History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 98

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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Yankton, December, 1870.

The message met with a very favorable response from the members of the Legislature, who testified their satisfaction by ordering many thousands of copies printed in the English language. Mr. Hancock, the Pembina representative, whose constituents were largely Canadians, and who were familiar with the French language and who could read English indifferently, secured the adoption of an order to print 300 copies in Canadian French. There was likewise an order passed to print some hundreds in the Norwegian and German languages, all of which were pigeon-holed by the territorial secretary, who had no funds to disburse for printing documents in foreign languages.

The various committees were appointed by each body, and a new committee added by the House, known as the Committee on Benevolent Institutions. This was the first legislative action taken by a Dakota Legislature looking to the care and custody of insane and other unfortunates, and an act was passed during the session providing for the custody of criminals and the care of other public charges.

Mr. Hancock introduced a bill early in the session to incorporate the Dakota Central, Yankton and British Possessions Railroad Company.

A bill to amend the election law of the territory by striking therefrom the word "male" was defeated in the House by a vote of 15 to 7. The session was an unusually quiet one after the organization, devoted to legitimate legislative business, and though the number of measures passed was less than the average of former Legislatures, a large number of measures were considered.

Among the important laws enacted was the herd law, entitled an act to protect cultivated land and young timber from trespassing animals. The grain raising farmers demanded this law; fencing material was expensive and difficult to procure, and herding was much cheaper at that time and grazing land abun- dant. The measure met with but slight opposition. An act concerning divorces was also passed. Also establishing a bureau of immigration, which appointed James S. Foster, commissioner, and appropriated $200 annually for postage and circulars ; and $300 annually for general purposes ; an act defining the manner of organizing unorganized counties ; an act defining the boundaries of certain counties ; an act apportioning the members of the Legislative Assembly ; a new election law : an act defining the judicial districts ; to organize Brookings County with Martin Trygstad, L. M. Hewlett and Elias Thompson, county commis- sioners, and W. H. Packard, county clerk; county seat at Medary. An act to organize Hutchinson, Turner, Hanson and Buffalo counties. A large number of memorials to Congress covering a variety of subjects, mail routes and public roads leading the lists, were passed.

The apportionment law passed by this Assembly, for the first time exhausted the limit of membership allowed by the organic act, viz .: thirteen members of

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the Council and twenty-six members of the House. The Council limit had been reached, however. in 1863. Under this latest apportionment the counties were set off into districts as follows: First District-Union County ; three councilmen and five members of the House. . Second District-Clay County ; three council- men and five members of the House. Third District-Yankton County; four councilmen and four members of the House. Fourth District-Bon Homme and Hutchinson counties ; one councilman and two members of the House. Fifth District-Charles Mix and Buffalo counties ; one councilman and two members of the House. Sixth District-Lincoln, Minnehaha. Brookings. Deuel and Armstrong counties ; seven members of the House. Seventh District-Pembina and Hanson counties ( Dakota ) ; one councilman and one member of the House. Todd and Gregory counties and all representation west of the Missouri River were dropped from the new apportionment, that country having been set apart by treaty as a portion of the Great Sioux Indian Reservation.

The Legislature changed the boundaries of the judicial districts, and for the first time gave to the northern portion of the territory one of the three courts and an associate justice. Pembina, Brookings and Deuel counties were constituted the Third District and the District Court appointed to be held at Pembina in June and September.

Clay, Union and Lincoln counties were made the First District, and two terms of court were to be held in each county during the year.

Yankton, Armstrong, Jayne, Bon Homme, Hutchinson, Charles Mix, Minne- haha and Buffalo, and all of the territory not included in the other districts were constituted the Second District, and two terms of court each year were appointed to be held in Yankton, Bon Homme, Charles Mix and Buffalo and Hutchinson united ; and one term at Sioux Falls.

