Crossing the Sheyenne

 

The seasonal harvest has begun and big combines have entered the fields to begin harvesting. To watch them is to see the best way of separating grain from chaff and straw developed to date. Before the time that any of us can remember, animals tramped on ripe straw to knock the kernels loose from their heads. Or in another method a worker struck the heads with a flail to separate the kernels and then scoop the grain up and toss it in the air for the wind to winnow the chaff from the mix.

Cyrus McCormick came along with his mechanical reaper that cut the straw to fall behind it on the ground. A worker walked behind to gather it by hand and bundle it into sheaves. It enabled farmers to raise more grain and harvest it in less time.

I possess a picture of a historical nature for which I hope to find a permanent home. I first noticed it in the Sheldon Community History - 1981 where it carried this inscription: The Wall Bros. Threshing Crew crossing the “Froemke” Sheyenne River Crossing south of Anselm, ND. It was given to me by Tom Spiekermeier of Sheldon who in his personal dark room enlarged it to its present size of 11” by 14”and preserved a great deal of detail.

Curious to when this scene occurred, I searched and found the following reference in the Sheldon Progress of July 19, 1901: “Fred Wall and brother Alfred have bought a fine new threshing outfit and will make the straw fly this fall.” In another reference dated August 30, 1901 the Progress reported that the separator was a 40-60 Nichols and Shepard Red River Special that was powered by a Pitts 22 horsepower engine. Fourteen crew members can be counted in this scene which is a far cry from today’s one combine operator and one person to haul the grain away.

Further developments in harvesting techniques can only be guessed at, but one thing for sure, there will be some. One other story we can relate deals with placing the seeds in the ground for the machines to eventually harvest. The cheers for this development occurred in the early 1700s when Jethro Tull, an Englishman, invented a horse drawn seed drill. In the mid 1800s, George Van Brunt developed a model which covered the seeds before birds got to them. Because of the Van Brunt seeder we first get acquainted with one of the early movers and shakers of Ransom County.

A. H. Laughlin tells the story himself in an address he gave to the Sheldon Old Settlers Picnic on July 27, 1907. “On the 26th day of January, 1882, I first saw North Dakota, arriving in Kindred that morning via Wahpeton, with H. A. Palmer, who still lives near Lisbon. We unloaded a carload of Van Brunt seeders and started the next morning on foot for Lisbon forty miles away, as there were no teams going through.”

He goes on, “It was a bright, beautiful morning. They told us to take the old government road, and that there were three hotels, or places where travelers were kept. About 10 o’clock a dark

cloud appeared in the northwest and we were soon in the middle of a blizzard. At French’s they could not keep us, so we tramped on to Porter’s, facing the blizzard nine miles. Mrs. Porter could not give us even a cup of tea, as they were entirely out of provisions. I asked her if she could spare a little heat from her stove.”

Bear in mind this was 1882 and very little development had occurred. Laughlin’s story continues, “We rested a while, when fortunately a four horse sleigh drove up loaded with merchandise for Joseph Goodman’s store at Sheldon. It was driven by Charlie Smart and Richard Jackson; we got permission to hang on to their sleigh. There was only room on one small box of goods for one to sit on, and as Mr. Palmer had been sick I gave him that privilege. A bundle of brooms stood upright in one rear corner, and by clinging to a broomstick I could keep my head in the shelter of the brooms and stand on the rear end of the runner.”

The blinding snow caused them to lose their way. “Once we were lost on the prairie and headed for the sandhills southeast, but Charlie took to the snow ahead of the lead horses and found the trail by intuition. He wore a wolf skin coat and cap, which may have helped him. Arriving in Sheldon about five o’clock the boys stopped in front of the hotel kept by Robert Grieve. It was new and had two blocks of square timber for steps. I got one foot up one step and could not induce the other one to follow, and fell down, unconscious with cold and exhaustion.”

They carried him in and warmed him to get his circulation going. He goes on, “We slept upstairs and the next morning the snow was an inch deep all over the bed. Our hands were so badly frozen that the landlord had to assist us in dressing. It was forty-four degrees below zero.”

He completed the trip. “We arrived in Lisbon that day by the stage driven by Thomas Eastman via Bonnersville and Shenford. We ate our first dinner at the Robinson house and after paying for our meals had sixteen cents left.”

Laughlin set out establishing himself in the county. He purchased 800 acres of farmland and started raising cattle. Those Van Brunt seeders he helped unload must have been his because he stated when his money arrived he paid $244 freight on that car load. He used the machines to establish with partners an implement business. That same year he arrived, 1882, he was elected Register of Deeds where he was in the middle of the county’s mini- gold rush. He opened a real estate and loan office and built the Lisbon Cheese Factory in 1889 in addition to a brick kiln business.

Many of those combines working in the fields that we mentioned previously are green. Pictures indicate those Van Brunt seeders were red, but John Deere bought them in 1911.

Pistol Packin' Women

 Pistol-Packin’ Women

The year was 1882, a full 20 years past the bloody Indian uprising in Minnesota, and the settlers were still distrustful of the Indians. An incident this year occurred when a few armed Indians were spotted “performing some queer antics” in Owego. The alarm spread quickly and several Norwegian families living there packed up and left by ox team to escape to Colfax.Then news of it took a roundabout path of reaching people who could investigate it.

A message was sent to the news editor of The Fargo Argus who in turn contacted the commander of the troops in Fort Sisseton. He mustered three troops of cavalry to ride and camp somewhere east of where the Dead Colt Creek campground is now located. Next day, he rode into Lisbon accompanied by a dozen cavalrymen. Here the imagination struggles to guess what they did until the next afternoon when two scouts “dressed in the characteristic fringed buckskin suits” arrived with their findings.

They reported a small party of Sioux had been chasing antelope in the sandhills area. A detachment of cavalry was dispatched to catch and escort them back to Sisseton. The facts of that relatively peaceful ending hadn’t reached Lisbon, and rumors of an impending attack circulated wildly. The practice of “yellow journalism” by newspaper editors flourished at the time and when the Fargo Argus circulated a sensationalized and exaggerated report of the situation, the presence of soldiers seemed to confirm it.

The frightened citizens of Lisbon had knowledge of the 1862 uprising in Minnesota where many settlers had been killed. This town wasn’t going to go down without a fight and armed themselves, the women with revolvers, the men with rifles. They spent a watchful, fearful night, not knowing what to expect. Finally, after everything got sorted out, word reached them that the apparent threat had ended.

Turn to the history of Sheldon and find another story of a pistol-packin’ lady named Margaret Callan Hickey. To see her picture is to see a diminutive lady wearing granny glasses and swept- back hair that ties into a bun at the top. Her grandson wrote she had such small feet that she had to wear baby shoes until she could have shoes custom built for her.

Despite her size she was not about to be intimidated by any of the lawlessness surrounding her in Sheldon. The grandson wrote, “She carried a Colt revolver with her at all times when the men were away from the house because there were many unsavory characters prowling the countryside at that time.”

To illustrate some of the flowery language printed in the day we only need to read her obituary. Besides describing the profusion of flowers and well wishes brought for this well-respected person in the community, her obituary stated after saying goodnight to her family that night in

By Lynn Bueling

1907, “she sank peacefully into the sleep from which the awakening comes in the light of the everlasting morning.”

