Then the Water Rose

A recent program we attended featured the retired national park superintendent Gerard Baker who left me with an unsettled feeling after hearing one of his statements. The Mandaree Indian born and raised on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota said this night, “My generation never got to see the river bottom.” He was speaking of the consequences of the land being flooded by the Garrison Dam that formed Lake Sakakawea. I wrote the following section three years ago after visiting one of the affected ranchers.

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The Garrison Dam straddles the Missouri River about seventy miles above North Dakota’s capital city Bismarck. Construction of the huge structure occurred from 1947 through 1953. A mammoth undertaking, the Corps of Engineers deemed it necessary for flood control and hydroelectric generation with the added potential for irrigation and recreation. Over 152,000 acres of land were purchased from the Three Affiliated Tribes for the formation of Lake Sakakawea. Under threat of having land taken from them by eminent domain, the tribal members  acquiesced to the demand to sell. This action displaced over 1700 tribal members from the rich bottomland they had lived on for hundreds of years. Three little trading towns - Elbowoods, Sanish, and Van Hook - passed from sight under the rising water, taking with them the social structure, unwritten laws, and conventions that had evolved over many generations.

Some white ranchers also lived on the land and worked harmoniously beside the Indians only to suffer the same fate. So it was that the Voigt family went looking for new land and found a ranch, the Anchor Ranch established by William V. Wade, for their operation south of Raleigh, North Dakota. Their herd of 150 cattle needed to be moved to that new ground, and the decision was made to drive them overland.

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Neighbors came in the morning and helped the Voigts round up the herd on a fall day in 1951 and came back early the next morning to help start the drive south to their new home. The crew didn’t look forward to crossing the Four Bear Bridge with them. The span was long and narrow and a steep riverbank dropped to the water on either side of the bridge. If a cow broke from the herd at its entrance, she could slip and slide twenty feet down the bank causing a big problem for the cowboys getting her back up.

We sat and listened to Duaine Voigt reminisce in his dining room where a glass-windowed wall opened to a southern exposure of the place he had become a part of on the Cannonball River. Memories of the cattle drive flowed easily like the river in a spring thaw. “We found this place after being told we’d have to move. Realtors came out of the woodwork when the news was out they were going to start flooding the dam. Every real estate guy in the country came to Elbowoods.”

“Once we got started, we were four riders plus Dad who drove a truck where we’d covered the box and rigged it to hold our sleeping cots and supplies.” Once the herd entered the long bridge, it didn’t take long for a problem to present itself. “When we were about a quarter of the way across, a car entered the opposite end and rattled toward us. A dog could trot across the bridge and it would rattle and shake. That spooked the herd and some turned and tried to come back. I was riding my best horse Sitting Bull that day, nobody else could ride him. You could ride him longer than  any three of the other horses. We had some turmoil for awhile with cattle bunching up, those in the back still going forward, some in front trying to go back from where they came. Anyway, I was back and forth and got them stopped from going backwards. We got them across, tut then they stampeded and came off the other end like they were shot out of a cannon and took off for the badlands. If they had gotten into those badlands, we would never have found them.” With the neighbors help, they rounded them up again and were able to leave on their planned drive the next morning. “We had 128 cows, each one had a calf, and we had five bulls. I know because I counted them every morning.” He told us they averaged about 17 miles a day and laughed when he told about the time when riding night herd he took a 2-4 a.m. shift. “It got foggy and when the 4-6 a.m. spelled me, I told him it’s pretty dark. When the fog lifted the next morning, here he was going around and around a bunch of rocks with cows scattered all over. On this trip we rode from daylight to dark, so we were really hardened in by the time we got the cows down here. We felt good about it because the cows came through it beautiful.”

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After 10 1/2 days on the trail, the herd arrived at their new home on the Cannonball River. One of the sons, Duaine, eventually became the owner of the sprawling acreage. Since retired, he leases the property to his daughter and her husband who combine it with their own adjacent ranch where they maintain a large herd of buffalo. Life seems to have gone well for them after the relocation.

Many, maybe most, of their Indian friends and neighbors did not fare so well. A picture taken at the signing ceremony when the federal government took possession depicts the chairman of the tribal government, George Gillette, standing sorrowfully and distraught amid a group of outwardly untouched men. His people gave more than the monetary value of their compensation.