KEEPING CONVICTS

A law was enacted by the Legislature of 1870-71, designating the penitentiary at Fort Madison, Iowa, as the official penitentiary of the Territory of Dakota. The United States had confined its Dakota convicts in the United States prison at Detroit, and in some instances at Fort Madison, but the territory had had no occasion for a penitentiary until Frank Sullivan was convicted of horse stealing in the Territorial Court at Yankton in October, 1870, and was sentenced by Chief Justice French to three years' hard labor in the "Iowa state prison at Fort Madison." Sullivan thus became Dakota's first convict. It cost the territory 50 cents a day to defray the expense of his care and custody. He was taken to prison and safely delivered to the warden by Sheriff Harvey J. Brisbine, of Yankton County, about the middle of December, 1871. Sullivan was an old offender, and the crime for which he was convicted was rather remarkable in criminal annals, and in one respect it had a ludicrous feature. In the spring of 1870 Frank Sullivan was arrested in the up river country by U. S. Marshal Litchfield, for stealing horses from the Indians, brought to Yankton, tried for the offense, and through the efforts of Gen. William Tripp, his lawyer, was acquitted and set free. He remained in Yankton, and during the summer obtained employment with Bartlett Tripp, a half-brother of his former attorney. and while so employed, and during the temporary absence from town of Mr. Tripp, Sullivan forged his employer's name to an order on S. Eiseman & Co., for a suit of clothes, which he procured. The forgery was soon discovered. and a warrant for Sullivan's arrest was issued. Hle had flown in the meantime ; but the sheriff found him at an Indian camp in Smutty Bear's bottom, brought him to town and locked him up. He was subsequently arraigned before Justice of the Peace Brisbine and, waiving examination, was bekl to answer to the District Court, and in default of bail was committed to jail. On the night fol- lowing election he escaped from jail, went to the stable of Gen. William Tripp, who had gotten him out of his first scrape, took his horse and fled in a westerly

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direction. IIe was overhauled in Bon Homme County, where he had been trying to negotiate another forged order, with General Tripp's name to it, with John Owens, and had the horse still in his possession. He was again brought to Yankton, lodged in jail, securely ironed, and at the October term of court tried and convicted of horse stealing, and sentenced and confined as above related. He was a young man, not more than twenty-five years of age, of pleasing address, and apparently could have succeeded well enough in life by pursuing an honorable occupation and a law-abiding course. On the contrary, he became the first to enter prison walls for crime committed against the statutes of Dakota Territory.

CRESCENT CITY

A new colonization scheme on a large scale was inaugurated in the fall of 1870 by the Peoria Emigration Society, of Peoria, Illinois. This society sent its agents to Dakota to look up a suitable place for a colony of about two hundred heads of families and single men. The agents investigated and finally decided upon a location about seventy-five miles above Fort Randall and within four miles of the mouth of White River on the west side of the Missouri River. Here they found a grand country, and an excellent townsite which they had named Crescent City, and picked out about two hundred quarter sections for their colony. Good deposits of building stone and an excellent steamboat landing were among the attractions at Crescent City. The location met the description given by Lewis and Clark of that particular section. The colony did not follow the lead of its representatives. It is probable that in selecting the location the agents were not informed that it was Indian country, and they learned this upon making application to file at the local land office. They had selected the part of the Great Sioux Reservation later known as as the Lower Brule Reservation.

This colony was called also the "White Earth Colony." Their representatives. discovering that they had selected Indian land, recrossed the Missouri and located opposite the mouth of White River, laying claim to a townsite and 193 quarter sections of land surrounding on the east side, and a few miles below the future townsite of Chamberlain. The town was afterwards named, at a meeting held at Peoria, "Mattalousa," in memory of a Sioux Indian chief who had rescued a wounded United States officer from a band of savages, took him to his own tepee, nursed him to health and restored him to his friends. This town was popularly known as Brule City, and was the first settlement founded in the Missouri above Charles Mix County and south of Bismarck. It was located on the east bank of the Missouri River and about opposite the mouth of White River, and some ten or twelve miles below the present City of Chamberlain. That vicinity had for some time been favored for the location of a colony of farmers with a trading point of their own, and the western bank of the river was the favorite, but the land there being Indian country, settlers were forbidden to take up residence on that side. The Brule City move was under the super- vision of Mr. Daniel Harnett, a pioneer of Sioux City and Dakota, and Mr. John Nelson was at the liead of the first party of emigrants, while Mr. Charles Collins, editor and proprietor of the Sioux City Times, was a member of the company and an active worker. It was for a time looked upon as a movement connected with the Fenian organization. but subsequent events did not justify the appre- hension.

D. W. Spalding was a prominent member of this company, and the last man to abandon Mattalousa when the country was added to the Great Sioux Reserva- tion in 1870, by President Grant's proclamation. When the lands were again placed in market by the executive proclamation of President Hayes, Brule County had been organized and Chamberlain, some twelve miles above, had been laid out and occupied, which appears to have discouraged the founders of Brule City, who made no further effort to promote its commercial interests.

