Historical Record On Beaver Creek

WA NA TA, THE CHARGER, Grand Chief of the Sioux, by Charles King Bird.
Missing Narrative In North Dakota
Historical Record On Beaver Creek
By Dakota Wind
Linton, N.D. (The First Scout) – There is a great long gradual rise on the vast open prairie between the Mnišóše (The Water-Astir, or “Missouri River”) and Čhaŋsáŋsaŋ Wakpá (White Birch River, or “James River”). The Iháŋkthuŋwaŋna (Little End Village, or “Yanktonai”) who occupied this region for hundreds of years call this rise Ȟé Mníšoše, the Water-Astir Ridge. The French called it the Coteau du Missouri.

The Očhéthi Šakówiŋ often know places by two or more names. An everyday name for everyday things like hunting or gathering. A site may have a special or spiritual significance. The Middle Dakhóta called the Water-Astir Ridge, just that, when they hunted and gathered. When they prayed there, when they put their relatives to rest on the coteau, they called it Wanáǧi Tȟamákhočhe, or Country of the Spirits.

For the Dakhóta, the Water-Astir Ridge begins in the north by Šuŋk’óthi Pahá, or Wolf Den Butte, which is today called Dogden Butte. The coteau reaches southwest to a point near the North Dakota-South Dakota border by Forbes, ND. A creek across the border meanders across the plain and serves as a natural boundary of the coteau. This creek has two names in Dakhóta, and if that weren’t enough, it has two designations in English. 

The Battle of Whitestone Hill, as it appeared in Harpers Weekly, October 31, 2863.

A gulch six miles west-southwest of Forbes, ND is known to the Iháŋkthuŋwaŋna as Šúŋka Wakȟáŋ Wičháktepi, or Where Their Horses Were Killed, in reference to the horses that were wounded in the 1863 Whitestone Hill Conflict carried survivors to this point and laid down to rest.

This creek is known by the Middle Dakhóta as Wíŋkta Wakpána (Hermaphrodite Creek) or Dakhóta Núm Wakpá (Two Dakota Creek). The Corps of Discovery called it Stone Idol Creek. The modern population in the vicinity of Pollock call it Spring Creek. This stream originates about nine miles south-southeast of Ashley, ND.

Another stream that bears re-examination is Čhápa Wakpána, or Beaver Creek. It rises at Bdé Čhápa, or Beaver Lake, and flows out of the coteau about 108 miles west to join the Mnišóše by the Beaver Creek Recreation Area by HWY 1804.

In the fall of 1839, Waná’ata, the Charger, led his band of Dakhóta to make their winter camp. It was his last winter. The camp spread out for miles along the creek. The Charger was a veteran of the War of 1812. He was commissioned a captain by British Indian Agent Col. Robert Dickson. The Charger led several hundred Dakhóta people at the battles of Fort Miegs and Fort Stephen in Ohio. He was so influential on the field, his bravery so renowned, that President Martin Van Buren met with the Charger and commissioned his likeness in a portrait. The Charger also met with King George III. Was the Charger an important and influential figure in the history of the American West? A president and a king seemed to think so.

In 1818, at Fort Snelling, the Charger became a devoted proponent of the United States.

The Charger led a command of hundreds of Dakhóta and Lakȟóta warriors in the first ever punitive campaign against a Plains Indian people, the Arikara, in the Arikara War of 1823. 

U.S. General Land Office Map, No. 12, 1878, details Grant's executive order extending the boundaries of Standing Rock Agency into present-day Emmons County.

President Grant extended the boundary of the Standing Rock Agency in his Executive Order, dated March 16, 1875, from west of the Missouri River, east of the agency along Beaver Creek to about where 19th Ave SE, Linton, ND is located, and south into North Campbell, SD. This boundary set aside land for the Iháŋkthuŋwaŋna Dakhóta people. The people who fought on the side of the United States were recognized for their service and dedication by the federal government and the president set aside land for them in perpetuity.

There’s plenty of cultural and occupational history in Emmons County. If only there were some kind of in-depth historical Class III survey that could document these significant events.

Revisiting The John K. Bear Winter Count

Drifting Goose, chief of the Húŋkpatina, a winter count keeper, along with his people were placed onto the Crow Creek Indian Reservation. 
The Drifting Goose Winter Count
John K. Bear Winter Count Revisited
By Dakota Wind
In 1976, James H. Howard published his Yanktonai Ethnohistory And The John K. Bear Winter Count in the Plains Anthropologist. Howard counseled with native informants from native communities in South Dakota. The strength of his work is determined by two things: his informants and his scholarly research. Howard genuinely cared for the subject and people he wrote about.

There are a few things which must be revisited in Howard’s work: the arrival of the horse is one. This is important because it establishes the earliest record of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (the Great Sioux Nation) encounter with the horse, its location, which places the Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna (the Yanktonai) at the mouth of the Čhaŋsáŋsaŋ Wakpá (the James River), and a date of 1692.

A few things must be re-interpreted. An example is the 1841 entry regarding Thamína Wé (His Bloody Knife). Howard calls this record an “anomaly,” and assumes this entry is in regard to the Arikara US Indian Scout, Bloody Knife, a friend of the infamous Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, from whom the latter learned how to converse in Lakȟóta, Sahnish (Arikara), and the Plains Indian Sign & Gesture language. This Bloody Knife is the Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋ chief, not the Arikara scout.

