USA > South Dakota > History of South Dakota, Vol. I > Part 39
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There were a great many adventurers and politicians among those who thronged into the Hills in 1876 and they could not long remain inactive. Having appealed to Governor Penning- ton to set up a civil government in the Hills, an appeal which necessarily the governor was com- pelled to refuse inasmuch as under the organic law an Indian reservation was not deemed a por- tion of the territory, they opened up on him in August. Their first movement was the agita- tion for the organization of a new territory, which was to include the area lying between the one hundredth and one hundred and ninth merid-
ian. They held mass meetings and conventions and passed resolutions and elected representatives to congress, continuing the agitation until after the ratification of the treaty for the opening of the Hills, but of course it came to nothing except to afford the pioneer lawyers and adventurers an opportunity to exercise their gifts of oratory.
On September 11th Deadwood City was or- ganized. E. B. Farnum was elected mayor and justice, the council consisting of A. Pearto, K. Kurtz, Sol Star and H. C. Filbrook. The city government was sustained by a license tax on every business in town ranging from five dollars to twenty-five dollars per quarter each.
The miners called a regular election the first Tuesday in February to vote for President and vice-President, members of the legislature and members of congress. The election resulted in the choice of Dr. Meyers and General A. Z. R. Dawson to represent the Black Hills country be- fore the territorial legislature at Yankton.
On the whole the Deadwood gulch was an orderly community during the season of 1876; when we consider the character of the men who had assembled there, it was extraordinarily so. Of course there were thousands of men who came into the Hills too late to secure claims in the bonanza district and who went out disap- pointed and heart-broken, but those who were for- tunate enough to secure claims generally made a fair stake and a few real fortunes were real- ized. No suggestion was secured during this year of the vast wealth lying under the feet of the miners in the inexhaustible stores of free milling quartz and refractory ores from which the great mining industry of the Black Hills has since been developed.
A surprisingly large number of the men who have since made the Black Hills famous are found among the pioneers of 1876. Sketches of the most of these, with the date of their arrival in the Hills, will be found in the department of this history devoted to biographical sketches.
CHAPTER XLIX
IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1877.
The homestead boom began in 1877. With the year 1877 a new era opened in the history of Dakota. Founded in the vast extent of our fertile and free lands, it had its impulse in the results of the great financial panic which swept the land in 1873 and continued to depress the people during the years of liquidation which followed. Many thousands of families all over the United States had been reduced to bank- ruptcy by the great panic and by 1877 had gath- ered themselves together and were looking for an opportunity again to begin life anew. They found their opportunity in Dakota and, despite the discouraging state of agriculture, the flood of immigration set this way. Not all of course who were looking Dakotaward at this period were bankrupts. Strong men of energy and action and means saw their opportunity in this field and availed themselves of it. And proba- bly young men just starting in life were the preponderating element in the movement. Nev- ertheless Dakota was to be the haven and salva- tion of thousands of families who had gone to the wall in the panic of 1873. Still they did not come all at once in this year. They simply sent forward their representatives to spy out land and make ready for the great rush which was to come in the years immediately following.
The greatest enterprise for the development of Dakota had its inception in the spring of 1877. It originated in the fertile mind of Mar- vin Hughitt, president of the Chicago & North- western Railway. Up to this time railroads had
been built either to accommodate settlements al- ready made or else to secure and hold valuable land grants. No railroad had ever pioneered and invaded a wholly unsettled country for the sole purpose of attracting settlement that way. Mr. Hughitt conceived the idea that by projecting his roads into the unoccupied territory of Da- kota east of the Missouri river he would thereby induce a large settlement to come in and occupy the lands and that ultimately his company would find profitable business in the field. He has lived to see the wisdom of his action splendidly justi- fied.
On the 27th day of March, 1877, Mr. Hughitt, in company with Mr. W. H. Stennett and other officers of the road, made their first visit into Dakota. They came then for the ostensible pur- pose of establishing a stage road into the Black Hills to connect with their lines, but later Mr. Hughitt personally inspected, by overland trips, the entire Dakota country east of the Missouri. and at once began the plans which resulted in the construction of several hundred miles of the Northwestern road across the unsettled Dakota prairies.
