History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 93

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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As all portions of the territory where settlements had existed for a few years were indulging an enthusiasm over this unwonted generosity on the part of Mother Earth, there were many who saw in the occasion an inviting time to stimulate emigration to the territory. In Yankton an or- ganization was effected for this purpose, and also with a view of forming a county agricultural society. A numerously attended meeting followed at the schoolhouse, where a county organization was effected to be known as the Yankton County Agricultural Society and Bureau of Immigration. Gen. J. B. S. Todd was elected president of the association : A. J. Faulk, vice president; Mark M. Parmer, treasurer: and T. A. Kingsbury, secretary. An executive committee was ap- pointed made up of Chas. H. Mclntyre, W. P. Lyman, W. A. Burleigh, John Stanage, and M. K. Armstrong. It was declared to be the object of the association to hokl a county exhibition if thought feasible; and also to disseminate among the people of the eastern states reliable information regarding Dakota and its agricultural resources particularly. The executive committee and the officers chosen were authorized and requested to prepare and have published such infor- mation, and also draft a set of rules for the government of the association. The following names were signed to the roll of membership: Louis Volin, J. R. Sanborn, J. M. Stone, J. B. S. Todd, Jas. W. Evans, Charles Eiseman, G. W. Kingsbury, M. U. Hoyt, J. A. Lewis, C. H. McIntyre, Wm. Tripp, A. J. Faulk, J. S. Gregory, J. B. Van Velsor, Simon Eiseman, W. P. Lyman, John J. Thomp- son, Wm. Leeper, M. E. Bonesteel, Geo. M. Campbell, George Hoosick, W. A. Burleigh, John Stanage, John E. Moran, John Sherrer, T. W. Brisbine, Mark M. Pariner, Henry Fisher, Rudolph Vonlns, Warren Osborne, Stephen Mosely, Grove Buell, J. F. Taylor, G. N. Propper, T. A. Kingsbury, M. K. Armstrong, Millard A. Baker, Maris Taylor, C. H. Edwards, Henry Bradley, Frank Bron- son. S. H. Morrow and Henry Brown. County fairs were thereafter held regu- larly with Yankton County the seat of the territorial and state fair.

DAKOTA'S PROGRESS

After ten years of settlement and cultivation and experience, the people of Dakota who had been observant of the climate, soil, productions and natural 'resources of Dakota, had reached the conclusion that it was one of the best sec- tions of the United States for general farming, including the rearing of domestic animals, and although the settlements had made but slight inroads upon the great treeless domain between the Missouri and Big Sioux and Red River of the North, all inhabited sections shared the general belief in the substantial character of the territory as an agricultural region capable under cultivation of contributing its full share to the food supplies of the world; the improvements of the year in country and town seemed to furnish a sort of turning point from a temporary to a more permanent class of improvements ; everything betokened confidence in the future of Dakota, and enterprising men laid the foundations for permanent busi- ness and a growing trade.

The year 1869 was the most prosperous the territory had enjoyed. There had been comparatively a large increase in population, and a great deal of build- ing and other improvements made in the towns and farming settlements. The season had been a favorable one for all kinds of grain, and the reports from the farms of the yieldl of wheat per acre seemed in many cases exaggerated, running as high as forty bushels. Considerable grain was shipped by steamboat during the fall to points on the lower Missouri. The year excelled in good crops, immi- gration and general improvement, and in the advancement of churches and com- mon schools. At Yankton there were hundreds of new arrivals each month at the hotels, men who came to "spy out the land;" there was an extensive steam- boat trade, boats arriving and departing during the boating season almost daily;

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the settlement of the Bohemian colony in Bon Homme and Yankton counties was an event of sufficient importance to render the year a notable one; there was abundant employment for the builders of brick and frame buildings, labor was at a premium; there was constant demand for native lumber, and prosperity beamed from every industry and every home.

From the records of the United States land office at Vermillion, the only one in the territory, though two others were established the same year, there were 300 claims taken in the month of June, and nearly all settled upon in the six counties of Minnehaha, Lincoln, Union, Clay, Yankton and Bon Homme. lin- migration had just begun to cross the line into the interior and adjoining coun- ties of Turner and Hutchinson. The number of claims taken during the month of May in the same counties was 186, nearly all by farmers and actual cultivators of the soil. Lincoln County received the greatest increase of population during the year, and Yankton was second. The City of Yankton increased in popula- tion a trifle over one hundred, and more than this number of sojourners were occupants of the hotels and boarding houses, coming and going. Yankton was the principal rendezvous for eastern parties, who made it their headquarters while prospecting the newer portions of the territory or contemplating a busi- ness venture, and in this way a large number of Dakota's early settlers became personally acquainted with the town and its people.

