The Bismarck Tribune Newspaper, June 20, 1936, Page 18

4 ; THE BISMARCK TRIBUNE, SATURDAY, JUNE 20, 1936 They Explored the Northwest Courtesy Yankton Press & Dakotan Capt. Meriwether Lewis (right) and Capt. William Clark (left) were the famous explorers commissioned by Pres. Thomas Jefferson to explore the latest land acquisition of the United States—the Louisiana Purchase. They spent the winter of 1804-05 not far north of where Bismarck stands. Their journals contain the first authentic information on North Dakota. Hf | Missouri river and in the Black Hills, Custer Brought First the grass is not native. It has all Blue Grass to Dakota | been imported and, like the Chinese detallintie pheasant, took to the environment Yankton, N. D., June 20.—General | and extended itself quite rapidly. Custer’s troops brought the first blue| However, it was unknown in Dakota grass into Dakota territory, not in-| until the summer following Custer’s tentionally but with the importation) stay in camp east of Yankton when of hay for the animals of the com- it sprang up quite thick along Marne mand. | (then Rhine) creek in the vicinity While blue grass now grows wild| of camp. The seed all came from the in almost every section of the state,| hay brought to Yankton by the Cus- particularly in the section east of the | ter outfit from Nashville, Tenn. For 55 years, Oscar H. Will & Co. has served not only farmers _ with the highest quality seeds of all descriptions but also home owners with bulbs, plants and seeds with which they have trans- formed a prairie wilderness into one of the most beautiful cities in the great Northwest. Bismarck’s development has brought great gratification to this pioneer firm, which is conscious of a very important part in the development of the great Missouri Slope area. It goes without saying that this pioneer institution joins in extending a cordial invitation to everyone to attend the Pioneer Days Festival At Bismarck July 3, 4 and 5 Commemorating the founding of Dakota Teritory, 1861, and the Battle of the Little Big Horn, 1876. 1881 Oscar H. Will & Co. Bismarck Pioneer Seed House, Nursery and Green- house of the Northwest. Dealers in Sceds, Trees and Plants, Join in the Celebratio ble the man behind the counter. list of food products items approved 3 : 3 sary of the Founding of Dakota Territory in 1861. by splendid cooperation, confidence and integrity of its members. Submit police from destruction. stationed at Fort Yates. night follows: ‘We had been in a state of tense ex- Pectation in the garrison for several weeks. An Indian Messiah had risen somewhere in one of the tribes farther west and old Sitting Bull and his fol- lowing had taken up the cult and were acting in a rebellious and defiant manner toward the authority of the agent. Orders Indian Support “Now, Captain Fechet,” it was Col- onel Drum speaking, “I want you to take your two troops of caviry and march them tonight so as to be near enough at hand to support the Indian Police if they have any trouble in making the arrest. If they make the arrest without help, they will turn Sitting Bull over to you and you are to bring him up here and confine him in the post guard-house. In any case you are to bring back the person of Sitting Bull.” Exactly at midnight the little col- umn of cavalry, about 100 troopers, trotted out of the post. It was a beau- tiful moonlight night and not very cold for that time of the year. We wore our light blue overcoats and car- ried no blanket rolls on our saddles. We had between 40 and 50 miles to ride before dawn and the horses must not be weighted down with packs. The gait was the trot from start to finish. Day was beginning to bregk and we were still about two miles from the edge of the steep slope down which the road leads into the valley of Grand river, when suddenly we saw ahead of us the dim figure of a horseman rid- ing at breakneck speed toward us. Soon we could make out that it wds an Indian riding without bridle or sad- dle, pounding the animal’s ribs with his heels to urge it on. Our column halted but the Indian’s horse never slackened its gallop until it stopped in front of us. Policeman Tells Story Louis Primeau, our half-breed in- terpreter, was riding at the head of the command with Captain Fechet, and the officers of the two troops without any invitation from our com- manding officer hurried to the front, also, to find out what news the Indian brought. It was Hawkman, one of McLaughlin's policemen. He was ter- ribly excited and the interpreter re- ported that he said that the police had arrested Sitting Bull, but had been set upon by his whole band and that every policeman except himself had been slain. I took his Winches- ter out of his hand and smelt its muzzle. The bore smelt.of fresh- burnt powder. ‘We had not advanced many hun- dred yards before we descried another Indian galloping to meet us. This one was more coherent and intelligible. He informed us that the police had; arrested Sitting Bull and that he had | to Arrest Colonel M. F. Steele of Fargo, One of Troopers Who Rescued Sioux Allies, Tells Story of Events on Moonilight Night in 1890 Fargo, N. D., June 20.