Early history of North Dakota; essential outlines of American history

Front matter

o V

ESSENTIAL OUTLINES OF AMERICAN HISTORY

EARLY HISTORY

Preface

"I hear the tread of pioneers, Of nations yet to be, The first low wash of waves where soon Shall roll a human sea."

— John G. IVhitticr.

More intensely interesting than a fairly tale is the story of the development of the great Northwest. It is a story of adventure and of daring in the lives of individuals not unmixed with romance, for there were brave, loving hearts, and gentle clinging spirits among those hardy pioneers, and many incidents and choice bits of legend have been handed down, which I hope may serve to make these pages interesting.

It is a story with traces of blood and tears, illustrating "man's inhumanity to man,'' for there were some among the early traders who had little regard for the expenditure of these precious treasures, in their pursuit of "Gold ! gold ! gold ! gold !" that is "heavy to get and light to hold." as suggested by Hood — the

"Price of many a crime untold

*******

How widely its agencies vary.

To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless,

As even its minted coins express.

Now stamp'd with the image of good Queen Bess,

And now of a Bloody Mary."

It is a story of man's love for man, in the work of the early missionaries, who, in obedience to the command of the Master, went forth into the wilderness to lift up and benefit the "untutored" savage, who only "sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind," and to bring refuge to his white children, who had blazed the way, and who were languishing in despair. It is a story of heroic deeds, of patriotic devotion to duty, of sufifering and bloodshed and of development.

Whether I am the one to write the story, let others judge.

"Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us : Let us journey to a lonely land I know.

There's a whisper on the night wind, there's a star agleam to guide us. And the Wild is calling, calling — let us go."

—Robert W. Service. "The Call of the Wild."

My family in all of its branches were among the early settlers of New York and New England, frontiersmen and participants in all of the early Indian wars. My mother's people suffered in the Wyoming massacre. Among the slain in viii PREFACE

that bloody affair were seven from the family of Jonathan Weeks, her paternal ancestor, who with fourteen fatherless grand-children returned to Orange County, New York, whence he came, abandoning his well-developed farm near Wilkesbarre, as demanded by the Indians.

I knew many of the people directly connected with the Minnesota massacre of 1862, and the incidents leading up to it, and the campaign following — settlers in the region affected, prisoners of the Sioux, traders, soldiers, missionaries, men in public life, and many of the Indians. One of the stockades built by the settlers for defense, was situated on the first real property I ever owned, and in a log house within the stockade, my first child, Hattie, wife of Charles E. V. Draper of Mandan, N. D., was born.

In July, 1873, I established the Bismarck Tribune, the first newspaper published in North Dakota. There were then but five villages in North Dakota — Pembina, Grand Forks, Fargo, Jamestown and Bismarck; no railroad, excepting the Northern Pacific under construction ; no farms, no agriculture, except the cultivation of small patches by Indians and half-bloods, or in connection with the military posts or Indian agencies ; no banks, no public schools, no churches. It was my fate to be one of five (John W. Fisher, Henry F. Douglas, I. C. Adams, Mrs. W. C. Boswell and myself) to organize the Presbyterian Church Society at Bismarck, the first church organization in North Dakota, in June, 1873, and in the autumn of that year I was instrumental in organizing the Burleigh County Pioneers, developed through my direction into the North Dakota State Historical Society, of which I was the first president.

I was at Bismarck when a party of Northern Pacific surveyors started west to survey the line of the road from that point to the Yellowstone River in the spring of 1873. and saw the smoke of battle and heard the crack of rifles, as the engineers were forced to fight, even before they got as far west as the site of Mandan.

I saw Gen. George A. Custer as he marched to his last battle — the massacre of Custer and 261 men of the Seventh United States Cavalry on the Little Big Horn, by the Sioux. Accompanying him was Mark Kellogg, bearing my commission from the New York Herald, who rode the horse that was provided for me — for I had purposed going but could not — and who wore the belt I had worn in the Civil War, which was stained with my blood.

I saw the wounded brought down the Yellowstone and the Missouri, by Grant Marsh, on that historic boat, the Far West, and the weeping widows whose husbands returned not.

The trail of blood, beginning at the Atlantic, taking a new start at the Gulf, extending to the Pacific, and. returning, starting afresh on the banks of the Missouri, came to a sudden check on the banks of the Little Big Horn ; but it was not ended, the blood already spilled was not enough. The Seventh United States Cavalry. Custer's Regiment, was again baptized in blood at Wounded Kjiee, and the end was not reached until the tragic death of Sitting Bull, Dec. 15, 1890.

