History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 60

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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During the autumn season great fleets of mackinaws came down the river from Fort Benton bringing hundreds of returning miners carrying in their buck- skin sacks small fortunes in golden nuggets. The steamer Spread Eagle was the first boat down in 1862, arriving early in July, having made the trip to Benton. Her passengers stated that flour was selling for $1 a pound in the mines. The boat's safe contained a large amount of gold. belonging to one of her passengers. There were not to exceed a dozen of the latter on the boat, and all were going after merchandise for the mines and felt confident of being able to get the Spread Eagle to make another trip before the river fell. These passengers expected to bring enough goods to give the boat all she would be willing to carry. They reported new discoveries of almost fabulous richness on this side of the moun- tains. and said the Californians were pouring into the country at the rate of hundreds a day.

A great deal of interest had been aroused in the settlements of Dakota in favor of opening an overland route to the new Idaho gold mines. It was claimed that this route was 500 miles shorter than any other that could be selected. and furnished an abundance of wood, water and grass, at frequent intervals, for the use of emigrants. A public meeting was held at Yankton on the 20th of February, 1864, for the purpose of devising a plan for laying this important fact before the public for the purpose of inducing emigration this way, making Dakota towns the outfitting points ; the route lying along the Missouri and Niobrara valleys. thence west up the Niobrara and Kcha Paha. Parties who had been in Idaho and were somewhat familiar with the route question were present and Capt. C. M. Davy, of Minnesota, made a strong appeal in favor of the Yankton route. This gentleman was somewhat familiar with the country to be traversed, having recently returned from Idaho by way of the proposed highway. The outcome of this meeting was the appointment of a committee to collect and publish such facts bearing upon the route as the committee should be able to gather. The committee consisted of D. T. Bramble, G. W. Kingsbury, Enos Stutsman, W. P.

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Lyman, Maj. Charles E. Galpin, J. Shaw Gregory, A. W. Puett, W. W. Brook- ings, Mahlon Gore, Joel A. Potter, J. R. Hanson, Capt. Wm. Tripp, M. K. Arm- strong. H. C. AAsh, C. C. P. Meyers, Geo. P. Waldron and Byron M. Smith, the last named being made corresponding secretary, and requested to furnish a list of articles needed by the parties contemplating the journey to the mines.

Following out the purpose of the meeting, the committee secured a great deal of information, and issued a circular to the public defining the route from Sioux City via Yankton to a point opposite the old Village of Niobrara, which occupied a site on the Missouri River two miles south of the mouth of the Niobrara River. Crossing the Missouri, the route took up the Niobrara ninety miles, then crossed that river to the north and struck almost due west to a point where the Fort Laramie road intersects the Niobrara Valley, distant about two hundred and fifty miles and in the vicinity of the Black Hills; thence a very good route was laid down to the gold fields, with wood, water and grass quite abundant, and danger from unfriendly Indian tribes reduced to a minimum. A fine map of the route was also prepared to accompany the circular. The distance from Yankton to Bannock, Idaho, was placed at 960 miles. A table of distances covering the principal points on the route was published, to show how thoroughly and reliably the pioneers who were striving to open up this route had performed their duty. Through the efforts of Dakota's delegate in Congress, who at that time was Gov. William Jayne, an appropriation of $10,000 was made by Congress for the pro- tection of emigrants going by the Southern Dakota route.

The efforts put forth by the Dakotans awakened considerable interest through- out the country in the gold regions of the Northwest, and there could be no question at that time that the Missouri and Niobrara route was by far the shortest and best for all emigrants east of the Missouri. The only serious draw- back was the danger from Indians. This was a constant menace to all overland travel west of the Missouri and emigrants were cautioned regarding it, and advised to go in large parties and employ experienced men and scouts to accom- pany their march. Yankton drew a large number of people during the late win- ter and spring of 1864, who were anxious to go through, and came prepared with wagons, tents and camping outfits. A hundred and possibly more of these emi- grants' tents were scattered over the townsite, while the hotels were crowded.

It was during this period that the Black Hills began to be talked about as a gold bearing section, and there were old mountaineers in the territory, and a few Indians and half-breeds, who claimed that the hills were richer in gold than Idaho. Some of these parties displayed small nuggets which they stated came from the Black Hills gulches, and were found by the Indians on their fishing and hunt- ing excursions.

