In 1871 the Whistler expedition went up the Little Missouri and into Montana in search of the most practical route for a railroad to the Pacific. Two years later the Stanley expedition, accompanied by a large military escort, conducted another western survey. Engagements with Indians cost this expedition a number of men. One Sioux, Rain-in-the-Face, claimed to have had a part in killing two civilians on the Stanley Survey, and as a result was imprisoned at Fort Lincoln until he escaped. He gained his revenge at the Little Big Horn (see Side Tour 8C).
The Northern Pacific Railway received its charter from the Government in 1864. Magnificent Federal land grants were made: still the road found it difficult to raise the necessary capital to finance the venture, and Jay Cooke & Company undertook the sale of Northern Pacific securities.
On the last day of the year 1871 the line was completed to the Red River at Moorhead, and early in March of the next year it was extended to Fargo. Cooke went into bankruptcy after the financial panic of 1873, but was able to obtain private funds to complete the road to the Missouri that year. Bismarck remained the western terminus of the line until 1879. During the next two years rails were laid to the Montana border, completing the line across the entire State.
In 1870, just before the advent of the railways, the estimated white population of present North Dakota was not more than five hundred. Pembina County, extending the length of the Red River Valley and to the western population limit, was the only organized county in the State.
The Northern Pacific was completed to the Pacific Coast in 1883. Squatters preceded the railroad, settlers followed it, trying to guess future town sites so they could force the company to buy them out at the most profitable price.
The Great Northern was the second important railroad to come into the State. By 1882 James J. Hill, the "Empire Builder," had extended a line up the Dakota side of the Red River to Canada. Hill had a vision of a great railroad connecting the Pacific Coast with the Great Lakes, whence produce could be cheaply transported to New York. Construction began in 1880 and the Great Northern was extended westward across northern North Dakota and in 1893 reached the Coast.
The railroads linked Dakota with the East and civilization, but to the west was the frontier. Here Sioux warriors were beginning to resent the encroaching whites and the appropriation of their hunting grounds. It was imperative, therefore, that soldiers be kept at Fort Abraham Lincoln.
To understand the campaign of 1876 against the Sioux, in which Gen. George A. Custer met his tragic end, it is necessary to go back to the Indian treaty of 1868. The Government by this pact promised to abandon and destroy Forts Reno and Phil Kearney in Wyoming and Fort Smith in Montana. This having been done, the Sioux were guaranteed their freedom in the territory between the North Platte and the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers. But, when gold was discovered in the Black Hills by a Government reconnaissance expedition under Custer in the summer of 1874, white settlers and prospectors begged for admission to the coveted territory. Military guards at first attempted to keep them out, but when the Indians refused in a treaty council in 1875 to sell or lease land to miners, the Government withdrew the guard and settlers poured in by thousands.
RING-BILLED GULLS