As a volunteer for the State Historical Society for the last 10 years and a former president of the North Dakota Archaeological Association, I have had many opportunities to write articles about the history and archaeology of Dakota Territory and North Dakota. One new project examines an attempted cross-country emigration of settlers and merchants from Minnesota to the gold fields of Montana and Idaho. A combination of bad timing, headstrong leaders, and disgruntled Native Americans would lead to its failure.

The year of 1864 was an unsettled time in Dakota Territory and the rest of the nation.

The American Civil War was still raging in the East.

Homesteaders were slowly and reluctantly returning to Minnesota and Dakota Territory after the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.

President Abraham Lincoln was shuffling military troops in an attempt to bolster Union fighting forces and address unrest in the Midwest.

Demands were being made to assure safe passage to gold fields of Montana and Idaho. Westward expansion was being encouraged, and with it, hopefully, the nation’s gold reserves would be replenished.

Sign at the entrance to Fort Dilts

Major General John Pope at “Headquarters, Department of the Northwest” in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, had issued orders to build four forts in Dakota Territory to address Native American unrest and establish a safe route to western gold fields. General Alfred Sully was the “boots on the ground” guy tasked with both objectives. On July 7, 1864, he established the location of Fort Rice eight miles above the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers. It would eventually be manned by former Confederate prisoners-of-war.

After detailing troops to build the fort, Sully and his command continued north to what would eventually be called the Battle of Killdeer Mountain and the Battle of the Badlands. One  “success” of the campaign was destruction of the winter food supply of Native Americans at Killdeer Mountain.

It was a bad time to attempt a cross-country road trip. Yet, that is exactly what James L. Fisk proposed to do. A former private in the Third Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, he had earned the reputation of being “undisciplined” and now was going to attempt a more direct, uncharted route across Dakota Territory to shave several hundred miles off the more established trail to the gold fields. Fisk had been successful in his 1862 and 1863 expeditions from Minnesota to Montana following the established route. His luck would not hold in 1864.

Fisk and 97 covered wagons and 200 men, women, and children traveled from Fort Ridgely, Minnesota, to newly established Fort Rice. His plans were to join General Sully and his troops for protection. Unfortunately, Sully had already left for his battles to the north. Undeterred, Fisk left Fort Rice on August 24, 1864, under an escort of convalescent soldiers and worn out horses.

On September 2, the wagon train was attacked by Hunkpapas under the leadership of Sitting Bull. The band was headed south to their traditional hunting grounds in hopes of replenishing their food supplies destroyed at the Battle of Killdeer Mountain. A wagon train loaded with supplies seemed to be one answer to their hunger problems.

A running skirmish ensued until the Fisk expedition circled their wagons on September 4, built a six-foot-tall earthen wall around the wagons, and hunkered down until Sully’s troops came to their rescue on September 20.

Corporal Jefferson Dilts, signal scout for the expedition, was killed during the siege. Their earthen cantonment and home for 16 long days was named Fort Dilts in honor of Corporal Dilts who was buried on the perimeter of the enclosure.

James Fisk detailed his side of the story in an official report to U.S. Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomason January 13, 1865. His handwritten, 100-page explanation of events did not, in all cases, agree with the daily diary kept by William L. Larned, expedition member and later resident of Fort Rice.

My next blog will explore Fort Dilts through the eyes of those who experienced it firsthand in September 1864.

You can visit the Fort Dilts State Historic Site eight miles northwest of Rhame. (GPS 46.279121, -103.776424). A four-mile drive north of Highway 12 west of Rhame will transport you to a site that looks much as it did 152 years ago.

We will review those sixteen days through the written words and stories of the participants in my next blog.

Landscape at Fort Dilts

One of my major projects as a Museum Division intern has been to go through objects found in our collection, or “FIC.” FIC objects are ones that have no record, were recorded as missing, misplaced, or were never part of the Museum Division collection in the first place and somehow, over time, ended up in collections storage.

Every week, I select several objects to bring to the Museum Collections Committee (MCC). At these meetings it is decided whether to accept these objects into the permanent collection. So far, I have submitted about one hundred FIC items to the MCC. There have been finds that have ranged from interesting to confusing.

One of the most interesting finds has been a bearskin jumpsuit. This suit is heavy and big. It was probably made for a person over six feet, since the jumpsuit spread across an entire work table when I took a picture of it. Inside the suit the pockets are made of denim, indicating that whoever made this cut the pockets out of a pair of jeans and sewed them to this bearskin jumpsuit. We have no records of this piece and have no idea how it ended up in museum collections storage. We do know, however, that whoever wore this stayed very warm. Because this item is so unique, the MCC decided it should be accepted into the Museum Division’s collection.

Bearskin jumpsuit found folded with no information on a shelf in storage.

I also found a small binder in the collection. At first glance, this was relatively unexciting and looked like some kind of small science textbook. After taking it to the Museum Collections Committee, we found that it was actually a guide to a rock collection that we have in our possession. Now, we can properly identify these rocks from the collector himself. At some point this guide book was separated from where it belongs, and now these two items are being stored together.

The binder had photos and newspaper clippings about the donor and collector as well as a guide to the collection.

Not everything I find stays with the Museum Division. Some of these finds go to the Instructional Collection maintained by SHSND’s Communication and Education Division. Staff uses this collection for educational programs, allowing the public to touch the items. For example, I recently found a box of nails and some silverware. For the Museum Division, these items are not a good fit for the permanent collection. We do not have a history of where they came from, and we already have similar items in the collection. By putting them in the Instructional Collection, the public will be able to get a closer look and learn about them.

These are just a few examples of found-in-collections objects that have gone to the education collection.

Some items we decide we don’t want. In these cases, I offer them to institutions around North Dakota. Many times they are taken by other educational institutions, museums, and historical societies. Recently, another institution took a military patch representing the 47^th Infantry Division of the Minnesota National Guard. We already had four of these patches in the museum collection, but we were able to transfer this patch to a county historical society that had none. This is a way that we can avoid redundancies in our collection and allow other institutions across the state to tell stories using objects they currently do not have.

This patch from the 47^th Infantry Division of the Minnesota National Guard is now helping a different institution interpret their history.

Museum professionals don’t like to discuss the uncataloged “found” items in a collection. However, this is a reality everywhere. When only a few people are responsible for thousands of objects, things are bound to be misplaced or mislabeled due to human error or just plain circumstance. Record keeping did not use to be as stringent as it is now. Museum database software also makes it easier to keep all information in one place. Being able to help find permanent homes for lost objects has been extremely rewarding. Institutions across the state can use these items, and we can finally put all the pieces of other objects back together again.