North Dakota: A Guide to the Northern Prairie State

by Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of North Dakota

SIDE TOUR 6B

Junction US 2—Buford—Fort Buford State Park.

Junction with US 2 to Fort Buford State Park, 9.5 m.

Unmarked graveled road 8.5 m., unimproved road 1 m.

No accommodations.

The remains of Fort Buford, at the end of this route, evoke memories of the once feared Indian chieftains Sitting Bull, Gall, and Joseph, and of the notable military leaders Gen. Hugh E. Scott and Gen. William H. Hazen.

The route, an unmarked gravel road, branches S. from US 2 (see Tour 6) 17 m. W. of Williston. At 8 m. is BUFORD (1,950 alt., 52 pop.), a little village named for the old fort. At 8.5 m. is the junction with an unimproved road; L. here.

On the SITE OF FORT BUFORD, 9 m., a stone powder house and the regimental headquarters buildings still stand; the military cemetery is to the S.

In 1828 John Jacob Astor's American Fur Co. built its principal post on the upper Missouri, Fort Union, 3 m. up the Missouri from the mouth of the Yellowstone, a few hundred yards E. of the present Montana Line. For almost 40 years Fort Union was the most important trading post in the Dakotas. Unfortunately, the traders at the post were more interested in getting furs cheaply than in preserving the morale of the Indians of the region. Whiskey, although prohibited, flowed freely. Quarrels between the Indians and the white men were frequent. Conditions were so bad in 1864 when Gen. Alfred Sully made a visit to the post following his campaign against the Sioux (see Tour 8 and Side Tour 8D), that he recommended Government control of the trading posts if peace were ever to be made with the Indians. Upon his recommendation, therefore, Fort Buford was established in June 1866 opposite the mouth of the Yellowstone. Fort Union was dismantled and its materials were brought here for use in building the new post.

Because of its strategic position, the new fort, named for Gen. John Buford, who distinguished himself at Gettysburg, commanded the water routes to the Northwest, and for more than 25 years was one of the country's vital Army posts. The fort was garrisoned partly by ex-Confederate soldiers, prisoners of war who had been paroled on oath that they would not again bear arms against the Union and on agreement to enlist for service in the outposts of the West. It played an active part in the settlement of the Indian troubles, and in establishing the Indians upon the reservations.

When Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce followers from Oregon finally surrendered in the Bear Paw Mountains of Montana in 1877 after leading their pursuers a merry 2,000-mile chase through the Rockies for more than a year, he was brought to Fort Buford before being placed on a reservation in Washington. Sitting Bull and his band of Sioux, after their flight into Canada in a vain attempt to avoid confinement on the reservation, also came to Fort Buford in 1881, and it was before the regimental headquarters building, the southernmost of the group now standing, that the chief surrendered. Gall had preceded him by a few months, also coming to Fort Buford to give himself up.

Telegraphic connections with Fort Lincoln were established in 1873, and a wagon road, used until 1881, connected Fort Buford with the Custer post and with the railroad, which at that time ended in Bismarck. It followed the eastern side of the Missouri, and is still in use in some places (see Side Tour 3B). Except for goods sent by steamboat, all supplies and mail were freighted over this road.

Fort Buford was sold at public auction in 1895. The 20-room residence of the commanding officers was purchased by John Mercer, who maintained it as a museum until its destruction by fire in 1937.

South of the old buildings is FORT BUFORD STATE PARK, 9.5 m., including the military Cemetery of the Fort. The unkept graves, some marked with marble slabs, some with wooden markers on which the inscriptions have lost all legibility, are sunken and overgrown with grass.

About a quarter of a mile SE. of the buildings by the river, in the 1830's and 1840's, stood a trading post known first as Fort William and later as Fort Mortimer. When William Sublette and Robert Campbell built Fort William in 1833, they found themselves treated as intruders by the monopolistic American Fur Co. post at Fort Union. The policy of the American Fur Co., in its fight against competition, was to try every kind of tactics, from rate wars to the instigation of killings by the Indians. On a typical occasion a band of Blackfeet Indians, coming to trade, was met by a procession from Fort Union headed by a band in full uniform, with the traders following, bearing articles of barter. That day the impressionable aborigines traded at Fort Union. Another time a Fort William expedition to the Crow Indians was robbed of everything including horses by marauders believed to have been sent by the neighboring post.

The power of liquor as an article of trade was unbelievably great. Charles Larpenteur, who was at Fort William, tells in his memoirs of going into an Indian camp in weather so cold that his mules froze to death in the shelter provided for them, and obtaining 180 buffalo robes for 5 gal. of alcohol, which sufficed to make everyone in the camp drunk twice. The use of liquor was a sore point between Fort Union and Fort William, for although it was illegal in Indian country Sublette had been able to get a supply into Fort William, while every similar effort at Fort Union had been defeated. Larpenteur describes the opening of trade at Fort William thus: "The liquor trade started at dark, and soon the singing and yelling commenced. The Indians were all locked up in the fort, for fear that some might go to Fort Union, which was about two and one-half miles distant. Imagine the noise. Five hundred Indians with their squaws, all drunk as they could be, locked up in that small space." (The stockade was 150 ft. by 130 ft.) "The debauch continued during that entire night and well into the next day ... Indians in stupor from drink lay in every direction."

Competition grew keen. Beaver skins, which ordinarily were worth $3, brought as much as $12. It was the policy of the American Fur Co., however, to buy out its competitors if it could not frighten them out. Accordingly, after a year of bitter rivalry, an agreement was reached whereby Sublette and Campbell sold Fort William to the Astor concern and moved W., leaving the profitable upper Missouri valley trade to Fort Union.

In 1842 a new post, called Fort Mortimer, was built by Fox, Livingston & Co. a short distance back from the bank at the Fort William site. The new traders did not long survive the competition of Fort Union, and in 1846 found it expedient to sell out to the American Fur Co. Some 12 years later an adobe trading post was erected here, but little is known of it other than that it was abandoned in 1858 and was finally torn down in 1866, its materials being used in the building of Fort Buford.