History of South Dakota, Vol. I, Part 7

Author: Robinson, Doane, 1856-1946. cn
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: [Logansport? IN] : B. F. Bowen
Number of Pages: 998

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jealousy, even if the expiring state of its interests there did not render it a matter of indifference. The appropriation, two thousand five hundred dollars, for the purpose of extending the internal commerce of the United States, while understood and con- sidered by the executive as giving the legislative sanction, would cover the undertaking from notice and prevent the obstructions which interested indi- viduals might otherwise previously prepare in its way.

In this message is the first suggestion of the great historic Lewis and Clarke expedition through the valley of the Missouri to the Pacific. to a history of which so far as it affects South Dakota the next chapter will be devoted. Congress at once authorized the expedition and

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ohject within the constitutional powers and care of congress and that it should incidentally advance the geographical knowledge of our own continent cannot but be an additional gratification. The nation claim- ing the territory, regarding this as a literary pursuit, which it is in the habit of permitting within its dominions, would not be disposed to view it with

arrangements were well under way when news came of the Louisiana purchase treaty.

Louisiana having now come under the juris- diction of the United States, pursuant to the Livingstone-Monroe-Marbois treaty, congress, for the purposes of administration and legal pro-

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HISTORY OF SOUTH DAKOTA.

cedure, attached it to the territory of Indiana. At that juncture Gen. William Henry Harrison was governor of Indiana and consequently became the first American governor having jurisdiction over South Dakota.

In the year 1805 the territory of Louisiana was regularly created and a full set of officers appointed. St. Louis was made the capital. South Dakota was included within the territory. The President appointed James Wilkinson, gov- ernor ; Frederick Bates, secretary, and Return J. Meigs and John B. C. Lucas, judges.

In 1812 Louisiana, with its present bound- aries, having been admitted as a state, congress created the remainder of old Louisiana as the territory of Missouri and in 1821, having ad- mitted Missouri, as now constituted, as a state, no government whatever was provided for the section north of Missouri and west of the Missis- sippi, and South Dakota and the contiguous country continued unorganized and ungoverned until 1834, in which year the territory of Michi- gan was extended west to the Missouri river and so included the eastern half of South Dakota in her embrace, but no provision was made for the western half until 1854. This is more remarkable when it is known that at all these periods there was a large white population in that section. Two years after we had become a part of Michi- gan, the territory of Wisconsin was created to include all of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and

the portion of South and North Dakota east of the Missouri, but this condition was changed in 1838 when Iowa put in an appearance, claiming all of the territory between the Mississippi and Missouri from the north line of Missouri to the national boundary. Eastern South Dakota was a portion of Iowa for eleven years, but in 1849 Minnesota claimed us as a portion of that ter- ritory, in which estate we continued until Min- nesota was admitted as a state, in the spring of 1858, when the few citizens then residing at Sioux Falls attempted to set up a territory to be called Dakota, but congress refused to recognize it and by a resolution of the house of represent- atives declared that the portion of Minnesota ter- ritory not included within the boundaries of the state of Minnesota continued as Minnesota ter- ritory. In 1854 Nebraska territory was created, to include the portion of South Dakota lying west of the Missouri and in 1861 the territory of Dakota was created, to include all of the sec- tion west of Minnesota to the Rocky mountains. In 1869 Montana and Wyoming were cut off from the western portion of Dakota. In 1889 Dakota territory was divided into almost equal portions and both sections were admitted as states on the 2d day of November of that year.

The foregoing, in brief, is the history of the many changes in the sovereignty over the soil of South Dakota. Each of the recent movements will be treated at large in subsequent chapters.

CHAPTER VI

THE LEWIS AND CLARKE EXPEDITION.

In the last preceding chapter was related the story of the first inception of the Lewis and Clarke expedition, in the mind of President Jef- ferson, some months before the purchase of Louisiana was consummated or even officially suggested. Congress having secretly authorized the expedition and provided the magnificent sum of two thousand five hundred dollars-all that was asked-to carry it out, the President chose Captain Merriweather Lewis and William Clarke to execute it. Lewis was the private secretary of Jefferson and was in the enterprise from its in- ception. He had grown up immediately under the eye of Jefferson, a son of one of the old Virginia families residing very near to Monti- cello. Lewis was a born woodsman, who from childhood had been renowned for his absolute fearlessness coupled with great energy and good judgment.

