Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Some people don’t like the subject of history saying it’s dull and boring.  They live in the present and worry about paying their bills in the future.  So the past doesn’t much affect them, they think.  But the old platitude about our standing on the shoulders of giants speaks quite well to the topic, I think.  The simple explanation states that each generation builds on the knowledge of the one before.  Even more simply, anyone standing on the shoulders of a giant can see farther than the giant himself.  

To illustrate, consider the invention and development of internal combustion engines.  They just didn’t appear in their present form to power vehicles along I-94 at 75 miles per hour.  Prior to 1860 and as early as 200 BCE in China hand cranks were developed and in the 300s a crank and connecting rod mechanism saw use in Turkey.  In the 1700s the first idea of a rudimentary internal combustion piston engine using gunpowder to power a water pump appeared.  A variety of developments kept showing up at this time such as two-stroke compression, carburetors, plus many more.

A big moment in engine development came with Nikolaus Otto’s invention of the Otto gasoline engine in 1876.  It was the forerunner of our familiar four-stroke engine operating with intake, compression, power, and exhaust strokes.  An example of one can be seen at Rollag, Minnesota during the Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion. A video of it in operation can be found by doing a brief google search.  Inventions, improvements, and perceived uses kept piling up, a topic about which a curious person could spend hours reading about.  

Personally, I’ve read history dealing with many topics and follow whatever trail I find myself on.  One dealt with my maternal grandfather and his experiences in World War One.  After learning the name of the army division and regiment that he marched with, I gathered a good deal of knowledge about the battles they fought, the conditions they struggled in, and the death and destruction that surrounded them.  

From that experience, another area of interest developed - the use and abuse of horses in that war.  Millions died from disease, malnutrition, injuries, overwork, and wounds from being targeted by enemy fire.  One particular horse stood out, a South Dakota horse rejected by French buyers because he could not be tamed to ride or pull loads.  Tipperary’s owners turned him into a rodeo horse, was used up in arenas until he could no longer perform, and was turned loose on the open range to die a lonely death in a blizzard.

One topic, still untold, begs for attention.  It centers on my home ground, more or less defined within the present day boundaries of Ransom County.  In general, I find it significant because that ground became the highway that settlers and freighters used to drive their wagons westward, at least, that is, until the Northern Pacific Railroad built its line from Fargo to Bismarck.  It’s a slow process to dig up information because not a lot has been written about it, but it’s worth the effort.

The term “scouts” comes up in some of the literature, especially that dealing with Fort Ransom and Pigeon Point.  I could never quite determine what was meant by it, until recently, while attending a family history workshop I found a publication that tells me, The Fort Sisseton Dakota Scouts and Their Camps in Eastern Dakota Territory, 1863-1866.  The aftermath of the U.S. - Dakota War of 1862 had spilled over into our part of the country and Indian men who had remained friendly to the whites were hired as another layer of defense.  More about that next week.