We have the Indians with us yet — in many instances happy and prosperous farmers, their children attending the schools and universities, the male adults having taken lands in severalty under the Federal Allotment Act, being recognized citizens of the United States, and entitled to the elective franchise in the State of North Dakota.

PREFACE ix

If I dwell upon Indian affairs, it is because I have been interested in the Indians from childhood. After the battle of Spottsylvania I lay in the field hospital beside an Indian soldier, wounded even worse than I. Not a groan escaped his lips. I admired the pluck and courage, and the splendid service of the Indian soldiers from the states of Michigan and Wisconsin in the Civil War. I have seen them in battle. I have known their excellent service as Indian police, I have seen them in their happy homes, when roaming free on the prairie, and I know their good points. Although I shall picture the horrors of Indian wars in a lurid light, I have no sympathy with the idea that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian," and I am glad to know that they are no longer a "vanishing race," but their numbers are now increasing, and to feel that they have a splendid destiny before them.

I have seen the growth of North Dakota from the beginning, I have performed my part in its development, but in the words of Kipling's Explorer:

"Have I named one single river? Have I claimed one single acre?

Have I kept one single nugget? — (barring samples?) No, not I. Because my price was paid me ten times over by my Maker, But you wouldn't understand it. You go up and occupy."

I feel it a duty, as well as a privilege, to contribute these pages to its history.

Clement Augustus Lounsberry.

Washington, D. C, February 27, 1919.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TENDERED

The author desires to acknowledge the receipt of historical data and other means of information necessary to the compilation, from the following persons:

Canada: A. M. Edington, Montreal Star.

Louisiana: Colonel William O. Hart, New Orleans.

Massachusetts: Hugh C. Cormack, Boston and Montreal.

Edward J. Holmes, Harvard Law School Association, Boston.

Professor Lee S. McCollester, D. D., Dean of Crane Theological School, Tufts College, Medford.

Joseph Sargent, Secretary Harvard Law School Association, Boston.

Professor Ezra R. Thayer, Dean of Harvard Law School, Cambridge.

Brevet Captain William H. Wade, Seventh Mass. Vol. Inf., War of 1861, and Mrs. Wade, Fall River.

Thomas Weston, Jr., Harvard Law School Association, Boston.

Mississippi: Thomas H. Herndon (Washington, D. C).

New York: Henry Winthrop Hardon, counselor at law, New York City.

North Dakota: John E. Blair, former Secretary of the College of Law of the University of North Dakota, Spokane, State of Washington.

Mrs. Minnie Clarke Budlong, Secretary of the Library Commission, Bismarck.

Ex-Governor John Burke, United States Treasurer, Washington, D. C.

Charles Cavileer, Pembina (deceased).

Very Rev. Thomas Egan, Rector of St. Mary's Cathedral Rectory, Fargo.

Adjutant General G. Angus Eraser, Bismarck.

Thomas Hall, Secretary of State, Bismarck.

X PREFACE

Major John G. Hamilton, Grand Forks.

Ex-Governor Louis B. Hanna, former Congressman, Fargo.

Governor Lynn J. Frazier, Bismarck.

Mrs. Kate T. Jewell, Bismarck.

Professor Orin Grant Libby, Secretary of the North Dakota Historical Society, Professor of History in the State University, Grand Forks.

Judge Charles A. Pollock, Fargo.

Captain W. A. Stickney, National Guard, Bismarck.

New Mexico: Ex-Governor Andrew H. Burke, Roswell.

Oklahoma: James A. Emmons, Pawnee.

Pennsylvania: T. Hanlon, City Clerk of Erie.

Virginia: Rear Admiral Harrie Webster, U. S. N. (retired), Richmond.

Washington, D. C: Amherst W. Barber, Surveying Division, U. S. General Land Office.

H. P. McLain, Adjutant General, U. S. A.

Frank Bond. Chief Clerk, General Land Office.

Mrs. Marie L. Bottineau Baldwin, Secretary of the New North American Indian Association.

Henry N. Couden, Chaplain U. S. Hotise of Representatives.

Captain E. W. Deming, U. S. A., artist.

Charles M. Gandy, Colonel Medical Corps, U. S. A.

C. F. Hauke, Chief Clerk, Office of Indian Affairs.

F. M. Hodge, Ethnologist-in-charge Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution.

Major James McLaughlin, Indian Office, U. S. Department of the Interior.