Immediately after the provision for the trip had been made, Jefferson hurried Lewis off to Philadelphia to take under Dr. Barton, a learned instructor of that period, a short course in natural science and in taking celestial observations and calculating latitude and longitude. By the first of June he had completed this work and was back in Washington. It now occurred to Jefferson that it would add to the safety and success of the expedition to send it in duplicate; that is, that there should be two complete organizations mov- ing together, so that in the event of an accident

there would be less likelihood of the loss of records and of the benefits which it was hoped would be derived from the trip. At the sug- gestion of Lewis. Jefferson commissioned William Clarke, a Virginian and a brother of the re- nowned George Rodgers Clarke, to accompany Lewis and clothed him with equal powers. Four intelligent sergeants, Floyd. Pryor. Gass and Ordway, were also selected and it was arranged that each should keep an independent journal of the events and discoveries of the trip so that it could hardly fail that from some one of them a full report could be obtained. All along Jeffer- son reiterated the suggestion of the message of January 18th, that the expedition was in the interests of "commerce and literature."

The commandants of the expedition had reached Pittsburg on their way to the Missouri before the news of the purchase of Louisiana reached them. They proceeded to St. Louis, where they completed their preparations and pur- chased necessary supplies and employed river men to assist them on the arduous trip. They spent the winter in a camp on the east side of the Mississippi opposite the mouth of the Mis- souri. While still encamped there Lewis and Clarke went down to St. Louis on May 9, 1804. and assisted in the exercises attending the formal transfer of Louisiana to the United States. Up to that time the actual possession and government of Louisiana had remained in the hands of Spain.

HISTORY OF SOUTH DAKOTA.

First the flag of Spain'was lowered as the gov- ernor and Spanish garrison marched out and the French flag was hoisted to the mast head. It was the plan to take this down at once and hoist the stars and stripes, but the French creoles begged to be allowed to keep the lilies of France afloat for one day and the request was acceded to. All night of the 9th a guard of honor, con- sisting of the leading citizens of St. Louis, among them old Pierre John Chouteau, watched the old flag which was permitted to float until sundown of the 10th, when it was lowered, never since to be raised over the soil of any portion of North America. "The people went to bed Frenchmen that night to arise Americans next morning," for the first sight that greeted their eyes on the morn- ing of the 11th was old glory floating over the citadel of St. Louis.

The primitive manner of the equipment may be judged from a circumstance occurring at St Louis. Dr. Saugrin, a French scientist and a refugee from the French revolution, induced them to believe their equipment was not complete without a thermometer. Captain Lewis knew as little about thermometers as he did about tele- phones, but was willing to take one along. Now in all St. Louis there was not a thermometer, nor the proper material to make one, but Dr. Saugrin, nothing dismayed, scraped the quicksilver from the back of his wife's French mirror and then melted up the looking glass itself and so obtained the material for the thermometer, which he made and presented to Captain Lewis, and with it a fair notion of the temperature was kept daily until at the top of the Rocky mountains an accident be- fell it and it was broken.

The members of the party comprising the Lewis and Clarke expedition were as follows: Capt. Merriweather Lewis, a relative of Wash- ington's and next friend of Jefferson's; Capt. William Clarke, brother to Gen. George Rodgers Clarke ; Sergeants Charles Floyd and Nathanial Pryor, of Kentucky, cousins and both of dis- tinguished families ; Sergeant John Ordway, of New Hampshire, uncle of Nehemiah G. Ordwav. governor of Dakota territory, 1880-84 ; Sergeant Patrick Gass; Corporal Warfington ; John B.

