This column ran in the Sept. 28 edition of the Prairie Post

Fort Seward may not have been a terribly active post when it comes to action against hostiles of the plains. In fact, it seems the post was used more just as a place to store things. 

Sort of like an attic for the branch of the army known as the Department of the Dakotas. 

Capt. Patterson started a house cleaning effort in February, 1876. He sent a report to headquarters detailing the extra goodies he found. 

Many of the items were equipment for cavalry troopers. Not much use on an infantry post like Fort Seward.  

His list included 12 cavalry sabers, 48 saber belts, 20 watering bridles, 5 curry combs, 15 horse brushes, 62 saddle blankets and 41 spurs and straps. Much of the equipment was new and Patterson suggested sending it on the Fort Abraham Lincoln where Custer and the 7th Cavalry might make use of them. 

Patterson also found a few old items. 

His inventory listed 100 canteens of the old pattern and suggested they could be issued to scouts, 140 haversacks, the shoulder bag issued the soldiers for carrying supplies, that were also the old pattern and useful for scouts.  

These items he also sent on to Fort Abraham Lincoln. 

But it is one of the largest items on the housecleaning list that caught my attention. 

Fort Seward listed as surplus one Gatling Gun with Caisson. This Gatling gun would have been mounted on a set of wheels similar to the cannons and howitzers of the black powder weapon era. 

I don’t know why Fort Seward would have been issued a Gatling Gun. It wasn’t like they sent the proper supplies to go with it. 

“The Gatling Gun is of the first made,” Patterson wrote in his report. “We have no ammunition for it, nor do we want any. Some post commander may want it but it is only in the way here.” 

The Gatling Gun was also shipped to Fort Abraham Lincoln that spring. 

We don’t know if any of the surplus equipment from Fort Seward was issued to troopers in time for the Little Big Horn campaign later in 1876. It certainly is possible that some of the items may have found its way into use.  

And it would be interesting to know about the Gatling Gun. The history of the Little Big Horn tells us Gen. George Custer took two Gatling Guns with him on the expedition. He abandoned the guns saying they slowed him down and would keep him from finding the Indians.  

A few days later he found the Indians.  

Many historians speculate that the decision to abandon the Gatling Guns may have been Custer’s fatal mistake.  

Hopefully he would have had ammunition with his.

Couple of thoughts on climate change.

I just did a story for the Sun Country, the Sun’s ag paper, where the North Dakota climatoligist estimates the average fall killing frost is about 10 or 11 days later than it was at the time of statehood in 1889. A similar change has occured in the spring but the unsettled spring weather makes statistics a little more jumbled.

This longer growing season makes crops like soybeans and corn work where they probably wouldn’t have a century ago.

I’m also reading a book called “The Man Who Ate His Shoes” about the British Navy’s efforts in the 1820s and 1830s to find a northwest passage to Asia by sailing along the north shore of Canada in the Arctic Ocean.

The book is a long and much to detailed history of the British Navy getting their ships stuck in the ice for 10 or 11 months at a time and the sailers suffering intense hardships, (hence the title).

But it does point out that even though there was no reliable sea passage through the Arctic Ocean at that time there is one now at least during the summer months.

I suppose some will argue the climate change is a good thing. After all, farmers in North Dakota are growing more valuable crops and ships are getting those all important Chinese made goods to the east coast of the U.S. and Europe quicker.

The question is, does it end before it becomes a disaster?

This column ran in the Sept. 21, edition of the Prairie Post 

They may not have had a computerized inventory at Fort Seward but they still managed to keep track of everything. And they took it seriously when something showed up missing.

Take, for example, an incident from September, 1874.

An inventory of the company stores, the stockpile of supplies at the fort, turned up a little short. Missing were most of the contents of a barrel of lard and part of a case of raspberry jam.

Yes, it was the great Fort Seward grease and jelly caper.

These kinds of shortages were taken seriously by the officials of the military. A Board of Survey was convened to investigate the situation. These officers would take testimony and try to determine what happened and who, if anyone, was responsible.

Lt. Ribbel was evidently the supply officer and submitted his testimony in writing to the board. He stated he had gotten the barrel of lard from his predecessor, Lt. Hunt, and the barrel had never been opened or tampered with.

He continued that the barrel was part of the original supplies transferred to Fort Seward from Fort Ransom when that post was abandon in 1872. This means this was a fairly high mileage barrel of lard.

The report of the Board of Survey found no theft or crime associated with the lard. The smoking gun, so to speak, was the grease spot on the storeroom floor. They determined the lard had run away when the wood barrel developed a leak.

But the mystery of the missing raspberry jam was a little more difficult.

Ribbel said the shipping box for the jam had never been opened. However, while the shipping box said 24 cans of jam there were only 11 cans found in the box when it was opened.

Moreover, the shipping box showed the indentations where all 24 cans of jam had set for some time.