I’ve employed the LLC standard orthography in this “update,” and have expanded or amended some of Howard’s entries. Howard’s general format will be used: Numerical year in the Common Era, original text, the text re-written using the LLC standard orthography, a word-for-word translation, a free interpretation, followed by cultural/historical narrative.

Some biographical information about Maǧá Bobdú (Drifting Goose) can be found at American-Tribes.com. Go visit this website for its great forum on the subject of American Indian history and culture.

Download the PDF document of "Revisiting The John K. Bear Winter Count." 

For whatever odd reason, the citations didn't carry over when I converted the doc to PDF. Please contact me if you'd like a copy of the original document. 

Dakota Wind is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. He is currently a university student working on a degree in History with a focus on American Indian and Western History. He maintains the history website The First Scout.

Lakota Geography

A view of the Great Plains with Dakota-Lakota place names. South is the orienting direction on this map. Makȟóčhe Wašté means “The Beautiful Country.” This is the name the Lakota have for the Great Plains, and by extension, North America.

Lakȟóta Geography
A World View Perspective
By Dakota Wind
Bismarck, N.D. (TFS) – Everyone knows the four cardinal directions. In English these are north, south, east, and west. The Lakȟóta name these four winds, or directions: Itókaǧata (South; “Facing The Downstream Direction”), Wiyóȟpeyata (West; Direction Where The Sun Sets), Wazíyata (North; Direction Of The Pine Tree), and Wiyóhiŋyaŋpata (East; Direction From Which The Sun Comes).

These four directions are represented in the medicine wheel by colors. Black may represent the west. White may represent the north. Red the east, and south by yellow. The color designation isn’t “set in stone.” In fact, some Lakȟóta employ blue or green as well. Many medicine wheels are employed oriented to the north. 

Rivers and streams are often known by more than one name. For example, the Dakota and Lakota call the Cannonball River "Íŋyaŋwakaǧapi Wakpá (Stone Makes For Itself River)," and they also call it "Íŋyaŋiya Wakpá (Talking Stone River)." 

The Lakȟóta memorized the landscape from a ground view perspective. The landscape was named according to the stream within. For example: Čhaŋšótka Wakpá Makȟóčhe, which means “Towering Tree River Country,” this presently refers to the country through which the Little Missouri River runs; Mníšoše Makȟóčhe means “Water A-stir Country,” which refers to country through which the Missouri River runs.

The Lakȟóta call the Great Plains, and by extension North America, “Makȟóčhe Wašté,” which means “The Beautiful Country.” The Lakota Language Consortium’s “New Lakota Dictionary, 2nd Edition,” has an entry for North America as “Khéya Wíta,” which means “Turtle Island.” Perhaps there are Lakȟóta people who call it so. 

A Hunkpapa map of the Little Bighorn Fight is oriented towards the south. Attention is paid more to the layout of the camps than to how the conflict unfolded.

At times the Lakȟóta employed maps, drawing or painting from whatever available resources were at hand (i.e. paper and pencil, cloth and ink, hide and paint, on the ground with a stick). When such maps were constructed, south seems to be the orienting direction.

This map relates the testimony of Takes His Shield, a survivor of the 1863 Whitestone Hill Massacre in Dakota Territory. It was rendered by the hand of Cottonwood and is oriented to the south. 

A testimonial map of the 1863 Whitestone Hill Massacre by Takes The Shield (Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna) and rendered by Cottonwood (Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna) was executed with the south at top of the map. Three Húŋkpapȟa maps of the 1876 Little Bighorn Fight were executed with south as the orienting direction.

Dakota Wind is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. He is currently a university student working on a degree in History with a focus on American Indian and Western History. He maintains the history website The First Scout.

Origins Of The Cannonball Stones

A cannonball concretion near Sentinel Butte, ND. Photo by ND State.
Origin Of The Cannonball
How The Stone Is Formed
By Dakota Wind
Cannonball, N.D. (TFS) – Mníšoše (the “Water A-stir;” Missouri River) is perhaps as old as 80 million years. Before the Quaternary Ice Age, the river ran north and drained into Hudson Bay. Following that ice age, the river altered its course and flowed east and south. The Lakȟóta worldview perspective observes that over time, rivers and mountains change. The Lakȟóta worldview embraces change. Everything changes.

One of the Mníšoše tributaries, Íŋyaŋ IyÁ Wakpá (Talking Stone River; Cannonball River) is a natural landmark, known by the first nations for thousands of years, and later by explorers and traders like the Corps of Discovery, traders, and military expeditions.

The Cannonball River is known by many names. The Húŋkpapȟa and Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna call it Íŋyaŋ IyÁ Wakpá, or Íŋyaŋwakaǧapi Wakpá (Stone Production [“Cannonball”] River), respectively. The Cheyenne call this same river É’ome’tá’á’e’t, in reference to the cannonball concretions. The Hidatsa know the Cannonball River as Aashihdia, which means Big River. The Mandan Indians, whose earliest historical record goes back to the Cannonball River, call it Pasąhxte’, meaning Big River.

The Mníšoše was known to the Thítȟuŋwaŋ (Dwellers On The Plains; Lakȟóta) as a dangerous river with a deadly undercurrent. Where tributaries converged with the Mníšoše, great wamníyomni (whirlpools) formed in the river. When the first nations crossed the Mníšoše they did so upstream of the wamníyomni. 

A Mandan Village by Karl Bodmer. In the image, Mandan women cross the Missouri River to tend to their gardens on the flood plain of the opposite shore. 