There had been small progress made in locating new towns in the territory during the decade beginning in 1859 and ending in 1869. Canton and Eden, in Lincoln County, had made a beginning in 1868; Sioux Falls had been abandoned in 1862 and reoccupied as a town just at the close of the decade; two small trading points that flourished for only a brief time under the names of Gran- ville and Mapleton, in Minnehaha County, had been settled. This was the extent of the towns and trading points in the settled portions of the territory (with Swan Lake just budding into villagehood) that had been made since 1859, when Sioux Falls, Elk Point, Vermillion, Yankton and Bon Homme were occupied as towns. These places had grown and improved slowly, but met the full de- mand for market towns, while the number of farms and the farming population had grown in greater proportion.

The organization of Minnehaha County, which was perfected in 1862, was permitted to lapse after the abandonment of the county in August of that year on account of Indian hostilities. Nearly six years thereafter, a few settlers having ventured in during the preceding year, the Legislature reorganized the county by an act approved the 4th of January, 1868, retaining the former boun- daries and appointing William Melvin, John Wilson and John Thompson county commissioners, and Edward Broughton register of deeds. The board appointed the remaining county officers.

The earliest settlers of the county when that country began to be settled permanently, in 1868, were John Langness, John Thompson, John Nelson, William Melvin, S. Delaney, John Aasen and his two sons, G. Gunderson and Ole Oleson. Langness came from Goodhue County, Minnesota, and crossed the Dakota line about due east of old Medary, and did not find a white settler in the Sioux Valley until he struck William Melvin's cabin, seven miles below the Dells. Some of the parties named above, particularly Thompson and Nelson, probably settled there in 1867. Langness has said that when he arrived in Minnehaha County he did not have a cent. lle had with him his wife and one child, his father, mother and a sister. He also had two cows, one ox, a wagon, and owed $80 back in Minnesota, which was represented in a portion of the per- sonal effects he brought along. He became a prominent and useful citizen and amassed a fortune from the land of the Minnehaha.

CHAPTER XLV DEMOCRATS ELECT DELEGATE TO CONGRESS 1870

THE DECADE BEGINNING WITH 1870-RAILROADS WERE DAKOTA'S PRESSING NEED -REVIEW OF THE PROGRESS OF SETTLEMENT-TERRITORIAL TREASURER'S RE- PORT-TOWNS AND POSTOFFICES-FIRST TELEGRAPH LINE-FEDERAL CENSUS BY COUNTIES-DAKOTA POLITICIANS AND POLITICAL PARTIES-BURLEIGH SEEKS REPUBLICAN NOMINATION-YANKTON COUNTY THE BATTLE GROUND-THIE REPUBLICAN TERRITORIAL CONVENTION-NAMES OF DELEGATES-A SPLIT- BURLEIGH AND SPINK BOTH NOMINATED-DEMOCRATS NAME TIIEIR FIRST PARTY TICKET-DEMOCRATIC TERRITORIAL CONVENTION-NAMES OF DELEGATES -ARMSTRONG NOMINATED FOR DELEGATE TO CONGRESS AND ELECTED.

