| Summary: | The Williston Story two years later that Fort Buford was built. Establishment of this military reservation meant the end of Fort Union, but some trading still was carried on by post settlers. In the subsequent Indian campaigns culminating in the Custer battle at the Little Big Horn in 1876, Fort Buford played an important part. It was to Fort Buford that prisoners of war were taken for later transfer to reservations. Chief Joseph, the Indian Napoleon, and his Nez Perce people were among the captives. There were other such Indian prisoners as Chief Gall, and it was at Fort Buford in 1881 that Sitting Bull, symbol of resistance both for the whites and the reds, surrendered with the remnants of his followers. In the area were the last great buffalo hunts, and in a few years this slaughter was to provide a source of income for the new settlers, the sale of bones. The area saw the romance of the railroad, and the work of one of the most romantic of railroad men, James J. Hill. A new area was born, and its principal product was beef. There were trail herds coming in from as far south as Texas, and other stock shipped in from the east by rail. There was a new breed of men, cow- lioys, and there were sheepmen, rustlers, vigilantes. Among the ranchers were the fabulous Pierre Wibaux; the four-eyed dude from New York, Theo dore Roosevelt; the distinguished and imaginative pretender to the French throne, the Marquis de Mores, who established a packing plant on the Little Missouri, 100 miles to the south. The five greatest visionaries of the west, men who dreamed of empire, had some contact or connection with the confluence area. These were Astor, Ashley, Nathaniel J. Wyeth, James J. Plill and the Marquis de Mores. All aspects of the winning of the west were here enacted: exploration, fur trade, Indian relations, scientific jaunts, steamboating and other forms of river transportation, the covered wagon, the pony express, the Indian scouts (including Yellowstone Kelly and Lonesome Charley Reynolds), Missionaries, the gold rush with steady streams of mining equipment and prospectors going to Montana and of disillusioned or successful miners returning to the States, railroading, the cowboy, the homesteader, the buffalo hunter, the sportsman. The area today is important. It is in the heart of the oil rich Williston basin which extends into four states and two Canadian provinces; it saw pioneering in the field of irrigation; it is at the upper edge of the 200-mile long reservoir behind Garrison dam; it is in the area of great fields of lignite coal, of valuable clay deposits, and other mineral resources; the hunter here has one of the best game areas in the world, and fishing and other water sports are coming to the fore. Recollections of friends By Jos. W. Jackson - Madison, Wis. What brought me to Williston were two of my old high school friends, "Duffy" Roivell and Lloyd Dow —who had gone there a year or two earlier. Duffy's brother Luke Rowell was located about two miles east of Williston on what later became the Burdick farm. Duffy and Lloyd had organized the Stoney Creek Dairy Company—had a herd of milk cows, and supplied Williston with milk. Luke Rowell, and his wife were good, sturdy folks who had gone west from their old home in Wisconsin. Living with them was "Captain" Moore, said to have been one of Custer's Scouts. lie may have been a civilian employe at old Fort Buford. Small in stature, with a greying beard and whiskers, "Cap" certainly looked the part. Quiet and soft spoken, it was but impossible to get a word out of him regarding his past or of early day events. It fell to my lot to sleep with old "Cap" Moore and to this day I vividly recall his standing up in the bed, waving his arms and shouting his orders •- at the top of his voice—all a part of his regular nightmares—night after night. They were so blood curdling that my hair stood on end and I wondered when the shooting would start. I doubt if there are more than two or three persons still living in Williston who know "Cap" Moore. Plis nearest nieghbors were Tom Dunn and Peter Plendrickson. Duffy Rowell died from TB and Lloyd Dow operated the first telephone company in Williston. 1 think he went farther west and died there. Among the old timers I recall were: "Dick" Cope- land, a kindly old man who published the Graphic. He did his own cooking and I can look back and see literally hundreds of empty egg shells he had tossed into a corner. "Yankee'' Robinson lived down at Spanish Point where he hunted deer. While standing on a log waiting for a deer with his hand resting on the end of the barrell—he slipped—the gun went off—and took all but a few shreds of his hand with it. When he got to Williston "Doc" Balyea amputated the hand while I assisted him. Nothing daunted—"Yankee"' cooked up a scheme. A mountain lion had been shot and another had been trapped and taken alive. "Yankee" got both of them, and had the dead one stuffed and mounted. Then lie built a stout cage for the live one. The St. Louis World's Fair was to open soon, so "Yankee" got together a house boat, and loaded both the dead lion and the live lion on to the boat. The., he had made a large sized painting on canvas, showing "Yankee" fighting the two lions single handed. It showed him choking one to death and capturing the other. And he had the proof to show that his one hand had been chawed off during the. fight. At 25c entry fee old "Yankee" came back to Williston with about $2,500 in quarters. Then there were the Bell brothers—Bent, Joe and Douglas—all real old timers. I recall Bent and his fine family living in a little old log house across the 43 Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited in Multi-page TIFF Editor.
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