There are two explanations that explain the origin of the cannonball concretions. One mystical, a lesson in holding dear the mystery of creation; the other geological, telling us that these stones have a long history reaching back to a time before humans. In both explanations water is the key to their formation.

According to Jon Eagle Sr., Tribal Historic Preservation Officer of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the wamníyomni at the confluence of the Mníšoše and Íŋyaŋ IyÁ Wakpá, where the energy of one river converged with the energy of another, is where the cannonball concretions were formed. The energy of the wamníyomni created the stones. Eagle contends that after the construction of Oáhe (Something-To-Stand-On; a “Foundation”) Dam, after the creation of Lake Oáhe, the wamníyomni at the confluence of Íŋyaŋ IyÁ Wakpá and Mníšoše, stopped producing the spherical cannonball stones.

Dr. Ray Wood sums up the disappearance of the cannonball concretions in his Prologue To Lewis And Clark, “the banks and valley of this stream once were home to uncounted spherical sandstone concretions that ranged from a few inches to several feet in diameter. Some of them indeed were the size of cannonballs. Today they have been carried away by curio hunters in such numbers that they are very rare.” 

Bluemle explains how the Missouri River once drained into Hudson Bay. Visit his amazing website explaining the geological history of the Great Plains: johnbluemle.com. 

John Bluemle Ph.D. (former State Geologist for the state of North Dakota) explains the cannonball stones’ process through cementation. The cannonball stones “form as a result of the selective deposition from water of cementing materials in the pores of the sediment,” and, “All the geologic formations in western North Dakota contain concretions and nodules of many sizes and shapes.” Bluemle states in his work The Face Of North Dakota, that “some concretions are nearly spherical, some long and tubular, and others have irregular shapes.” As the landscape erodes around the cemented concretions, the cannonball is revealed.

The cannonball is so important to the identity of North Dakota, that the North Dakota Heritage Center and State Museum features several cannonball concretions outside its east entrance.

Dakota Wind is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. He is currently a university student working on a degree in History with a focus on American Indian and Western History. He maintains the history website The First Scout.

Survey Report Says Nothing To See Here

Leslie Nielsen's "Lt. Frank Drebin" from the 1988 comedy classic, "The Naked Gun." In this scene, Drebin tells people, "Move along. There's nothing to see here. Please disperse."
Survey Report Doesn't Say Much
"Move Along. There's Nothing To See Here."
By Dakota Wind 
Bismarck, N.D. (TFS) - Last November I submitted letters and copies of bibliographical information and primary resource documents to several agencies regarding the Class III survey report submitted to the North Dakota State Historic Preservation Office in January 2016. 

The contrast of information excluded from the report is far greater than what the report actually contains. The report minimizes the cultural, historical, and military occupations of a significant landmark on the Missouri River: the Cannonball River. 

Here are one dozen distinct events (a detailed explanation and complete bibliography can found in at "Remembering A River:" 

The Big River Village, a Huff phase Mandan Indian occupation as early as 1400 C.E. The site that has been disturbed by the drill pad on the north bank of the Cannonball River is known to the Mandan as "Big River Village," and to the State Historical Society of North Dakota as the "North Cannonball Village." 

The 1762-1763 Sičháŋǧu (Burnt Thigh; Brulé) and Cheyenne Fight, an inter-tribal conflict in which the Cheyenne retaliated and set fire to the prairie which caught and burned their enemy giving them the designation Sičháŋǧu. 

English explorer John Evans, who mapped the Missouri River from St. Louis to Knife River in 1796, includes the Cannonball River as the "Bomb River," in reference to the cannonballs.

The inter-tribal between the Mandan, Hidatsa, Húŋkpapȟa and Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna that began at the mouth of the Cannonball River concluded at the mouth of the Heart River in 1803. 

The Corps of Discovery Expedition remarked on the "La Bullet" River and took a cannonball concretion, Oct. 18, 1804. 

Botanist John Bradbury collected flax from the Cannonball River in 1811. A significant difference in the flax samples necessitated a second trip to the Cannonball River in 1819 for additional collection. 

War of 1812 tensions resulted in conflict on the Missouri River between the Arikara, Cheyenne, and the American Fur Company. There was a conflict at the mouth of the Cannonball River in 1812. 

A devasting flood in 1825 on the Missouri River floodplain resulted in the drowning deaths of over one hundred Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna men, women, elders, and children, and several hundred of their horses. All were buried on a hill across the river from the north bank Big River Village. This hill is sometimes submerged in Lake Oáhe, and is now located roughly halfway across the span of the present lake. 

Prince Maximillian von Wied-Neuwied spent probably the most time at the Cannonball River, describing what he saw, more than any other explorer or trader to date, and noted significant geological findings there in 1833. 

In 1837, the Húŋkpapȟa camp was struck by an epidemic of smallpox there on the flood plain, the west side of the Missouri River, at the Cannonball River confluence. 

After constructing Fort Rice in the summer of 1864, Gen. Alfred Sully began his punitive campaign against the "Sioux" at the mouth of the Cannonball River, July 29, 1864. 

The historic Cannonball Ranch, established at the same time as Fort Rice, was instrumental in developing the ranching traditions and western lifestyle on the Northern Great Plains. This historic ranch was inducted into the ND Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1999.

None of this is mentioned in the Class III survey report. Reports are supposed to be exhaustive: "An intensive inventory is a systematic, detailed field inspection done by, or under the direction of professional architectural historians, historians, archeologists, and/or other appropriate specialists." 

