Ch. 4 -The Owner Begins His Search

The Owner Begins His Search

We found ourselves held captive by the winter storm that made us wonder if we’d ever see the sun rise again. Time seemed to stand still. All we had were our thoughts and memories of a past life. Dreams of the future wouldn’t form in the wall of snow that blocked our view. And while we sat unable to move, what about the man who owned all these wagons and oxen? Where was he?

The fact that I write these words is proof enough that I survived. After meeting up with Stevenson, I could listen to his story. He wasn’t dallying anywhere but had encountered his own nightmare. I know that a story loses part of its truth when it’s repeated by listeners, so when we finally arrived in Fort Abercrombie we heard him tell it firsthand. 

Here is the story as he told it:

  I want to tell you, boys, my thoughts were with you all the while. I had business in Osakis I had to tend to and then set out by stagecoach, making it to Pomme de Terre to stay overnight. Leaving there, we thought we could reach Abercrombie next morning, but a fine mist coming from the northwest started creeping over the prairie. The storm came upon us so fast that we had all we could do to button down the flaps on the coach. The wind hit our rig head on and the exposed driver became blinded by the snow and since he had to hold the reins in both hands we took turns keeping his face and eyes wiped off.

Soon we were driving blindly. Only the sure-footedness of the horses kept us on the trail. I got into the driver’s seat and drove the team for awhile, but after making our way, the team suddenly stopped. The passengers shouted out wondering what was the matter when just then a man stuck his head out of a cabin door to welcome us. We had arrived at a stage station and didn’t know it. After spending the evening, we reached Abercrombie where I was able to rent a team of Canadian ponies with a sleigh and continue on my way. 

I made it to Faribault’s station at Pigeon Point for another stopover and took off next morning in a snowstorm. A few miles out, I ran into a dog team and sleigh carrying mail and a discharged soldier from Fort Ransom. They were drunk but with the wind at their backs should’ve been all right. As I went on the storm intensified and I had to turn back but my horses shied at a black spot in the snow. I stopped to check and found one of the drunken men who’d been on the dog sled. He was frozen stiff but still alive, and I managed to get him into my sleigh. Not long after I came upon the dog sled with the dogs still hitched to it. I don’t know where the musher was, but I wanted to release the dogs. The team’s leader leaped at me and almost got me by the throat so I decided to leave them as they were.

A welcome sight of smoke rising from a campsite of traders on the river appeared where I could stop and spend the night. They helped unload the frozen man and took him by the fire to start rubbing him down. By morning they had him awake and talking and I was able to start looking for my outfit again. I had an Indian companion now and whenever we reached a ravine we had to unhitch the horses and draw the sled across and let the ponies wallow through as best they could.

Stevenson finally makes it through to his stalled wagons and what does he find? Next week’s installment will provide the answers.

They went with Sibley

Here are two gravestones marking the final resting places of members of Sibley’s Expedition in 1863 that passed through North Dakota. Andrew Moore was wounded on July 24, 1863 at the Battle of Big Mound, northeast of Tappen, and lingered until death overtook him at Camp Arnold, north of present day Oriska, ND on August 15.

James M. Kinney returned to live a full life with death coming on November 22nd, 1915. His grave is located at the far west edge the old Owego Church Cemetery in Ransom County. While visiting the gravesites of my relatives buried there, I noticed Kinney’s stone standing apart from the others. It interested me enough to do some research. Mr. Henry Ylvisaker filled out the necessary paperwork to request the stone from the War Department. It was shipped via the Northern Pacific Railroad on August 9, 1939 and placed here on arrival.

Since Kinney was a wagoner, might it not be possible that Andrew Moore rode in his wagon on the way to Camp Arnold? It’s one of those historical mysteries that can never be known.

More About Yellowstone Kelly

There seemed to be quite a bit of interest with Yellowstone Kelly and his arrival at the site that he helped build into Fort Ransom. Unfortunately the passage about Fort Ransom is small. He does tell about living conditions at the fort.

Writing in 1926, he says, “Judged by the standards of the present day our situation was cheerless enough. We constructed rude quarters of logs, floored with boards and lighted by candles. Our daily ration consisted of salt pork, bacon, beans, rice, dried apples, and peaches, together with coffee and tea. We always had sweet fresh bread, however, and were supplied beef by contract. Notwithstanding our rude quarters and simple fare, we were as happy and cheerful as soldiers could be.

“For the evening meal we marched through a dark corridor, cold as ice, to the kitchen where the cook and his assistant dished out a pint of tea and a good-sized chunk of bread, while as a side there was usually a plate of cold boiled pork from which each soldier might help himself. Having procured our share of pork, we returned with it to our quarters, where we ate our meal.” He concludes the passage with, “It was early spring when I left Fort Ransom.”