Colonel George H. Morgan, U. S. A.

Rev. J. Henning Nelms, D. D.. Rector of Ascension Church.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

Lieutenant Charles C. Slayton, U. S. N.

Major Richard R. Steedman, U. S. A. (retired).

Wisconsin: D. F. Barry, Superior.

Wyoming: Rev. John Roberts, D. D.

Minnesota: James J. Hill, Great Northern Railroad Company; H. E. Stevens, Chief Engineer Northern Pacific Railroad Company ; J. M. Hannaford, Vke President Northern Pacific Railroad Company, St. Paul.

publisher's preface

Part One, Early History of North Dakota, was published in 1913. and three years later was merged into North Dakota History and People, published by the S. J. Clarke Publishing Company of Chicago, in connection with two volumes of biographical sketches. The historical features embraced in that work, with added matter and illu.'^trations, are now presented in four parts, complete in one volume, carefully indexed, for home and school use, representing many years of painstaking research with verification.

Liberty Press.

Washington, D. C, February 27, 1919.

Part One Chapter Page

I. In the Beginning 3

I. (Continued) Outlines of American History 8

II. Occupied for Indian Trade 17

III. The Buffalo Republic 32

IV. Founding of Pembina 40

V. The Louisiana Purchase 53

VL "When Wild in Woods the Noble Sav.^ge Ran" "jj

VII. Graft in the Indian Trade 88

VIII. The Northwest Territory — A Chapter Apart gg

PART two

X. Early Exploring Expeditions 143

XI. The Conquest of the Missouri 158

XII. The Conquest of the Missouri (Continued) 170

XIII. Including the Sioux Massacre of 1862 190

XI\'. In the Sioux Country 209

X\'. Dakota Pioneers 224

XVI. The Conquest of the Sioux 241

XVII. The Conquest of the Sioux (Continued) 252

X\'III. Dakota Territory 263

part three

XIX. Dakota Organized 275

XX. Dakota in the Civil and Indian Wars 286

XXI. Politics in Indian Affairs 312

XXII. Transportation Development 330

XXIII. Red River Valley Old Settlers' Association 356

P.\RT FOUR

XXIV. Division of the Territory , 369

XX\'. The North Dakota Constitutional Convention 387

XXVI. The St.^te 422

xi xn

CONTENTS

CHAPTER • PAGE

XXVII. The Codes of North Dakota 446

XXVm. The Supreme Court 453

XXIX. Prohibition 470

XXX. The Press of North Dakota 483

XXXI. Naming North Dakota Counties 496

XXXII. Stories of Early Days 501

XXXIII. Pioneer Settlers and Settlements 524

XXXIV. History of Banking in North Dakota 546

XXXV. History of Methodism in North Dakota 554

XXXVI. Historical Sketch of the University of North Dakota. . 565

XXXVII. North Dakota Volunteers 577

XXXVIII. The Political Revolution in North Dakota 603

XXXIX. Founding of the Catholic Church in North Dakota 610

XL. Early Presbytertanism in North Dakota 615

XLI. Origin of the School Land System 628

— A L.\st Word 630

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Portrait of the Author Frontispiece

Presidents of the United States, 1789 to 1829 8

George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James iMonroe, John Quincy Adams.

Presidents of the United States, 1829 to 1849 16

Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William H. Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor.

Presidents of the United States, 1849 to 1869 30

Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson.

Presidents of the United States, 1869 to 1889 112

Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland.

Presidents of the United States from 1889 to the Present, 1918 (for Cleveland, see page 112) 130

Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, Woodrow Wilson.

Dakota Pioneers: Enos Stutsman, Judson Lamoure, Hugh S. Donaldson,

Charles E. Galpin 226

Noted Sioux: Sioux Warrior, Crow King, John Grass, Running Antelope. . 240

A group of old time traders 308

Robert Wilson, John Smith, "Jack" Morrow and A. C. Leighton. Noted Sioux: Chief Gaul, Rain-in-the-Face, Sitting Bull and Bull Head. ... 312

Dakota Pioneers : Charles Cavileer, Jean Baptiste Bottineau 326

Dakota Pioneers : Colonel Harry Brownson and Clerks 338

Dakota Pioneers: Erastus A. Williams, Clement A. Lounsberry at 21, Alanson W. Edwards, Linda W. Slaughter 398

