History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 14

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1198

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( BY GEN. W. H. II. BEADLE, WRITTEN ABOUT 1875)

The southern part of Dakota Territory belongs to the Cretaceous group of the Mesozoic system, having sharks and Ammonites as the leading types of its. fossils. A general view of Dakota's geology can be had by referring to the generally received theory of the forma- tion of this continent. It had a regular growth. It commenced as an angulated ridge of land, between the region now occupied by the River St. Lawrence and lakes, and Hudson Bay, enclosing the latter in its obtuse angle. This gave general form to the continent, which has grown from this by a succession of upheavals, extending through a long series of ages. The Age of Molluscs saw the continent very small; all the rest an ocean. In the Age of Fishes the area was enlarged, but yet only reached the extreme northeastern and north- western points of the United States. At the close of the Age of Reptiles the shore line included New England and extended to Trenton, N. J., inside of Delaware and Chesapeake Bay to the interior of South Carolina, and thence curving west and north to the mouth of the Ohio. The gulf extended with varying width to the north and east of the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, which had risen from the sea. Further to the northwest it extended along what is now Mckenzie River .. The whole of the upper valley of the Missouri was then under the gulf, and ships could have sailed over the region now occupied by Dakota's pre-emption and homestead claims, long after the great mountain ranges had risen from Alaska to the isthmus. We find that the land grew upon the water to the south and south- west of the formative nucleus or ridge of the continent, and hence that Dakota grew from the northeast to the southwest, and from the Rocky Mountains eastward.

There is probably little to be found older than the Cretaceous unless in the Valley of the Red River of the North, and from the discovery of salt springs in that region we are led to believe that valley plows its way down to the Silurian Rocks, as the salt springs of the United States issue invariably from that formation. As the Devonian lies next to the Silurian, and the Carboniferous between the latter and the Cretaceous, it will be seen that our rocks include the possibility of coal in theory, whether present in fact or not. From the Red River Valley we pass southwest over the broad Cretaceous belt and when we cross the Missouri we enter a newer formation. This is a Tertiary; and nearly one-half of Dakota is found to be no older than the Tertiary belt along the Atlantic seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico, and not as old as most of the Pacific slope.

The part known as the Bad Lands, west of the Missouri River, belongs to the Ter- tiary group of the Cenozoic system, and here Nature has collected, in one desolate sepulchre, the relies of a geologie age. The fossils are most interesting and remarkable. The ground on which one treads, the columns, shafts and buttresses, the monumental domes and massive walls, which characterize this strange domain of death and desolation, are strewn and filled with fossil skulls and jaws, and teeth, and thigh bones, which belonged to varied races of mammals of which scarce a single specimen is familiar to the anatomist of the present day. Strange ichthyosaurs and turtles of wonderful size, rhinoceros different from any existing, elk with canine teeth, hornless rhinoceros with jaws five feet long, and horses that united some of the characteristics of the tapir which had incisor. teeth and ate either flesh or grass and chewed the cud, are some of the strange combinations shown in this grave where the slain of a great convulsion lie buried. The region in its other characteristics is true to its general nature. The water is brackish and bad. The earth is burned by the sun in summer, arid. ashy, and nearly chalky white. It is a treeless waste, and in the winter is the abode of snow and tireless storms. The strange formation of the hills and general surface of the Bad Lands is the work of excavating waters, and is a phenomenon of the Post-Tertiary Age. North of this region, and about the mouth of the Yellowstone River, was a great inland sea

GENERAL. JOHN B. S. TODD

First delegate to Congress from Dakota

HISTORY OF DAKOTA TERRITORY

after the Bad Lands had been drained. Around its shores roamed the rhinoceros, the cle- phant, the mastodon, the horse, beaver, wild cat, and wolf, with other animals now extinct. This sea changed slowly from salt to fresh, as its successive fossils show, and its bottom was finally lifted, and its waters furrowed the great Valley of the Missouri.