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CHAPTER XLVII EARLY STEAMBOAT DAYS AND YEARS 1830 and Later

THE FIRST STEAMBOATS-THE DAYS OF THE MACKINAW-CAPTAIN JOSEPHI LA- RARGE A PIONEER-11OW THE TRANSPORTATION TRAFFIC GREW-PROFIT IN THE BUSINESS-THOUSANDS OF RETURNING MINERS-A BAD MAN-BURNING OF THE CHIPPEWA-A BATTLE WITH HOSTILE INDIANS-FIRST TRIPS UP THE YELLOWSTONE-DERIVATION OF THE NAME-MINING PARTIES RETURNING WITH HALF A MILLION IN GOLD DESTRUCTION BY FIRE AT ST. LOUIS-FIVE CRAFT FROZEN OUT OF HARBOR-STEAMBOAT IN A TORNADO-LOG OF THIE PENINAII SHOWING THE NAVIGABILITY OF THE MISSOURI IN THE FALL-LOG OF THE FANCHON DESCRIBING A LATE JOURNEY ON THE YELLOWSTONE-CAPT. JAMES M GARRY TELLS OF THE GRANDEUR OF A MISSOURI VOYAGE-THE DESTRUCTION OF SNAGS-THE MISSOURI ONE OF THE GREAT NAVIGABLE RIVERS OF TIIE WORLD.

Up to about the year 1835 the commerce of the Missouri had been largely carried on by means of sail and oarboats and mackinaws. Steamboats, however. were plying in the lower river as will be seen by the following printed in a directory of the City of Cincinnati in the year 1819, which appears to announce the first attempts to navigate the Missouri with craft propelled by steam :

The steamboats Expedition, 120 tons, and the Independence, fifty tons, built near Pitts- burgh, are both destined for the same voyage of discovery, the Independence being the first steamboat that has undertaken to stem the powerful current of the Missouri. They both arrived at Franklin (Boon's Lick), Howard County. 200 miles up the Missouri from its mouth, in the month of June. 1818. It is now aseertained beyond a doubt that this important and extensive river, for several hundred miles at least, can be navigated by steamboats with the same ease and facility as the waters of the Ohio and Mississippi.

Following the pioneer efforts of the Expedition and Independence came numerous voyages that finally penetrated as far as the mouth of the Big Sioux, and for a long time that locality was looked upon as the head of navigation. Pierre Choteau did not share in this belief. He was interested in steamboat lines. and about 1832 had two boats built especially for the upper river trade, one of which, the Antelope, under Mr. Choteau's direction as pilot, made a successful trip to Fort Pierre, and soon after the other boat, named the Assinaboine, suc- ceeded in reaching Fort Union. This success revolutionized the carrying trade of the upper river, and also carried consternation into many an Indian village, where the inhabitants had never seen or heard of a steamboat, and it was a long time before they could become accustomed to them. . At first they were regarded as a living monster that would devour everything in its path and the superstitious natives could hardly be induced to remain near the place where a boat was tied up. But their fears gradually wore away until it was not an unusual thing to see a half hundred friendly redskins taking passage from one Indian village to another and paying the transportation charges with a buffalo robe. Other companies employed steamers after Choteau's successful trip to Pierre, but were never able

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to get beyond Fort Union, near the mouth of the Yellowstone, until 1849, when the Genoa, under Captain Throckmorton, is said to have made a successful run to Fort Benton. Mr. James Parsons, late of Yankton, is authority for this state- ment. Hle claims that he made the trip on the Genoa in 1849 as cabin boy, being then eighteen years of age. He bases his statement as to the time on the discovery of gold in California, which important event occurred the same year.

