I enjoy searching for stories originating in the place I call home, which in many cases means Ransom County. Unfortunately, not much in the way of textbook history exists; fortunately a scattered group of historians preserved some of it piecemeal. In addition, interesting and valuable community and church histories have been compiled to which we can refer.
A couple historians I return to time and again are A. H. Laughlin and Dana Wright. Laughlin wrote a chapter titled “History of Ransom County,” included in the History of the Red River Valley, 1909, while Wright wrote a small book titled “Historic Ransom County.” Both publications are filled with fodder that feeds my search for local history. Snorri Thorfinnson’s concise book titled Ransom County History can be mentioned here, too.
It’s extra rewarding to walk on a site where events occurred. So it was on a recent Saturday that my wife and I drove to the historical site near the Dead Colt Creek park southeast of Lisbon. I’ve misplaced references for the creek’s name but as I remember, it honors some Indian’s favorite pony who died when struck by lightning.
While that name suggests a certain sentimental glamour worthy of Western stories, it wasn’t what lured us to the site. What fascinates is the name of the nearby Okiedan Butte. Old maps show it on the south side of the Sheyenne River near there, but one has to dig deep to find satisfactory information. I wanted to talk to someone with knowledge of it, so while driving through the park I stopped to ask a camper if he was familiar with the name Okiedan Butte. Yes, he was familiar with the area, but no he’d never heard of it. Next we asked a young family man who had brought his kids to the park playground. He had no knowledge of it either, even though he lived only a mile away where his or his neighbor’s cattle might graze on the grass growing there.
Many years have passed since events mentioning the Okiedan Butte first appear, and the significance has faded. What about the butte? I imagined when first coming across the name that it named a high promontory in that area looking like the buttes west of the Missouri River, but now I see where the written sources mostly agree it is a manmade mound. None of the natural landscape seemed much higher than others to warrant calling it a butte. We needed to go home and look for more information. As it turned out there was something I’d been overlooking.
We’d read once that a small army detachment from Fort Wadsworth, now Sisseton, was stranded at Okiedan Butte on what Laughlin termed “a noted high mound” in the early 1860s. They were completely surrounded by an immense herd of buffalo and had to wait several hours for them to pass. The commander, Colonel Creel, estimated the herd at several hundred thousand.
The name Okiedan translates as “the place where they rushed together,” something which marks a fierce battle fought here, thought to be around 1842, which occurred between a party of about thirty Arikara hunters who had wandered into the area from the west. The Sisseton Sioux claimed the area as theirs and wanted them expelled. In the end they did more than that because none of the intruders survived to return home. All were killed and beheaded.
The young farmer told us about the small bridge nearby that crosses the river that might have some significance to us. When we returned home we zeroed in on a plat map to study that small area. Something revealed itself then that I had missed all along. There, on the banks of the Sheyenne River just opposite of Okeidan Butte was Camp Hayes, the site of General Sibley’s encampment of several days commencing July 4, 1863 where they stopped while waiting for a supply train from Fort Abercrombie.
Diaries written by several members of the expedition paint a sketchy picture of the time spent in camp and their experiences on the trail. It will be a future project to sift through all the material I’ve gathered from people on the expedition and will be doing that as the next project.
Mishaps occurred, one teamster fell off his mule, was run over by the wagon which broke his leg badly. They suffered from heat and thirst, sometimes not finding good water to drink, such as that at Skunk Lake. Men fell retching from drinking impure water. In places they dug wells in their search for good water, often to no avail. Frequently, smoke hung in the air, thought to be from Indians burning the prairie as a weapon.
Their stop at Camp Hayes proved a good one, however, because they found spring water, shade trees, firewood, fish, and good grazing for their animals. I want to learn more about Sibley’s expedition and Ransom County’s Camp Hayes.