The ND SHPO has updated their Cultural Resources Identification, Recording and Evaluation page to reflect their process. "A location of five or fewer artifacts and identified by the archaeologist(s) as representing an area of very limited past activity may be recorded as an isolated find." The Class III Survey Report submitted by Energy Transfer flags over forty artifacts recorded by the survey team in the mouth of the Cannonball area alone.

ND SHPO continues: A location of five or fewer artifacts and identified by the archaeologist(s) as representing an area of very limited past activity may be recorded as an isolated find. The map detailing the Dakota Access Pipeline's route where the pipeline is to cross under Lake Oáhe flags fifty artifacts on both sides of the river. I can not publish an image of the map because it may result in "disturbance of the resource."

Site leads refer to resources that lack sufficient information to fully record and complete all necessary data fields on the North Dakota Cultural Resources Survey (NDCRS) site forms. Examples of site leads include: (1) locations recorded from various historic documents, (2) locations reported by a landowner or other non-professional, (3) a location with five or fewer surface visible artifacts which, in the professional judgment of the archaeologist(s), is likely to be a limited surface expression of a former occupation area where most of the artifacts are still buried, and/or (4) locations recorded by a cultural resource specialist outside of their project area(s), and thus not fully recorded. Clearly the Cannonball River is more than a "site lead," with over a dozen native and non-native primary resource documents, and at least two Ph.D.'s who've written about the Cannonball in their works, one a world-renowned archaeologist, and the other won a Pulitzer Prize in 2016 about the Mandan and their earliest record of that historic nation at the Cannonball River. 

These two Ph.D's have found enough material, physical and historical, and most importantly, significant, enough to include data and construct narrative about the Cannonball River Village sites. It's for the ND SHPO to say, "Move along. There's nothing to see here. Please disperse." 

The preliminary evaluation of all cultural resources identified within the study area should be made in sufficient detail to provide an understanding of the historical values that they represent...Only the lead agency and North Dakota State Historic Preservation Office, through consultation, can provide a final determination of eligibility (DOE) on cultural resources in North Dakota. 

The class III survey report has raised no flags. The events mentioned above can be found in various resources at the ND State Archives, ND State Library, the Stanley Ahler collection at the ND SHPO, on the ND Studies website, and as books for sale at the ND Heritage Center and State Museum Gift Store. 

Dakota Wind is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. He is currently a university student working on a degree in History with a focus on American Indian and Western History. He maintains the history website The First Scout.

Remembering A River

A view of the Cannonball River looking west. 

Remembering A River

Significant Mentions In Historic Resources

By Dakota Wind 
Updated on Nov. 12, 2016
Updated on Dec. 11, 2016
Updated on Feb. 13, 2017
Updated on Feb. 1, 2018

Cannonball, ND – The Lakȟóta people keep their collective memory alive in pictographic records called winter counts. One such winter count, the Brown Hat Winter Count, reaches back to what ethnologists and historians might call “myth-history,” to circa 901. This history reaches back hundreds of years and recalls the arrival of the horse in 1692, the first horse stealing raid in 1706, inter-tribal conflict, contact with traders, smallpox, starfalls, eclipses, comets, sun dances, white bison hunts, conflicts with soldiers, treaties, the arrival of settlers, the boarding school and reservation era, and survival.

If the Cannonball River were excluded from primary resources like journals, maps, and winter counts, our North Dakota history would be poorer for it. There is a continuous cultural occupation of this Missouri River tributary reaching back to circa 1300 through the tribal histories of the Mandan, Arikara, Cheyenne, Yanktonai Dakota, and Hunkpapa Lakota.

Following my viewing of the Class III survey report, I contacted the Chief Archaeologist at the North Dakota State Historic Preservation Society about several things that were missing. Mr. Picha's replied, "Dakota, Thank you. Mentions also appear in J. H. Howard's (1979) British Museum Winter Count. Sincerely, Paul." Mr. Picha acknowledges the missing information by mentioning yet another primary resource document. 

I scheduled a viewing of the Dakota Access Pipeline Class III survey report with the North Dakota State Historic Preservation Office at 4:00 PM on March 1, 2016. The report is in three thick volumes, and there was no possible way that I could view the entire thing in one sitting, however, I narrowed my search to the Cannonball River and Beaver Creek. According to the authors of this report, they admitted to no tribal consultation. They don’t have to, because the pipeline does not physically cross the reservation border. The report doesn’t mention much in the way of history and culture. What is mentioned, can’t be shared, because it may lead to the destruction of the resource.

The Lakota world view perspective places south as the orienting direction. Here is the Missouri River, the Cannonball River on the right (west), and two Missouri tributaries on the left (east) (Beaver Creek, top; Long Lake Creek, bottom).

What it doesn’t say needs to be shared. The report does not mention the flood of 1825 opposite of the mouth of the Cannonball River - thirty lodges, or about 150-180 people drowned. There was no mention of The Charger’s last camp on Beaver Creek either. The Charger was a major historic figure in the War of 1812, he fought in three conflicts in Ohio, met President Van Buren, met King George III, led as many as 700 Dakȟóta-Lakȟóta under Col. Leavenworth’s command of the Missouri Legion in 1823 in the first ever US military campaign on Plains Indians against the Arikara. A major historic figure? A former US president and an English king certainly thought so.

The Charger (inset) and the location of his last winter camp on Beaver Creek where he died the winter of 1839-1840. 

