| Summary: | A HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY AND THE CITY OF WAHPETON 7 Father Genin, knowing the horrible details of the raids, induced 900 delegates from the Chippewa and Sioux tribes to gather at Fort Abercrombie in August 1870 for a conference—the greater part of present Richland County was regarded as neutral ground by the two tribes. The Indians pitched their tipis on both sides of the river within the military reserve, and for three days were in conference, settling definitely the limits of their hunting grounds, and agreeing to live in peace. This conference ended intertribal strife that had been going on for generations. The decendants of the Indians who once lived in the Richland County area are now on reservations in North and South Dakota and Minnesota. Those who lived in the northern part of North Dakota and Minnesota, particularly the Chippewa, are now on the White Earth reservation in Northern Minnesota and on the Turtle Mountain reservation in North Dakota, while the Wahpeton and Sisseton Sioux live on the Sisseton reservation in South Dakota. Indian boys and girls from these three reservations attend the U. S. Indian School in the city of Wahpeton, which takes its name from the Wahpeton Sioux. Evolution of Richland County Politically Through the explorations of John Cabot in 1495-98 on the northeast coast and those of Jacques Cartie?r in 1534-41 in the Gulf and River of St. Lawrence, England and France held conflicting claims to the North American mainland. The English maintained that a nation had a right to all land inward from points occupied on the coast, while the French held that occupying the mouth of a river gave title to all lands drained by the river. Since the Souris and Red Rivers are a part of the Nelson River system, which flows into Hudson Bay, the French claim to Canada extended to the northeastern half of present North Dakota. In 1682 La Salle sailed down the Mississippi from the French possessions in the north and claimed for France all lands drained by that river, including, of course, the southwestern half of the State. Roughly, the line of division between these northeast and southwest halves of tie State ran northwest from what is now Sargent County to northwest Divide County. France ceded Canada to England in 1763, following the French and Indian War, and that part of the drainage basins of the Souris and Red Rivers at present lying within the United States was ceded to this country by England in the treaty of 1818. The international boundary line, though defined by this treaty as the 49th parallel, was generally understood merely to lie west from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains. This indefinite characterization made thelineamatterof controversy until 1823, when it was definitely located by Maj. Stephen Long, who passed through present Richland County on his way to make the survey. While the entire territory included within the present boundaries of North Dakota is often considered a part of the Louisiana Purchase, only the section drained by the Missouri River was included in that transaction. The northeastern half of the State is in the drainage basin of Hudson Bay, and therefore was not a part of the Louisiana Purchase and did not come to the United States until 1818. The northeastern edge of the Purchase lies a short distance west of the western border of Richland County. When the Red River Valley became a part of the United States, it also became a part of Missouri Territory, which included most of present North Dakota, Minnesota, Wyoming, Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Montana. In 1834 the part of the State east of the White Earth and Missouri Rivers became a part of the newly-organized Michigan Territory, in which lay also trie areas of present Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and a large Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited with Multi-Page TIFF Editor.
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