We’ll recall another facet of her life by saying she was married to the rugged Westerner John Hickey who brought his family to Sheldon to operate the livery stable. It is from his obituary we learn he was a participant at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Obviously he was not slain with those of the 7th cavalry because as a freighter hauling Custer’s supplies and ammunition his rig sat parked away from the battle with Major Reno’s detachment. The Hickey grave marker can be found in the Sheldon cemetery.

One more historical lady of the pistol-packin’ sorority was a gal from Winona, ND. Winona no longer exists because of its inundation by the waters of Lake Oahu, but in the days that Fort Yates stood as a working fort, it was important as a recreation site. No liquor sales were allowed on the fort or the reservation. Interestingly enough, with Winona’s location on the east side of the Missouri River and Fort Yates on the east side, soldiers exhibited creativity to cross the river, whether by ferry, ice skates, rowboats, or even swimming.

To this town came a lady with business acumen who became known as Mustache Maude because of the dark growth on her upper lip. Even though the town had several dance halls and casinos in operation, she built and successfully operated one of her own. In a town well stocked with rowdy soldiers and cowboys who often drank too much, she punctuated her authority with the big revolver she wore holstered on her hip.

The atmosphere became charged with the alcohol problem and murder of a family by Indians looking for liquor. The county commissioners started cracking down and many of the dance halls closed their doors. Maude relocated to start a ranch across the river at the town of Shields. There she found herself charged with cattle rustling by the attorney general William Langer. She told of the whereabouts of a cattle rustling gang working in the area and received a light sentence. She went on to be a sort of “Florence Nightingale” in the community by ministering to their medical needs. She stated once that as a midwife, she’d spanked half the bottoms in Grant County.

The brief accounts here of women from Lisbon, Sheldon, and Winona give us a small slice of their lives, but facts are few. I remember a quotation made by the historian/author Dee Brown where he states “Sometimes there isn’t enough material. There’s a story there and you can’t fill it in with facts, so you let your imagination run wild.” While thinking about these women with so little information about them, I can still draw vivid pictures in my imagination.

Book Talk at Zanbroz

 We just attended one of those events that I wish there were more of. Kevin Carvell from Mott possesses the largest privately owned library of North Dakota books, i.e. books about North Dakota or written by North Dakotans. The Zanbroz book store in downtown Fargo was the setting and the meeting room was packed. Carvell appeared to talk about some of his books, two boxes of which he brought along to show and tell.

When the Zanbroz manager introduced Carvell, he made a brief mention of Carvell’s involvement with the infamous “Zip to Zap” that brought a laugh. Great program! Mott being where it is means I’ll probably never get over there to visit it.

It was also my pleasure to meet and visit briefly with Chuck Haga, a retired newspaper man who now teaches some journalism students at UND in Grand Forks. I always enjoy his intelligent musings on Facebook.

Still thinking about Oppenheimer

 Still thinking about the “Oppenheimer” and atomic bomb story… A relevant article came across the Bismarck Tribune Sunday stated “The thundering Trinity test showered fallout on 46 states, including North Dakota, Minnesota and South Dakota, within 10 days.” It left “lingering questions about cancer and other health effects.”

The brother-in-law of one of my cousins experienced the results of the Trinity test firsthand - in Hiroshima. A fourteen-year-old at the time, he’d accompanied his father to visit his ailing paternal grandfather in Hiroshima, Japan. He had not come with other members of the family when they’d emigrated and settled in the U.S. in the 1930s. To make the long story short, when their visit was over they could find no way to return home. Japanese and U.S. relations had deteriorated so badly by then that there were no American-bound ships available.

Since they were stranded it was decided the boy must attend school. In the fourth year of the war he was drafted to assist in the war effort. There came that day when he looked up in the sky and saw a single plane overhead. He said at 8:16 the bomb exploded, lifted him in the air, and flung him to the ground again. Then when he looked around the smoke and dust were so thick he could not see.

When it cleared, he said the display of human suffering was too much for him to bear. “I can never forget the image nor the smell of death.” This survivor’s story is interesting to read. Go to the Cal Alumni Assn and search for “An Atomic Bomb Survivor Recalls the Horrors of Hiroshima.”

Driving Cattle to Market

 Driving Cattle to Market 

The cattle industry in this country became a thing when people started looking around at the wild longhorn cattle running loose and multiplying on the plains of Texas. The virgin grasslands of Montana and the Dakotas beckoned as a place to fatten up the skinny critters and the trail drives were born.

Cattle drives born in the imagination of writers have earned a place in popular books and television fare. Take the novel “Lonesome Dove” where Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call drove a herd on the trail from Texas to Montana, or the tv series “Rawhide” where young Clint Eastwood’s character Rowdy Yates endlessly drove a herd around the country for about eight years.

If we want to get real and close at hand, though, we can relate a good story of a trail drive in Ransom County that took place in 1940. The lady rancher Freida Bohnsack came into possession of over 2,000 acres in the sandhills. Given the ranch by her father in the mid-1930s, she left an accounting job with the Gamble-Skogmo Company in Minneapolis to come and earn a living on the land. In addition, her dad started her out with a herd of six Holstein calves.

Bear in mind this was the drought and depression period in our history and the outlook was bleak. Along with the dust storms, the year 1936 gave us the coldest and the hottest recorded temperatures in North Dakota history, minus 60 degrees in Parshall and five months later a plus 121 degrees in Steele.

She now owned a large parcel of sandhill grassland with only a few head of her own to graze on it. An enterprising business person, she decided to make the grass available to others by leasing grazing rights, something which a number of cattlemen agreed to. As these things go, the cows and calves most likely did well. Then an article in the Fargo Forum dated September 18, 1940 states a trail drive of 600 cattle were going to be made that fall. However, it took the memories of one of her trail hands named Tex Bohm to clarify the event.

Tex worked for Freida the summer before his senior year in high school. A lover of all things Western, he liked his job, especially so when Freida arranged and coordinated an overland drive of 600 cattle to the West Fargo Stockyards. He would be able to participate in an old-time cattle drive. So many details have been lost or dimmed since that time 83 years ago, but he left a few.

He spoke of the winding route the herd took because fences or other developments stood in their way, but rights-of-way were followed when possible which provided enough room for the herd to pass through. None of the history of the event tells how long it took. One of the riders was an older man who rode sidesaddle. Tex asked why? His answer was it was more comfortable to ride that way when you have hemorrhoids.

The stockyards no longer exist, but try to imagine a cattle herd driven in on the hoof now with the commercial and residential development surrounding that site. Built in 1935, the facility stood alone and apart from any thing else, and in 1940 it was still that way. It is doubtful many herds came in that way. The history of the West Fargo Stockyards was published in 1985: “Through Chutes and Alleys: A Half Century of the West Fargo Union Stockyards.” It makes no mention of trail drives delivering stock. Trucks and rail cars were already serving that purpose.

The number 600 head being driven to West Fargo comes into question. When Tex died, his obituary stated he helped “when Freida Bohnsack drove 300 head of cattle from her Ransom County ranch to Fargo.” A city-born writer working for the Forum might’ve misunderstood and should’ve written that the roundup in September, 1940 separated the cow-calf pairs and 300 spring calves were driven to market, leaving 300 cows behind?