These few things were brought to the attention an individual at the ND SHPO on March 1, 2016, along with where he could find this information. The following day, that individual responded that this info is also be found in the British Museum Winter Count, in London, England.

The north and south banks of the Cannonball River are rife with physical evidence of historic and cultural occupations of people who are still here. This physical evidence of village remains and midden mounds are complemented by surviving oral tradition; there are various mentions in historic journals from English resources (i.e. John Evans) to American resources (i.e. Manuel Lisa, Corps of Discovery, etc.). As to whether or not the historic occupations of the Arikara, Cheyenne, and Mandan Indians ever interred their deceased in the vicinity of the Cannonball River mouth, it is absolutely preposterous to say that there are no burial grounds nearby – to say so would be to suggest that no one ever died in any of the cultural occupations. Alfred Bowers’ Mandan informants told him that their ancestors buried their deceased “in earlier times.”

The Sitting Rabbit Map of the Missouri River. The Cannonball River is listed on this map as "Big River." 

The Sitting Rabbit map of the Missouri River, from the North Dakota-South Dakota border to the North Dakota-Montana border, was commissioned by Orin Libby in 1906. At the time, Libby was the Secretary of the State Historical Society of North Dakota (SHSND). Libby sought out Sitting Rabbit, a Mandan Indian man, to capture the geography of the Missouri River as they knew it. Sitting Rabbit didn’t disappoint in his efforts. In fact, the Mandan Indian villages at the mouth of the Cannonball River, both the north and south bank villages, are called the Big River Villages. The Mandan Indian name of the Cannonball River is the Big River. This precious map is still in the collections of the SHSND. The SHSND has graciously uploaded this map for public viewing on their ND Studies website.

A Cheyenne (left) meets a Lakota (right) on the hunt. The Cheyenne makes the sign for "Finger Cutter" to the Lakota. The graphic is by French artist Jean Marcellin.

According to Col. A.B. Welch's "Seven Fires," Sometime around 1750, the Šahíyela (Red Talkers; Cheyenne) were compelled by the Lakȟóta to cross the Missouri River at the mouth of the Cannonball River. The Šahíyela were hard pressed to make peace with the Lakȟóta or be exterminated, so they embraced their old foe and became allies. A great inter-tribal adoption, cemented by marriages, was arranged. But not all the Lakȟóta were keen to make an ally of a former enemy. 

The origin of the Sičáŋǧu began with a conflict at the Cannonball River.

The Brown Hat Winter Count (aka Baptiste Good Winter Count; Sičáŋǧu, “Brulé”) in the winter count collections at the National Museum of The American Indian in Washington DC, has been made available in its entirety online. This winter count recalls 1762-1763 as the “people were burnt winter.” The entry details a great prairie fire that caught up to their village. Many people and horses were killed in this fire. Survivors themselves were burnt about their legs and made it through this trial by jumping into Long Lake. This band of Lakȟóta had fought the Cheyenne in the Cannonball area. The Cheyenne had retaliated by crossing the Missouri River at the mouth of the Cannonball River and tracking the Lakȟóta along Long Lake Creek, where they set fire to the plains. The late Albert White Hat Sr. (Rosebud; Sičáŋǧu), recalled the oral tradition of the Sičáŋǧu as taking place in the Bismarck region. The conflict which resulted in the formation of the Sičáŋǧu began at the mouth of the Cannonball River. The identity of one of the tribes of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (The Seven Council Fires; “The Great Sioux Nation”) tied to this location is significant.

John Evans composed this map of his journey up the Missouri River. Roughly half the Corps of Discovery's expedition was already mapped before they came. 

The Beinecke Library Map, at Yale, CT, the only evidence of John Evans travels (his journals may have been destroyed or lost) provides the only testimony of his journey on the Upper Missouri River. This map was referenced and annotated by the Corps of Discovery. Evans recorded on his map a series of streams, many unknown to him by name; one of the outstanding streams he recorded was the “Bomb River,” or the Cannonball River.

The Corps of Discovery mention the Cannonball River as “La Bullet” on October 18, 1804. Referencing Evans’ map, Captain William Clark walked that evening in search of the remarkable places mentioned by Evans, but couldn’t find them, though by then, the Corps’ campsite was north of the mouth of the Cannonball River. Co-Captain Meriwether Lewis noted on this same date that the cannonball concretions were “of excellent grit for Grindstones,” and had his men select one to “answer for an anker.”

The Pictographic Bison Robe details a huge inter-tribal conflict on the Northern Plains.

The Pictographic Bison Robe, at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, MA, details the intertribal conflicts amongst the Arikara, Mandan, Hidstsa, Hunkpapa Lakota, and Yanktonai Dakota in the Heart River and Cannonball River area along the Missouri River during the 1790s. This same robe details one of many conflicts between the tribes of the Upper Missouri River which concluded in the 1803 Battle of Heart River, which saw the expansion of the Huŋkphapȟa territory. This conflict is remembered in the Drifting Goose Winter Count (aka John K. Bear Winter Count) as Tȟa Čháŋte Wakpá ed okíčhize, or “There was a battle at Heart River.” The expansion of Huŋkphápȟa territory is significant. This territorial boundary is recognized in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty.

Ensign Nathaniel Pryor, a sergeant of the Corps of Discovery during the expedition, recorded on September 9, 1807, that the Arikara and Mandan were at war. The Mandan had killed two Arikara at the mouth of the Cannonball River. Testimony of the conflict at Cannonball River was delivered to Pryor at the Grand River by the Lakȟóta. Pryor’s previous experience with the Arikara and Lakȟóta made him aware that the best policy was to place every confidence in their word; they had no reason to lie.