The legislature convened the second Tuesday of January and organized with Dr. Burleigh and Major Hanson, respectively, the chairman and secretary of the council, and D. C. Hagle, a new man in the territory, a resident of Hutchin- son county, as speaker of the house, to which Theodore A. Kingsbury was elected chief clerk. Governor Pennington's message was character-
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istically practical and was devoted largely to a discussion of the financial situation and a rec- ommendation for a reform in the methods of raising revenue and managing the finances of the territory. He dealt upon the importance of immigration and gave it as his opinion that the system adopted by the legislature of the previous session had been unsuccessful and that the former single commissioner system should be re-adopted.
One of the first actions of the legislature was to appoint a committee to examine and report on the territorial finances. They went carefully over the books of the auditor and treasurer and reported gross carelessness and irregularity in the methods of accounting. In fact the confusion was such that they found it quite impossible to determine the exact condition of affairs. Noth- ing criminal was developed, though they found that one warrant for one hundred dollars had been paid twice, simply through carelessness.
There were one or two contests for seats, the most important coming from the Fargo dis- trict in North Dakota where P. M. McHench contested the seat of Mr. Back. One day when only a quorum was present, the 15th day of February, and the session was almost ended, McHench's friends saw their opportunity. McHench was seated and the contest ended, whereupon Dr. Burleigh resigned as president of the council and C. B. Valentine, of Turner county, was elected to fill out the term.
Dr. C. W. Meyer and Gen. A. Z. R. Dawson were admitted to seats on the floor and permitted to present measures favorable to the Black Hills districts, which they represented.
Judson LaMoure injected a little fun into the session by introducing a bill to remove the capi- tal from Yankton to Jamestown. After some filibustering the bill was indefinitely postponed.
Railroad rate legislation showed up for the first time in the legislature of this session by a bill introduced by Eric Iverson, of Union county, regulating the freight and passenger rates. The bill died in committee.
One or two funnyisms crept into the proceed- ings. The house sessions were held in Stone's hall over the music store of W. H. White, a
somewhat erratic old gentleman well known to the old residents. White persisted in playing his fiddle in his store, much to the annoyance of the legislators. A legislative committee was sent to reprimand him for his conduct, but he insisted that it was his business to sell fiddles and that he could not conduct his business without exhibit- ing his instruments and the character and tone of his goods, and he kept on fiddling. He then was arrested and brought before the bar of the house and reprimanded for his obstreperous con- duct. He promised to reform, but kept on fid- dling, and not until he was called in another time were the solons able to abate the nuisance.
T. M. Fulson, a citizen of Union county and a gentleman in whom the Governor had reposed trust and confidence and commissioned a notary public, conceived the opinion that he was by vir- tue of his office authorized to solemnize mar- riages, and for a long time carried on a large business in this industry. When the real situa- tion dawned upon his customers there was a good deal of consternation among the citizens of his bailiwick, but the legislature made' it right by legalizing his action.
Congress having early in February approved the Black Hills treaty, the legislature provided for an immediate survey of a territorial road from Ft. Pierre to Rapid City and Deadwood. The bill became a law on February Ioth and on that day the secretary appointed Ed. Palmer and Frank D. Wyman to make the survey. They started out promptly, and though the weather was extremely severe and they suffered great hardships in consequence, they succeeded in com- pleting the survey within the next forty days. After a great deal of discussion the legislature adjourned, having repealed the immigration law and without having provided an immigration commissioner.
The Black Hills counties were created by this session, Custer taking its name from the princi- pal camp, which had been named for General Custer, Pennington named in honor of Governor Pennington and Lawrence for John Lawrence, an enterprising early citizen of the territory. Judge Granville G. Bennett was at once assigned to the
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courts of the Black Hills district and that section of Dakota threw off the anomalous condition which existed from its settlement and came un- der the jurisdiction of duly enacted civil law.