The decade beginning with 1870 was destined to be one of great and perma- nent importance to the territory. Railroads for the first time entered the territory during the second year of the decade, except that the Union Pacific had tres- passed upon our soil in 1867-68 while Dakota embraced within its western boundaries the future Wyoming country ; the Missouri swarmed with steamboats carrying merchandise and gold-seekers to Montana, and tens of thousands of tons of goods of many kinds to the military posts and thousands of Indians, great numbers of whom had promised to abandon the war path and in good faith under- take a civilized life, a promise that by a great majority was faithfully observed as we of today can testify. Immigration flowed into the territory through Fargo, Grand Forks, Wahpeton, Big Stone, Brookings, Watertown, Sioux Falls, Flan- dreau, Canton, and through the country opened up by Dakota's first railroad, the Dakota Southern, and through the gateway at Wahpeton on the headwaters of the Red River of the North down that wonderfully prolific and fertilized valley to Pembina on the northern border, part way across the northern portion of the territory to Bismarck on the newly constructed Northern Pacific Railraod. The Black Hills were opened and drew to their auriferous gulches and mountains seamed with valuable minerals, thousands of experienced miners, and husband- men flocked to her pine laden slopes and fertile valleys all in one grand crusade. Overspreading the lands with the abodes and industries of civilization almost within twelve months. Immigration crept up the fertile grass covered valleys of the Big Sioux, the Vermillion and James rivers, and spread out over the inter- vening prairies, reclaiming to the uses of a civilized, industrious, Christian people, though not compactly, the entire area of the former Yankton Indian domain ceded in 1859. It was a decade of wonderful progress and prosperity, and not- withstanding serious reverses caused by drouth and the grasshopper scourge, the material improvement of the territory was steady, substantial, and foretold the early retrievement of the entire domain of Dakota to the occupation and uses of a highly civilized, intelligent and progressive God-fearing people.

A fleet of steamboats also plied the waters of the Red River of the North from its source to Winnepeg, reaping abundant reward from the growing settle- mients that bordered its banks and extended well into the interior.

534

MOSES K. ARMSTRONG

Pioneer of Yankton County, 1559. Member of first and sue- ceeding legislature. Territorial delegate to Congress. 1870. Served two terms, retiring March, 1875.

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THE INDIANS

In 1870, Gen. D. S. Stanley was in command of the military district of Dakota, with headquarters at Fort Sully. The 14th and 17th U. S. Infantry were stationed at different forts in the territory and at the Indian agencies, which then included Fort Randall, Fort Sully, Fort Rice, Fort Stevenson, Fort Buford, Fort Union, Fort Totten, and Fort Wadsworth then or near the Sisseton Reserva- tion ; and also the Indian agencies at Whetstone, Rosebud, Pine Ridge, Crow Creek, Fort Ramson, Fort Sully, Fort Bennett and the Cheyenne Indian Agency ; Grand River, Standing Rock, Fort Berthold, Devil's Lake, and Fort Meade in the Black Hills, then being constructed.

From all unprejudiced accounts the Indians along the Upper Missouri Country even, as far away as Fort Benton, were unusually quiet and peaceable in 1870. Steamboats appeared to enjoy an immunity from that source, not a social and soliciting immunity, but were not menaced by any unfriendly conduct on the part of the ied men. There were a number of depredations reported by small parties whose purpose was phuinder of some sort and who coming across an opportunity of their roaming, seemed unable to refrain from the vicious prac- tiees and time-honored customs of their race to confiscate the white man's prop- erty, and occasionally take his scalp along as an evidence of prowess, which would be carried back to his tribe and displayed as a badge that would aid in elevating him to the rank of chief. But there were no signs of hostility toward the whites that indicated a general sentiment of that character among the Sioux; and the credit for this agreeable state of affairs was ascribed to President Grant's new peace policy. Whatever disturbances occurred were notably above Fort Berthold, reaching beyond Fort Buford, and were attributed to the Crows and other Moun- tain Indians.

ENTERPRISE OF RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS

Not alone in a material way did the territory make encouraging progress in the period alluded to. The religious and educational interests of the territory were also notably promoted. One of the best practical as well as theoretical educators in the West had come to be a Dakotan during the year 1869, and while not connected, officially, with the educational department of the territory, the new surveyor general, W. H. 11. Beadle, was a host in the educational field for which he felt so much friendliness and earnest interest, that he gratuitously devoted much of his time to assisting those charged with administering the law governing common schools and speaking to educators and those being educated.

The church organizations were all under the supervision and direction of superior men and aggressive forces. Rev. Joseph Ward, of the Congregationalists, an organized host and a host at organization in himself ; Bishop Robert Clarkson. of the Episcopal denomination, assisted by Reverend Doctor Hoyt, Rev. P. B. Morrison, and Rev. S. D. Hinman, who had charge of the Indian missions ; the Methodist organization, under the leadership of the presiding elder, Bennett Mitchell, located at Sioux City; Bishop Marty, of the Roman Catholic Church, was in charge of the Dakota fickt; the Baptists were also quite aggressive under the Rev. Geo. W. Freeman, of Elk Point, while the Scandinavian Lutherans and the German Lutherans were doing their full part in the religious work of the territory. It would seem that in all the commendable important constituents of growth and improvement, the fabric of the best civilization and civil government. was being made use of in the work of constructing the foundations and super- structures of the territory's religious and educational institutions. It was a pros- perous period largely for those who counted prosperity only in dollars; it was intich more substantially prosperous to those who counted the increase of general improvement-the increase of churches and schoolhouses; the growth of the church in membership, the school in pupils, and the multiplying of the number

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of school structures ; the improvement of roads by the needed bridging of streams, and a general uplift which all these improvements betokened. Dakota Territory, so scrupulously avoided a few years before, was becoming better known and appreciated by the good people of the country.

