settlement about the mouth of the Assinaboine River, under penalty in case of failure so to do of being refused all supplies from their store. At that time even more than at present, powder, balls, and net thread for fishing were articles indispensably necessary to their subsistence. In short, they were obliged to submit."
EARLY TRADERS AND SETTLERS
At the time of Major Woods' expedition the Hudson's Bay Company had a building a few feet south and were building extensively about two hundred yards north of the international boundary. Norman W. Kittson was represented at that time by Joseph Rolette, a son of the one of that name met at Prairie du Chien by Lieutenant Pike.
The Selkirk colonists were then engaged in farming on the Red River, north of the boundary, and they reported thirty to forty bushels of wheat, forty to fifty bushels of barley, forty to fifty bushels of oats, and 200 to 300 bushels of pota- toes per acre, as the usual yield.
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RED RIVER MOSQUITOES
The mosquitoes were an ever-present annoyance. At the site of the proposed military post it was said they literally filled the air and it was impossible to talk without inhaling them. "They choked down every expression," wrote Major Woods, "that would consign them to the shades. They condemn the displeasure and sing cheerily over the torture of their victims." The horses began to fail, attributable, principally, to the ever-increasing army of these insects, that did not allow the horses to rest by night nor quietly feed upon the grass. "The suf- fering of the horses was painful to behold and irremediable. The men would industriously strike out with both hands, from morning till night, scarcely able to talk without inhaling some handfuls of them."
At the site that afterwards became Fort Abercrombie they set up a square post and marked on it "163 miles to Sauk Rapids, July 14, 1849." At Goose River they encountered a vast herd of buffalo. At Turtle River they found an old earthwork, said to have been erected by the Chippewas for defense against the Sioux. It covered about an acre. Two or three years before, the old fort had again been occupied by a band of Chippewas, but they were driven off by the Sioux and five or six were killed.
The country north of the Sheyenne was the acknowledged land of the Chip- pewas, while that south was claimed by the Sioux. Their claims extended up the Sheyenne to Devils Lake, back to the Missouri River.
The Chippewas at Pembina were then unorganized. Through the suggestion of Major Woods they elected Sakikwanel (Green Feather) principal chief, Majekkwadjiwan (End of the Current) first second chief, and Kakakanawak- kagan (Long Legs) second chief. The election was later approved by the Indian authorities. The tribe had been without a head since it had separated some years before from the mother tribe on the Great Lakes. The new dignitaries were properly saluted by the firing of guns and appropriately instructed as to their duties and responsibilities.
While on the plains that season the Chippewa hunters had been attacked by the Sioux and several scalps had been taken on each side. Following the return of the hunters there was a scalp dance. The scalps were ornamented with rib- bons and feathers, and, fastened to the end of a stick, were borne in the dance high above the heads of the dancers. Those who bore them had returned from the war, heroes indeed, arriving in advance of the main body of hunters. They always expected trouble with the Sioux and were prepared for it, and were organized under a captain, whose orders they implicitly obeyed.
OPENING OF NAVIGATION ON THE RED RIVER
While traffic on the Red River began with the work of the voyageurs in the Indian trade, even before the advent of Henry's Red River Brigade, and every branch of the stream had been reached by their boats, the goods for the wander- ing traders being packed on the backs of men to their temporary trading posts, it was not until 1858, that the first steamboat was built for operation on the Red River of the North, at Lafayette, Minn., by Capt. Anson Northrup, for whom it was named; this would carry from fifty to seventy-five tons. The ma-
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chinery was brought overland from Crow Wing and the timber was cut on the Red River. It was operated one season and then passed into the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company and its engine was transferred to a saw mill.
The "Freighter" was a 200-ton boat operating on the Minnesota River. An attempt was made to transfer this boat from the waters flowing into the Gulf of Mexico to the Red River tributary to Hudson Bay. There have been sea- sons when this could have been done, but in this case the attempt failed. The "Freighter" grounded in the inlet of Big Stone Lake and became a wreck. Her machinery was sold to the Hudson's Bay Company and was used in the "Interna- tional," built at Georgetown, Minn., in 1860. She operated for many years on the Red River, exclusively for the Hudson's Bay Company, until competition forced her into private traffic.