How much would they have brought on the market? The stockyards history stated that in 1940 136,904 cattle came bringing an average price per hundred weight of $6.80 for cattle, whereas 17,912 calves brought $8.00. Prices did increase through the years. In 1984, the last year recorded in this history, cattle brought $52.70 and calves $62.30.

November 30, 2020 was the market’s last day of operation.The manager stated, “There was little warning of the closure. We were doing dang good business, and they called and said in two weeks you have to lock the doors and shut it down.” With the encroachment of development surrounding the facility, he surmised the property was more valuable that the business was.

It’s not known when this independent lady rancher stopped leasing grassland to other cattle producers, but she eventually filled it with her own herd of Angus cattle that grew to 300 in number. Her successful management of the ranch earned her a spot in 2002 in the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame.

In the state’s history several cowboys followed the herds up from Texas, found the area to their liking, and stayed: Ben Bird, Ott Black, Bill Molash, and more. They live on with their colorful pasts defining them. As for the fictional Lonesome Dove, it might be remembered from the story that Gus had two pigs that followed the herd to Montana. Unfortunately for them, after Gus died the ranch hands butchered them for a Christmas dinner. As improbable as it might seem, it could’ve happened. I have a true story where a sow followed a pioneer wagon from Iowa to the Enderlin area. Some day I might just pass it along.

Halls of Fame

 

Various halls of fame can be found in North Dakota established to preserve and honor the memory of notable citizens. An argument might be made that The Rough Rider Hall of Fame in the capitol building at Bismarck is  the premier one. The hall inducted for its first member in 1961 the popular Lawrence Welk. He still rides high in the estimation of many older North Dakotans, especially in the “sauerkraut triangle” with its high density of Germans who emigrated from Russia. 

By July of last year 47 people had been inducted representing a wide variety of achievers such as entertainers, athletes, authors, entrepreneurs, and others that have excelled. Other halls of fame have been established, too. They can be found in such places as the Sports Hall of Fame, Jamestown’s Civic Center;  The Aviation Hall of Fame, in the terminal building at the Bismarck Municipal Airport; and The Entrepreneur Hall of Fame, on the campus of the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks; as well as others.

Lest some readers think we’ve omitted a big one, rest assured, it’s been saved for last, just because it’s my favorite - The Cowboy Hall of Fame (NDCHF) in Medora. When inductees are chosen, the committees award their honors for a variety of individuals, animals, and events. Any connections to Ransom County? Yes.

The Sheldak Ranch near Sheldon owned by Dave and Kim Utke entered the Ranches Division of the hall in 2022. They’ve built an international reputation for raising Appaloosa horses of note. The NDCHF summarized their entry: “They bought an old farmstead near Sheldon, ND, and started with nothing but $1,000 cash, a small loan from the local bank, and one mare. The couple spent years fixing up the run-down farmstead into what it is today – a premier North Dakota ranching operation recognized worldwide to countless stock horse owners and enthusiasts.”

Over their 54 years in operation, the Utke’s have earned countless ribbons, trophies, and accolades, but now, in their 80s , want to slow down. 

In 2007, I had a hand in the induction of a gentleman for the Pre-1940 Ranching Division when I spoke for Donald Stevenson at their selection meeting. My interest in his accomplishments had grown over the years through his work in the county and beyond as a freighter. He and his ox drawn wagons hauled the materials and supplies for the building of Fort Ransom in the 1860s, then onward to Fort Abraham Lincoln where he furnished the necessities to build its structures.

The distances his wagons traveled while moving at the speed of plodding oxen are mind-boggling. Much of the freight came up the Mississippi River to St. Cloud where his wagons would load and begin their arduous journeys. Fort Abercrombie stood as a stopover as did Pigeon Point in Ransom County. It was his forty-wagon train that stalled in a three-day blizzard near Lisbon. 

Establishing his operations in Bismarck, his wagon train to the Black Hills was the first to bring back gold ore samples, which helped to set off a gold rush. After a life of adventures in the territory, he finally settled down and began ranching in Grant County.

The Bohnsack Ranch at Sheldon entered the Pre-1940s Ranching category of the Hall of Fame in 2002. After inheriting her family’s 2,000 acre ranch in 1935 with a big mortgage, Freida Bohnsack went to work rebuilding and making it a viable operation during the drought and depression years of the 1930s. As she started building her own herd of cattle, she took in cattle for summer grazing from which an interesting story developed.

In those years before large horse trailers and cattle trucks were available, herds were driven overland to their destination. Being a resourceful thinker, she organized a trail drive with other owners of 600 head to the West Fargo Stockyards. Having found a clue to this, I searched the archives of The Fargo Forum and found in a September 18, 1940 issue an article about the drive. The paper’s reporter opened with “Frieda Bohnsack has dropped her M.A. (Master of Arts) for some very early A.M. in Ransom County and the result is she has brought some old fashioned cow country with the very environs of the Red River Valley.”

Through the years she participated in several relevant organizations, started a saddle club and a 4-H club, and taught school for a couple of years. Along the way she adopted a baby girl, Bonita, who still owns the ranch. Freida was the first woman to be inducted to the NDCHF.

Kenneth Krueger joined the ranks of the Hall of Famers in 2016 in the Pre-1940 Rodeo category. He might not have lived in Ransom County, but it was nearby in Cass County. He began his rodeo career as a saddle bronc rider in the early 1930s. and then promoted his own rodeos at his Leonard ranch and other local venues in the 40s and 50s. He was instrumental in promoting rodeo in the southeastern region of North Dakota. Many of the rodeo posters listed him as “Wild Horse Krueger,” bronc rider, rodeo producer and trick rider. He dressed and lived the part. We find “Ken Krueger, the bronc rider” listed on Bohnsack Dude Ranch poster advertising an upcoming rodeo in 1942.

I’ve been a long time fan of rodeo events, especially the bucking bulls. One named Little Yellow Jacket lived near Mandan, ND, and I’d watch him perform whenever I could. His horns were distinctively mismatched. One pointed downward while its mate aimed up. Ridden only 14 times out of 90 tries, he was described by an official of the Professional Bull Riders Assn as  “a once in a lifetime bull. He has the kind of heart, desire and athletic ability that true champions in any walk of life possess.” When he bucked the last time in North Dakota at the Bismarck Civic Center, there was a big celebration, and he won that time, too. We were there. He was inducted in 2006.

Since the NDCHF’s inception, about 230 men, women, events, and livestock have entered its membership roster, all of them representing impressive achievements.

Lack of Decorum

 Lack of Decorum  

The phrase “lack of decorum” gets bandied about occasionally in politics whenever someone has gotten miffed about the opposition’s behavior. They just didn’t do it right! Many examples of the problem can be found. The best (or maybe it’s the worst) case of it happened in 1985 at a black tie affair of the Washington Press Club dinner and centers on two people John Riggins, a star football player and Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman Supreme Court justice.

Riggins was invited to the dinner by People magazine because of his stellar performances on the football field, even to the point of earning Most Valuable Player in Super Bowl XVII. For whatever reasons, he’d been drinking heavily that day besides not eating. He was seated at the same table as Justice O’Connor, and in the course of the evening told her to

“loosen up, Sandy baby. You’re too tight.” He then proceeded to fall asleep under their table. It must have worked on his conscience, because the next time they met he gave her a dozen roses. He did exhibit a lack of decorum.

