THE COST OF THE OUTBREAK TO THE INDIANS The property of the two Indian agencies belonged to the Indians and was paid for out of their appropriation. The crops growing on the agency farms were for their support, and whatever injury came to these was an injury to them. All of the dwellings (excepting two Indian homes), stores, mills, shops, and other buildings, with their contents, and the tools, implements and utensils upon the Yellow Medicine Agency were destroyed or rendered useless. The value was $425,000. At the lower or Redwood Agency, the stores, warehouses, shops and dwellings of the employes, with their contents, were destroyed, together with eight houses belonging to the Indians and occupied by them, and a new stone warehouse nearing completion. The value was $375,000. Adding to this the destruction of fences, loss of crops, and of lumber and supplies, the loss to the Indians on the reservation alone was not less than $1,000,000. The fund of $2,748,000 on which the Government had agreed to pay them five per cent per annum, was forfeited, and they lost the interest thereon from that time forward. The treaty of 1851 was abrogated by the act of February 16, 1863 (vol. 12, Federal Statutes at Large, p. 652). They had received under the treaty $2,459.350, less the sum paid for depredations. They also lost $300,000 deposited to their credit under the treaty of 1837. Four hundred and twenty-five Indians were tried by a military commission on the charge of murderous participation in the massacre. Three hundred and twentyone were convicted and 303 were sentenced to death. President Lincoln commuted the sentence of all but thirty-nine. Thirty-eight of these were hanged at Mankato, Minnesota, December 26, 1862. One was pardoned by the President. Two were later hanged at Fort Snelling, and still another at Mankato. Among those hanged was a negro half-blood. Two others convicted were released after three years' imprisonment. Little Crow was killed July 3, 1863, by Chauncey Lampson, near Hutchinson, Minnesota. It must be said to the credit of Little Crow that it was through his efforts that the captives in his camp escaped massacre. He saved them, even at times when his own life was threatened on that account, but it was because he feared the vengeance of the Sissetons and Wahpetons who were persistently demanding their release, or at least that no harm should come to them. THE COST TO THE SETTLERS The loss of property and crops destroyed belonging to the settlers was even greater. The $71,000 in gold, which arrived at Fort Ridgeley on the day the outbreak commenced, was paid under act of Congress to the settlers as part payment for Indian depredations. The amount so paid included, also, other items appropriated for their benefit amounting in the aggregate to $204,883.90. The burning of Sioux Falls, the death of Joseph W. Amidon and Edward B. Lamoure, an elder brother of Hon. Judson Lamoure, of Pembina, in the attack on Sioux Falls are mentioned in another chapter. The garrison at Fort Randall, the activity of the settlers and the "preparedness" shown at Yankton, where the settlers in that section of Dakota assembled for defense, doubtless prevented an outbreak among the Yanktons inhabiting that region. These are only striking incidents of Indian warfare, followed by a long list of bloody affairs, in which the Indians gained nothing. Other incidents have been mentioned in other chapters. The story of the massacre at Fort Phil Kearney and the Custer massacre will be told in subsequent chapters. Today the whole world realizes what War is. Now (October, 1916) 14,000,000 soldiers of Christian nations are at war. The "beasts" come out of the land, and from under the sea and from the air-all engaged in the destruction of human beings, sparing not innocent children, weak women, decrepit old men, or the sick and wounded in hospitals. And for what? Anarchists, in their warfare on all forms of government, killed a son of royalty, and the war of August, 1914, began, coming like a storm from a clear sky, sweeping over and involving nations in no way responsible for its beginning, and making the hymn of H. W. Baker-No. 199 of the Episcopal Prayer Book-appropriate for every opening day: "O God of love, O King of Peace! Make wars throughout the world to cease, The wrath of sinful man restrain, Give peace, O God! give peace again." CHAPTER XIV IN THE SIOUX COUNTRY BEGINNING OF CIVILIZATION IN THE LAND OF THE DAKOTAS-THE OLD HAND-PRESS— THE FIRST DAKOTA NEWSPAPER-THE FIRST PERMANENT NEWSPAPER-THE TREATY OF 1851-THE MASSACRE OF LIEUTENANT GRATTAN AND HIS MEN—THE VERMILION SETTLEMENT-HARNEY'S PUNITIVE EXPEDITION-FORT PIERRE AS A MILITARY POST-THE BATTLE OF BLUE WATER OR ASH HOLLOW-FIRST ORGANIZED SETTLEMENT IN SOUTH DAKOTA-FOUNDING OF SIOUX FALLS-DAKOTA CHRISTENED BIG SIOUX COUNTY ORGANIZED TOWNSITES ON THE SIOUX-THE TREATY OF 1858 CAPT. JOHN B. S. TODD FORTS RANDALL AND ABERCROMBIE ESTABLISHED THE BON HOMME SETTLEMENT-THE FIRST SCHOOLHOUSE-ELK POINT CHARLES MIX COUNTY-THE PONCA AGENCY-DAKOTA PROCLAIMED CHARLES F. PICOTTE-FIRST DAKOTA POSTOFFICES. At the doorway of his wigwam TERRITORY Sat the lovely Minnehaha, Sat his daughter, Laughing Water. IN THE LAND OF THE DAKOTAS -Henry W. Longfellow. Beginning with the treaties of 1825 by the Indians on the upper Missouri River and the establishment of the organized fur trade on that stream and its tributaries, events rapidly followed, tending to confirm the Indian fears that their hunting grounds would soon be taken from them, and to stir them to fierce. resistance. The Dakotas were contemplating encroachments on their weaker western neighbors, when they beheld a wave of white settlement coming from the West as well as from the South and East, crowding toward the very heart of the Sioux country. In 1832 Fort Pierre had become the head of the fur trade on the upper Missouri, and steamboats had begun making regular trips to that point and beyond. In 1838 Jean Nicholas Nicollet, assisted by Second Lieut. John Charles Fremont of the United States Topographical