OTHER PORTR.MTS

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark 60

Chief Little Crow 19°

General John B. S. Todd 218

Joseph Rolette 230

Governor William Jayne , 262

Chief Red Cloud 306

Governor William A. Howard 31°

Dr. Henry R. Porter and Charles Reynolds: 320

xiii xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGt

J\Iax Bass 330

Richard F. Pettigrew, Jefferson F'. Kidder, Henry C. Hansbrough and Morgan T. Rich •. 370

Governor Arthur C. Mellette 372

Governor Nehemiah G. Ordway 378

Walter A. Burleigh . 382

Oscar Sherman Gifford 384

Major James McLaughlin and Luther Sage Kelly (Yellowstone Kelly).... 418

Governor Eli C. D. Shortridge 426

Governor E. Y. Sarles 430

Governor John Burke 432

Governor Louis B. Hanna 434

Senators Lyman R. Casey and Gilbert A. Pierce 440

Senators Porter J. McCumber, Asle J. Gronna, and Members of Congress

Patrick D. Norton, Geo. M. Young and John M. Baer 442

Governor Lynn J. Frazier 606

Reverends O. H. Elmer and I. O. Sloan 618

MAPS

Territory of Louisiana, 1682-1762 52

Louisiana purchase modified by treaty with Spain, 1819 54

Louisiana, the territory actually delivered, 1804 56

Louisiana purchase and later annexations 58

Great Northern Railway Line, 1914 342

Counties and Congressional districts of North Dakota 602

MISCELLANEOUS

The First Encounter, — Attack on the Narragansett Indians at South Kingston 4

Seven Bears at the River, — The Wounded Bear 20

Hunting the Grizzly Bear, — Herds of Bison and Elk on the Upper Missouri 26

Black Diamond (the famous buffalo) 32

Running the buffalo 36

Steamer Selkirk, — Old Fort Pembina, 1840-84 40

Ball Play of the Dakota ( Sioux ) Indians 44

United States Flag adopted June 14, 1777 64

A Alandan \'illage, — Winter Village of the Minetarees 68

Sakakawea, "The Bird Woman" (statue) 74

Portrait of Virginia Grant, granddaughter of Sakakawea ; Sioux women

dancing 76

Fort Clark on the Missouri, February, 1834, — Fort Union on the Missouri,

Dog Sledges of the Mandan Indians, — Interior of the Hut of a Mandan

Chief 82

Ponca Indians Encamped on the Banks of the Missouri River, — The \'oy-

ageurs at the Portage 92

Red River Cart, 1801-1871, — Grand Forks in 1874 148

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv

PAGE

Steamer "Yellowstone" ascending the Missouri River, 1833, — Snags, Sunken

Trees on the Missouri 158

Upper Missouri River Scene at "Drowned Man's Rapids." Steamer "Rosebud" Homeward Bound, — Steamer "Josephine," 1876 160

Fort Union, 1864 i/O

Horse Racing of Sioux Indians, — Fort McKenzie, August 28, 1833 176

Sioux Warriors (Deming) 240

Whitestone Hill Battle Monument 294

Steamer Far West 324

Main Street, Bismarck. 1872-3, — Indian Travois 334

First House in Burlington and First Postofifice and Postmaster in Northwestern North Dakota 386

The March of Civilization ( Sitting Bull and other noted warriors following

the flag) 420

State Flower, — The Wild Rose 422

Battleship "North Dakota" 436

Norwegians Dancing near Red River in Abercrombie. — Girls in Norwegian

Peasant Dress. Abercrombie 500

North Dakota State Flag 57^

Part 1

Vol. I— 1

Chapter I In The Beginning A Trail Of Blood

"Swiftly walk over the western wave, Spirit of Night."

— Shelley.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void ; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

• — Holy Scriptures.

Long before the earth took form, the universe existed. Compared with the whole, the earth's proportion is that of a thought snatched from a busy Hfe, a leaf from the forest, a grain of sand from the seashore, a chip from the workshop of Eternal Energy.

Perhaps it existed in impalpable dust, or fragments left when other worlds or celestial bodies were created, hurled together by Almighty Force, forming a burning mass, still burning in the interior, changing but not destroying the material of which it was made. Gases from the flames still form, and finding vent at some weak spot, the explosion and the earthquake follow, and portions shake and tremble, cities are destroyed or buried, and the face of the earth is changed.