We recently returned from the 37th annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Medora. Its founder Bill Lowman has persisted all these years in successfully rounding up participants. I make no claims about being a cowboy but do like the poetry and songs that come from that thinking and even try a hand at writing some myself. Consequently, we’ve attended to participate a few times.

One of the pieces I wrote and recited concerned a real life occurrence and is a good example of a lack of decorum. It happened this way. My wife is a west river girl born and raised among cowboys and individualists who thrive in that rugged yet beautiful environment. One of her family’s neighbors was a man named Dan Panko, a state representative.

The family got to know big, burly, cigar-smoking man well since he’d occasionally drive in the yard to sit and visit. As for his legislative stance he had a pet peeve with which he felt needed action. He wanted funding for a bounty on rattlesnakes. We’re talking about that area around Sioux and Grant countries where one is often cautioned to watch for snakes.

In 1941, his colleagues wouldn’t even consider the bill for his cause. But he wasn’t about to accept defeat. I wrote, “The only way you could dilute/ the danger lurking in those buttes/ was pass a bounty, but they wouldn’t budge./ As for Panko we’ll see that they misjudged/ the resolve be brought to this debate.”

He went home for some snake hunting which was easy to do in the winter months because the cold, lethargic snakes were balled up in dens. He put about fifty of them in a box and took them to the capitol and dumped them out on the floor. “Such a commotion you never saw/ as when the snakes began to thaw/ and crawl about in the warmth of that room.”

With only one dissenting vote, 110-1, his efforts paid off. A bill appropriated $10,000 to be paid out at the rate of 25 cents per tail. Panko’s break from standard behavior, that is lack of decorum, brought results. By the way, his ploy made news around the country. A headline in an Oregon newspaper read, “Legislators Are Rattled.”

Another of my poems titled “The Stockyards Hotel” dealt with memories. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen cattle cars rolling on the tracks. Until about 1950 a stockyards stood along the tracks in Sheldon where farmers could load livestock into slatted cars for shipping to market. But about this time another group of inhabitants found shelter here. Itinerant workers, bums, tramps, hoboes, whatever they were called hitched rides on the trains to come to work in the grain fields at harvest time.

As the poem goes, “This was just what the ladies feared/ each day this time of year./ They’d cry, those bums/ pull my carrots and dig my spuds/ and steal overalls off the line./ One gal got so doggone mad/ she chased them down the street/ waving her broom/ and screaming their doom/ til they escaped to their dens/ in the shipping pens/ to hide til the coast was clear.”

Territorial and early statehood history has long been a favorite of mine. One of the biggest personalities to wield oversized control of people and events in this period was Alexander McKenzie. As he became an established figure in Dakota Territory, he discovered his position of power lay with employer the Northern Pacific Railroad through which he pulled off a big example of getting his way through a lack of decorum.

The territorial capital at Yankton sat in the far southeastern part of the territory and proved too far removed from the activity occurring farther north. The rail line stretched across the state by now and the railroad wanted the capital city of the territory moved north to Bismarck. Yankton was not going to give up without a fight, though. In the territorial legislature, a bill passed whereby a law described how a new capital city was to be chosen. In the process, Yankton thought they would be able to pull the strings that would keep it there.

The governor at the time, Nehemiah Ordway, appointed a nine member commission to do the choosing and were to meet within 30 days, specifically in Yankton. While there, they were to organize and elect officers, after which they would select the capital. McKenzie and eight other cohorts made up the commission. Not wanting to meet in Yankton but required to, they knew they could come under extreme pressure from Yankton city leaders.

McKenzie devised the plan of tricking Yankton’s leaders by hiring a train locomotive pulling one passenger car in which the commissioners were seated. Early in the morning while Yankton still slept, the train slowly rolled into town, within the city limits a meeting was called to order, they conducted the necessary official business, and then chugged away and into the countryside. The letter of the law had been obeyed, and the commissioners could now choose Bismarck. Lack of decorum? I’d say so.

Yellowstone Kelly

 Yellowstone Kelly

Occasionally an historic character passes through Ransom County. Take Luther S. Kelly, for instance. His birth name won’t be recognized, but when his contemporaries added the nickname “Yellowstone,” he became Yellowstone Kelly, a historic character who made a name for himself on the frontier.

As a younger man he tried to join the military during the Civil War, but since he was only 16 years of age, the army denied his enlistment wishes. He still wanted in, though, but didn’t go to the lengths one young enlistee made when he wrote the number 18 on a piece of paper and slipped it in his shoe. When he went in to enlist, he swore that he was “over 18.”

Whether that story was true or not, Kelly was successful the second time he tried enlisting because of the help of his mother. We don’t know if it was ego or tongue-in-cheek when he wrote that the army officer who examined him this time “seemed impressed by my good looks and tall stature.”

In the spring of 1867 while still wearing the army uniform, he was stationed at Fort Wadsworth in Dakota Territory which is near the Sisseton we know today. His company received orders to build a fort near Bears Den Hill. As they travelled along to this assignment, they came upon the startling scene of dead buffaloes as far as the eye could see. They appeared to be healthy animals and did not bear bullet or arrow wounds so the cause of their death remained a mystery. Nevertheless the scene impressed him because they were the first buffalo Kelly had ever seen.

His first look at Bears Den Hill did not impress him. He called it a grass-covered knob set in a rolling plain that was bare of timber except for trees along streams and coulees. They immediately began building the fort which for the most part consisted of plain log buildings having rough board floors lighted by candles. Kelly tells us more than anyone does about their daily lives at the fort. Daily rations consisted of salt pork, bacon, beans, rice, dried apples, and peaches, together with coffee and tea. For the evening meal the cook dished out a plate of cold boiled pork, a big chunk of bread, and a pint of tea.

Fort Ransom couldn’t hold Kelly. His term of enlistment ended less than a year after arrival and he chose not to re-enlist. The wide open spaces beckoned and he chose an independent life of adventure. He went to Fort Buford which was situated in the midst of white and Indian turmoil. Whenever mail passed between Fort Buford and Fort Stevenson, an escort of mounted troops usually accompanied it. Kelly gained respect for the following event.

One day an expected delivery of mail to Fort Buford did not arrive, and they suspected the mail carrier and his escort had been intercepted. The officer-in-charge wanted to send some important mail to Fort Stevenson, but no soldiers could be spared for escort service. Kelly stepped forward

and volunteered to take the mail through alone. Because of his youthful appearance, people overhearing his offer broke out laughing at him. He persisted and received the go-ahead.

He crossed the ice on the Missouri River and reached Fort Berthold two days later. After resting for a few hours he headed out to Fort Stevenson which he reached in good order and handed the important dispatch to Col. de Trobriand. Wasting no time, he headed back.

On the return trip he encountered a situation which the famous western painter C. M. Russell preserved on canvas. Kelly met two Sioux warriors who began shooting at him. They wounded both Kelly and his horse, but he began defending himself and killed one with a shot to the heart. The second one took cover behind a large cottonwood tree and while ducking back and forth took quick shots at Kelly. The game didn’t go on long because Kelly anticipated the warrior’s timing and connected with a timely shot.