CAPT. JOE LA BARGE

In 1832, Joseph La Barge, then but seventeen years old, was running on the Mississippi, and was present at the Indian battle of Bad Axe, Wisconsin. During the same year he came on to the Missouri River, and began learning the river, preparing himself for the profession of a pilot, the most important department in the steamboat industry, and highly lucrative to men who were thoroughly trained to it. His first trip on the Missouri was on the steamboat Yellowstone, 1833, which was built in Pittsburgh in 1827, and was the first steamboat to engage in the upper Missouri trade. She was built and owned by the American Fur Company, of St. Louis, Pierre Choteau, president, and was commanded in 1832 by Captain Young. She was laden with miscellaneous merchandise designed for trading purposes with the Indians. This boat went up the river to the mouth of the Yellowstone River, the trip taking all summer. In those days and for some time afterwards steamboats were of a primitive character, both in appear- anee and construction, being of very heavy draft, leaving St. Louis drawing five and six feet of water. They were very narrow, had single engines, side wheels, and were very hard to manage. Still the trip of the Yellowstone was made, but with very hard work. The Yellowstone ran back to St. Louis and up the river once more that fall, and La Barge spent the winter with Cabanne, a trader, who was located in the neighborhood of the present City of Council Bluffs, though on the west side of the river. The Yellowstone continued to run on the Missouri during the year 1833 and 1834, and during this latter year the company sold her and built a new boat called the Assiniboine, named after the Indian tribe or the river of that name in Western Canada, to take her place. She was commanded by Captain Pratt. She made a very successful trip, but in 1835 she was burned about three miles below where Fort Abraham Lincoln was afterwards built. There was no insurance, and the company lost about seventy- five thousand dollars in furs, which was a very large amount at that time. They had put on board the boat all of their fine fur, thinking they would be safer there than on the Mackinaw boats.

La Barge was now a licensed pilot, and a young man of high character ; and was made captain of the company's boat as well as pilot, in which employment he continued for thirty years, and never lost a boat. In 1839 he built his first steamboat for the Missouri trade and during the succeeding thirty-five years built fifteen steamboats, the last one being the John M. Chambers, and the first stern-wheeler he constructed. He was convinced that a stern-wheeler was better adapted to the Missouri River than any other kind of boat, and unquestionably the best style for navigating the Yellowstone.

Steamboating was very profitable in the early days, according to Captain La Barge. The passenger boats on the Missouri River from 1864 to 1869 were the finest and most substantial ever built, and cost from one hundred and ten to one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars each. They were not as large as some of the Mississippi boats, but in all their furnishings and accommodations, including the table, they were unexcelled. People demanded floating palaces and would not travel on an ordinary steamboat if they could avoid it.

La Barge recalled a number of trading posts along the river in the years 1833 to 1840, and mentioned one called Fort Vermillion, which he says was just below the mouth of the Vermillion River, and a large establishment.

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The beginning of navigation on the Missouri River, as understood in these modern days, refers to the time when vessels propelled by steam power first began to plow its waters. Antedating that period for a century, large mackinaw boats propelled by oars and drawn with the aid of ropes by men or animals, carrying several tons of freight and an ample crew, transported merchandise from the mouth to the head of navigation near the Great Falls, a distance by river of about three thousand miles.

Steamboat traffic on the upper Missouri, which was inaugurated in 1830 by Pierre Choteau with the steamboat Antelope or Assiniboine, did not exhibit any notable increase for the following twenty years. There was not a sufficient increase of business to demand it.

The Harney expedition of 1855 and the building of Fort Randall in 1856-57 gave temporary employment to two or three vessels. But the fur trade, which was the only substantial industry, was amply accommodated by scores of mack- inaws, a few itinerant traders with ponies, and the occasional trips of steamboats other than Choteau's two stern-wheelers, that made voyages whenever occasion demanded as far up as Fort Union, which was supposed to be the head of steam navigation for a number of years. Above that fort transportation by river was furnished altogether by mackinaws.

Following the construction and operation of Choteau's boats, the American Fur Company put the steamboat Trapper in the upper river carrying trade in 1840. In 1841 the General Brooks was added. In 1843 the Prairie Bird, owned by Honore Picotte, and in 1851 the American Fur Company launched the St. Mary. It was not until the discovery of gold on Salmon River in what is now Montana became known to the public, about 1862, that the steamboat traffic began to show notable increase. The discoveries on Salmon River were made as early as 1859, and a large mining population had entered the country from California and other Pacific coast and mountain communities, and this popula- tion were not long in ascertaining that the Missouri River was the most economical route for immigration from the east, and the preferable route for carrying the large amount of freight, which was growing rapidly as new discoveries were made. And in 1862 the famous Indian war led by Little Crow broke out, the hostiles driven west to the Missouri and beyond making an emergent demand for twenty-fold increase in transportation facilities. New military posts were erected, new Indian agencies established along the upper river. Many of the expeditions against the hostile red men found it economical and expedient to patronize the river. New boats by the score were built expressly for the upper Missouri, the side-wheeler had been discarded as not adapted to the channel, and all boats then built or later were on the stern-wheel model. Even the mam- moth Dakota and Montana crafts, equal in carrying capacity to the Mississippi River boats, were built on the stern-wheel pattern. These new boats, possibly to the number of 100, were constructed for the comfortable accommodation of hundreds of passengers as well as having a freight capacity reaching in some of the vessels as high as 500 tons. From the two or three in 1855, the number of steamboats reported to be employed in 1804-65 was not far from fifty, and during the next fifteen years this number was annually augmented until it reached seventy-five plying between Sioux City or Yankton and Fort Benton and inter- mediate points. And after 1873 another large fleet was also employed at Bismarck after the completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad to that point. In the meantime the navigation of the Yellowstone had been added to the Missouri. During this long period the transportation traffic of the upper Missouri River exceeded that of the Mississippi above St. Louis.