When these successive scenes had passed came the Ice Period. The equalizing currents between the south and the polar regions were cut off by the intervening continent. The whole northern regions were covered with ice, the southern border only being free, and the expansive force of the whole body pushed this over the land with irresistible power, grind- ing and furrowing the rocks and covering the surface. Later the greater streams made or resumed their way, and smaller rivers and creeks cut down their varying routes, leaving the terraces, slopes and hills, with the depressions and gravelly ridges sprinkled with the lime- stone and granite boulders. In the parts through which streams have passed. Dakota has no lakes, but on the higher general levels between the sources of streams, we have the beautiful lake country of Minnesota and Dakota. Some of these are marshy, but the most have clear, pure water, and firm, gravelly or sandy shores.

Here are found walled lakes similar to those in Northern Iowa. These walls are of rough and irregular stones, compactly built and filled with clay and sand. giving the appear- ance at first of man's handicraft, but a closer examination shows them in clemental and not mechanical order. These walls are generally upon the south sides of the lakes, and arc made of the same materials that are found in the bed of the lakes adjacent to them, showing that the power which set them there was the expansive force of ice, the same that acted on so grand a scale in the Glacial Period-one of those forces loosed from the right hand of God in that hour when "the morning stars sang together." A warmer age succeeded the Ice, and over this again the storms of changing seasons have waged their varying war; sum- mer followed winter, and water, air and frost, in infinite succession, wrought their slow but mighty changes npon the surface materials. To these were added the vegetable growth, which burned or decayed, mingled with the minerals and left our finely pulverized, deep, calcareous and arenaceous soils. Our soil is excellently suited to produce cereals from the presence of much mineral and other valuable constituents.

But to return to Eastern Dakota, which, as indicated, belongs to the Cretaceous. Nearer its eastern boundary it seems to approach the Jurassic and Carboniferous, the coal measures appearing in Iowa. The Cretaceous, as its name implies, is marked by the presence of the chalk formation. This is shown in great abundance in the bluffs of the Missouri near Yankton, and at various points above, while it also appears at different points interior. At Sioux Falls, Dell Rapids, and in Davison County, are great masses of red quartzite rock. or. as some call it, red granite. It seems to be entirely without fossils. It is a very hard, unstratified rock, and is colored from a pale red to a rosy tinge. It is difficult to dress or cut, but breaks under the hammer into suitable shape for very substantial building stone. This rock is also found at other points in the territory, west, northwest and northeast of Sioux Falls, where the Big Sioux River breaks through and over the formation in a beautiful succession of rapids, cascades and falls: descending a distance of rio feet in half a mile. forming a series of attractive pictures and a scene of wild beauty. Partly overlying the granite at Sioux Falls is a finely grained white or yellowish sandstone of a very friable texture, being casily pulverized in the hand. This does not show, however. in large amount. In the river bank above the falls. and at other places, and in considerable amount about forty miles cast of north from Sioux Falls, appears the red pipestone of the Indians. so closely associated with their religious legends and traditions.

(Professor Hayden's account of his journey to and exploration of the Black ITills and Bad Lands, in 1866, will be found in the chapters devoted to the Black Hills. )

Professor Hayden furnished the following regarding a geological survey made by him of that portion of Dakota lying cast and north of the Missouri River :

In October, 1866, after my return from a tour of exploration of the "Mauvaise Terres" or Bad Lands of White River. I took advantage of an opportunity that presented itself to visit some portions of Dakota Territory on the north side of the Missouri River. not hitherto examined by me. I have taken as my starting point the Village of Yankton, the capital of Dakota Territory, located on the Missouri River about twelve miles above the mouth of the James. At this point we observe a large exposure of the yellow calcareous marl beds of No. 3. Niobrara division, forming along the river nearly vertical bluffs, extending some- times several miles. The rock varies in texture from a nearly white soft chalk, much like our chalk of commerce, to a somewhat compact limestone, which is used for burning into lime and for building purposes. Thick beds of this chalk present a marked rust color. from the presence of a greater or less amount of peroxide of iron; otherwise it could be hardly distinguished from the chalk of Europe, and without doubt would serve the same economical purposes. The organic remains found here are not very numerous in species. The most abundant shell is the ostrea congesta Conrad, which seems to have been so gregarious, and to have aggregated together much in the same way as the little oyster which is exposed when

HISTORY OF DAKOTA TERRITORY

the t de recedes along the shores of the Sea Islands of South Carolina. Near the base of No. 3, there are layers of rock several feet in thickness, made up almost entirely of one or more species of inoceramus, one of which has been identified as 1. problemeticus. The fish remus are quite numerous, diffused throughout the rock. Fragments, consisting of jaws. ribs and scales, are found in the greatest abundance, and Mr. Propper, a resident of Yank- ton, has succeeded in recovering some nearly perfect specimens ( undescribed) from the quarries there. This group of rocks extends for 400 miles along the Missouri River, and 1 am convinced that when carefully studied, it will be found to represent the white chalk beds of Europe, and be employed for similar economical purposes.