In 1873 General Forsyth received orders to explore the Yellowstone River and realized he needed a reliable guide, and Kelly came highly recommended. He went on to guide for the different expeditions undertaken by the military in Montana. The years passed until an episode in his life called the Alaskan expedition occurred. The United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867 and then forgot about it until gold was discovered there in 1896. The government realized the area was a blank spot on the map and sent military units there to conduct surveying and mapping work. Kelly hired on as an interpreter and guide. Their work made possible the building of the Alaska Railroad in 1923 because it followed the route mapped by the 1898 expedition.

He went on to fight in the Philippines after which he served as the Indian agent at the San Carlos Indian Reservation in Arizona. As he grew older, he received recognition from the outgoing President Theodore Roosevelt who invited him to the White House for a breakfast gathering of people that TR admired for their work. In addition to Kelly were Seth Bullock, the sheriff of Deadwood, Gifford Pinchot, head of the forest service, and almost thirty others. Finally, to cap it off, Kelly retired to a small farm in California.

In his 80th year he realized the fact of his mortality and requested that upon his death he be sent back to Montana for burial. When he died in 1928, his casket was accompanied by a military honor guard to Billings, Montana where he was borne by horse-drawn wagon to a spot on The Rimrocks overlooking the Yellowstone River Valley. A thousand people attended the ceremony.

Crossing the Sheyenne

 Crossing the Sheyenne

The seasonal harvest has begun and big combines have entered the fields to begin harvesting. To watch them is to see the best way of separating grain from chaff and straw developed to date. Before the time that any of us can remember, animals tramped on ripe straw to knock the kernels loose from their heads. Or in another method a worker struck the heads with a flail to separate the kernels and then scoop the grain up and toss it in the air for the wind to winnow the chaff from the mix.

Cyrus McCormick came along with his mechanical reaper that cut the straw to fall behind it on the ground. A worker walked behind to gather it by hand and bundle it into sheaves. It enabled farmers to raise more grain and harvest it in less time.

I possess a picture of a historical nature for which I hope to find a permanent home. I first noticed it in the Sheldon Community History - 1981 where it carried this inscription: The Wall Bros. Threshing Crew crossing the “Froemke” Sheyenne River Crossing south of Anselm, ND. It was given to me by Tom Spiekermeier of Sheldon who in his personal dark room enlarged it to its present size of 11” by 14”and preserved a great deal of detail.

Curious to when this scene occurred, I searched and found the following reference in the Sheldon Progress of July 19, 1901: “Fred Wall and brother Alfred have bought a fine new threshing outfit and will make the straw fly this fall.” In another reference dated August 30, 1901 the Progress reported that the separator was a 40-60 Nichols and Shepard Red River Special that was powered by a Pitts 22 horsepower engine. Fourteen crew members can be counted in this scene which is a far cry from today’s one combine operator and one person to haul the grain away.

Further developments in harvesting techniques can only be guessed at, but one thing for sure, there will be some. One other story we can relate deals with placing the seeds in the ground for the machines to eventually harvest. The cheers for this development occurred in the early 1700s when Jethro Tull, an Englishman, invented a horse drawn seed drill. In the mid 1800s, George Van Brunt developed a model which covered the seeds before birds got to them. Because of the Van Brunt seeder we first get acquainted with one of the early movers and shakers of Ransom County.

A. H. Laughlin tells the story himself in an address he gave to the Sheldon Old Settlers Picnic on July 27, 1907. “On the 26th day of January, 1882, I first saw North Dakota, arriving in Kindred that morning via Wahpeton, with H. A. Palmer, who still lives near Lisbon. We unloaded a carload of Van Brunt seeders and started the next morning on foot for Lisbon forty miles away, as there were no teams going through.”

He goes on, “It was a bright, beautiful morning. They told us to take the old government road, and that there were three hotels, or places where travelers were kept. About 10 o’clock a dark

cloud appeared in the northwest and we were soon in the middle of a blizzard. At French’s they could not keep us, so we tramped on to Porter’s, facing the blizzard nine miles. Mrs. Porter could not give us even a cup of tea, as they were entirely out of provisions. I asked her if she could spare a little heat from her stove.”

Bear in mind this was 1882 and very little development had occurred. Laughlin’s story continues, “We rested a while, when fortunately a four horse sleigh drove up loaded with merchandise for Joseph Goodman’s store at Sheldon. It was driven by Charlie Smart and Richard Jackson; we got permission to hang on to their sleigh. There was only room on one small box of goods for one to sit on, and as Mr. Palmer had been sick I gave him that privilege. A bundle of brooms stood upright in one rear corner, and by clinging to a broomstick I could keep my head in the shelter of the brooms and stand on the rear end of the runner.”

The blinding snow caused them to lose their way. “Once we were lost on the prairie and headed for the sandhills southeast, but Charlie took to the snow ahead of the lead horses and found the trail by intuition. He wore a wolf skin coat and cap, which may have helped him. Arriving in Sheldon about five o’clock the boys stopped in front of the hotel kept by Robert Grieve. It was new and had two blocks of square timber for steps. I got one foot up one step and could not induce the other one to follow, and fell down, unconscious with cold and exhaustion.”

They carried him in and warmed him to get his circulation going. He goes on, “We slept upstairs and the next morning the snow was an inch deep all over the bed. Our hands were so badly frozen that the landlord had to assist us in dressing. It was forty-four degrees below zero.”

He completed the trip. “We arrived in Lisbon that day by the stage driven by Thomas Eastman via Bonnersville and Shenford. We ate our first dinner at the Robinson house and after paying for our meals had sixteen cents left.”

Laughlin set out establishing himself in the county. He purchased 800 acres of farmland and started raising cattle. Those Van Brunt seeders he helped unload must have been his because he stated when his money arrived he paid $244 freight on that car load. He used the machines to establish with partners an implement business. That same year he arrived, 1882, he was elected Register of Deeds where he was in the middle of the county’s mini- gold rush. He opened a real estate and loan office and built the Lisbon Cheese Factory in 1889 in addition to a brick kiln business.

Many of those combines working in the fields that we mentioned previously are green. Pictures indicate those Van Brunt seeders were red, but John Deere bought them in 1911.

An Old West Story

 An Old West Story

A compelling story of the old west had roots in the eastern part of Ransom County, in Owego, to be exact. Several members of the Ward family settled here in the early 1870s after leaving Minnesota. Little did they know they’d become central figures in the March, 1876, Battle of Big Meadow.

An interesting incident preceded that however while they were still in Ransom County which seems to stretch belief. Each time I read the account, I have to wonder if it really happened. F. A. Baguhn, an early county historian, passed along a story he’d found about an unknown child who lies in an unknown grave. He relates that the Wards were haying and trapping along the Sheyenne River when one day a man came asking them to help bury one of his children.

Nobody knew the family but about fifteen community residents gathered next day at the cabin. The roughly made coffin rested on a couple of stools and was surrounded by the mourners crowded into the little cabin. A problem arose: a clergyman was not present and no one came forward to conduct a proper service. Now what?

Was the next scene possible? The written account says the door opened and two children entered, a boy of about 16 and a girl of 14. They were children of a French half-breed family from about a mile away. Apparently wise in the ways of Christian ritual, they knelt and the girl offered up prayers and her brother sang a hymn. To quote the account, “It made a profound impression on those who looked on. Everyone who saw and heard the little girl and her brother that day left better men and women.” We don’t know how many hands the story passed through before Baguhn learned of it, but it was recalled by one of the Wards in later years.