Perhaps a crust formed upon the surface of the burning mass when this old earth was young, which, shrinking as it cooled, gave the mountain ranges and the depressions which make the beds of the seas and oceans, and out of the volcanoes, belching forth their clouds of smoke and gases, caine the "darkness" which "was upon the face of the deep," and when the darkness disappeared, and life and growth became possible, "the morning stars sang together," for a new world was born.

And that world took its course among the planets, the portion receiving the direct rays of the sun becoming tropical, while immense bodies of ice formed at the poles. "The testimony of the rocks" indicates that when the ice was broken loose, and plowed over the surface of the earth, it was miles in depth. It broke down, and ground to gravel and dust, mountain ranges, leaving here and there the boulders, forming new valleys and new plains, burying the immense mass of vegetation of that earlier period, giving to the world its fields of coal.

Perhaps, under this enormous accumulation of ice, the earth was changed in its axis, possibly by some convulsion of nature. The fact that a large portion of North Dakota was, time and time again, beneath the waters, is apparent to any observer, and in all of the eastern part of the state, the work of the ice is as visible as the stitches of a seamstress upon a completed garment.

Neither life nor light was possible in the earth's earlier stages, and after the creation of all other forms of life, man appeared, and into his organization there was carried every element in nature, whether on the earth, in the waters which surrounded the earth, or in the atmosphere — whether in the chattering ape or creeping thing, in beast or bird, in fish or fowl, in life-supporting or life-destroying principle, and to all these life was added, breathed into man, created indeed from the dust of the earth by Divine Energy. And what is life ? We may follow matter and find it in its changing form, but when life passes from its earthly teneinent, who can say whither it goeth ?

Man ate of the tree of knowledge. That was God-given, and its use brings its reward and its punishment, but death is essential to development, and is as natural as birth. The seasons come, and the seasons go; winter has its work no less than summer ; the flowers bloom and fade, and so man is born, matures, and falls into decay, and, like the dead worlds which have performed their missions, passes into dust to be born again into some new form of fife.

"The stars shine over the earth.

The stars shine over the sea; The stars look up to the mighty God,

The stars look down on me.

The stars have lived a million years,

A million years and a day; But God and I shall love and live

When the stars have passed away."

—Rev. Jabec Thomas Sunderland.

When man appeared upon the face of the earth the strenuous life began. Doubtless from the beginning he "earned his bread by the sweat of his brow" and the quiet life of Abel invited the first flow of human blood, which has formed a continuous trail that marks the course of human development. Without bloodshed there has been no advancement, without bloodshed no redemption ; no great reforms have ever gained a masterly headway without bloodshed ; no nation has ever been established without its baptism of blood.

Persecution in the old world led to tlie peopling of the new, and every step in the development of the new world is marked by human blood. There was war between the French and the English colonists, war between the Dutch and their neighbors, and cruelty in most revolting form by those who sailed under the flag of Spain and gained a permanent foothold in the country west of the Mississippi River. And from the beginning the whites were at war with the reds, driving them from one section, then another, destroying their homes, taking from them their wealth of game, and planting within their breasts hatred almost undying. Who does not remember the pathetic words of Tah-gah-jute called

THE FIRST ENCOUNTER From Abbotfs King Philip.

ATTACK ()X THK XARRACiAXSETTI INDIANS AT SOUTH KIX(iSTON From Abbott's Kiiijj Pliilip.

"Logan?" He was the son of a white man reared among the Indians, and was known as a Mingo chief — a common term for those Iroquois Hving beyond the proper boundaries of the tribe. He was named for James Logan, colonial secretary of Pennsylvania, his father's friend. All the members of his family were killed in the spring of 1774, while crossing a river in a canoe, and after the defeat of the Indians in the bloody war which followed, instead of suing for peace with the rest, he sent this message to be delivered to John Murray Dunmore, the last royal governor of Virginia.

LOGAN TO DUN MORE

"I appeal to any white man to say if he ever entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him no meat; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him not. During the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate of peace. Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen pointed as they passed by, and said, 'Logan is the friend of the white man.' I had even thought to have lived with you, had it not been for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, who last spring, in cold blood, unprovoked, murdered all the relatives of Logan, not even sparing my women and children, and he an officer in the white man's government ! There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it. I have killed many. I have glutted my vengeance. For my country I rejoice at the gleams of peace; but do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one."

KING Philip's war

"Here still a lofty rock remains,

On which the curious eye may trace — Now wasted half by warring rains, — The fancies of a ruder race."

— Philip Frencau, 1752-1832.