The increasing travel from the eastern states to these gold mines of the Northwest had directed the attention of moneved business men to the necessity of trading points, ferry privileges and general accommodations for the traveling public at important points along the overland and steamboat route. One such point, highly commended, was at the mouth of the Yellowstone River. Here Captain Davey had crossed the Missouri with his first expedition from Minnesota ; and here the two great Mackinaw water routes converged leading to and from the gold fields. one down the Missouri and the other along the Yellowstone. Already the Legislature of Dakota had granted a ferry privilege at this point to a number of Dakotans, and in the month of July the following townsite notice was issued :

To all whom this may concern :-

We, the undersigned do hereby claim all the lands and grounds being in these described limits, to-wit :- Commencing at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers, and extending from said points three miles in a westerly direction or course. The whole to include nine square miles. We claim the said lands and grounds including all meandering of said rivers, for the purpose of a townsite, and for building, erceting and surveying a town thereon to be called and known as Oraopolis We also claim all ferry rights, titles and

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privileges on the Yellowstone River and on the Missouri River for fifty miles up and down on all and both sides of said rivers for the aforesaid purposes. All of which a charter has been applied for.

John Howe, president, St. Louis, Mo .: James Stewart, vice president, Virginia City, Idaho Ter .; Samuel Hauser, secretary, Virginia City, Idaho; John J. Roc, St. Louis, Mo .; Jobe Townsend, Oraopolis, Dakota Ter., agent for the Oraopolis Town Company; John Tufts, Virginia City, Idaho; Thomas Townsend, St. Louis, Mo .; W. B. Dance, Virginia City, Idaho.

Given under my hand this 17th day of June, A. D. 1864, at Fort Union, Dakota Ter. SAMUEL HAUSER, Secretary.

CHAPTER XXXII THE GRASSHOPPER PLAGUE

1864

GRASSHOPPERS-INDIANS AND INSECTS FOE TO IMMIGRATION-A GRASSIIOPPER RAID- GENERAL SULLY'S GRASSHOPPER EXPERIENCE-NATIONAL GOVERNMENT INVESTI- GATES-OFF YEARS-IIOW THE FARMER FOUGHT TIIEM-LIEUTENANT WARREN'S STATEMENT-EIGIIT HUNDRED AND FORTY-NINE WINNEBAGOES

SENT TO NEBRASKA-THE OLD SETTLERS' ILISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, AND TIIE HISTORI- CAL SOCIETY OF DAKOTA.

There was considerable uneasiness during the summer of 1864 in the farming settlements regarding Indians ; but what was fifty-fold more hurtful to the general welfare and prosperity of the territory, was the first grasshopper raid experienced by the white settlers. It occurred in July just after the New York colony had got fairly settled in comfortable quarters; and while it was the first it was the worst and most complete scourge of the kind that ever visited the territory. It was a most unfortunate disaster coming at the time it did. The insects came down at midday while the bright warm sun was shining; the few fields gave promise of a moderate harvest and the gardens were in fair condition, producing a variety of summer vegetables-but all were covered literally by the myriads of these ferocious insects who devoured and destroyed every green thing, even the leaves on the trees, the grass on the prairie, the family washing hanging in the open air, and injured many of the tents in which the new arrivals had their temporary homes. The insects remained all night and departed the next morning as abruptly as they came. Several of the newcomers and some of the members of the New York colony became so affected and discouraged at the frightful damage inflicted that they yoked up their cattle and left the territory intending to settle in Iowa. Great temporary injury was done to the settlements by this calamity-for such it was-and immigration received a decided check from which it did not recover for years, though this lasting injury was due to subsequent visitations, of less harmful proportions comparatively, but sufficient to frighten away the great body of homeseekers. Iowa newspapers and other eastern jour- nals took particular pains to herald this wonderful phenomenon to the world, claiming in many statements that it was an annual occurrence here and an insep- arable objection to Dakota as a farming country.