Manuel Lisa, a fur trader of the American Fur Company, recorded that tensions were high on the Northern Plains among tribes who were pro-English trade, those who were pro-American trade, and American Fur Company trappers in the fall of 1812. The Crow and Lakȟóta had killed American trappers, the Hidatsa had stolen American Fur Company horses, the Arikara had indiscriminately killed trappers be they English or American, and the Cheyenne had robbed and whipped American Fur Company trappers on the Cannonball River.

The native blue flax fascinated Bradbury. 

Botanist John Bradbury made a journey to the Cannonball River in 1811. Bradbury noted late in the day on June 20, the “valley of Cannon-ball River, bounded on each side by a range of small hills, visible as far as the eye can reach; and as they appear to diminish regularly, in the proportion of their distance, they produce a singular and pleasing effect. The Cannon-ball River was muddy at this time; but whether it is constantly so or not, I could not learn. It is here about one hundred and sixty yards wide, but so shallow that we crossed it without swimming. We camped on a very fine prairie, near the river, affording grass in abundance, nearly a yard high. The alluvion of the river is about a mile in breadth from bluff to bluff, and is very beautiful, being prairie, interspersed with groves of trees, and ornamented with beautiful plants, now in flower.” Among Bradbury’s findings was a species of flax he identified as linum perenne. The Lakȟóta know the native blue flax as Čhaŋȟlóğaŋ Nabláǧa (“Hollow-Stem To-Blossom-From-Within”) and employ the seed in their food stock.

Bradbury returned again to the Cannonball River on July 7, 1819, for the express purpose of procuring additional botany specimens.

The location of the 1825 spring flood (Mní wičhát’tÉ) and the name in memorial (Étu Pȟá Šuŋg t’Á) afterward. 

The location and story of the 1825 flood is remembered in the pictographic record. Pictured above is the 1825 entry on the Medicine Bear Winter Count. 

The location and story of same flood is recorded on the Chandler-Pohrt Winter Count for the same year, 1825.

The Blue Thunder Winter Count, the No Two Horns Winter Count, and the High Dog Winter Count, all of which are in the collections at the State Historical Society of North Dakota - the High Dog Winter Count is on display in the Early Peoples Gallery - all recall a devastating flood in the spring of 1825. The High Dog Winter Count remembers the flood as Mní wičhát’tÁ, or “Many died by drowning.” The Blue Thunder Winter Count remembers the flood as Mní wičhát’tÉ, or “Many died by drowning.” According to the High Dog Winter Count, this fatal winter camp was opposite of the mouth of the Cannonball River, and the site is remembered as Étu Pȟá Šuŋg t’Á, or “Dead Horse Head Point.” The Steamboat/Thin Elk Winter Count, in the collections of the Buechel Museum at the St. Francis Indian School on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, records that it was thirty lodges of Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna Dakȟóta who drowned in the Horsehead Bottom flood. This flood story and location is also remembered in the Medicine Bear Winter Count at the Hood Museum at Darthmouth College, Hanover, NH. This information is repeated for the same year in the Chandler-Pohrt Winter Count which is located at the Detroit Museum of Arts, Detroit, MI.

Prince Maximilian von Wied-Neuwied travelled into the interior of North America during the summer of 1833. Wied-Neuwied has written probably the most about the Cannonball River than any previous or post visitors. An excerpt is shared here: “On the north side of the mouth, there was a steep, yellow clay wall; and on the southern, a flat, covered with poplars and willows. This river has its name from the singular regular sand-stone balls which are found in its banks, and in those of the Missouri in its vicinity. They are of various sizes, from that of a musket ball to that of a large bomb, and lie irregularly on the bank, or in the strata, from which they often project to half their thickness when the river has washed away the earth; they fall down, and are found in great numbers on the bank. Many of them are rather elliptical, others are more flattened, and others flat on one side, and rather convex on the other. Of the perfectly spherical balls, I observed some two feet in diameter.”

An entry from the Long Soldier Winter Count for 1835-36. A copy is available for viewing at the Sitting Bull College Library. 

The Long Soldier Winter Count entry for 1835-36 recorded an Arikara camp on the Cannonball River. The Húŋkphapȟa Lakȟóta went to the Arikara camp to trade for wagmíza (corn). The Arikara, not wanting the Lakȟóta around, perhaps owing to the part the Lakȟóta played in the Arikara War of 1823, killed six of the Lakȟóta. 

A beautiful photo of the Rock Wren by Glenn Bartley. See and hear more of this bird on the Audubon page for the Rock Wren. 

John James Audubon visited the Cannonball River on June 5, 1943, and wrote of "the very remarkable bluffs." According to Audubon, the Cannonball River was formerly a good place for beaver. He saw Iǧúǧaothila (Rock Wren) on the bluffs, a prairie fire, and noted that the water tasted good.

General Sully rendered this image of the Whitestone Hill conflict. The hills were dotted with creamy white stone, glacial deposits from the last ice age, and could be seen glittering from the distant flat horizon. 

