At 20 m. is HUFF, a store and railroad station. At 20.5 m. (L) is the HUFF INDIAN VILLAGE STATE PARK, site of a Mandan village. According to legend the Mandan people at one time lived underground, but under the leadership of four chiefs, headed by Good Furred Robe, they climbed a vine to enter this world through an opening in the ground to the surface. Good Furred Robe then laid out their first village, placing the houses in rows like corn. This legend is believed by some Indians to refer to the Huff Site, whose heavily sodded lodge rings suggest great age. The reason for the somewhat rectangular shape of some of the depressions has not yet been determined.
South of Huff to FORT RICE STATE PARK, 29 m., the site of a fort established by Gen. Alfred H. Sully on his Indian expedition in 1864. It served as a military post until 1877, when it was succeeded by Fort Yates down the river. In 1868 Fort Rice was the scene of a peace council with the Sioux. Sitting Bull and some five thousand followers, resentful of the appropriation of their lands by the white settlers, had refused to go on reservations and had moved to the Powder River in present Wyoming, where they lived the free, open life to which they were accustomed. They harbored a bitter hatred for the white people, but there was one white man whom Sitting Bull trusted. He was Father Pierre Jean De Smet, a Jesuit missionary who had spent years among the Indians of the western plains, and was sincerely interested in their welfare. He was known to the Sioux as "Black Robe." The War Department and the Indian Bureau, eager to negotiate with the Sioux, sent Father De Smet to lead a delegation to Sitting Bull's camp. Many of the hostile Indians had vowed to kill any white man on sight, but their leader learned that it was "Black Robe" who was approaching, and welcomed him heartily. During the council which followed Father De Smet gave Sitting Bull a brass and wood crucifix, which the Sioux leader, although he never professed Catholicism, prized highly all his life. At the instigation of the priest, Sitting Bull, while refusing to attend a peace council himself, sent two representatives, Chief Gall and Bull Owl, whom he instructed to say, "Move out the soldiers and stop the steamboats and we shall have peace." The peace council was held at Fort Rice, and led to the Laramie Treaty later that year, which unfortunately was violated in 1875 by the Indian Bureau and the War Department, precipitating the hostilities that ended in the disastrous Battle of the Little Big Horn in June 1876 (see History).
West of Mandan US 10 enters that part of the Missouri Plateau known locally as the Missouri Slope, and proceeds over the rolling grasslands typical of this area. As the route progresses through the Slope region, buttes jutting up from the prairie become more numerous. Many are crowned with brick-red scoria (clay baked in the earth by the heat of burning lignite beds lying adjacent), and others have scoria formations protruding from their sides.
At 209.5 m. is the junction with ND 25, a graveled highway (see Side Tour 8D).
At 231 m. (L) is the WRONG SIDE UP MONUMENT, a four-foot natural boulder bearing a bronze plate, commemorating an incident to which the New Salem Holstein Breeders' Circuit, nationally known dairy organization, credits its success. As one of the early settlers was breaking land preparatory to seeding it for the first time, a Sioux Indian and his son approached. The father, turning a piece of the sod back into its natural position, remarked, "Wrong side up." His son explained that the father believed the soil should not be plowed. The farmer, heeding his advice, grazed cattle on his land instead. Neighbors followed his example, and today NEW SALEM, 232 m. (2,163 alt., 804 pop.), is the center of an extensive dairying area. The town was named by members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church for the Biblical city of Salem.
GLEN ULLIN, 251.5 m. (2,065 alt., 950 pop.), a Russo-German community, has a name suggested to a railroad official by the Scottish ballad Lord Ullin's Daughter. An intermediate lighted airport is maintained here by the Department of Commerce. Levon West, the etcher, once attended Glen Ullin high school.
HEBRON, 267 m. (2,155 alt., 1,348 pop.), is in a small valley just W. of the divide between the Heart and Knife Rivers. Like New Salem, its name is of Biblical origin. The town has more brick-faced buildings in its business district than most towns of similar size because of the proximity of the $250,000 Hebron Brick Plant (for directions inquire at post office; open weekdays 9-5). Clay deposits suitable for brick manufacture, discovered here in 1904, led to the development of the field. The plant, on the eastern outskirts of the town, ships its products to all parts of the Northwest, the Pacific Coast States, and Canada.
Emil Krauth, son of one of Hebron's early settlers, is an authority on butterflies, and received recognition of his work in 1935 when entomologists named a small yellow butterfly, Colias christina krauthii, for him. At his residence he has a Butterfly Collection (open; for directions inquire at post office), 100 cases displaying specimens gathered from many parts of the world.
Just NW. of the town, where a cemetery now lies, Fort Sauerkraut was built at the time of a false Indian scare in 1892. There is no record of why it was given its odd name.