After the blustering and ranting that marked its formation, the business of running a territorial government from Yankton brought some sense of normalcy. No longer did the attorney general need to empty the slop bucket in the cabin he shared with the governor, no record exists of a speaker of the house being thrown out a saloon window for a second time, and it’s not recorded where another fistfight featuring “hair-pulling, choking, striking, blood spitting and pugilistic exercises” occurs between the governor and the director of the land office. For me, while imagining myself as an amateur historian, I especially like this period in our state’s birth and development.
That first tumultuous session did manage to pass some bills confirming the territory’s legitimacy. They established eighteen counties, a militia to protect settlers, the illegality of prostitution, a ban on stallions roaming about the range, a university at Vermillion, plus a few other items.
For those who like General Custer stories, here is one connected to Yankton during this period. Various accounts tell us that the 7th Cavalry regiment became blizzard-stalled in Yankton during the winter of 1873. On their way to Fort Lincoln, they were being stationed there to deal with the Indian threat in the West. As many as 900 men with as many or more horses and mules had arrived at the end of the tracks in several trains and set up a tent city outside of town. The men pitched tents and Custer and his wife stayed in a partially finished cabin. Unexpectedly an April blizzard developed to make life miserable since the tents started blowing down and Custer’s cabin didn’t keep the weather out.
Men got sick, including Custer who came down with a high fever. His wife Libbie Custer wrote this account in Boots and Saddles: “Knowing the scarcity of fuel and the danger to the horses from exposure to the rigor of such weather after their removal from a warm climate, the general ordered the breaking of camp. All the soldiers were directed to take their horses and go into Yankton, and ask the citizens to give them shelter in their homes, cow-sheds, and stables. In a short time the camp was nearly deserted, only the laundresses, two or three officers, and a few dismounted soldiers remaining. The towns-people, true to the unvarying western hospitality, gave everything they could to the use of the regiment; the officers found places in the hotels.”
Some of the men already suffered from frozen feet and did not make it into town, but instead stopped at Custer’s cabin for shelter about which Libby wrote, “It was almost unbearable to hear the groans of the soldiers over their swollen and painful feet, and know that we could do nothing to ease them.” She went on to say, “We did not soon forget our introduction to Dakota.”
Her book left me with one image I’d like to have seen first-hand. After leaving Yankton and marching along, she said, “When the stream was narrow, the hundreds of horses had to be ranged along its banks to be watered.” Nine hundred animals wanting water would have been quite a sight and not a place for me to drink downstream.
Remembering the territory’s official formation in 1862 affairs moved along for a number of years until the political winds blew in a change. Loud voices tired of the outside control U. S. presidents exercised in appointing their governors and other officials for them. One of those voices said, “We feel very much as the thirteen colonies felt when they flung away their dependent condition.”
The seventh territorial governor was Nehemiah G. Ordway who took office in 1880; his term in office proved to be a turning point. Ordway initiated the process to move the state capital in 1883 by appointing a nine-man commission to study the matter. Of course, to make things easier, he loaded the commission with three members associated with the Northern Pacific Railroad. One of them was a familiar figure, Alexander McKenzie. The railroad had their sights set on building west and had reached Bismarck in 1873, the place they wanted for the capital.
The capital was indeed moved in 1883. Try as they did, Yankton leaders could not stop it from happening. As part of the process that Ordway wanted for moving the capital, he stated a meeting must be held in Yankton, and Yankton planned to fight hard for it to stay. McKenzie showed his cunning ability to sidestep the matter.
On the day of the meeting, Yankton people crowded the site of the meeting and waited for the train to pull into the station with the commissioners on board. While still rolling, a meeting convened in the city limits, a vote was taken in favor of Bismarck, and the train never stopped. That was a bit too far for people in the southern part of the territory because they began to call for statehood for South Dakota. In 1889, after six years, North Dakota and South Dakota became separate entities.
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