The Cretaceous rocks of the Missouri River have been numbered in the order of super- position, Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and all of these divisions have been located in the geological scale by the unmistakable evidence of their organic remains. We find, therefore, that this portion of Dakota is occupied exclusively, or nearly so, by the middle member of the Cretaceous series. The soft and yielding nature of No. 3 is well shown by the topographical features of the country, where all the slopes are gentle in their descent, and for the most part, covered with a thick growth of grass; for the soil, which is composed of the eroded materials of this group, is quite fertile, and in ordinary seasons produces excellent crops, and is especially adapted to the growth of cereals.

From Yankton our course was nearly north up the west side of James River. Our path led over a gently rolling prairie for sixty-five miles, with not a tree or bush to greet the eye. There were no cut bluffs along the little streams over which we passed: the sides of the hills bordering the valleys sloping at a very moderate angle and being covered with a thick growth of grass. No rocks were seen in place until we arrived at Fort James, about twelve miles below the mouth of Firesteel Creek, a branch of James River. Erratic rocks of all sizes and texture were visible on the surface everywhere, more especially in the valley of the James River and tributaries. At this point on James River, uncovered by the scooping out of the valley, is a large exposure of reddish, variegated quartzites, differing somewhat in structure and appearance from any rock hitherto observed by me in the Upper Missouri. They cover a considerable area in the valley of the James at certain localities, but nowhere are they exposed at a thickness of more than twenty or thirty feet. Indeed, they have been much worn by water, so that they project above the surface in large square masses, suggesting to one in the distance a village of log houses. The rocks are mostly reddish and flesh colored quartzites, so compact that the lines of stratification are nearly obliterated. They also appear to be metamorphic. There is, however, a horizontal as well as vertical fracture, and the horizontal fracture breaks across what appear to be original laminas of deposition. These lines or bands are seldom horizontal, but much waved and inclined, as if the materials had been deposited in shoal or troubled waters. The illustrations of ripple or wave markings in these rocks are numerous and very beautiful. There is considerable variety in the texture of the rock; some of it is a very fine, close grained quartzite, so that when worn by water it presents a smooth glistening surface like glass. Again it is filled with small water worn pebbles, forming a fine pudding stone; again there are layers of silicious sandstone, which separate into slabs from one-fourth of an inch to several inches in thickness. This rock is very useful for building purposes, and has been employed at this point by the United States army officers in erecting the numerous buildings that constitute the fort. I looked diligently wherever the rock had been quarried for some traces of organic remains, but none were visible. Resting upon the quartzite of this locality is a bed of black plastic clay, precisely like No. 2 Cretaceous as seen along the Missouri River near the month of the Vermillion. 1 found no fossils in the rock, but there were numerous specimens of selenite in crystals, which characterize it in other localities. Reston No. 2 is the chalky marl of No. 3. not differing in structure from the same rock before described as occurring at Yankton on the Missouri River. It here contains an abundance of its characteristic fossil, ostrea congesta. lis thickness exposed is about fifty feet, but from an examination of the slope above I estimated its entire thickness at this point at from eighty to one hundred feet. The formations at this locality, in descending order, are as follows: \, yellow chalky marl, No. 3: B, black plastic clay with selenite crystals, undoubtedly No. 2; C. reddish and rose colored quartzite.

From Fort James we again proceeded across the undulating prairie in a direction a ftth south of east. about sixty-five miles, to Fort Dakota. at Sioux Falls, on the Big Sioux River. Nothing of special interest, in a geological point of view, met our eye except a small UNpostre of the reddish quartzite in the valley of the Vermillion River. The soil of the prairie over which we passed and also the superficial deposits, as shown along the streams, gave unmistakable evidence that the surface features of all this region are due to the wearing away of the Cretaceous rocks, Nos. 2 and 3, and that they are the immediate underlying formations. The most characteristic features which met the eye everywhere were the b uldlers which cover large areis so thickly as to render cultivation impossible until they are removed. These rocks, however, will be found to be very useful to future settlers for building and other economical purposes.

