Summary: | 10 Wells County History the Hudson Bay Company hunters, the Red River buffalo hunters from Pembina, and the fur hunters from the trading posts along the Missouri river. The Yanktonai Indian tribe laid claim to all the territory west of the James river on a line with Devils Lake, and extending to the Missouri and White Earth rivers, which they relinquished to United States under the terms of the Dakota and Yankton Treaties, signed on April 29,1868, and completed at Fort Rice in June of that year. This treaty is known as the Ft, Laramie or General Sherman treaty. North Dakota was included in the Louisiana Purchase made from France in 1803. However the English long claimed all of the country drained by the Red, Sheyenne and the Mouse rivers and their tributaries until 1818, when a treaty was signed and the 49th Parallel became the International Boundary line. Consequently, the Sheyenne river territory in Wells county was once claimed as British possessions, while the remainder of the county belonged to the French. The territory now embraced in Wells county was included in Pembina count}-, Minnesota, one of the four first counties created by the first Territorial Legislature of Minnesota in 1849. In 1870 two counties, Pembina and Buffalo, were created by the Territorial Legislature of Dakota in session at Yankton. Pembina county extended west from the Red River of the North to the 9th Guide Meridian and Buffalo from the 9th Guide Meridian to the Missouri and White Earth rivers and both south from the Canadian Boundary to the 46th Parallel of North Latitude. The 9th Guide Meridian is the township line between Ranges 66 and 67, and extends north and south through the present cities of New Rockford and Carrington. Buffalo county was named on account of the countless herds of buffalo, the wild cattle of the prairie, that roamc-d and grazed over its prairies. Buffalo county never was organized as a county and passed out of existence after many others, including Wells, had been carved from its vast area. On January 4, 1873, Wells county was created by Act of the 10th Territorial Legislative Assembly of Dakota, then in session at Yankton, and named Gingras (Jennegra) county in honor of Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited with Multi-Page TIFF Editor.
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