But just as in the case with the lard the Board of Survey absolved Ribbel of fault. They reported that while it was certain that 13 cans of jam had disappeared, it was impossible to say who had tampered with the box and made off with the jelly.

The board ordered the inventory, or return as the report was called, show the reduced quantities.

And I imagine the officers at Fort Seward kept an eye on the soldiers for anyone with the smell of raspberry jam on their breath.

The official low in Jamestown was 37 degrees this morning.

I beg to differ.

There was frost on the pitchfork handle when I did my horse chores at 6:15 a.m.

Didn’t take the time to look for any pumpkins to see if they had frost.

William Nathaniel Roach was one of the early political leaders in North Dakota. But we can’t say he had a lot of ties to the state.

First a little background. Roach was born in Washington, D.C. in 1840. He attended the public schools in the capital city before continuing his education at Gonzaga and Georgetown Universities.

He served without any real distinction during the American Civil War as a clerk in the quartermaster’s department.

I’m guessing he faced the daily danger of paper cuts.

We don’t know much about his life in the years right after the war. He first enters the scene in the Dakotas in 1879 when he operates a business hauling mail under contract to the post offices in the Larimore area. He may have also operated a farm in the same area but seemed to serve more as a manager and operator than a horse driving farmer.

These occupations gave him enough time to dabble in politics serving in the Dakota Territory House of Representatives in 1885. He was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the North Dakota governor’s mansion in the first two elections for the post in 1889 and 1891.

But his big political win came in 1893 when the North Dakota Senate voted him in as one of the United States Senators from the state.

This was back in the day when Senators were elected by the state Senate rather than people.

But getting seated in the Senate was a challenge. He was accused of embezzlement in Washington, D.C. in the 1870s although he had never been charged. Some felt the reason Roach first moved to North Dakota was to avoid prosecution back east.

The Senate debated in March of 1893 but finally seated him saying that Senate policy prohibited considering acts, even criminal acts that occurred before Roach was elected to the Senate.

Evidently it’s only unethical to be a crook while in office.

It appears the time Senator Roach spent in the Capital was fairly quiet. I find only one issue that he took a major stand on.

During the Spanish American War the United States took steps to annex Hawaii into the United States. This seemed to cause Roach a great deal of concern. He not only voted against the annexation resolution but spoke against it in debate citing concern over the desires of the Hawaiian citizens.

“Whose consent do we have as to Hawaii?” he asked his fellow Senators.

I don’t know if it was Roach’s overall lack of visibility in the Senate, his possible past corruption or his stance on Hawaii but the North Dakota Senate refused to reelect him to a second term. Instead the Republicans elected Porter McCumber to the seat. Roach was 59 at the time but retired from both politics and business.

The same year, 1899, he sold his businesses and left North Dakota.

And if you guessed he didn’t retire to Hawaii you would be right.

He lived out the rest of his life, just 3 more years, in Washington, D.C.

It is hard to believe that tragic day occured nine years ago. It seems like just yesterday we saw the gut wrenching images of the towers collapsing and mourned the great loss of life.

I personally have few recollections of that day. My mother’s funeral had been the day before. The service held in the Lutheran Church at Monango. The same church she was baptised in, confirmed in, married in and finally buried in.

I was suppose to have 9/11 off to kind of regroup. My job at that time was as news director and talk show host for one of the local radio stations. It was the kind of job you can’t stay away from when a tragedy like the attack on the World Trade Centers takes place.

We went to full national news coverage early in the morning. There wasn’t much for us to do but keep the satelite news feed on the air and listen in disbelief as our country came under attack. I did make one decision that morning. I chose to air the McCoy Ministry program but asked them to do a brief prayer so we could return to news coverage.

It was a decision, I still believe the right one, that we received calls both lambasting and praising.

My other recollection of that day is less professional and more personal.

We lived close enough to the radio station that I could either walk or drive to work. That morning, in a rush to get to the station, I had driven.

That evening, evidently in a mental fog, I walked right past my truck and headed home.

It had been that kind of couple days.

Report based on conversations heard on the Jamestown Police band scanner Thursday morning.

A young, approximately half grown, skunk was found in the alley of the downtown area of Jamestown. No further information is expected from the police department given the juvenile status of the offender.

Two officers managed to convince the skunk to enter a pet carrier for transportations. The officers had been issued the department .410 shot gun but took it upon themselves to transport the animal rather than use deadly force.

I also doubt tasering was seriously considered.

Transportation was accomplished without, and we’re quoting traffic heard on the scanner here, “discharge.”

The skunk was transported, gently I’m sure, to the vicinity of the garbage bailer where, again we’re quoting the scanner traffic, “the prisoner was released.”

It’s unknown whether the skunk posted bail or was released on his own recognizants. I’m guessing their just hoping he doesn’t show up for any court appearances.