We’ll move on with telling a story of the old west where the Wards were key figures in a drama. They had been eying a destination further west and trekked to Bismarck the next year, arriving just before the Northern Pacific rails reached there in 1873. The following year, in July 1874, Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills, an event that would change the history of the region. His orders included searching for a good spot to build a new fort and finding out if there was anything to the rumor of gold in the hills. He sent out news - gold was indeed present, news which created a stampede of miners to the hills. Of course, this was treaty land and these interlopers made the Indians none too happy.

Growing numbers of miners were creating a big market for products such as meat, clothing, ammunition, shovels, and, of course, whisky. Like many other gold rush situations, astute businessmen saw profits in selling these necessities to the miners and not digging in the dirt themselves. Here the Wards re-enter the narrative. By 1876, they had acquired some beef cattle and saw profit in trailing a herd to hungry miners who craved a good steak.

With that first Northern Pacific train in 1873 came the printing press that Clement Lounsberry used to print the story he headlined three years later as “The Battle of Big Meadow.” He tells us that in March, 1876, Oscar Ward led a party from Bismarck to the Black Hills consisting of 50-60 men and a few women. They were scattered along the trail for about four miles. While they camped one night at Big Meadow, Indians stampeded twenty-seven head of stock which prompted some men to go out to regain possession of them. Oscar’s brother George accompanied this group. Running gun battles occurred, but they did retake some of the cattle, although they had to fight to keep them. Men were wounded including George who took bullets in his shoulder and a life-ending shot to his chest. Of the fourteen men who pursued their stolen cattle, only two were uninjured. They buried George, wrapped in blankets, on the prairie and the wagons and cattle rolled out again the next day.

Another character who reported his version of the story to Lounsberry was Donald Stevenson. He might be remembered as the owner of a wagon train that stalled in 1867 during a three-day blizzard near what is now Lisbon. He also saw profits supplying the Black Hills miners and passed through the area with his train shortly after the Ward train. He found the body of George Ward that Indians had dug up and stripped of clothing. They reburied him and then disguised the site by running animals back and forth across it. A few months later when George tried to find his brother’s grave, he was unsuccessful.

As I stated earlier, the Indians became angry at white miners and settlers trespassing on land they had been granted by treaty. Only three months later, June 25, 1876, they brought down Custer’s command at the Little Big Horn.

The Raw Wounds Have Healed

 The Raw Wounds Have Healed

Try as I might, I could not reach the top of that sand dune. For every step gained, I’d slip back to where I started. My shoes filled with sand, and I soon tired of climbing and sliding. I started pestering my mother and grandma that I was hot and wanted to go home. No, not til the pails were full of juneberries.

This little scenario took place when I was a young tyke about 75 years ago. Raw blowouts and sand dunes were plentiful in the eastern part of the county; reclamation had only started to heal it. A personal recollection of those times came from Elizabeth Bost who wrote “...the winds returned again and again to create their own landscapes of dunes and blow holes.” Later she remarked on playing in them: “...to play in the sand was a danger in itself. If one misjudged the depth of a blowout before sliding into it he might very well need help in getting out.”

At one time people lived on this acreage and tried to coax a living from its dry sandy soil, but the so-called “dirty thirties” arrived and endless winds blew and tore soil loose and carried it away in great clouds. To further complicate their troubles, everyone had to contend with the Great Depression.

The election of 1932 brought Franklyn Delano Roosevelt to the presidency. He soon set out to bring relief to the country suffering from this “double whammy.” Part of his attention turned to areas like these sandhills in Ransom County where farmers went broke and had begun leaving. Roosevelt’s response was to create the Resettlement Administration (RA) which resettled poor farmers on more productive land, promoted soil conservation, provided emergency relief and loaned money to help farmers buy and improve farms.

To administer the RA, Roosevelt tapped Rexford Tugwell as his point man. A liberal university economist, he had become an assistant secretary of agriculture. He successfully implemented the plan of resettlement but came under heavy criticism since he believed in a certain amount of government planning for land usage. Trained in the ways of a research scientist, he had traveled to Russia in 1927 to study their system. Upon return to the U.S., critics labeled him a communist, “Rex the Red.” Historians agree he was at all times a loyal American and was never affiliated in any way with the Communist Party.

In a nutshell, the plan was for the government to buy submarginal land and make loans available to farmers who wanted to move to better land and continue farming. It wasn’t met with universal acceptance though. A newspaper article from April, 1935 headlined this: “Farmers at McLeod Organize to Fight Purchase of Sand Hill Acres.” Spokesmen for the group insisted the ground was not sub-marginal and that if cattle prices rose the land would provide a good living again. Wyndmere merchants also objected fearing the loss of business from too many farm families leaving the community.

Tugwell forged ahead and prevailed. He had entered the fray with supreme confidence but started to weaken from the hammering he was taking. The Bismarck Tribune of July 16, 1936 stated in a headline “Tugwell Different From ‘Prof’ of ’33.” The interviewer detected his weariness, and in November, 1936, Tugwell resigned his position, lasting only two years.

Besides the local groups voicing their criticism, a Catholic priest made his opposition known through a popular national radio program. Father Charles Coughlin first took to the airwaves in 1926, broadcasting weekly sermons over the radio. By the early 1930s the content of his broadcasts had shifted from theology to economics and politics. He began as an early Roosevelt supporter, but later in the 1930s he turned against FDR and became one of the president's harshest critics. FDR’s programs and appointees suffered from the attacks.

Coughlin’s fervor rose as millions of Americans tuned in each week. Eventually his professing a dislike of Jews among other things might be what took him too far because soon the Catholic hierarchy finally silenced him and sent him back to the work of a parish priest.

Tugwell left, Coughlin left, but the project yielded 70,180 acres of public land and 64,769 acres of privately owned land. Termed tallgrass prairie, this Sheyenne National Grassland, locally administered by the Forest Service office in Lisbon, provides grazing for over 80 ranchers and habitat for a wide range of wildlife and plant life. It is one of the few places where I’ve heard Meadowlarks singing in recent years.

It was at my mother’s funeral that I learned of a thin yet personal connection to resettlement. A lifelong friend of the family told me the story of how his parents had resettled and vacated their old farmhouse. They still had the keys and decided to hold a community dance in it. A young boy at the time, he remembered seeing my parents, before they were married, having a great time dancing. The family’s move to productive land south of Sheldon paid well since I’ve seen many a good crop raised on the new farm.

Today, whenever the walls close in and we feel the urge to escape city noise and traffic, we like to head back to the sand hills in the eastern part of Ransom County. It is quiet and lightly populated and the blowouts and dunes have healed. It welcomes me.

They Gave, Too

 They Gave, Too

Many residents of Ransom County have served the country while wearing a military uniform. I’m holding a book - Ransom County’s Loyal Defenders - written by former county residents Michael and Ann Knudson. A comprehensive book, it gathers in one place the names of those from the county who wore our country’s uniform in World War I. A daunting task it must have been to collect all the information, including over 600 names with brief biographies of each one.