In 1870 the common school system of the territory was represented by eleven public schools in Union County; six schools in Clay County ; three in Yankton with two private schools in the city : four in Lincoln County ; one in Bon Homme, and one in Minnehaha. It will be observed that the white settlements of the terri- tory were still confined to the four Missouri River counties, and two on the Big Sioux. It is probable that a school had been established at Pembina during this year which was the beginning of white immigraton to that quarter, but no report from it was received by the superintendent.

It will be observed, or should be, that the history of Dakota Territory so far as it has to do with the white settlement, has been confined to a very narrow portion of the great domain, but stretching from Pembina on the Red River of the north, along the eastern boundary to the intersection of the Big Sioux with the Mis- souri River, thence west and northwest for 150 miles along the Missouri. There was no organized county north of the few counties in which local governments were established in 1862. All was a waste of fertile prairie, inhabited, if at all, by a very few widely scattered bands of Indians, most of whom belonged to the Dakota or Sioux Nation.

RAILROADS WANTED

The topic that most interested the substantial element of Dakota's population in the year 1870, was connected with securing railroad facilities that would fur- nish a ready outlet for the surplus farm produce of the settled portion of the territory, which was growing larger and more valuable, as well as more difficult 10 dispose of profitably, as time passed. Wheat was the principal staple of our farms, and the expense of hauling it to market at Sioux City ate up the small margin left to the producer after his crop was harvested and cared for. The general sentiment of the settlers in the Missouri Valley favored a road connecting at Sioux City, and passing up the valley through Elk Point, Vermillion, Yankton and Bon Homme. Above Bon Homme the population was more of a nomadic character and somewhat indifferent, having at that time very little, if anything, to transport to eastern markets, and for that which they wished to sell, finding a good market at the fort and Indian agencies convenient to their settlements. There were also commercial advantages and economy which the merchants as well as people had to consider. The steamboats could be depended upon during the boating season, but for five months in the year, stated as an average, the river was closed and merchandise was subject to a long and expensive haul in freight wagons, and was not always procurable at the time needed.

Yankton had without intent and through circumstances that she could not control, excited the suspicion in the minds of many settlers in Clay and Union counties, in the southern portion of those counties, which then contained a large majority of the population, that the people of the Capitol City were opposing a line of road with Sioux City as the starting point, and favoring the McGregor and Western, then building through Northern lowa, which would practically ignore, by its proposed route west of the Big Sioux, the principal towns and a majority of the settlements in both Clay and Union counties. The only justification for this feeling toward Yankton, was the apparently earnest efforts of the McGregor and Western to build their road through to the Big Sioux at Canton or near there, then across to Yankton on the Missouri. This projected road was not in the least due to any effort made by Dakota interests. The McGregor and Western was seeking a Missouri River terminus and Yankton was then its choice.

The sentiment of Yankton was governed to a large extent by its ambition to secure the advantages of steamboat traffic, which was at this time controlled by

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Sioux City, and unquestionably led the sentiment of the latter place to obstruct any movement toward extending the railway beyond to any Missouri River point.

In order to defeat or neutralize this opposition, Yankton made an effort to secure railway connection with the Illinois Central at LeMars, and at one time the project appeared to have the favor of the Illinois Central Company. As a rival of Sioux City, this connection seemed to guarantee to Yankton the cooperation of the strongest railway corporation in the West, in advancing the city's commercial interests, and it may have been the apprehension that such a road would be built that modified the sentiment of hostility at Sioux City, and finally led her to favor, rather than oppose, the extension to Yankton, from that point.