Thompson, of Vincennes, a surveyor; William Bratton, blacksmith; John Shields, gunsmith ; John Coalter, Reuben and James Shields, William Warner and Joseph Whitehouse, of Kentucky ; George Shannon, brother of Wilson Shannon, twice governor of Ohio and once of Kansas ; George Gibson, Hugh McNeal, John Potts, Peter Weiser, all of Pennsylvania ; Thomas P. Howard, of Massachusetts ; John Collins, of Maryland ; Robert Frazer, of Vermont; Silas Goodrich, Richard Winsor, Hugh Hall and Alexander Wil- lard, whose state is not known, and six unnamed soldiers enlisted at St. Louis; George Druillard (Drooyar), son of old Pierre Druillard, of Indi- ana fame (there are many of George Druillard's descendants still in South Dakota and Min- nesota), was the official guide to the expedition ; York, the negro servant to Captain Clarke; Pierre Dorion, interpreter to the Sioux (Dorian's wife was a Yankton from lower Jim river) ; Pierre Cruzatte and Labiche, expert canoemen from Kaskaskia, and five other French river men. Patrick Gass was the carpenter of the ex- pedition and Captain Clarke, who possessed some rudimentary knowledge of medicine, being, in the formula of his day, "qualified to administer simples," was given charge of the medicine chest.

The Chouteaus and all of the well-known pioneer families of St. Louis appear to have exerted themselves to assist in the success of the enterprise, except Manual Lisa, the Spanish trader, who, with characteristic perverseness, op- posed it and used his influence with the Indians to hinder it. The expedition was outfitted with two pirogues and one bateau. The former were painted red and white; the bateau was much larger than the pirogues and was fifty-five feet long and had twenty-two oars. All of the boats were equipped with sails. In addition they had several light canoes. The bateau was decked, had cosy cabins and was quite a pretentious craft.

It was three o'clock on the afternoon of Mon- day, May 14, 1804. when the expedition finally got under way and the stems of the little fleet turned up the muddy course of the Missouri. They moved very slowly, critically examining the country as they progressed, especially noting the

HISTORY OF SOUTH DAKOTA.

conditions of the Indians and holding councils with every tribe they could reach. Nothing hav- ing a bearing upon the history of South Dakota occurred for several weeks. On the night of the 19th of August the party arrived at the present site of Sioux City and Sergeant Floyd was suf- fering with a bilious colic. He was given the best of care and attention possible in the circum- stances, but Captain Clarke's simples failed to give relief. He fully realized that he was smitten with death, but faced the inevitable like the brave man that he was. Where the beautiful Floyd monument now looks down upon Sioux City he was buried with military honors, and the little stream which washes the foot of the bluff below his grave was named for him. The next day, August 21, 1804, at eight o'clock in the morning, the expedition passed the Sioux river and entered South Dakota, and here is the wonderful fabric of fact and fancy, relating to the Big Sioux, with which the loquacious Pierre Dorion regaled them and which story the Captains gravely set down in their journals for the enlightenment of the world, or as Jefferson put it. "to increase the sum of human knowledge:"

"Three miles beyond Floyd's we came to the mouth of the great Sioux river. This river comes in from the north and is about one hundred and ten yards wide. Mr. Dorion, our Sioux inter- preter, who is well acquainted with it, says that it is navigable upwards of two hundred miles to the falls and even beyond them; that its sources are near those of the St. Peter's. He also says that below the falls a creek falls in from the eastward, after passing through cliffs of red rock; of this rock the Indians make their pipes and the neces- sity for procuring that article has introduced a sort of law of nations by which the banks of the creek are sacred and even tribes at war meet without hostility at these quarries, which possess a right of asylum. Thus we find even among savages certain principles deemed sacred, by which the rigors of their merciless system of war- fare are mitigated. A sense of common danger, where stronger ties are wanting, gives all the binding force of more solemn obligations. A

high wind that day filled the air with dust from the sand bars. They camped that night on the Nebraska shore, twenty-four miles above Floyd's grave."