The winter of 1877 was an exceptionally severe one. Early in January Captain Miner, of the Twenty-second Infantry, regular army, (not the well known Captain Nelson Miner ), started out with a detail of fifty men for a scout over the prairie west of the Missouri river. They were caught in a fearful blizzard and the Captain and eleven of his men perished; the remainder were rescued after suffering incredible hardships.
The severe losses which the settlers had en- countered the previous years led to an attempt this year to destroy the young grasshoppers im- mediately after hatching. It was conceived that if the prairie grass was kept until the new grass started and the young grasshoppers had hatched and then burned that it would destroy the pests which had caused so much hardship among the settlers. A convention was held at Canton on the first of March, attended by representatives from all of the southern parts of the territory and a day agreed upon when the prairies should be burned. The plan was carried out with some success.
W. H. Pelton, a reputable citizen of Lincoln county, brought great censure upon himself by going out on an independent enterprise to Chi- cago and other eastern points to secure aid for the destitute of Lincoln county. His action was very severely condemned and he was advertised as an imposter by the immigration agents, though there is no doubt that he was acting in good faith and there was some destitution which he helped to relieve.
Early this spring, in the month of March, N. C. Nash became the proprietor of the Sioux V'alley News, which he has conducted continu- ously from that time. At about the same time Robert Buchanan became editor of the Sioux Falls Pantagraph.
The Black Hills immigration had given a great impetus to the river trade. Some notion of its extent may be derived from the fact that
thirty-six steamboats regularly cleared from the port of Yankton for the up-river trade.
Under the direction of W. H. Claggett, from Montana, a new territorial movement had a great impulse in the Black Hills and for a time ap- peared to be formidable. To offset this a state- hood movement was instituted in Yankton. A mass convention was held on April 19th upon a call signed by a very large number of the citi- zens of the territory. It convened at the court house in Yankton, Captain Caleb E. Brooks being chairman and George W. Kingsbury, secretary. Proper resolutions proposing statehood for the south half of Dakota territory were prepared by General Beadle and unanimously adopted. An executive committee was appointed, consisting of George W. Kingsbury, General Beadle, Dr. Burleigh, O. C. Stein, C. E. Brooks and George H. Hand, and an agitation for immediate state- hood assumed territorial wide proportions, but, with the deadlock between the Republican sen- ate and Democratic house, it, of course, came to nothing.
The harvest of this year was a very excel- lent one notwithstanding the fact that some of the localities were again visited by the grasshop- per scourge.
The settlement had become quite general up the Sioux valley as far as Lake Kampeska. Messrs. Montgomery and Keeler had settled on Lake Kampeska two or three years before and this year they took with them James Riley, Cin- cinnatus C. Wiley and O. S. Jewell. They drove up from Yankton to their claims at Kampeska on May 6th and for the first time in their ex- perience were able to find regular stopping places at the homes of settlers along the route.
The Oakwood lake country had begun to at- tract attention. Byron E. Pay had resided there for some years and during this season a large number of claims were located in this section and several new settlers established themselves there.
Among the engineers who assisted in the location of the Northwestern Railway to Kam- peska in 1872 was one Robert Pike, an enthusi-
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ast. a sort of scientific, philosophical communist with free-love tendencies. He was delighted with the beautiful country surrounding Lake Kampeska and conceived the plan for the estab- lishment of a community there which should become an exponent of his peculiar social no- tions. He interested his brother. W. C. Pike. a gentleman who, if possible, was more erratic than Robert. In 1873 they had visited Lake Kampeska and settled on a considerable body of land on the west side of the Sioux river between the present location of Watertown and the lake and had erected a number of dugout claim shanties upon it. During the succeeding winter the Pikes lectured throughout the east and in- terested a considerable number of people in the enterprise. In the spring of 1874, while enroute to Lake Kampeska, Robert Pike died. This checked the enterprise for the time being, but in 1876 it was again taken up by his brother, William C. Pike, who visited Lake Kampeska and took some action toward perfecting the claims of the community there. He returned to Chicago, where he conceived an inordinate jealousy for Colonel Jones, editor of the Religio Philosophical Journal, who was one of the pro- moters of the community scheme and a shining light in the Pike Free-Love Society, and one morning, meeting Jones on the stairs of his office, he shot him dead. He escaped hanging on the plea of insanity and was incarcerated in the Illinois Insane Asylum, where he remained many years, and so the great "Kampeska Co-operative Free-Love Community" proved a campaign that failed.
