An early historian Moses Armstrong probably says it best with his description of life in the first Dakota Territory capital as being “wide-open, red-hot, and mighty interesting.”
Time spent reading stories like the one referenced above can be a fulfilling, often entertaining pursuit. Traveling back to the earliest days of Dakota Territory makes for a great trip filled with people interacting with a raw undeveloped frontier. Since it was still Indian country, the settlers with families experienced some tension and fear, but there was a population of rough, tough men who brawled and drank to excess who would face up to any threat.
Let’s take a trip to Yankton in the extreme southeast corner of present day South Dakota where until March 2, 1861, the countryside was just an unorganized territory, a blank on the map. March 2 is a date marker since that is when outgoing President Buchanan signed the congressional bill that created the huge 300,000 square miles of real estate. Buchanan, by the way, has been ranked as one of the worst presidents we’ve had. Nevertheless, his signature created Dakota Territory.
It would be up to its new governor to get Dakota Territory up and running. So who was to be this governor? President Lincoln entered the presidency on March 4, 1861, but due to the impending Civil War, quickly made the decision to give the job to his personal doctor William Jayne. His wife’s cousin, J.B.S. Todd, wanted the job, and possessed political abilities. Besides, he had lived in this area for twenty-odd years and knew it well. Alas, Lincoln dared not hand it to him for the reason that Todd was a Democrat, and he also needed to avoid the appearance of nepotism.
Jayne, 35 years old, tall in stature with piercing black eyes and a bushy beard, arrived in Yankton possessing the reputation of being “a clever man, …without any appreciation of statesmanship.” Imagine this authoritarian’s shock at meeting up with the frontiersmen who would represent the new government when they convened as a legislative body. Squabbling already started among several towns vying to host the new capital, i.e. Yankton, Sioux Falls, and Vermillion.
When I close my eyes, I can imagine Yankton as any one of the frontier towns seen in movies and television. One historian, Howard Roberts Lamar in his book “Dakota Territory 1861-1889” gives us this picture. “Almost all of the inhabitants were young men in their twenties or thirties, unmarried, and quite used to frontier hardships… they engaged in huge fights and drinking bouts to ward off boredom and disgust.” Many carried knives and side arms and dressed in the garb of a frontiersman complete with buckskin clothing.
We know that when Jayne came to town he was forced to live like the rest of them. The only dwelling available for him was a two-room log cabin. In it he shared the bedroom with the attorney general and conducted the business of the territory in the other.
Lamar writes that the chief outlet these energetic people had was politics, “So great did this interest become that it led many Dakotans to view all their problems in a political light and to pose their solutions in political terms and action.” And so the first session of the territory’s legislature would soon meet. But one thing still needed doing. The governor had to establish legislative districts from where representatives would be elected. To do that he ordered a census taken whereby 2,400 people were tallied, and interestingly, Indians were not included. They would’ve included Metis, but they were on the trail in their wandering ways gathering game.
This ragtag collection of representatives first met in March 17, 1862. Some of them had trouble getting to Yankton because of a spring snowstorm. The man from Pembina was five days late because he could only make it through by riding a slow dogsled. Where did they stay after arriving? It must have been in the Ash Hotel or a boarding house because one historian counted only nineteen buildings in the town: hotel, two boarding houses, one saloon, one store, two legislative buildings, one office building, six occupied cabins, and one empty cabin.
Frank Ziebach, the publisher of the first newspaper, may well have moved into that empty cabin. It is at this point where I’ve found my favorite tidbit of territorial history. From the window of print shop, Ziebach witnessed the sudden exit of the vanquished speaker of the house through the window of the saloon across the street. It seems he’d gone back on his word to support Yankton for the permanent capital, and it created such a stir that the governor had to call out the local militia to establish order.
The speaker, George Pinney, was pressured into resigning and later that day wanted a drink in the only saloon. In there stood the legislative sergeant-at-arms named James Somers. Doane Robinson, another historian, wrote in 1905 that Somers wrapped Pinney in his arms, carried him to a closed window, and threw him out. A jeering crowd followed the humiliated ex-speaker outside wanting to continue offending Pinney. The disgraced speaker only let it go so far and pulled a pistol from inside his coat to threaten the pursuing mob.
Things settled down, James Somers went on his way to the west, and was killed in a gunfight in Chamberlain, Dakota Territory. Dakota Territory became viable, laws were passed, development ensued, and finally morphed into what are known today as North and South Dakota. Much can be told, and a good old rootin’ tootin’ Western novel should be written about it all.