In September of 1863, General Alfred Sully lead an assault on the Siouan encampment at Whitestone Hill as part of the punitive campaigns organized by General Pope to make Americans feel safe following the 1862 Minnesota Dakota Conflict, and to open the frontier for settlement - in particular, to open the frontier for veterans returning from the Civil War. Sully's command killed as many as 200 (mostly women and children) and took 256 prisoners (mostly women and children). Survivors, those who escaped, turned west and crossed the Missouri River at the Cannonball confluence. 

Long Soldier mentions a conflict at the Cannonball River between the Lakȟóta and Hóhe.

A second entry on the Long Soldier Winter Count cites a conflict at the Cannonball River between the Lakȟóta and Hóhe (Assiniboine) in 1862-63. Twenty Assiniboine came on the warpath, there was a battle there, and they hid behind the cannonball concretions. The circle tells us that the Assiniboine were surrounded and fired upon. The fox image which overlays the Assiniboine tells us they fought with guile.

Capt. Seth Eastman painted this scene of Fort Rice, Dakota Territory.

On July 29, 1864, after spending two weeks hastily constructing Fort Rice, General Sully took his command of 2200 soldiers, which included a detachment of Winnebago Indian scouts, and ascended the Cannonball River on the south bank, his punitive campaign on the Isáŋyathi Dakȟóta anew. Known or unknown, Sully also marched against the Thítȟuŋwaŋ Lakȟóta (Húŋkpapȟa, Itázipčho, Sihásapa, and Mnikȟóžu), and Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna Dakȟóta, two Siouan groups who had nothing to do with the 1862 Minnesota Dakota Conflict. Sully received a dispatch from Fort Rice at midnight on July 22 that the Dakȟóta were on the Knife River. The next day Sully’s command crossed the Cannonball River near present-day communities of Porcupine and Shields, ND.

Gall was bayoneted by a soldier at Fort Berthold. 

A third entry from the Long Soldier Winter Count indicates that the Húŋkpapȟa were camped at the Cannonball River in 1866-67. Gall was taken by soldiers that winter to Fort Berthold where they stabbed him. Gall was left for dead and the camp moved on. What makes this tale remarkable is that Gall walked to the Húŋkpapȟa camp at the Cannonball River and recovered. 

In 1878, the Huŋkphápȟa chief, Ištá SápA (“Black Eye/s”), met with William Wade, a cattle rancher on the Cannonball River, and shared this about the terrible 1825 flood: “...we camped on this bottom land just below here...it was the Wolf Month [February] and it had been warm for a long time. One night the water started coming in over the ground from the river and before we could get to higher ground we were surrounded by water and ice chunks. Our only chance was to get to high ground before we would all be covered up with water. We tried to carry our tepees and supplies but finally had to leave them and many of the women were drowned trying to save their children. Most all our old people drowned and many others. Most all our horses went under and you can still see their heads (skulls) laying [sic] along at the foot of the hills after so many, many years. Two Bears (Mato Nopa) a Yankton chief [sic], saved the lives of several women and children by carrying them from camp to the higher ground.”

William Wade’s daughter, Mamie, met her share of pre-reservation Dakȟóta and Lakȟóta people. Among them was Annie Skye. Skye relayed to the younger Wade that smallpox struck the Lakȟóta in 1837. They were camped at the mouth of the Cannonball River when “out of a clear blue sky smallpox hit them. After the death of several of their number, who were put to rest up on platforms suspended in trees, they decided to move away from this infested locality.”

Dr. Harriett Skye, Annie Skye’s granddaughter, offers a contemporary perspective on current events near the Cannonball River: “I believe that as long as they remain peaceful and unarmed, and each day they are there, is a win. This kind of action confuses those who would come in with their guns and armor because their intent is to kill. They arrested people who were praying, but the powers that be know that the world is watching, but more importantly, know that our Ancestors are watching because they fought and died so we could be here. This struggle is everyone’s struggle to maintain our clean water. Water is life.” Dr. Skye was inducted into the North Dakota Heritage Center’s Native American Hall of Honor in September, 2016.

Dr. Fenn's "Encounters At The Heart Of The World." Get yourself a copy.

Dr. Elizabeth Fenn, Pulitzer Prize winning author of “Encounters at The Heart of The World: A History of The Mandan People,” writes that the Huff phase - located between the Cannonball River and Heart River in a time frame from about circa 1300 to about 1450 - was when and where the Mandan became the Mandan. They developed the Okipa ceremony in this location during this time. The South Cannonball site was unprotected, that is, there were no palisade walls, nor defensive moats surrounding their village there. The fortifications at the North Cannonball site may well represent a key transformation in plains village life, as drought caused strife in the Missouri River valley. This may have been cause for the Mandan to move closer together - and build fortifications - for safety. But we need archaeological study to sort these things out.

By the time Mandans moved north from the Cannonball area to Huff and the Heart River, they had embraced the key trait that made them Mandan: the Okipa ceremony, with its multi-day reenactment of their own rich history. The Cannonball area, according to Fenn, represents “the oldest Mandan cultural horizon.”

One of Deloria's thought-provoking works. Another one is "Custer Died For Your Sins." 

The late Vine Deloria Jr. essayed that for many Americans, “the first and most familiar kind of sacred lands are places to which we attribute sanctity because the location is a site where, within our own history, something of great importance has taken place. Unfortunately, many of these places are related to instances of human violence. Every society needs these kinds of sacred places because they help to instill a sense of social cohesion in the people and remind them of the passage of generations that have brought them to the present. A society that cannot remember and honor its past is in peril of losing its soul. Indians, because of our considerably longer tenure on this continent, have many more sacred places than do non-Indians.”