The year in the Black Hills, while continu- ing profitable from a mining point of view, started off in somewhat discouraging circum- stances. On the evening of February 25th the freight train of Horick, Evans & Dunn was camped on Centennial Prairie near Crook City. Ted McGonnigle was in charge of the cattle herd when a band of Oglalas, presumably under the lead of Young Man Afraid of His Horses, dashed down upon them, killed McGonnigle and ran off the entire drove of cattle and a con- siderable number of horses. On the same day
Riley and Jones, two prospectors near Rapid City, were killed and scalped.
There was a great deal of agitation in the early spring about the opening of the Pierre route. One faction determined to start from Chantier creek, while still another favored Fort George as the official point. After a good many vacillating orders the government ordered the opening of the Fort Pierre route along the sur- vey which had been made by Palmer and Wyman carlier in the spring.
On Saturday, April 7, 1877, the Black Hills Daily Times was established by Warner & New- hard. It started off with intense antagonism to the territorial government and was an advocate of the "new territorial" movement. On the evening of the very day of its establishment a great mass meeting to agitate for Black Hills territory was held in Deadwood, of which Judge Kuykendall was chairman and J. H. Burns sec- retary, and the well known Sol Star was chair- man of the committee on resolutions. The pre- amble set out a long line of grievances to which the miners had been subjected and then "Re- solved, that the only remedy left us is the or- ganization of a new and independent territory." The paper next day said that "the general tenor of the meeting portrayed a fixed determination to throw off the yoke of Yankton servitude and to enroll our names on the roll of freemen, not serfs of the governor of Dakota, but citizens of the United States." The same meeting took oc- casion to pass a resolution eulogizing Seth Bul- lock, sheriff, "for his unswerving bend to duty."
In reading the daily occurrences of that period when there were more than six thousand people gathered in Deadwood gulch one is struck with the remarkable freedom from acts of violence. Shootings were very rare, though it is noted that in the first number of the Times there is mention made of the shooting of Dave Finnigan by Henry Porter. Finnigan, however, recovered and there was no official action taken in the matter.
From the first issue of the Times we learn that there were five first-class breweries in the vicinity of Deadwood, and the following prices
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current : Nails, eighteen cents ; butter, twenty- five cents ; dried apples, forty cents ; coal oil, two dollars; eggs, seventy-five cents, and flour, twelve dollars per hundred weight. Freight was hauled from the Missouri river to Deadwood for three cents a pound.
The Times declared in this issue for "An independent territory, one and inseparable, now and forever." Governor Pennington was se- verely censured for appointing A. W. Lavender, Fred Evans and John Walzmuth county com- missioners for the county, on the theory that through these commissioners he was implicated in a county seat steal.
On the 26th the paper notes that the arrivals averaged more than one hundred daily, chiefly by the Fort Pierre route, but on the 27th the Times says : "One hundred tenderfeet have left because they could see no gold on the sidewalks."
On April 30th Jack Farrell was arraigned before Judge Gooding, charged with uttering counterfeit "dust." Judge Burns, who had been appointed public prosecutor, appeared for the ter- ritory and said that although he was ignorant of the present law respecting such act, still as "dust" is the actual currency of this country he had no doubt that a penalty as severe as that for uttering counterfeit bank bills was prescribed Ly the statutes. He therefore asked that the case be continued ten days so that full information could be obtained and that the accused be held on at least five thousand dollars bail. Judge Hollins appeared for the prisoner and entered a plea of not guilty. The case was continued for a week, with the understanding that should the statutes arrive before that time the case should be called for trial. Judge Hollins considered five thousand dollars an excessive bail, but the court placed it at that amount.