Those who abandoned the territory at this time, many of them, gave out, while passing through the settlements east, a most pitiful story of the perils they had encountered and the privations they had endured, and these stories were seized upon by the newspapers and under the caption "Another Survivor of l'lague Stricken Dakota Reaches Gophertown" and then would follow a string of exaggerations concerning Indians, drouth, grasshoppers, frequently embel- lished with an awful blizzard story that the narrator had received from a "poor old Dakota cripple who had lost both legs and an arm" during one of these winter storms. Dakotans felt very indignant at all this and exceedingly despondent. They were not, however, prepared to make any defense or explanation, for the grasshopper invasion was as novel and as great a surprise to the early settler as

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to the one who had just arrived. There had never been anything of the kind since the whites came into the country, and the Indians, when questioned about the matter, failed to throw any light thereon.

A history of Dakota Territory would lack completeness if no mention was made of the grasshopper, not that the territory has been on more familiar terms with that notorious insect than many sections in the many states of our Union, but their unwelcome visits here were at a period when Dakota was seeking public favor and people to occupy its vacant lands, and were of such a char- acter, such a multitude of characters, continuing through so many years, as to entitle their visitations to mention among the historic events which have marked the progress of the territory by retarding it possibly more than all other causes combined. It was during the warm summer of 1864 that the early Dakotans first made the acquaintance of this scourge, at a time when the territory greatly needed more people and when the settlers here were putting forth extraordinary exertions to secure immigration. The early planting and growing season had been injuriously affected by a prolonged dry spell, and the cultivated fields reflected this injury in the stunted character and premature ripening of useful vegetation. The grasshoppers came in upon the settlers unheralded and unexpected and in a few brief hours literally devoured and destroyed every form of growing vegeta- tion excepting the prairie grass and this was noticeably diminished. Their com- ing and the destruction that followed struck terror to the hearts of scores of our people and many of the newcomers of that year summarily threw up everything, gathered their households and household effects together and left the territory, breathing maledictions both loud and deep upon who ever had been responsible for influencing them to come here. These parties spread the story of the grass- hopper raid far and wide, the newspapers took it up, and for a time it seemed that this calamity overshadowed in interest the great Civil war which was then raging between our Government and its rebellious citizens. This was the begin- ning of the grasshopper affliction which continued to impoverish and harass our settlers more or less for the succeeding ten years.

Dakotans became somewhat acquainted with the movements and habits of the insect as time passed, and during the season of spring the grasshopper would form a staple topic of conversation, and the question of its coming would be dis- cussed with the gravest anxiety. At first there would be unpleasant suggestions of grasshoppers in the air, still it might have been only the downy seed-bed of the cottonwood, which passing over at a high altitude were not infrequently mis- taken for the flying grasshopper. To a person who has not beheld the novel spectacle of a grasshopper cloud moving through the upper air on a sunny day. this similarity between the cottonwood seeds and grasshoppers may need some explanation, and Dakotans can furnish this, for scores of our early settlers will tell of standing for a good fraction of an hour with their necks craned at an angle of nearly ninety degrees and their vision directed as near to the sun as the glare of that orb would permit, endeavoring to make out whether the mass of tiny specks a thousand feet above were living insects or merely the harmless cotton- wood seed. It was no uncommon sight to see such people in little groups making this investigation for an hour at a time, and even then turn away with the prob- lem unsolved.

It will be thought that if they were grasshoppers they would alight but this fortunately might not occur. Early Dakotans will testify that they have witnessed the passage of a stream of grasshoppers through the upper air that occupied an hour or two in the passing, and maintaining a steady flight eastward, turning neither to the right nor to the left, nor downward, and some days after these observers would learn through the papers of a destructive Dakota grasshopper visitation a hundred miles away, which would disclose where this great stream of insects settled to the earth and feasted after a long fast and wearisome jour- ney. The grasshopper scourge that infested and kept Dakota and other portions of the West largely impoverished for ten or twelve years from 1864 was some-

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thing peculiar. It was a tremendous calamity, but it was no more a Dakota scourge than it was an lowa scourge or a Minnesota, Illinois and Indiana scourge, and in fact this might be carried as far east as the Alleghenies, for the pest sorely chastened the farmers in the fertile valleys of Pennsylvania.