—The hair is silver upon his temples but the memory of that history-making night when Sitting Bull died on the banks of the Grand river, Dec. 15, 1890, still is vivid to Col. M. F. Steele, who as a lieutenant helped save the Indian Colonel Steele, for many years a resident of Fargo, was a young graduate of the U. S. Military academy when he was There he lived the waning years of the Indian menace. There he saw one of the epochs of history. Colonel Steele was one of the first men to record the events that transpired upon that occasion. His reminiscence of that ting Bull’s band, he said, were now in the thick timber near the cabin pouring a heavy fire into the cabin, and the beleaguered policemen had fired nearly their last cartridge, and if we didn’t make haste to relieve them they would surely all be killed. “Forward, march!” Captain Fechet commanded, and the trumpeter sounded “Gallop.” Away we went across country for the edge of the val- ley, which it was now light enough for us to see about a mile ahead of us. Rifle Smoke Veils Cabin When we reached the crest of the slope we found ourselves immediately above the cabin in which the police- men were surrounded. It was now broad daylight, and we could distin- guish this hut from the rest by a dense blue ring of rifle smoke which floated over it. The Indians in the woods nearby were still firing heavily at it. No doubt they would soon have charged it and murdered every police- man sheltered there. We were about a thousand yards from the wood and a hundred feet or more above it. We opened fire upon it and the Indians therein immedi- ately returned our fire; but we were too far from them and too high for their shots to take effect. Keeping up cur fire we moved down the grassy slope to the next bench, while the Indians continued their fire from the cover of the timber. If we had been dependent wholly upon the fire of our carbines we should have had a sharp fight and a hard task to dislodge the hostile In- dians. Every advantage was on their side. ‘They outnumbered us and had repeating rifles while we had single loaders; and they had a wood for cover, which is about the best natural cover troops can have against small arm fire. But luckily we had not fo1 gotten to bring with us the little mountain Hotchkiss gun. It fired an explosive shell about an inch and a quarter in diameter. First Shell Is Telling This little gun was hurriedly dragged to the crest of the slope and trained on the woods below. Imme- diately after the first shell exploded among the Indians they began to move out and by the time the third shell had burst, they could be seen going by the dozens out of the woods and up the slopes on the opposite sidé of the valley as fast as their ponies could carry them. As soon as the fixe in the river bot- tom had ceased and the wood was silent, a white flag was seen to wave from the window of the cabin. There- upon the command “Cease firing” was sounded by our trumpeters and we poren down the slope in skirmish ine. resisted and given the alarm, and then his whole band had attacked the } Police; that Sitting Bull and some of | his men had been killed, but Bull! Head, chief of the police, and several | of the policemen were dead, and the rest had taken refuge in one of Si ting Bull's cabins. The whole of Si | n of the 75th Anniver- ever packed by one organization. by Good Housekeeping of any similar line. y in Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, and from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon. An Indian policeman bearing the white flag came out of the cabin and met us half way down the hill. He pitched the flag down when he reached our line, and I told one of the troopers to take it along as a souvenir. He detached it from the pole it was tied to and holding it up called to Back Alive Indian Police Ordered to Bring Sitting But Medicine Man Died Rather Than From Blanket to Baton Is But a Step me that it was a little white shirt. It was afterwards identified by one of Sitting Bull’s squaws as the shirt worn by her little daughter Wok-in-nogin in the ghost dance. Sometime after- wards Slocum and I sent this little shirt to the Army museum at Gover- nor's Island, New York. Find 12 Dead Indians ‘When we reached the ground about Sitting Bull’s two cabins at the bot- tom of the valley, the beleaguered Police came out to meet us. In a space hardly 10 yards square in front of the cabin where they had taken cover lay the bodies of 12 dead In- dians. Four of them were policemen and Sitting Bull and seven of his fol- lowers were the others. Two police- men inside, shot in the abdomen, were mortally wounded, and another had a very painful wound through one of his insteps. Three of Sitting Bull’s People were wounded. In the cabin