In 1871 the "Selkirk" was built at McCauleyville, by James J. Hill and Capt. Alexander Griggs. She was operated for general traffic. In 1872 the two lines were consolidated and run under one management. In 1875, the merchants of Winnipeg built the "Minnesota" and "Manitoba" at Moorhead. One of them sank and the other soon passed into the hands of the other company. The company was styled the Red River Transportation Company, and they built the "Sheyenne" and "Dakota" at Grand Forks, and the "Alpha" at McCauleyville. The "Grandin" was built at Fargo, together with a line of barges, and used for trans- porting grain from the Grandin farms to the Northern Pacific Railroad. Numer- ous other barges were built at Moorhead, which were used for transporting goods down the river to Winnipeg, where they were broken up and used for lumber. The "Pluck" was built on the Mississippi, and transferred by rail to the Red River from Brainerd, by Alsop Brothers. In 1881 they built the "Alsop" and a line of barges, operating boat and barges until 1886.
ON THE MISSOURI RIVER
The mackinaws or small boats with a crew of five men, would start from the trading posts down the river, requiring thirty days to reach St. Louis. The men would leave St. Louis in the spring, returning after about sixteen months. They were paid $220 for the round trip, up the river one season and back the next spring. Carpenters and blacksmiths were paid $300 per annum. The traders were paid $500 per annum.
Gen. John C. Fremont, writing of his trip from St. Louis to Fort Pierre in his memoirs, says: "For nearly 21/2 months we were struggling against the current of the turbid river, which in that season of high water was so swift and strong that sometimes the boat would for a moment stand quite still, seem- ing to pause to gather strength until the power of the steam asserted itself, and she would fight her way into a smooth reach. In places the river was so embar- rassed with snags that it was difficult to thread a way through them in the face of the swift current and treacherous channel, constantly changing. Under these obstacles we usually laid up at night, making fast to the shore at some convenient place where the crew could cut a supply of wood for the next day. It was a pleasant journey, as little disturbed as on the ocean. Once above the settlements on the Lower Missouri, there were no sounds to disturb the stillness but the echoes of the high-pressure steam pipe, which traveled far along and around the
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shores, and the incessant crumbling away of the banks and bars, which the river was steadily undermining and destroying at one place to build up at another. The stillness was an impressive feature, and the constant changes in the character of the river shores afforded always new interest as we steamed along. At times we traveled by high perpendicular escarpments of light colored rock, a gray and yellow marl, made picturesque by shrubbery or trees; at others the river opened out into a broad delta-like expanse, as if it were approaching the sea. At length, on the seventieth day, we reached Fort Pierre, the chief port of the American Fur Company, on the right bank of the Missouri River about thirteen hundred miles above its mouth."
In the Knife River region the crumbling banks disclosed thick beds of lignite coal, used by Lewis and Clark for blacksmithing purposes : and which has become an important item of commerce and is required by law to be used in heating the public buildings of North Dakota. It is so abundant that it is practically the only fuel used in some parts of North Dakota. Some of the beds are upwards of thirty feet in depth.
LOUISIANA FUR COMPANIES
In 1712 Antoine de Crozat was granted a monopoly of trade in the Province of Louisiana, as noted under "Louisiana Purchase" in Part I, having a trading house on the site of Montgomery on the Alabama River, and another at Natchi- toches on the Red River. Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville established Fort Rosalie on the site of Natchez in 1716. After five years in possession, Crozat resigned his patent, and was succeeded, in 1717, by a company organized by John Law, a Paris banker, known as the Mississippi Company, whose patent was to last twenty-five years, or until 1742. Their activities extended as far north as the mouth of the Grand River, in South Dakota. In 1722 an attempt was made by M, de Bourgemont to establish a trading post five miles below Grand River, known as Fort Orleans, but all the inmates of the post were killed by the Indians in 1726 as the result of well founded complaints of ill treatment by the traders, and in 1732 the Mississippi Company resigned its patent to the crown of France.
In 1762 the French governor general of Louisiana granted authority to Pierre Ligueste Laclede and his partners, their organization being known as the Louisi- ana Fur Company, to establish trading posts on the Mississippi River, and on February 15, 1764, Auguste Chouteau, representing that company, selected the site of St. Louis, twenty miles below the mouth of the Missouri, for headquarters.
October 21, 1764, the king of France ordered that portion of Louisiana west of the Mississippi to be turned over to the king of Spain; the cession was accepted by the Spanish on November 13th of that year, and August 11, 1768, Spanish troops took possession of the Louisiana Fur Company's post at St. Louis, giving place in July, 1769, to the Spanish lieutenant governor, Don Pedro Pieruas, who assumed civil authority.