I can find my Grandpa Andrew Sandvig included in its pages. A stoic Norwegian immigrant who wasn’t particularly well-versed in the English language, he never left much of a written record. However, knowing his division number, 91st, and his regiment number, 362nd, I’ve been able to trace his participation in the battle of the Meuse-Argonne through various historical texts. It all seems so real, but over a hundred years have passed since that time.

But this article won’t be about the men and women who fought in that war. Instead, consider something that is often overlooked - the horses and mules that worked and died alongside the army. One bit of experience Grandpa left us with was how it bothered him to hear the screams of the wounded horses trapped in no-man’s land where no one dared approach them.

About a dozen years ago the movie War Horse played in theaters and gave us Steven Spielberg’s Hollywood version of the use and abuse of horses in the European war setting. Newspaper articles from that time mostly agree and give us a picture of the difficult conditions where men and animals fought. History tells us how army casualties soared, and we learn the life expectancy of a horse taken to a battlefield was a mere four days. Mechanized vehicles hadn’t yet developed to the point of making a large impact.

Injuries, sickness, gassing, and wounds, even to the point where they were targeted by enemy guns, combined to take huge numbers of horses out of action, so many that European farmers could no longer supply adequate numbers. The solution: send buyers to the United States to find replacements.

Newspapers of the time preserve the history of countless occurrences of purchases and shipping. For instance, the Evening Times - Republican of Marshalltown, Iowa on May 22, 1915 reported this. “Only yesterday a train load of horses consisting of 620 head were unloaded by the Northwestern at their yards in Boone, rested and fed. These were on their way to the war zone. This occurs several times a week.”

Keeping in mind that World War I did not end until November, 1918, the rounding up and selling of horses stayed strong throughout the war. The headline on an Ogden (Utah) Standard article stated on June 15, 1918, “Things Moving at Stockyards.” Among the livestock being sold, the report stated “... there in the section of the Ogden Horse Sale & Commission company, a steady stream of horse flesh is pushing under the hand of the British purchasing commission, rejections

and selections made, and train loads assembled for shipment across the seas where they will haul some of the cannon that will blaze the way to Berlin.”

Anything of the sort happening in North Dakota? Yes. Again newspaper reports affirm it. The Mandan News reported in 1914, “Eighteen hundred head of horses passed through Mandan yesterday for the East. The herd was purchased at Miles City by the French government for use in the war where the loss of horses has been tremendous.”

How about Ransom County? The Sheldon Progress of August 24, 1916 wrote, “Bird & Ross, a firm of horse buyers from Mt. Pleasant, Ia., who are in the vicinity buying war horses, have already secured a car which they will ship from Enderlin some time this week...” Further on it stated Bird has been “...scouring the country around Sheldon the past week with his Ford car, looking for animals that will meet the government requirements.”

How did they decide if a horse met those requirements? This headline from The Tacoma Times says it all: “Buckaroos from Montana, With Wild and Woolly Names, Busy Training 5000 Horses for Duty in Sammies’ Army.” Tacoma was just one place where horses were evaluated. There were others.

Camp Crook in South Dakota collected and evaluated horses. If approved, it was close to the Miles City market from where they would be shipped. It was here at Camp Crook that one horse was rejected but went on to earn honors as a famous rodeo bucking horse. The first to attempt riding him was Ed Marty who landed face first onto the dusty main street of Camp Crook. For some reason when he got up started singing, “It’s a long way to Tipperary.” Therefore, the horse has became known as Tipperary.

When you drive through Buffalo, South Dakota, you come to a roadside park on the south side of town where a large bronze statue of Tipperary depicts the moment after throwing that would be rider. A plaque on the site states the horse bucked off 91 riders until finally being ridden by Yakima Canutt, a famous Hollywood stuntman for John Wayne.

Large numbers of both people and animals participated in the bloody war. Others have written of the men and women, but I think of the price paid by horses, too. Numbers vary widely, but approximately a million-and-a-half American horses were purchased for service by the European allies, and some of them came from Ransom County.

Once There Were Livery Stables

 Once There Were Livery Stables

More and more electric cars can be seen driving along the roads and streets. Their batteries need to be recharged, so charging stations have popped up. We’re not done with gasoline and diesel powered vehicles yet, so gas stations still occupy a prominent place. Take it another step back to the time when we depended on “oat burners” to provide real horsepower. They needed refilling with oats and hay, and farmers fed them in barns with homegrown fuel.

But in towns or cities a century or more ago not everyone had a barn, and therefore needed a place to board their horses. Some town folks just wanted to rent a horse for the day. Salesmen arriving in town on the railroad needed a horse and buggy to take their samples around as they called on customers. To serve these needs, most every town had at least one livery stable.

Livery stables might have offered different levels of service which included buggy and wheel repair, harness repair, horseshoeing, horse trading, and possibly more. More than that occurred within its walls, however. Bums, drunks, and down-and-outers begged off a sleeping place in the soft hay in the loft. Town loafers and gossips gathered to exchange news, chew and spit, and pass the bottle around. Smells unique to the stable floated on the air. I never worked with horses but Dad did and the smell of liniment still drifts through my memory. Manure and urine permeated and flies buzzed thickly and vermin scurried about the scene. If the stable owner was a bit lazy the manure piled high behind the barn.

Locally, disgust with animal waste products probably never reached levels voiced by city dwellers. In 1900 New York City experienced what is called “The Great Horse Manure Crisis.” Most of us have seen black and white pictures of that city’s streets. The number of horses working there tallied about 100,000 which, of course, produced huge amounts of manure. Along with the smells came flies, vermin, and soupy streets whenever it rained. The problem disappeared, though, when automobiles took over.

From personal experience I can attest to the way strong smells from large numbers of cattle hang in the air, both outside and inside buildings. In 1969 as a university student in Greeley, Colorado, the 100,000 head Monfort feed lot outside of town sat where the prevailing wind gifted the campus with their particular “smell of money.”

The J. T. Hickey stable in Sheldon is my point of reference. Situated at the west end of main street, it sat across the street from the Northern Pacific depot which made it handy for passengers to leave or return on the train. If the criteria for owning a stable involved relating to the animals, knowing how to shoe them, repairing wagons, wheels, and harness, then Hickey qualified.

My interest in his story developed when I read his obituary dated April 12, 1923. Its headline stated, “J. T. Hickey, Reno’s Freighter, Died Suddenly Last Friday.” In part the story said he “often related with much vividness the stirring times of encounters with the savage Indian tribes that roamed over the state.” A civilian contractor, he hired on as a mule skinner and accompanied Custer and the 7th Cavalry’s march to the Little Big Horn.

Students of the battle know that Custer divided the 7th into three groups that day, one led by him, one by Captain Benteen, and the other by Major Reno. To support his army in the field, 150 supply wagons plus a herd of beef accompanied it to provide the food, equipment, and feed for the horses and mules. History records how Custer wanted to move faster and ordered the mules unhitched from the wagons and trained to carry packs. The mules didn’t take kindly to their new role and expressed themselves with wild entertaining behavior for onlookers. It’s been said that mules were the only animal Noah did not load into the ark.