TOWNS AND POSTOFFICES

There were few towns and postoffices in Dakota Territory in 1870. The number had made but a trifling increase in ten years. The traveler coming in to the territory from Sioux City and crossing the Big Sioux on the Government bridge, would journey a distance of twenty miles to Elk Point before reaching a town, though a postoffice had been established at Jefferson, eight miles east of the Point, on the stage road. Elk Point was the county seat of Union County, and had grown to be something of a village ; a weekly newspaper, the Elk Point Leader, was published, conducted by F. O. Wisner. The population of the town was claimed to be 500. Eight miles northwest was a new town called Liberty, owned by the Curtis family, somewhat famous as vocalists, where there could be found a postoffice, sawmill, schoolhouse, blacksmith shop and the Curtis resi- dence. On the journey the traveler would have observed a fair sprinkling of log cabins and some frame residences, along the road. From Liberty it was seven miles to Vermillion, situated on the bank of the Missouri River, fated to be its destroyer ten years later ; Vermillion had about six hundred population ; it was the county seat of Clay County, the home of the Dakota Republican newspaper, conducted by Lucien O'Brien, and a United States land office, the seat of the United States Court for the First Judicial District ; with two hotels, a sawmill nearby, a number of stores, and a number of lawyers, doctors, and a due pro- portion of clergymen. Clay County had made considerable progress in agricul- ture and was fairly well settled in its southern townships and along the lower valley of the Vermillion River. Crossing the Vermillion River was the Govern- ment bridge, and eight miles west was the Town of Lincoln, or rather the stage station and postoffice. It was located by Mr. Taylor, who came in with the New York colony in 1864, and took up a homestead there. It contained a first rate hotel kept by Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, was the seat of a schoolhouse, blacksmith shop, and possibly a country store. Sixteen miles further west by north the James River was crossed on the Government bridge, and four miles beyond the James the traveler would reach Yankton, the capital of the territory ; said to be the finest natural townsite on the Missouri River, although Lewis and Clark did not observe its municipal topography, but gave their only recommendation in that line to the mouth of White River and a tract adjoining. Yankton was now an incorporated city, with fine hotels, two church edifices, Episcopal and Congrega- tional-public school, an academy, the Dakota Hall, for young ladies seeking a higher education, two newspapers-the Union and Dakotian, and the Yankton Press; a town of about twelve hundred population, governed by a city charter and the usual officials provided for by such legislative grants, doing a large com- mercial business with the forts and Indian agencies, and ranchmen, to the west and north, and the prospective terminus of the Dakota and Northwestern Railroad from Sioux City, then theoretically under construction ; also the MeGregor and Western or the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul then buikling through northern lowa : also the Columbus and Yankton from Nebraska : and the Minnesota and Missouri River, now the Southern Minnesota Railroad.

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Twenty miles by land due west, located on the banks of the Missouri River, was the little Town of Bon Homme, county seat of Bon Homme County, where two good stores were kept, a fairly good hotel, schoolhouse, two or three resi- dences, blacksmith shop, and other appurtenances of a promising village includ- ing a postoffice and courthouse. Eight miles farther was located the new Town of Springfield, where a United States land office had just been installed, and a new land district formed called the Springfield Land District. The firm of Bonesteel & Turner was just arranging to open a store here. A hotel was kept by a widow lady. The town was located nearly opposite the new Santee Indian Agency and Reservation in Nebraska, from which it afterward derived a portion of its prosperity. Beyond Springfield thirty-five miles was Greenwood, on the east bank of the Missouri, the official residence of the Yankton Indian agent, and the seat of the Yankton Indian Reservation. Fifteen miles above Greenwood but on the opposite side of the Missouri, Fort Randall was located, and at this time was garrisoned by four companies of United States troops. Opposite Randall was a postoffice called White Swan, and a few miles above another called Wheeler, both in Charles Mix County, of which Wheeler was the seat. Twenty miles above Randall, on the east side of the Missouri River, lay Harney City, a frontier trading point, and a steamboat landing. Harney City was opposite the mouth of Whetstone Creek or the point where the Government agency had been established for the Sioux on the great reservation. The sup- plies for Spotted Tail and Red Cloud's Indians were landed at Whetstone landing and hauled out to the agencies in the interior. There was quite an Indian settle- ment at Whetstone in addition to the agent and his white employees. There was a postoffice at Harney, and an average population of 200, made up largely of cattlemen, herdsmen, "wood-hawks," and a few merchants, restaurant keep- ers, and others, and it was spoken of by those who had visited the place as the wildest frontier town in the country. No serious crimes, however, were known to have been committed there.

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History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 93

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