Among the natural advantages of Yankton during the years of its early settlement was an excellent steamboat landing, extending nearly the entire length of the city's river front. This was not the case with any other settled point on the river above Sioux City until Fort Randall was reached. This gave to the future capital city a steamboat trade and steamboat accommodations. The steam-

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boats Chippewa, Key West and Spread Eagle reached Yankton from St. Louis in May. 1859. all bound for the mountains loaded with supplies for the fur companies. The arrival of a steamboat was quite an event, and was the signal for a grand roundup at the river of the entire population. According to the general understanding at that time no steamboat had yet been able to reach Fort Benton owing to a very rapid current called the rapids some distance above the Yellowstone's mouth. On this trip each of these boats had started out early, expecting to find a good stage of water in the upper river, and their officers were determined to get through to Benton if possible. The Chippewa was successful, the others from defect in construction failing. The winner carried a cargo of 250 tons for the American Fur Company of St. Louis, which it delivered at Benton. It was considered a notable achievement, and the successful boat nailed the elk horns to its pilot house as a trophy of championship. The other boats transferred their cargoes to mackinaws about nine hundred miles this side of Benton and the remainder of the trip was made by cordelling the small boats through. The Chippewa returned in September and reached St. Louis five months from the date of departure, making the round trip of 6,400 miles in that time.

Another claim has since been set up for the first voyage to Benton. Mr. James Parsons, of Yankton, stated that the Chippewa was ten years behind the first Benton boat. He says that he made a trip to Fort Benton in the steamboat Genoa, Captain Throckmorton, in 1849. He was cabin boy on the Genoa, and eighteen years old, and fixed the date from the historical fact that it was the year of gold discovery in California. Steamboat men generally discredited the claim, the cap- tain of the Genoa not having made it at the time or at any time afterwards.

BURNING OF THE CHIPPEWA

Captain Humphries, of the good steamboat Chippewa, with Commodore Choteati, of the American Fur Company, and the crew and passengers of the steamer. reached Yankton from the upper river on Wednesday, July 3. 1861, in mackinaw boats, bringing the startling intelligence that the boat had been destroyed by fire and explosion when lying-to for the night at a point about one hundred and twenty miles above the mouth of the Yellowstone. The doomed boat reached Yankton about the 15th of May, from St. Louis, on her way to Fort Benton, laden with a cargo of 160 tons, and carrying a number of passengers, among whom were four ladies, bound for the gold mines of Salmon River. The cargo was made up of outfitting goods for the American Fur Company's fort at Benton, annuity goods for the Blackfeet Indians, a large stock of groceries and provisions for merchants in Bitter Root Valley, and a large quantity of ordinary black and giant powder, amounting to 5.925 pounds, which was securely stowed away in the magazine surrounded by a barricade of boxes of tobacco to protect it from accidental explosion. Just after the boat had laid by for the night on the south shore a deck hand lifted a hatch for the purpose of descending into the hold to see that everything was safe, when the alarming discovery was made that the hold and its contents were on fire, which had already made dangerous headway. The flames poured out through the hatch so quickly and fiercely that the deck hand was seriously burned. Every effort possible was made to quench the fire, but it had reached beyond control and the boat's facilities were of no avail in the effort to fight it. It was soon evident that the vessel was doomed. the flames spreading to the light woodwork in less time than it takes to tell it, and very soon cutting off all ingress to the engines. Captain Humphries ordered everybody ashore and, fearing the hot blaze would communicate with the powder magazine, the passengers were obliged to abandon their personal effects. Once they had reached the shore these people clustered near the boat. Appreciating their danger, the captain induced them to remove to a point about a quarter of a mile away. They were reluctant to do this, but entreaties and explanations finally satisfied them that they had better follow the captain's energetic counsel. The

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History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 98

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