not occupied by the policemen we found Sitting Bull’s two squaws and several other Indian wo- men. I took a squad of soldiers into the cabin to examine it. I noticed that two or three of the squaws sat fast upon the bed which was very low. This aroused my suspicion and we pulled them off and lifted the heavy tick. There beneath it, flat on his stomach and face, lay Sitting Bull's son, & mute about 18 years old. In this room hung an oil portrait of Sitting Bull in a deep gilt frame. It had been painted by a Mrs. Welden, a woman from the east who had spent several weeks visiting Sitting Bull the summer before. I had forbidden the soldiers to touch anything in the room, but suddenly I saw one of the special Indian policemen snatch this picture from the wall and smash its frame with his rifle. He also punched @ hole through the canvas, but I got the portrait away from him before he N. D. Historical Society Photo Proud were the Sioux and their white friends when they posed for this photo July 4, 1888, in front of the Indian agency at Fort Yates. Seventh from the left in the front row sits the bearded gentleman responsible for the pic- ture—Maj. James McLaughlin, for many years agent on the Standing Rock reservation. He wanted-to emphasize to a wondering world that a people who seven years before had slain Custer could doff their war paint and don the uniform of policemen of their own people. This was the first Indian police unit organized at Fort Yates. First Train Brought First Paper Presses Aboard the first Northern Pacific passenger and freight train that reached Bismarck, June 5, 1873, were the presses for North Dakota’s first newspaper—Ths Bismarck Tribune. Col. C. A. Lounsberry, the founder and editor, published his first paper on July 11, Since that date, 63 years ago, the Tribune, despite three dis- astrous fires, never has missed an edition. The Tribune, first published as a weekly, later became a daily, the first daily newspaper in North Dakota. Before it built its own church build-| In 1933, 15,000 persons from 47 ing, the congregation of Bismarck’s|states, Alaska, and 11 foreign coun- First Evangelical church held services| tries, visited Roosevelt’s cabin on the in the court house and the city hall.| Capitol grounds. For more mileage, perfect lubrication and better performance . . . Use CONOCO cisoune and change to Planser Daye Festoa CeROTOR Oe ae Quality Tractor Fuels completed its destruction. I carried it back to Yates with me and informed Major McLaughlin of the circum- stances, and told him I should like very much to keep it, if the dead chief's squaws could be induced to let me do so. A day or two later McLaughlin told me the squaws said I might have it for two dollars. I handed him the two dollars for them, and I still have the torn canvas which I keep as @ valuable relic. We have never known exactly how the combat was brought about be- tween the police and Sitting Bull's braves; but the story as it was inter- preted to us at the time was like this: The policemen approached Sitting Bull’s cabins without arousing any of his people, about half-past five o'clock. The chief of police, Lieutenant Bull Head, and Sergeant Shave Head went into the cabin where the old man slept and started out with him be- tween them. Then & gutteral sound of alarm was uttered, some said by Sitting Bull himself, but more prob- ably by his deaf and dumb son who slept with him. This aroused some of his bucks who came running out of their tepees, rifles in hand. The old chief called on them to rescue him from his captors. Thereupon Catch-the-Bear fired, hitting Bull Head who instantly shot and killed Sitting Bull before he him- self fell to the ground. Then the scrimmage became general and the little body of police were soon over- powered and driven into the old man’s cabin, and the hostiles withdrew to the woods nearby. The police de- fended themselves until their ammu- and Tractor Oils LOMAS OIL COMPANY “Bismarck’s Newest Super Service Station” On East Main Between Ninth and Tenth M. B. GILMAN CO., INC. BROADWAY AT SECOND COMMEMORATING FOUNDING OF DAKOT. TERRITORY. BATTLE OF THE BIG HORN, 1 nition gave out, then Hawk Man, one of their number, slipped out and mounting @ bareback horse, which he found in the village, rode at full speed Since 1881--- Bismarck’s Pioneer Hardware and Harness Shop has been supplying farmers and home owners with farm and garden supplies and household equipment. For more than five decades in a young country this pioneer establishment has had an important part in the rapid development of the Missouri Slope area. So it is in a fraternal spirit seasoned with our pio- neer background that we join in extending a general invitation to one and all to come to Bismarck, July 3, 4 and 5, to attend the PIONEER DAYS FESTIVAL Commemorating the Founding of Dakota Territory, 1871,.and the Battle of the Little Big Horn, 1876. FRENCH & WELCH HARDWARE Bismarck, N. Dak. Telephone 141 pie Se