August 22d they made some remarkable dis- coveries in geology, minerology and medicine. The reference in the journal is to the bluffs on the Nebraska shore midway between Sioux City and Elk Point: "The bluffs, which reach the river at this place, contain copperas, alum, cobalt, which had the appearance of soft isinglass, pyrites and sandstone, the first two very pure. Seven miles above is another cliff, on the same side, of alumı rock, of a dark brown color, con- taining in its crevices great quantities of cobalt, cemented shells and red earth. From this the river bends to the eastward to within three or four miles of the Sioux. We made nineteen miles and made our camp on the north side (where Elk Point now stands). Captain Lewis, in proving the quality of some of the substances in the first cliff, was considerably injured by the fumes and taste of the cobalt and took some strong medicine to relieve him of the effects. The appearance of these mineral substances enable us to account for disorders of the stomach with which the party had been affected since they left the Sioux. We had been in the habit of dipping up water of the river inadvertantly and making use of it, until, on examination, the sickness was thought to proceed from a scum covering the surface of the water along the southern shore, and which, as we now discovered, proceeded from the bluffs. The men had been ordered, before we reached the bluffs, to agitate the water so as to disperse the scum and take the water not at the surface, but at some depth. The consequence was that these disorders ceased ; the boils, too, which had afflicted the men, were not observed beyond the Sioux river. In order to supply the place made vacant by the death of Sergeant Floyd, we allowed the men to name three men and Patrick Gass, having the greatest number of votes, was made a sergeant."

The next day, while passing the prairie be- tween Elk Point and Burbank, Captain Lewis killed a buffalo, the first they had seen on the

HISTORY OF SOUTH DAKOTA.

trip. They salted two barrels of beef from this animal. From the circumstance they named the region Buffalo prairie.

On the 24th they examined "a bluff of blue clay, which lately had been on fire, and even now the ground is so warm that we cannot keep our hands in it at any depth; there are strong ap- pearances of coal and also great quantities of cobalt or a crystalized substance resembling it." That day they discovered their first buffalo ber- ries and passed the mouth of the Vermillion, which they call the Whitestone, and were vastly annoyed by mosquitoes.

The next day Captains Lewis and Clarke took ten men and went to examine Spirit mound, "an object deemed very extraordinary by all the neighboring Indians." They dropped back down to the mouth of the Whitestone, which they found to be thirty yards wide, where they left the boat and at the distance of two hundred yards as- cended a rising ground from which a plain ex- tended itself as far as the eye could reach. After walking four miles they crossed the creek where it is twenty-three yards wide and waters an ex- tensive valley. "The heat was so oppressive that we were obliged to send back our dog to the creek, as he was unable to bear the fatigue; and it was not until after four hours' march that we reached the object of our visit. This was a large mound in the midst of the plain about twenty degrees northwest from the mouth of the creek, from which it is nine miles distant. The base of the mound is a regular parallelogram, the longest side being about three hundred yards, the shorter sixty or seventy. From the longest side it rises with a steep ascent from the north and south to the height of sixty-five or seventy feet, leaving on top a level plain of twelve feet in breadth and ninety feet in length. The north and south ex- tremities are connected by two oval borders which serve as new bases and divide the whole side into three steep but regular graduations from the plain. The only thing characteristic in the hill is its extreme symmetry and this, together with its being detached from other hills, which are at a distance of eight or nine miles, would in- duce a belief that it is artificial ; but as the earth

and the loose pebbles which compose it are ar- ranged exactly like the steep ground on the border of the creek we concluded from this similarity of texture that it might be natural. But the Indians have made it a great article of their superstition ; it is called the "mountain of little people," or little spirits, and they believe that it is the abode of little devils in human form, of about eighteen inches high and with remarkably large heads ; they are armed with sharp arrows, with which they are very skillful, and are always on the watch to kill those who have the hardi- hood to approach their residence. The tradition is that many have suffered from these little evil spirits and, among others, three Maha Indians fell a sacrifice to them a few years since. This has inspired all the neighboring nations, Sioux, Mahas and Ottoes, with such terror that no con- sideration could tempt them to visit the hill. We saw none of these wicked little spirits, nor any place for them, except some small holes scattered over the top; we were happy enough to escape their vengeance though we remained some time on the mound to enjoy the prospect of the plain, which spreads itself out until the eye rests upon the northeast hills at a great distance and those of the northwest at a still further distance, en- livened by large herds of buffaloes. The soil of these plains is exceedingly fine; there is, how- ever, no timber except on the Missouri, all the wood of the Whitestone river being not suf- ficient to cover one hundred acres thickly. The plain which surrounds this mound has con- tributed not a little of its bad reputation; the wind driving from every direction over the level ground, obliges the insects to seek shelter on its leeward side or be driven against us by the wind. The small birds, whose food they are, re- sort of course in great numbers in quest of sub- sistence ; and the Indians always seem to discover an unusual number of birds as produced by some supernatural cause; among them we observed the brown marten employed in looking for insects, and so gentle that they did not fly until we got within a few feet of them." At one o'clock they left the mound and rejoined the expedition, which had moved slowly up stream, at ninc

HISTORY OF SOUTH DAKOTA.

o'clock that evening at the encampment on the Meckling Bottom.

