| Summary: | at Pembina. When the Territorial Legislature met in a log house at Yankton in 1862, it created four counties in northern Dakota Territory. They were Kittson, Chippeway, Stevens and Sheyenne. Kittson was named in honor of Norman W. Kittson, a successful trader at Pembina who in 1843 led the first fur cart train of Red River carts to St. Paul. Chippeway was of course named for the Chippewa Indians. The area of Traill County was then part of Chippeway County. Stevens was named in honor of Isaac Stevens, the leader of a group of surveyors who, accompanied by soldiers, blazed the trail for the Northern Pacific Railroad to the Pacific coast in 1853. Many years passed before the railroad was built. Sheyenne was named for a band of Dakota or Sioux Indians who held forth in the southeast corner of the future state. The Indian wars in the Minnesota valley held back settlement in Dakota Territory for several years. In 1862 the Sioux decided to reclaim their happy hunting grounds because the Indian agents had reneged on food rations the government promised in exchange for land. They killed, robbed, and pillaged the settlers in the valley. Hundreds of whites — men, women and children — were massacred. Stage coaches and wagon trains were burned and merchandise carried away. Settlers by the hundreds fled the Minnesota River valley. Those living at Fort Abercrombie and Georgetown joined the exodus. The Red River valley was deserted and from Fort Abercrombie to the outskirts of Pembina, not a white man or a cabin remained, and it was written: "Dakota is that part of the Great Plains which is and ever must be useless." In the midst of the Civil War President Lincoln ordered troops into Minnesota and Dakota, and slowly but surely the Sioux were driven west of the Missouri River and into reservations. Never again did the Sioux cause a problem east of the Missouri. With the establishment of forts confidence was restored, and life slowly returned to the valley. TRAILL COUNTY, THE FUR TRADE, THE METIS, BUFFALO HUNTS AND THE RED RIVER CARTS Traill County, in the heart of the Red River Valley of North Dakota, is one of the most fertile and prosperous farming areas in the nation. The production from its marvelous rich, black loam is amazing for quality, quantity, and variety. And yet, the first commercial product of Traill and other Red River counties was BUFFALO. It is quite impossible to imagine the magnitude of the buffalo herds that once inhabited the plains. Students of the species estimate that their numbers once ranged from 50 to 90 million. Perhaps 65 million is a reasonable compromise. Walter T. Hornaday of Smithsonian Institution once wrote "Of all the quadrupeds that have lived upon the earth, probably no other species has ever marshalled such innumerable hosts as those of the American bison or buffalo." As the Canada goose flies north in the early spring and south in the fall, so did the buffalo migrate from Texas north to the Red River Valley to feed on its luxurious grasses. Their departure to the south was much later than that of the wild fowl for they had no fear of early winter if they had "pawing" ground for food. Long before the arrival of the white man the Indians noticed the Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited with Multi-Page TIFF Editor.
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