“A second category of sacred lands has a deeper, more profound sense of the sacred. It can be illustrated in…[when] Joshua led the Hebrews across the River Jordan into the Holy Land. After crossing, Joshua selected one man from each of the Twelve tribes and told him to find a large stone. The twelve stones were then placed together in a monument to mark the spot where the people had camped after having crossed the river successfully. In the crossing of the River Jordan, the sacred or higher powers have appeared in the lives of human beings...the essence of the event is that the sacred has become a part of our existence.”

“It is not likely that non-Indians have had many of these kinds of religious experiences, particularly because most churches and synagogues have special rituals that are designed to cleanse the buildings so that their services can be held there untainted by the natural world. Non-Indians simply have not been on this continent very long; their families have rarely settled in one place for any period of time so that no profound relationship with the environment has been possible.”

Deloria concluded: “The third kind of sacred lands are places of overwhelming holiness where the Higher Powers, on their own initiative, have revealed Themselves to human beings. We can illustrate this point in the Old Testament narrative. Moses spent time herding sheep on Mount Horeb. One day to his amazement [he] saw a bush burning with fire but not being consumed by it. Approaching this spot, Moses was startled when the Lord spoke to him. ‘Put off thy shoes, for the place where thou standest is holy ground.’ This tradition tells us that there are places of unquestionable, inherent sacredness on this earth, sites that are holy in and of themselves. These holy places are locations where people have always gone to communicate and commune with higher powers.”

Wood's book details the Huff Phase of the Mandan Indians, which also includes some narrative of the North Cannonball site. An aerial view of this site is within these pages.

Dr. Ray Wood, renowned expert in Plains Indian cultural and archaeological sites on the Upper Missouri River and whose first-hand field experience goes back before the dams of the 1950s, interprets the data from John Evans 1796 map in regard to the Cannonball River locality that what Evans recorded as “Jupiter’s Fort” is without a doubt a prehistoric Mandan village. According to Wood’s findings regarding the North Cannonball site, “Not only was it a defensive setting, but the village was also fortified by a curving ditch that isolated a level upland spur from the adjoining upland. The village today is badly disturbed by plowing, but from the air one can clearly see the fortification ditch and the numerous bastions protruding from it. Little wonder that Evans referred to it as a fort…” In his “Prologue To Lewis & Clark: The Mackay And Evans Expeditions,” Dr. Wood essays the number of remarkable Indian village sites north of the Cannonball River. Remarkable. Extraordinary. Outstanding. Significant.

The ND SHPO conducted a follow-up survey west of HWY 1806 and found that no significant sites were destroyed. The physical evidence, or lack thereof, cannot be disputed. According to the chief archaeologist’s published note, he and his associates were looking west of HWY 1806, perhaps because Mr. Tim Mentz conducted his own survey and called attention there with his findings. The North Cannonball site, and the mouth of the Cannonball River, the confluence of history and culture, is east of HWY 1806.

The Cannonball Ranch was a main stop in North Dakota's history. 

In 1999, the Cannonball Ranch was inducted into the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame. It’s one of the oldest ranches in North Dakota. According the ND Cowboy of Fame, the ranch served as a gathering point as early as 1865. The ranch included a hotel, a general store, a ferry crossing, a steamboat landing and fueling station, a military telegraph station for Fort Rice, and a stage line to the Black Hills in the 1870’s and 1880s. The ranch also included two houses, a barn, a blacksmith shop, a bunk-house, an ice house, a laundry, and tennis court.

The North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame’s strict criteria for eligibility to be recognized is that a ranch must have been “instrumental in creating or developing the ranching business, traditions, and lifestyles of North Dakota’s western heritage and livestock industry.”

In 2010, Walmart planned to construct a supercenter near Wilderness Battlefield (a Civil War battle ground) and people invested in the history of that site grew concerned. Eventually, enough people held that ground as sacred and historical that plans for the supercenter were dropped in January 2011. Coincidentally, Walmart and state officials had argued that nothing significant occurred on that site. 

The sum of the north bank of the Cannonball River with a million years of geological history, 700 years of continual occupation, inter-tribal conflict, smallpox, botany, trade, steamboat traffic, US military history, and early ranching, have made that location significant.

Mr. Leroy Curly (Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe) developed a Lakota alphabet in the 1980's. I employed this alphabet executed in a brush script using acrylic on watercolor. 

Spiritual pilgrimages were conducted on the plateaus of the “Hummit.” There would be little to no traces of these vision quests, and there shouldn’t be. People went to pray, not leave evidence. In September of 2016, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Rt. Rev. Curry, made a pilgrimage of his own to the Cannonball. He listened and prayed with the community there. Curry’s visit calls to mind Psalm 99:9, “Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at his holy hill; for the Lord our God is Holy.” The mystery of creation can be seen there today as the early peoples beheld it.

The Cannonball River, and specifically the North Cannonball site, and its importance to the first nations, to North Dakota, must take into account its religious or spiritual significance, its role in inter-tribal conflicts, its role in the 1837 smallpox epidemic which struck the Húŋkpapȟa, its role as the starting point in Gen. Sully’s 1864 punitive campaign, and the historic Cannonball Ranch.

The Cannonball River, and all its attributes is important to all North Dakota citizens, to new citizens, and most importantly of all, the future. Let us put our minds together, to educate ourselves and one another about the things we hold dear, to resolve to respect our story, our histories, and our sites of significance.

Keúŋkeyapi. That’s what they said.