May 26, 1780, a band of Indians led by British regulars from Fort Michili- mackinac or Mackinaw-established by French Jesuits on the Michigan side of the strait between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, conquered by the British in 1760-surprised the people outside the wall of brush and clay, built the previous
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year around the settlement of St. Louis for defense, killing from fifteen to twenty persons, and then attacked the village, but were repulsed.
Spain held possession of the territory until 1800, when it was retroceded to France, as related in Part I, and was ceded to the United States in 1803. On June 2, 1819, the first steamboat reached St. Louis, direct from New Orleans. She was named the Harriet. The first steamboat built in St. Louis was not launched until twenty-three years after.
The Mississippi Company was reorganized in 1832, and during their occupa- tion trading posts were established in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, and lead mines were discovered in Northern Louisiana extending from the 33d degree north latitude to the Canadian territory.
CHAPTER XI
THE CONQUEST OF THE MISSOURI
EARLY TRADING POSTS ON THE YELLOWSTONE RIVER - YELLOWSTONE TRAPPERS AMBUSHED-ATTACKED BY THE ARIKARAS-TIIE LEAVENWORTH EXPEDITION- PUNISHING THE ARIKARAS- THE PURPOSE OF THE CAMPAIGN-MISSOURI RIVER TRADERS-ROCKY MOUNTAIN FUR COMPANY-INDIAN TREATIES OF 1825-THE COLUMBIA FUR COMPANY-DIVISIONS OF THE AMERICAN FUR COMPANY IN 1831 -COLTER AND FINK, CHARACTER SKETCHES.
"Careless seems the great Avenger; History's pages but record One death grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the word; Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne. Yet the scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own." -James Russell Lowell.
EARLY TRADING POSTS ON THE YELLOWSTONE
There were several posts at the mouth of the Big Horn, where it joins the Yellowstone River in Montana, not far from the Custer Battlefield; the first built in 1807, by Manuel Lisa, the noted Indian trader-as previously mentioned -and abandoned the next year. One, called Fort Benton, was built at this point in 1822, and abandoned in 1823. In 1822 Gen. William H. Ashley and Andrew Henry built a post at this point, but gave it up after the first winter. In 1825, it will be seen, it was visited by the Atkinson Commission and the site described. Fort Cass was three miles above the mouth of the Big Horn, built by the American Fur Company in 1832, sometimes known as Tulloch's Fort, and abandoned in 1835.
YELLOWSTONE TRAPPERS AMBUSHED
During the winter of 1822-23, the Missouri Fur Company had maintained a force of hunters and trappers on the Yellowstone and its branches. The party originally consisting of forty-three men, who wintered at the mouth of the Big Horn River, were reduced to thirty by desertion. They had abandoned their winter quarters and were returning to their station with their catch of furs, when, on May 31st, they were ambushed by the Blackfeet.
Robert Jones, who joined the Missouri Fur Company in 1818, and Michael Immel, the leaders of the party, and five others were killed, and four wounded. They lost their entire outfit of horses and equipment, and from $15,000 to $20,000
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THE STEAMER "YELLOWSTONE" ASCENDING THE MISSOURI RIVER IN 1833 From a painting by Charles Bodmer from "Travels to the Interior of North America in 1832-3-4," by Maximilian, Prince of Wied, 1843.
SNAGS, SUNKEN TREES, ON THE MISSOURI
From a painting by Charles Bodmer from "Travels to the Interior of North America in 1832-3-4," by Maximilian, Prince of Wied, 1843.
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worth of furs, some of which were recovered through the good offices of the Hudson's Bay Company officials.
ATTACKED BY THE ARIKARAS
General Ashley, from his trading post at the mouth of the Yellowstone River, in 1823 planned an expedition for trading and trapping on that stream and its tributaries, intending to extend his operations to the Columbia River. He organ- ized a party of ninety men in the spring of that year, which he concentrated at the mouth of the Cheyenne River, with the intention of sending forty men across the plains with horses, the remainder to go on by boat. On the morning of May 30th, he reached the Arikara villages, and spent three days there, purchasing about fifty horses for his Yellowstone expedition, but on June 2d he was attacked by the Indians, and of his men fourteen were killed, eleven wounded, and one died of his wounds. Practically all of his horses were killed, and much of his property was stolen or destroyed. The Indians numbered about six hundred, and the attack was without the slightest provocation or warning.
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