North Dakota: A Guide to the Northern Prairie State

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

After spending the winter with the friendly Indians, the expedition in April 1805 set out along the river again, following its course into Montana. Their journey through the mountains to the Pacific, led by Sakakawea, is one of the most thrilling adventures in American history.

The party returned in September 1806 to the Hidatsa village on the Missouri where Lewis and Clark, taking leave of their faithful guide, set out for St. Louis and home. The careful observations recorded in the journals of their party are a valuable contribution to the history of this region.

Lewis and Clark were not the only explorers to visit the Missouri region in the early nineteenth century. A decade before they came traders were already ascending the river, and in the succeeding year naturalists and military men added their presence to the growing, if transient, white population. Among the many who left interesting records of their explorations and travels were Charles le Raye, who spent three years as a captive of the Brulé Sioux; Manuel Lisa, one of the most important fur traders on the upper Missouri; Gen. William Ashley, Col. Henry Leavenworth, and Gen. Henry Atkinson, who subdued the Arikara; and Wilson P. Hunt of the Astorian Overland Expedition. Two royal adventurers visited here: Paul Wilhelm, Prince of Wurttemberg, who is said to have taken Sakakawea's son back to Germany with him; and Maximilian, Prince of Wied, who brought with him the Swiss artist Carl Bodmer, whose paintings preserve much of the life and customs of the Mandans. George Catlin, a native artist, was aboard the first steamboat to reach the Yellowstone. He painted and wrote about the Missouri Indians, and left hundreds of pictures of their life. John James Audubon, noted naturalist, spent several months in present North Dakota studying the larger types of North American mammals.

ON THE FRONTIER

The earliest attempt at colonization in this State was the Selkirk settlement in 1812 at Pembina in the Red River Valley. The Earl of Selkirk had arranged for the transportation of a group of evicted Scotch and Irish peasants to the Hudson Bay region in Canada, and some of the emigrants had followed the Red River south and settled at Pembina. The fur traders in that vicinity, however, were not eager to have the wild country inhabited. They made life miserable for the Selkirk settlers, and finally succeeded in driving most of the newcomers out.

Among the fur companies of that time were two famous competitors, the Hudson's Bay and the North West Companies. Others were the Missouri Fur Company, Chouteau and Berthold, Northwestern, Columbia, and Sublette & Campbell, the latter company establishing a post, Fort William, on the site later occupied by Fort Buford military post. John Jacob Astor established the American Fur Company, and for years Fort Union, on North Dakota's western border, was that company's principal post. (See Side Tour 6B.)

Some of northeastern North Dakota's most noted pioneers came into this region as fur traders. Joseph Rolette was sent to Pembina by the American Fur Company in 1842. A member of the Minnesota Territorial Legislature, he was responsible for keeping the capital at St. Paul. Norman Kittson, who established a fur trading post at Pembina in 1843, became the first postmaster, in 1851, in what is now North Dakota. He, too, was a member of the Minnesota Territorial Legislature. Charles Cavileer, while not a fur trader, was a contemporary of these men, and acted as collector of customs at Pembina.

The coming of settlers marked the decline of the fur trade, but at its height it had been colorful. Lewis Crawford, a North Dakota historian, has written:

"In this early race for empire none except fur seekers entered. Their rhythmic paddle blades swished up every stream of the West to its rivulet head; every mountain height and forbidding gorge knew their intrepid feet.... Every nationality had a part.... These were the true pathfinders, the true explorers, the heralds of empire. Their fur-laden vessels floating down the familiar waters of the Missouri and its tributaries represented the wealth, the adventure, the romance of the Northwest."