Kelly went on to a life of adventure and become friends with some of the well-known names of the West. With Teddy Roosevelt ending his term as president, he invited some of them for a farewell luncheon at the White House. Included in the group were Deadwood sheriff Seth Bullock, chief of the Forest Service Gifford Pinchot, and Luther S. Kelly. TR had first met Yellowstone Kelly on the Little Missouri when he ranched in the Badlands.

Yours truly enjoys stories about the early frontier days of Dakota Territory, especially those where Ransom County was the setting. AND there are lots of them that should be preserved in a modern format.

Yellowstone Kelly Helps Build the Fort

An interesting character named Yellowstone Kelly emerges from the shadows of Ransom County’s earliest history. At 15 and too young to join the army during the Civil War, he skirted the rules by scribbling the number “18” and placing it in his shoe so that he could swear that he was “over 18.” While he went on to live an adventurous life in the West, what’s important here is an episode concerning the construction of Fort Ransom while he was still in the army.

Here are his words: “Early in the spring of 1867 the company was ordered to establish a station at the forks of the Cheyenne River near Bear’s Den Hill … Our course led over a rolling prairie. Nothing of interest occurred until the second or third day, when we crossed a high and level plain which extended for many miles. This plain was covered with a thin coating of ice, and on all sides as far as the eye could reach was dotted with the bodies of dead buffaloes. These animals were in good condition and bore no mark of bullet or arrow wounds. The cause of their death was a mystery to us. As we marched over the plain toward the valley of the Cheyenne the appearance of so many carcasses scattered around made a strong impression on my mind, perhaps because they were the first buffaloes I had ever seen.”

Another Generation...

All four of them arrived for Christmas, 2019. The Santa is familiar in real life, Smoky Sletmoe. We've known him for years. He loves being Santa!

Chapter three - Stalled

The Story of a Stranded Wagon Train

Stalled

Chapter Three

I dread calling to mind the experience that I’m about to relate since it tested my resolve to live. Swift moving storm clouds overtook and swathed us under a white sheet that settled and obscured anything with shape or color. We were swallowed into a storm that ebbed, then intensified, growing ever stronger. If an order to stop came from the front of the train, we never knew. Wagons just stopped, not well-ordered, but helter-skelter. I couldn’t see the one ahead, and when I realized he’d stopped, I veered my team off to the right and stopped sideward. It would be three days before we’d see the disarrayed order of the wagons.

The first winds had set upon us from our right rear, sweeping through our ranks, and driving heavy snow into and around each man and beast. We generally walked alongside the wagons to avoid the jolting ride. While walking, we could also goad the oxen and crack the bullwhip like a gunshot over their ears to keep them moving. But now that driving wind found its way into our wrists and ankles and neck causing me to climb into the wagon box and find some shelter from the wind.

The oxen worked hard to pull their weight while plodding through the ever-deepening snow. As soon as the wagon in front made tracks, the wind filled them in with snow so that the next in line had no readymade trail. Their short legs kept stumbling into holes or on rocks and moved us forward only because we forced them to.

I remember thinking maybe this ordeal will be over soon, and we can get rolling again. The oxen still stood in their yokes from which they should’ve been released and let to drift with the wind at their backs. They couldn’t have gotten so far that we couldn’t have rounded them up after the storm had passed. But danger didn’t seem to register with our leader Un-Able, and we just sat around waiting. 

The howling gales stopped our attempts to build fires to warm ourselves. My Irish mother told          stories of the female banshees who would wail and scream through the night predicting the death of someone. Was it a banshee who screamed our fate and buried us in this raging white? The story came alive in my thoughts and as the hours passed I kept imagining the banshee had come for all of us. The storm stopped everything except my fears and images of doom.

We lost all concept of time; we couldn’t see the sun, only the faint light of day and the consuming darkness of night. The oxen stood yoked to their wagons and snow kept piling around them and our wagons. Soon it became next to impossible to wade through chest high drifts with the wind blowing the way it was. We were all hungry. I had some jerky in my pocket to chew on, but it didn’t do much to kill the growl in my stomach.

We wrapped in our buffalo robes to keep out the cold and lay there shivering. Strange thoughts came and went, maybe that’s the way a freezing man thinks, not making sense, imagining a baby cry or a woman scream in the midst of our pitiable lot. My oxen went down sometime on the third day as the snow drifted over and around them where soon they became mounds that blended into the featureless landscape. How long can we last like this?

Next: The owner sets out looking for his wagons

My New Year's Wish for 2020

My New Year's wish for 2020..."Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition." Steve Jobs