In July, 1675, the King Philip's war commenced. The old and friendly chiefs, who appreciated the sturdy integrity of the Pilgrims, and their braves who knew what war was, had passed away. The young men who followed them had become proficient in the use of firearms and were chafing for war, and determined to provoke it, but believed they would be defeated unless they avoided shedding the first blood. So they wandered about committing depredations of every kind, sometimes snatching the prepared food from the tables where they appeared as unbidden guests at meal times. They killed the domestic animals of the colonists, sharpened their knives on their doorsteps while boasting of what they intended to do, and finally on Sunday, July 20, 1675, ^ party of eight called at the home of a colonist and demanded the privilege of sharpening their hatchets on his grindstone, well knowing that it would not be permitted in view of the Pilgrim idea of the Sabbath. They went to another house where the people were at church and ransacked the closets, helping themselves to food; they shot the cattle of other colonists and finally demanded liquor of one and tried to take it by violence when he in his desperation fired on one of them who was sHghtly wounded, and their purpose was gained — the whites had drawn the first blood, and war was declared and waged in all its fury.

Of the ninety villages which had been settled by the New England colonists, twelve were utterly destroyed during that war, and forty others suffered from fire and pillage. The isolated settlements were nearly all destroyed, the Indians taking but few captives and these being held for torture or ransom.

The traditions of many families run back to King Philip's war, some of the women and children escaping by being placed in an out-of-door brick oven before which wood was piled when the men were called out for the common defense. When the men returned they found the family safe, but the buildings had been destroyed by fire. In Abbott's "History of King Philip," the author graphically tells the story, and concludes with these words: "But the amount of misery created can never be told or imagined. The midnight assault, the awful conflagration, the slaughter of women and children, the horrors of captivity in the wilderness, the impoverishment and mourning of widows and orphans, the diabolical torture, piercing the wilderness with shrill shrieks of mortal agony, the terror, universal and uninterrupted by day or night — all, all combined in composing a scene in the awful tragedy of human life, which the mind of the Deity alone can comprehend."

Plymouth and Bristol counties in Eastern Massachusetts witnessed some of the most exciting episodes of the Indian wars, and the conflicts with King Philip and his warriors occurred frequently in this locality. Their woods and the country lying between the present cities have rung many times with the war whoop of savages, and the waters of Mount Hope Bay, and the many lakes, rivers, and large ponds, have assisted in the transportation of countless parties of attack, and of escape, as well as great councils leading to transactions of far-reaching consequence to the country.

King Philip and about five hundred lodges of his people numbering upwards of three thousand, took up their winter quarters in 1675, near South Kingston, R. I., on an elevated tract of land surrounded by an almost impenetrable swamp. It was fortified by palisades, a ditch and a slashing of some rods in width, and here as at Pequot Hill, they had gathered immense quantities of supplies. December 19, 1675, they were attacked in this position by a force of about one thousand colonial troops and their camp and supplies entirely destroyed. More than one thousand warriors were slain, and a large number were wounded; few of the women and children escaping, although many of the warriors reached the swamp, and continued their warfare until the bitter end in the summer of 1677.

King Philip, however, was killed August 12, 1676, at Mount Hope, R. I. His body was beheaded and quartered and the parts hung up in trees to be devoured by vultures ; his wife and children being sold into slavery. This was the fate of the captives generally. Those for whom there was no market were parceled out among the colonists as servants. The tribes engaged in this war were the Wampanoags, Narragansetts and Nipmucks.

Similar scenes were enacted in the Wyoming Valley, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, July 3. 1778, when more than three hundred settlers were slain.

EXTENDING THE FRONTIER

Before the Revolutionary war, steps were taken to extend the settlement to the west, partly from the impulse to expand, to grow, and partly from a desire to extend the frontier as a measure of protection. This ambition was the leading, moving thought among the great minds of Virginia, and it was sons of Virginia who blazed the way into the trackless wilderness, and took possession of Kentucky, "the dark and bloody ground," where the battles were fought and the minds cultured which made apparent the advisability of the purchase of Louisiana, and contributed so much to its development.

As Washington, then a young surveyor and lowly citizen, extended the lines of survey, he was watched by the red men, who dogged his footsteps and scalped his unfortunate assistants who happened to fall into their hands, and often it became necessary to drop the tripod and compass, and take up the rifle and the knife. That which occurred in his case was true in the life of almost all of the frontier surveyors, and the frontier farmer carried the rifle, as well as the hoe, into the field where the work was done.