Anyway, I do believe we have a couple of “skunk whisperers” on the Jamestown PD.

This column ran in the Sept. 8 edition of the Prairie Post.

In August of 1889 the North Dakota Constitutional Convention finished its work. It went to the voters on October 1 and by November the President signed the paperwork and North Dakota became another star on the flag.

That special election had a couple of issues for the voter’s consideration. The measure to approve the Constitution passed by about 27,000 to 8,000 votes. The communities that got an institution like Jamestown with the State Hospital and Valley City with a teacher’s college all voted overwhelmingly for the constitution. In all 14 communities got either a school, hospital or prison. Quite a load of public institutions for a new state with only 191,000 people.

The other measure on the ballot dealt with prohibition. This passed with 1,200 vote margin of 18,552 for prohibition and 17,393 against.

But the constitution had a few other clauses and I have to admit I don’t know how many of these are still in force.

The constitution guarantees freedom of religion, speech and guaranteed the right to a jury trial.

It gave the right to vote to any man over the age of 21 who was an American citizen or had legally declared their intent to become a citizen more than one year before the election.

Women got the right to vote on all school elections.

But women got another perk from the new North Dakota constitution.

A woman was guaranteed the right to own property in her own name even if she was married. Quite a change from the principle that a married woman owned nothing on her own but only through her husband.

And children under the age of 12 couldn’t work in mines or factories.

But many of the clauses of the constitution dealt with how businesses treated the citizens of North Dakota.

Corporations were prohibited from exchanging black lists of banned employees. This kept businesses from making lists of labor organizers and keeping them from working in the state.

And the constitution contained another, more generic, protection of citizen’s rights in North Dakota.

The constitution states that no business can operate in a manner that ”infringes the equal rights of individuals or the general well being of the state.”

The North Dakota constitution shows a great deal of distrust in business, especially corporations.

But it was not just the power of corporations that the writers of the state constitution wanted to limit.

The department heads, Agriculture Commissioner, Secretary of State, Attorney General and others are elected as the head of their own departments rather than being appointed and controlled by the governor. This kept the governor from having much power in state government.

It would appear the framers of the North Dakota constitution didn’t trust anyone when it came to how the citizens of the state were treated.

I like that in a civic leader even if they were a little misguided on that prohibition thing.

It appears the founder of the Electric Light Orchestra, ELO to anyone who can remember the 1970s, was killed when a large round hay bale rolled down a hill in England, through a hedgerow and onto a road. The bale struck the car carrying Mike Edwards killing him.

Here is the link if you don’t believe me:

I don’t recall listening to ELO back in the 1970s, but then I don’t recall most of my college Freshman and Sophmore years which would have been in roughly the same period.

Still, I’m glad we leveled off North Dakota so rolling hay bales don’t kill off any of our aged rock and roll stars unnecessarily.

This column ran in the Aug. 31, edition of the Prairie Post

I suppose you could say we are at the centennial of the beginning of the end of the settlement phase of North Dakota. Starting in about 1910 and ending with the financial collapse of the European banking industry during the Great War was the last expansion or construction of the Railroad lines in the state.

The decade from the turn of the century to 1910 had been very good for railroads in North Dakota. Profits were so high the lines invested in new engines and cars, improvements to existing lines and actually lowering passenger rates from 4 cents to 3 cents per mile.

That doesn’t mean the public appreciated the things the railroad was doing. The general consensus of the public was freight rates were too high, the bulk of the trains ran in the period of time between harvest and mid-winter and the railroad pulled strings to avoid paying their share of taxes.

This conflict came to the front in 1907 when the railroads were accused of not scheduling trains to get coal to many small communities creating a shortage of home fuel in many areas of the state. In January the legislature accused the railroads of negligence.

The state passed laws requiring the railroads to fence along the tracks to prevent losses of stray livestock, build depots rather than using old railroad cars and doubled the taxes to about $371 per mile.

Still, from 1910 to about 1917 new railroad lines were being built including one headquartered here in Jamestown.

The Midland Continental Railroad in North Dakota organized on Aug. 30, 1912 with the intent of operating a railroad line from Pembina to Forbes in North Dakota. This was part of grand plan to operate an international line running from Winnipeg to Galveston.

We know the end of the story. The Midland Continental only managed to build from Edgeley to Wimbledon before war in Europe dried up their financing and ended the dream of a north and south transcontinental railroad.

And it was not just the upstart Midland Continental that stopped construction. The years of almost constant construction of railroads in North Dakota ended. With it also ended the founding of new towns along the new lines.

Over the next decades the world economic crisis of World War I and the depression of the 1930s all prevented railroad expansion. By the time these crises ended trucks were making an impact on the transportation industry.

The heyday of the railroad ended with the expansion of the trucking industry. With it also ended the founding of new communities in North Dakota. And the whole ball of wax started rolling down hill about a century ago.