To such an extent did this infliction grow that the United States Government sent out an expert commission from Washington to investigate the insect and dis- cover if possible its origin and its habits, and from the report of that commission we have considerable information and much more from actual contact. Though known popularly as the grasshopper it was a very different and far more for- midable foe than any grasshoppers the western people had ever known in their eastern abodes. In appearance it resembled the old-fashioned eastern hopper very closely, but aside from this resemblance it differed materially. By many the insect came to be known as the seventeen year locust. It differed from the ordinary grasshopper in its structure which was fitted for flying for as long dis- tances as the wild fowls cover during a flying spell. Its frame was large and hard and though very light was also very tough. They could hop or jump, but flying was their forte, and the flutter of their large amber wings faintly seen in the air near the bright sun gave them the appearance of a mass of cottonwood down, and unless an occasional hopper broke away from the great stream and settled, while one were gazing, which not infrequently occurred, there was no certain method of detecting them. Even in color the difference did not seem to have been detected, but there was a distinguishable difference, the grasshopper being a shade darker, with its wings outstretched. To witness, with your mind's eye, a myriad of these pests alight, presuming you have never looked upon stich an invasion with your physical eye, it is best to imagine a quiet heavy snow- fall in midsummer, the flakes as large as a 25-cent piece, completely filling the air, and covering the earth as rapidly and completely as a heavy snowfall will do in winter. Just imagine these flakes falling for an hour and then the earth a mass of life, crowding upon everything out of doors and indoors if per- mitted to enter, covering the bushes and trees and the grass, the fences and the walls of buildings so completely as to effectually conceal them from view and in as brief time as it is required to tell it, stripping the tree of its foliage and devouring the grass and gardens. If there is one plant more than another that they have a special fondness for it is growing corn, which they attack with much spirit and only leave it when they have cut away and devoured all but the naked stalks. Then woe to the careful and cleanly housewife who has left her house- hold linen on the clotheslines or a fine garment out to air. The pest has a peculiar relish for dainties of this kind and we will go farther and quote briefly from one report made by Brig. Gen. Alfred Sully who led several expeditions through Dakota against the hostile Indians during the '6os. Sully was camped between the Missouri and the Yellowstone. In his report he says :

The only thing spoken about here is the grasshopper. They are awful. They actually have eaten holes in my wagon covers and in the tarpaulins that eover my stores. A soldier on his way here laid down to sleep on the prairie in the middle of the day-the troop had been marching all night. His comrades noticed him covered with grasshoppers and awakened him. His throat and wrist were bleeding from the bites of these insects. This is no fiction. Last year, about five days' marchi from the Yellowstone, we met the army of grasshoppers on their way east. After that I suffered greatly for grass and many of my animals died. The grasshoppers made a general cleaning down to this place and then disappeared.

There would be the sincerest gratittide in every heart when the invaders after their feast and a night's rest would receive flying orders. Some intelligence directed the time of departing and when the signal was given they would rise into the air and fly off eastward-always taking that direction. In a very brief time they would have disappeared and the people would venture forth from their domiciles almost as timidly as they would had Indians been besieging them, to view the havoc and ruin presented in garden and field, and to thank their Maker

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that the plagne had been stayed, and the pest had departed. The parent pest surely had departed, but had left a legacy in an unborn progeny, that would cover the land with gloom when the eggs deposited in the soil were hatched out in the coming spring, and so it came to pass that when the spring opened and the reviving sun warmed up the earth, myriads of tiny hoppers sprang from the ground, hungry as goats, with an insatiable hunger and devoured all vegetation that came in their way. The first attack was on the young wheat and oats as it came up and upon this fodder they thrived and fattened and grew, and the farmer looked on and wrung his hands and said little that we care to repeat. Suffice it that this scourge was fully as hurtful as the former would be, the second generation remaining and gormandizing for two months at least, or until their wings had grown. Wheat and oats and the grass would be greatly dam- aged and largely destroyed, but later erops would escape.

As soon as the insect had acquired its wings there would come an hour when the myriads would rise into the air and strike off in an easterly direction, fol- lowing the path of their predecessors.

