In 1745 De Lusigan, a courier in the employ of the Canadian government, visited Big Stone Lake and other points in western Minnesota to call in the Canadian coureurs de bois, or unlicensed traders who were living with the Indians. This fact is evidence that several white men were probably at this time in the Dakota country, but they left no record of their doings or of the localities they visited.
It is rather strange that no record has been kept of the time when the French traders at St. Louis began to trade up the Missouri among the Dakota tribes. We only know that as early as 1796 a post known as Loisel's house, a substantial fortified trading post, was built on Cedar Island in the Missouri River a few miles below the site of Pierre, and that the next year Trudeau's post, generally known as the Pawnee House, was built on the east side of the Missouri River, opposite the site of Fort Randall. Pierre Dorion, afterward guide to Lewis and Clark, traded with the Yanktons and married a Yankton woman before 1785, and Pierre Garreau lived continuously with the Rees after 1790. From these facts it may be fairly assumed that French trade along the Missouri was quite general from about 1785.
In 1801 the trader Charles Le Raye was captured in Missouri by a war party of Brulé Sioux. They took him to the Sioux River, near Elkpoint; then up the Missouri, visiting Spirit Mound, the Teton River, and several Ree towns on the way; then across to the Minnesota River; then in 1804 back to the Vermilion, where the Brulés held a council upon the question whether to resist the progress of Lewis and Clark, of whom we shall read in a later chapter. That fall Le Raye escaped and returned to the white settlements.
SOME LAND CLAIMS
CHAPTER V
SOME LAND CLAIMS
On the strength of the discoveries of Columbus, and especially of Coronado, who came from Mexico up through New Mexico and into Kansas in 1540–1541, Spain claimed all of the interior of the American continent, including the South Dakota country. She did nothing, however, in the way of exploration or occupancy, to make the claim good, though for more than a hundred years her right was undisputed, until the French from Canada began to trade with the Sioux Indians and claimed for France all of the territory which they entered.
On September 18, 1712, the king of France granted the monopoly of trade in all of the territory lying in the Mississippi valley to Anthony Crozat, a banker of Paris, for the term of sixteen years. The action of the French led the Spaniards to take measures to assert their claims, and they sent men from Santa Fé to drive the French from the lower Missouri and Mississippi rivers. The Spanish plan was to excite the Osage Indians to make war on the Missouri Indians, who were friendly to the French, but by a mistake the Spaniards went directly to the Missouri camp, where the entire party, with one exception, were killed. This led the French to build a fort near the mouth of the Missouri.
In 1732 the king of France reasserted his sovereignty over the Mississippi and Missouri valleys, and governed the section through a governor general who lived at New Orleans. There is no record or probability that either France or Spain took any actual possession of the South Dakota country until young Verendrye claimed it for France in March, 1743.
For nearly twenty years after Verendrye claimed the land France's title seems to have been undisputed, but in 1762 she ceded all of Louisiana, which included South Dakota, to Spain, in return for certain political favors. Spain took possession and governed the land west of the Mississippi for nearly forty years thereafter; then in 1800 she secretly deeded it back to France.
When the American people learned of this secret cession of the Louisiana country to France, the western pioneers in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee were greatly concerned and aroused. The great Napoleon had just made himself the head of the French government; his fame as a soldier and conqueror had spread over the world, and the American frontiersman did not like to have him for a near neighbor.
Thomas Jefferson was then President of the United States. The importance of the control of the Mississippi River was clear to his far-seeing eye. He determined that we must, at least, have a joint right to its free passage and must have a site for a commercial city at its mouth, and he undertook, by sending special representatives to France, to secure these rights. At the same time he prevailed upon Congress to permit him to undertake the exploration of the far West with a view to finding a means of crossing the continent to the Pacific Ocean, and while his ambassadors were at Paris, bargaining for free rights on the Mississippi, Jefferson was pushing his plan to send an exploring party across the American continent. He had his party organized and his plans well matured when, to his surprise, and the surprise of all America, the news came from Paris that the American ministers had bought not only the desired free rights on the Mississippi, but all of the great Louisiana territory as well. Thus it came about that, as a part of Louisiana, South Dakota came into the possession of the United States, having been first claimed by Spain, then by France, again by Spain, again passing to France, and finally falling to the American commonwealth.
LEWIS AND CLARK
CHAPTER VI
LEWIS AND CLARK
Jefferson selected to head his party of explorers his private secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, a cousin of George Washington. Scientific knowledge was not very far advanced in America at this time, but early in the spring of 1803, a few days before the bargain with Napoleon had been made and months before it had been thought of in America, Lewis hurried from Washington to Philadelphia to take a brief course in the natural sciences and mathematics, hoping to gain enough to enable him to make scientific observations of the country through which he was to pass, and to determine the latitude and longitude of various places.
While Lewis was in Philadelphia, it occurred to him that it would be wise to organize the expedition in two parts, and keep two records, so that in case one record was lost there would be hope of preserving the other. He told Jefferson about it, and the President thought the plan a wise one; so Captain William Clark—a brother of General George Rogers Clark, the man who in the Revolutionary War had saved Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the United States—was selected to accompany Captain Lewis, and to enjoy with him equal rank in the command of the enterprise.
All of the remainder of that year was spent in preparation. In the summer the two captains set out for St. Louis, and not until they