Engineers, appointed for that purpose by President Martin Van Buren, came to Fort Pierre on the steamer Vol. I-14 Antelope for exploration. Leaving the Missouri River at the mouth of the James, or Dakota River, they extended their explorations to the Devils Lake region, returning East via St. Paul. It was while in Washington preparing his report that Lieutenant Fremont made the acquaintance of his future wife, Jessie Benton, daughter of Senator Thomas H. Benton of Missouri, which ripened into affection and resulted in an elopement, and an assignment of Fremont for exploration in Iowa, followed by pathfinding in the Rocky Mountains in 1842-44. Fremont came to be known as the Great Pathfinder, and, in 1856, was the first republican candidate for President of the United States, and later a distinguished major general in the Civil war. It will be noticed that the foundation of his fame and that of his love for the beautiful daughter of Senator Benton were laid in the land of the Dakotas-the land of the arrow-maker's daughter, Minnehaha. Overland immigration to Oregon commenced in 1841. In 1847 Utah was occupied by the Mormons, and for the protection of immigrants and others passing over the country, and of the frontier settlements, military posts, as they had been projected, were established, followed by the creation of new territories. and the admission of new states. In February, 1848, gold was discovered in a mill-race at Coloma, Cal., by James W. Marshall, a native of New Jersey, who had just finished building a sawmill, by Indian labor, for Col. John A. Sutter, a Swiss, who resided at a fort near Sacramento. The gold was in the form of a long, irregular pumpkin seed and was tested at Monterey. The first few months Marshall employed about one hundred Indians from Monterey to wash out gold at Webber Creek, six miles from Coloma. There were then only three white men in that region, but the discovery of gold turned the tide of immigration in that direction. Fort Kearney was built in 1848, and the trading post on the north fork of the Platte known as Fort Kearney was purchased in 1849 and converted into a military post, bearing the name of Fort Laramie. THE OLD HAND-PRESS As early as 1843 a printing outfit was brought to Lancaster, Grant County, Wis., for the first weekly paper of that lead-mining region. It was subsequently owned by James M. Goodhue, a talented and progressive editor, who, being ambitious for a larger field, closed his office and removed to St. Paul in the autumn of 1848. On the same steamer with him was a young man from the same village, named John B. Callis, who helped Goodhue unload his freight upon the river bank at the Village of St. Paul. Fifty-eight years later, September 6, 1906, Gen. John B. Callis, the noted colonel of the Seventh Wisconsin Infantry of the Iron Brigade, rested on his crutches in the splendid office of the St. Paul Pioneer-Press during the Grand Army encampment for that year, and narrated to reporters how he had brought the first font of type and the first press into the town, with "Jim" Goodhue, famous in its development. It is not well known how many poor pioneer printers of the Northwest had inherited that little machine, to print "final proof" sheets in far-away frontier townsites. It met its fate at Sioux Falls and was buried and forgotten among the scrap-iron. Later still it became known to Senator Richard F. Pettigrew that at the back door of a humble house of his home city was the platen of the much-traveled old press, serving in the useful capacity of a door-step. The senator bought it and gave it an honorable place among historic relics of the Northwest territories in the State Historical Society. THE FIRST DAKOTA PRINTING PRESS The first printing press in Dakota was purchased at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1848, and was the gift of Oberlin College students to Rev. Alonzo Barnard, a Presbyterian missionary, about to be stationed at St. Joseph, now Walhalla, N. D. It was brought up the Mississippi in the summer of 1849, from Cass Lake in canoes down the Red Lake and Red River to Pembina, and from there transferred to St. Joseph, in a Red River cart, and thence to Fort Garry, now Winnipeg, where it was used by Dr. Schultz in printing the Northwester, the first newspaper published on the Red River. THE FIRST DAKOTA NEWSPAPER July 2, 1859, Samuel J. Albright established the Dakota Democrat at Sioux Falls City, the first newspaper published within the limits of Dakota Territory. Mr. Albright had been connected with the Free Press at St. Paul. At the date of the issue of the Sioux Falls Democrat there were less than two score of people at Sioux Falls City. The publication was suspended in March, 1860, during the absence of Mr. Albright, until December, 1860, when it was revived as the Western Independent, and was published occasionally thereafter until March, 1861, by J. W. Stewart. According to the record given above, Mr. Albright's was not the first printing press in Dakota. The Dakota Republican, the first permanent newspaper in Dakota, was established by J. Elwood Clark and James Bedell September 6, 1861. THE TREATY OF 1851 Minnesota Territory was organized in 1849. The plains west of the Missouri River were occupied by Indian Tribes claiming them under undefined hereditary rights, or by the power of might. The Laramie treaty of 1851 defined the boundaries of their several claims. The Mendota treaties of 1851 ceded Indian lands lying on and extending to the western boundary of Minnesota Territory. These treaties were made without the consent of the masses of the tribes and were not accepted by them. There were bad hearts and hot blood among the Indians. Fort Riley in Kansas and Fort Ridgeley in Minnesota, the main reliance of the settlers of Dakota in 1862, as related in Chapter XIII, were built in 1852. THE MASSACRE OF LIEUTENANT GRATTAN AND HIS MEN In June, 1853, two young Indians fired their guns into the air, in the vicinity of a frontier military post, contrary to military regulations, lest alarm be created |