At Sioux Falls there is a remarkable exhibition of the same red and variegated quartzites described at James River. They are here exposed only in the valley of the river by the removal of the superincumbent Cretaceous rocks. The falls are five or six in number, extending a distance of half a mile, and have a descent of Ho feet in all, forming the most

HISTORY OF DAKOTA TERRITORY

valuable water power I have ever seen in the West. About ten feet from the top of the rocks, as seen at this locality, is a layer of Steatitic material, mottled, gray and cream color, very soft, about twelve inches thick, which is used sometimes for the manufacture of pipes and other Indian ornaments. When the quartzites have been subject to the attrition of water, they present the same smooth, glassy surface as before mentioned. There are also beds of pudding stone, and the most beautiful illustrations of wave and ripple markings that I have ever observed in my geological explorations hitherto. I was unable to discover any well defined fossils, but wherever the surfaces of the rocks had been made smooth by the attrition of the water, quite distinct rounded outlines of what appeard to be bivalve shells could be seen so numerous that the rocks must have been charged with them. The matrix is so close grained and hard that on breaking the rock no trace of the fossil could be found. I am confident, however, that the rock is filled with organic remains, but they cannot now be separated from the matrix so as to be identified.

From Sioux Falls to the celebrated Pipestone Quarry, the distance is just forty miles, measured with an odometer. Direction, a little east of north. We passed over similar undulating prairie, with but one small tree along the route, and but one rock exposure, and that occurred about four miles south of the quarry. The rock is a very hard quartzite, composed largely of water worn pebbles, quartz, jasper, small clay nodules, chalcedony ; some of the rock is a quartzite sandstone, other portions fine-grained silicious rock. It lies in regular layers or beds, dipping at an angle of about five degrees thirty minutes south of east. On reaching the source of the Pipestone Creek in the valley of which the pipestone bed is located, I was surprised to see how inconspicuous a place it is. Indeed, had } not known of the existence of a rock in this locality so celebrated in this region, I should have passed it by almost unnoticed. A single glance at the red quartzites here assured me that they were of the same age with those before mentioned at James and Vermillion rivers and at Sioux Falls. The layer of pipestone is about the lowest layer of rock that can be seen. It rests upon a gray quartzite, and there is about five feet of the same gray quartzite above it, which has to be removed with great labor before the pipestone can be reached. About three hundred yards from the pipestone exposure is an escarpment, or nearly vertical wall of variegated quartzite extending directly across the valley. Each end of the wall passes from view beneath the superficial covering of the prairie. It is about a half mile in length. About a quarter of a mile farther up the valley, there is another small escarpment, so that the entire thickness of the rock exposed at this point is about fifty feet. Not a tree can be seen ; only a few small bushes growing among the rocks. There is a little stream of clear, pure water flowing from the rocks, with perpendicular fall of about thirty feet, forming a beautiful cascade. The evidences of erosion were very marked, and the question arose- how could all the materials which must have once existed here joined onto those walls, have been removed, except by a stream much larger and more powerful in its erosive action than the one at present flowing here? There is a slight inclination of the beds from one to three degrees about fifteen degrees south of east. About two hundred yards southeast of the quarry are five massive boulders, composed of a very coarse feldspathic granite, very much like that which forms the nucleus of the Black Hills.