After the massacre of W. H. Smith, the pio- neer Methodist minister, it is probable that there was not a minister of the gospel in the Black Hills for some months, but in that autumn C. E. Hawley, a Congregationalist, arrived and held preaching services in Deadwood and at other points. On November 26, 1876, the Reverend
L. P. Norcros, a Congregational minister, came from Denver and held services at the Inter-ocean hotel. On January he organized the first reli- gious organization of the Black Hills, the First Congregational church of Deadwood, with nine members. On May 17th Father John Lonergan, a Catholic priest, arrived and at once organized a Catholic church.
On May roth Judge Bennett arrived and held court in chambers at Deadwood, the first exer- cise of statutory judicial authority in the Black Hills. On May 25th he convened the first regu- lar term of district court at Hayward, in Custer county.
Charles Collins, the irrepressible citizen of Dakota, and Black Hills promoter, early in May embarked a first-class printing outfit on the steamer "Carroll," bound for the Black Hills, to establish a newspaper at Gayville. When fifty miles from Randall the "Carroll," with the com- plete printing outfit, was burned. Undaunted, however, he returned to Chicago, purchased a new outfit and in a very short time established his printing plant and newspaper at Gayville.
At a reconvened "new territorial convention" on May 19th, two factions appeared in the meet- ing, one headed by Clagget, the other by Dr. Mayer. Mayer made a violent attack on Pen- nington and Dr. Clagget and most everybody of prominence in the territory. The meeting was convened to elect a delegate to represent the Hills at Washington. Clagget and Mayer were candidates and after great confusion and intense excitement, almost resulting in riot, Mayer was chosen.
On May 25th the Times notes that there were three churches and seventy-three saloons in Deadwood.
Early in June a party of United States sur- veyors set out to establish the line between Da- kota and Wyoming and caused great excitement in Deadwood by announcing that that enterpris- ing burg was located four miles over into W'y- oming, that is that the line run four miles east of Deadwood. This renewed the excitement and demand for the organization of a new territory.
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It was several weeks before it was finally deter- mined that Deadwood was actually in Dakota and not across the line.
On May 12th, in a fight over a mining claim, two Bohemians named Dan Obrodovich and Steve Kroack, who had jumped the claims of John Blair and Samuel F. May, were shot by the latter. On May 16th May and Blair were con- victed and sentenced to five years at Fort Mon- roe.
On May 25th William Blatt instituted the first lodge of Masons there.
Gold dust at this time, by common consent, was legal tender in the Black Hills at twenty dol- lars per ounce. The merchants maintained that this price was exorbitant and that they main- tained a loss of two dollars on every ounce they received. This caused a good deal of discussion and on June 25th a meeting was called "to con- sider the currency question." After extended discussion the price was fixed at eighteen dollars.
About July first a United States postoffice was established in Deadwood. When it was first opened a line extending for many blocks was formed by the miners desiring to secure their mail. Those who were more fortunate in getting their places in the front line were offered and often accepted from one to two dollars for their places.
The subject of issuing bonds to pay the or- ganizing expenses and current expenses of Law- rence county caused a good deal of agitation at that time. John Lawrence, who had been ap- pointed county treasurer, bitterly opposed these early bond issues, but his judgment was over- ruled and the great debt which has been upon the people of Lawrence county even down to the present time was created.
There were many Indian depredations about this time and many persons were killed in and about the Hills. On July 26th the county com- missioners of Lawrence county offered two hun- dred and fifty dollars for the body of an Indian, dead or alive. This notice was signed by John Walzmuth and Fred Evans, county commis- sioners.
On July 25th Seth Bullock notified Governor
Pennington that "Agency Indians are destroying property and murdering citizens. Several ranclı- men have already been murdered. We shall call out the force of the county for protection. We lack arms and ammunition. Can you assist us ?" To this Governor Pennington replied, "We have no arms or ammunition here. You may organ- ize one or more companies of militia, under the laws of the territory, for self-protection, to arm themselves. I will commission the officers elected by them. I have telegraphed the secretary of war for aid." A militia company was therefore organized on the 28th day of July, with W. H. Parker captain, John Manning, first lieutenant, Noah Siever, second lieutenant, and Dr. Mc- Kowen, first surgeon.
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