On the 27th they passed the mouth of Jim river, which they inform us is called by the French both Jacques and Yankton river, and that it may be navigated a great distance as its sources rise near those of the St. Peter's of the Mis- sissippi and the Red river of Lake Winnipeg. At the mouth of the river an Indian boy swam out to them and upon landing they were met by two others who told them there was a large body of Yanktons camped in the vicinity. Two of the Indians went with three soldiers to invite the camp to meet the captains at the next camp. They camped that night on the Dakota shore somewhere between Yankton and the mouth of the Jim, but next morning moved up to the former site of Green island where they went into camp to meet the Yanktons. Pryor, one of the men who was sent to invite in the Indians, found them, twelve miles up the Jim. He re- turned to the camp at Green island, accom- panied by young Pierre Dorion, the son of their old interpreter, whom we shall hear from again as the guide and interpreter of the Astoria ex- pedition. They were attended by five chiefs and ' seventy young men and boys. Pryor was sent back to the Yankton camp with some small presents and an invitation for the Yanktons to come down to see the captains and hold a council next morning. The Yankton home of that day is described as follows : The camps of the Sioux are of a conical form, covered with buffalo robes, painted with various figures and colors, with an aperture in the top for the smoke to pass through. The lodges contain from ten to fifteen persons and the interior arrangement is compact and handsome, each lodge having a place for cooking detached from it.

At twelve o'clock on Thursday, the 30th of August, the great council with the Sioux, the first ever held between that people and repre- sentatives of the United States, was held under a big oak tree on the Nebraska shore opposite Yankton. The stars and stripes floated over them upon a high pole erected for the purpose and there was great solemnity observed. Cap-

tain Lewis made the speech. Shake Hand, the head chief, was given a flag, a medal, a cer- tificate, a string of wampum and an officer's red coat richly laced with gold ; three subsidiary chiefs were given medals and general presents were given to the tribe. That night the entire party indulged in a great dance, continuing to a late hour. The next morning the chiefs came in to reply to the address made by Captain Lewis on Thursday, the Indians having held a council among themselves in the meantime to deliberate upon the matter. Shake Hand spoke, acknowledging allegiance to the new power, the President of the United States. He then made a typical Sioux plea, parading the poverty of his people and begging for presents. White Crane. Half Man and Struck by the Pawnee then spoke in the same line. Struck by the Pawnee has frequently been confused with Strike the Ree; the latter was but a child nine years of age, but he was in attendance at this council and until his death, which occurred in 1887, he retained a ' vivid recollection of all that transpired there. One of the demands of the chiefs in their talks in this council was for a supply of their "great Father's milk," meaning spirituous liquors. At this camp they left old Pierre Dorion with in- structions to take a delegation of the Sioux down to Washington.

"These Yanktons," says the journal, "are about two hundred men in number and inhabit the Jacques, Des Moines and Sioux rivers. In their persons they are stout, well proportioned and have a certain air of dignity and boldness. In their dress they differ nothing from the other bands of the nation whom we saw. They are fond of decorations and use paint, porcupine quills and feathers. Some of them wore a kind of necklace of white bears' claws, three inches long and closely strung together around their necks. They have only a few fowling pieces, being generally armed with bows and arrows, in which, however, they do not appear to be as ex- pert as the more northern Indians, and what struck us most was an institution, peculiar to them and to the Kite (Crow) Indians farther to the westward, from whom it is said to have been

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History of South Dakota, Vol. I, Part 7

Author: Robinson, Doane, 1856-1946. cn Publication date: 1904 Publisher: [Logansport? IN] : B. F. Bowen Number of Pages: 998

Author: Robinson, Doane, 1856-1946. cn
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: [Logansport? IN] : B. F. Bowen
Number of Pages: 998