The pipestone layer, as seen at this point, is about eleven inches in thickness, only about two and a quarter inches of which are used for manufacturing pipes and other ornaments. The remainder is too impure, slaty, fragile, etc. This rock possesses almost every color and texture, from a light cream to a deep red, depending upon the amount of peroxide of iron. Some portions of it are soft, with a soapy feel, like steatite; others slaty, breaking into thin flakes; others mottled with red and gray. A ditch, from four to six feet wide and about five hundred yards in length, extending partly across the valley of Pipestone Creek, reveals what has thus far been done in excavating the rock. There are indications of an unusual amount of labor on the part of Indians, in former years, to secure the precious material. This is the only locality from whence the true pipestone can be obtained, and the labor is so great in throwing off the five feet of solid quartzite that rests upon it. that the rock has always been rare. For a mile or two before reaching the quarry, the prairie is strewn with fragments cast away by pilgrims. Nearly all our writers on Indian history have infested this place with a number of legends or myths. They have represented the locality as having been known to the Indians from remote antiquity. All these notions. I am convinced. will disappear before the light of a careful investigation of the facts. It is quite probable that the rock has not been known to the Indians more than eighty or one hundred years, and perhaps not even as long a period. I could not find a trace of a stone implement in the vicinity, nor could I hear that any had ever been found; and, indeed. nothing could be seen that would lead one to suppose that the place had been visited for over fifty years. All the excavations could have been made within that time. There are many rude iron tools scattered about. and some of them were taken out of the ditch last summer in a com- plete state of oxidation. Again, it does not appear that in the mounds opened in the Mississippi Valley so extensively, any trace of this rock has ever been found. It is well known that the pipe is the most important of the dead Indian's possessions, and is almost invariably buried with the body, and if a knowledge of this rock had extended back into the stone age, it is almost certain that some indications of it would have been brought to light in the vast number of mounds that have been opened in the valley of the Mississippi.

HISTORY OF DAKOTA TERRITORY

Pipes and other ornaments made from Steatite have been in use among Indians from the tarhest periods of their history, and they are still manufactured from this material on the Pacific coast.

Regarding the age of these rocks described above, Professor Hayden accepted the opinion of Professor Hall, who had given the matter elaborate investigation by personal visits to many points in Minnesota and Dakota, and who concluded that they were of the same age with the Huronian rocks of Canada and Lake Superior.

THE PRINCIPAL RIVERS

The Missouri River is probably the longest navigable river in the United States, the distance from its mouth, twenty-five miles above St. Louis, to Fort Benton, the practical head of navigation, being not far from 3,185 miles. Its principal tributaries in Dakota from the north and east, are the Big Sioux, the Vermillion and James rivers, Choteau, and Medicine creeks, the Little Cheyenne, and Swan in South Dakota, and the Beaver, Apple, Turtle Valley, Snake and Pride creeks, and the Little Knife, White Earth* and Little Muddy and Milk rivers, in North Dakota. From the west and south it receives the waters of the Niobrara, which drains quite an arca of the territory, also the Ponca, White, Bad River, Big Cheyenne, Moreau and Grand in South Dakota, and the Cannon Ball, Heart, Knife, Little Missouri ; and the Yellowstone in North Dakota, the Mis- sottri's largest tributary, being the only one of the tributary streams navigable. The Missouri is navigable for ordinary steamboats during the boating season to the Great Falls, Montana, from the beginning of April and frequently from the middle of March to the last of October. Its peculiar and objectionable feature to steamboat men is the frequent shifting that takes place in its channel, owing to the quicksands which compose the bed of the river.

The Red River of the North is, next to the Missouri, the largest river in Da- kota, rising north of Lake Traverse, South Dakota, near the eastern boundary between North and South Dakota, and flowing almost due north to its outlet in Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The Red River of the North is navigable as far south as Fargo, and steamboats have ascended during the '6os, to Breckinridge and Wahpeton, in favorable sea- sons. It forms the boundary between Minnesota and Dakota north of the 46th parallel. to the international boundary, and runs nearly due north. The valley of this stream is one of the largest and most fertile in the world. Its average width from east to west is from fifty to sixty miles, and its average length from north to south in Minnesota and Dakota is about two hundred and thirty miles. This valley is divided about equally between Minnesota and Dakota; one-half being east and one-half west of the Red River. The valley is principally prairie, and is uniformly smooth, and very nearly level throughout its whole extent. Along the Red River there was a good supply of timber before the country was settled : the variety of timber being oak, ash, basswood and elm, and some others, but the ones enumerated predominated. It is a well watered valley ; every few miles small streams of water make down from the highlands to the west. across the valley and empty into the Red River. These streams were likewise timbered with the same kind of wood.

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History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 14

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920 Publication date: 1915 Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company Number of Pages: 1198

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1198