When on their flight or alighting they might be compared to a great river flowing rapidly, so close together that the sun does not penetrate through the mass, which casts a shadow on the earth similar to that when a cloud obscures it. It was by a mere chance that a small party of Sunday afternoon ramblers were strolling past the suburban premises of Col. G. C. Moody in the '6os. His place is that which a few years later became the home of the late W. B. Valen- tine and family on the northwestern border of Yankton. Mr. Moody had a 40-acre field of corn, well advanced and promising, the ears beginning to form. A grass- hopper raid had invaded the field several minutes before this party reached it, and the living river was pouring into the fiekl and literally covering the corn when the ramblers came upon the scene. The stream stretched away to the south and west as far as one could see in either direction, and the flutter of their wings with the passing of such a host through the air, created a roaring noise that was almost deafening for the time being. Not a ten-thousandth part of the stream had alighted in that field but passed beyond and covered other fiekls and the face of the country for many miles. They set immediately to work upon Moody's field, devouring the tender leaves and new-formed ears and never ceased their feast until the stalk was as bare as a tent pole.

Colonel Moody and his family stood by and witnessed the complete destruc- tion of his season's labor, which occupied less time than one hour. At the same time the vandals were destroying the Moody fiekl others were laying waste the fields as far away as Vermillion and probably through Union County. They spread all over the portion of Yankton County that had been occupied by farmers, which embraced only a comparatively narrow strip along the river two or three miles in width. Whether they attacked the wild prairie grass was not known but they were known to feast on it in regions farther west where there were no cultivated fields. To witness such a phenomenon is to have brought to mind the biblical account of the plagues visited upon Pharaoh, the Egyptian ruler, when he refused the Hebrews permission to leave his domains.

The scientific gentlemen who came out from Washington did not slight their investigation because of any personal privation they might be obliged to endure. They visited the Dakota settlements and from information obtained in the ter- ritory concluded that the breeding place of the pest was in the Rocky Mountains and thither they directed their journey and explorations, accompanied by a small defensive force of Government troops from Fort Sully. Their labors were amply rewarded by the discovery that the insect was apparently indigenous in the bar- ren slopes and foothills of the Rockies, scattered along for hundreds of miles, where the soil or sand was warm. There were their hatching or breeding grounds. They appeared soon after the first real warm days of spring, fed on mountain verdure, hopping about the foothills for two months until their wings were grown, when, as with one accord and under some such leadership and guidance as directs

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the flight of wild fowl, they would mount into the air to an elevation of thousands of feet and flow out toward the abodes of civilized people. Their flight was invariably directed eastward. Their invasion of the settled and cultivated sec- tions of the country, extending even to Ohio and Pennsylvania, had become a mat- ter of such serious import as to create widespread and well-grounded alarm, and for this reason measures were taken by the Government to destroy them in their breeding haunts, while yet they occupied the little white cell or egg, which in long clusters had been deposited by the parent in the earth. Undoubtedly a great deal was accomplished toward their extermination by the use of fire in destroying the infant insect and also in the destruction of these eggs by various methods, but despite these efforts the grasshopper raids continued to afflict the West with more or less calamitous effect until the year 1875 when they ceased as abruptly as they had begun and for thirty years past they have existed only as a memory that we would not care to lose now that it has been paid for. It is something worth while to have been an eyewitness to a grasshopper raid.

The grasshopper did not visit the settled portions of the Dakotas cach year during the period from 1864 to 1874. They occasionally omitted an annual visit, due, as would be ascertained, to their failure to alight, but they passed over in their long fliglits and swept away the fields and gardens of our neighbors in Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska. The newspapers and the people of those states and the states farther east grew accustomed to call them the "Dakota grasshoppers" because they came in on them from this direction and because also this name had been bestowed upon them by those tenderfoot emigrants who had been frightened away from this land now celebrated as one of the great garden spots of our nation, but which these thoughtless deserters derided as a land of grasshoppers, drouth, Indian massacres and "blizzards," all of which were but temporary evils that added spice as well as hardship and privation to the pioneer's experience. But these damaging stories had a baneful influence at the time and sadly retarded immigration. The reports were nearly always greatly exaggerated and strongly colored to make them interesting and wonderful; and yet it may be truthfully confessed that there was ground for the reports, for serious drouths did occur that prevented a remunerative harvest, the grasshoppers did devour and destroy more than would have been inflicted by the hostile invasion of an army. The Indians harassed the early settlers and kept their minds in a condition of almost constant anxiety and apprehension and the "blizzards" added their terrible fury to the wintry blasts just as they did and continue to do in all sections of our beloved country. Today Dakota is, as free from all these unpleasant and dam- aging features as any portion of the United States and has enjoyed such immunity for the past thirty years.

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History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 60

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