A grandson of Hickey wrote a brief biography of him which the family shared with me. His father wanted him to apprentice to the printing trade; instead he struck out for the West. He became a stagecoach driver for a time between Jamestown and Deadwood. Later he became a supply wagon teamster for the army. The family legend states Custer’s last note, the request for help and ammunition, was dropped by the officer who received it, and J. T. picked it up and later sent it on to Custer’s widow. I’d loved to have proved that but cannot substantiate it. Neither can I substantiate the following claim that he was called to Chicago to testify at the court martial of Major Reno for Reno’s battlefield failure. The story exists as part of the family lore.

Whatever the facts of his part at the battle were, I am convinced that he was well prepared to run a livery stable. Hickey and his wife were parents of five children. One of them married Martin Kaspari and relatives still live in the area, including the editor of the Ransom County Gazette.

Wide Open, Red-Hot, and Mighty Interesting

 Wide Open, Red-Hot, and Mighty Interesting  

Frank Ziebach, editor of The Weekly Dakotian, glanced out the window of his print shop and witnessed a man crashing through the window of Robeart’s Saloon in Yankton, Dakota Territory. He saw the dazed victim rise and throw off the sash that hung around his neck, brush shards of glass from his clothing, while in the gaping window frame his burly assailant stood shouting, “That’s what you get for breaking your promise. If you want more of the same, git back in here!”

A surge of shouting and laughing men squeezed through the doorway and started toward the victim who pulled a small pistol from inside his coat and waved it in the air shouting “Keep back!” It was enough to discourage the jeering mob from coming closer while he ran from the scene.

Ziebach rushed out to gather some facts from the excited bystanders. He learned the victim was George Pinney who until recently had been serving as speaker of the house of the newly formed Dakota Territory. The strong arms belonged to Jim Somers, the sergeant at arms. What could have caused such a barbaric act?

***

The western lands beckoned settlers to come, but they met fierce resistance from the indigenous people who saw them as intruders. Soon their numbers increased to the point where the Indians recognized the futility of resisting and signed the Treaty of 1858 through which they ceded a huge area of what is now the eastern Dakotas.

When the door opened, land speculators walked through. Among the first to enter was J. B. S. Todd, who happened to be a cousin of Mrs. Lincoln. Todd had been a promoter of the treaty, and followed it up with a trip to Washington, DC to present a request for territorial status. He gained no traction, but when Lincoln became president, Todd returned, flaunting his relationship to the president’s wife, and found success. Congress passed the Organic Act. Through the process we learned Todd’s underlying ambition was to be named governor of the new territory.

President James Buchanan had cleared his desk on March 2, 1861, but before leaving signed the Organic Act to establish Dakota Territory. President Abraham Lincoln took office just two days later and found himself facing the impending Civil War. Needing to free himself from the work of establishing a functioning government in this new territory, he quickly named an acting governor, his friend Dr. William Jayne. Lincoln feared naming Todd governor would bring charges of nepotism. Besides Todd was a Democrat, a fact which would not mesh well with the party in power.

Jayne’s task was large, even needing to name a temporary capital city. He chose Yankton, knowing that when the legislators assembled, one of their jobs would be to choose an official capital site. That Yankton should win the seat of government on a permanent basis may have

been seen as a given in some quarters, but a rivalry developed with other towns vying for the honor, namely Vermillion and Bon Homme.

Dakota Territory experienced a stormy birth. When Governor Jayne arrived in Yankton on May 27, 1861, he found a dismal town with primitive amenities. Of necessity, his office consisted of a two-room cabin, the back room of which served as a bedroom that he had to share with Attorney General William E. Gleason. The attorney general soon discovered the pecking order since his daily duties included emptying the chamber pot.

In order to proceed Jayne ordered a census which accounted for about 2,400 residents. Jayne used the number to issue his first proclamation that divided the territory into judicial districts and assign judges for them. The roving Metis were hard to find for a count and the census takers didn’t bother to count Indians.

The first territorial legislature convened on March 17, 1862, consisting of nine councilmen and thirteen representatives. Starting with a clean slate, the representatives worked to fill it. Contentious discussions and arguments swirled around their selection of a permanent capital site. George Kingsbury stands as a reliable historian of the time and relates to us just how contentious it was.

When a group of legislators gathered to eat in the dining room of the Ash Hotel two argumentative councilmen loudly asserted their preferences and began fighting over the matter with J. W. Boyle promoting Vermillion and Enos Stutsman favoring Yankton. Kingsbury gave a blow by blow account of the affair. “Stutsman was crippled from birth but he was every inch a fighter and amply able to take care of himself if he could get his hands on an antagonist... Boyle seized the ketchup bottle and flung it at Stutsman’s head, narrowly missing him. ‘Stuts’ retaliated with a fusillade of tumblers, cups and the skeleton of a fowl that had contributed to the feast. The combatants then flung themselves forward across the table for a finish fight, which might have ended seriously had not friends interfered and led the enraged gentlemen out into the air by different exits and walked them around until their ardor for a fight had time to cool, which it did, and they soon after joined hands in token of forgiveness and forgetfulness.”

Some details regarding the occurrence at Robeart’s Saloon highlighted earlier can be added here. It was on April 5 of the session that speaker of the house George Pinney discovered consequences for reneging on a promise he’d made to support Yankton for territorial capital. When a candidate for the speakership he’d agreed to support Yankton so as to gain their votes. Then as speaker, for whatever reasons, he inserted Bon Homme in an amendment, lost, then inserted Vermillion in it. That action won the day, but the bill came up for reconsideration the next day which prompted Moses Armstrong to report “a little blood was shed, much whisky drank, a few eyes blackened, revolvers drawn, and some running done.”

As they deliberated, they charged Pinney as being a traitor and a liar. The sergeant at arms James Somers, having the reputation of a thug, offered to throw Pinney through the window. The panic-

stricken speaker appealed to Governor Jayne for protection who complied by sending several guardsmen. That act enraged the representatives to the point where Pinney thought better of his action and resigned. Later that day he found himself flying through a saloon window.

In the closing days of that first legislative session, a number of representatives sullied their reputations with an inglorious episode on main street. Recorded history tells us the men celebrated for three nights before wrapping up business and going back to their homes. Campfires burned all night around which they gathered drinking, singing, and speech-making. Armstrong made note of observing the remarkable sight of two legislators holding a kicking cow by the horns with a third one stretching out its tail. Two more, one on each side of the animal, sat with buckets in hand trying to squeeze milk from the non-lactating heifer. Another man lay on the ground convulsed with laughter at the futility of effort and one silver-tongued lawmaker, J. W. Boyle, who afterward went on to become a justice of the Supreme Court, stood looking in the animal’s eyes pleading with it to give milk.

Known as the Pony Congress, this group of legislators accomplished the passage of 91 laws that served as the foundation for the new territory. James Somers moved on and was shot and killed in a dispute near Chamberlain. Yankton became the bona fide capital and Vermillion received a consolation prize of what has developed into the University of South Dakota. The promised state penitentiary for Bon Homme never materialized.

Dakota Territory existed as a self-governing body for 28 years until November 2, 1889, when it split simultaneously into North and South Dakota. Rowdy as they were, the first gathering of legislators in Yankton established the foundation for the territory to function. Historical accounts penned by George Kingsbury, Moses Armstrong, and Doane Robinson permit today’s readers to know something of its beginning, a beginning that Armstrong termed, “wide open, red-hot and mighty interesting.”