Dakota Datebook

Sitting Bull was born in Dakota Territory between 1831 and 1837, traditionally believed to be along the Yellowstone River in what is now Montana. At the age of fourteen, he joined his first war party and quickly earned a reputation for fearlessness in battle.

Cooperative organizations in the United States have their roots in the Industrial Revolution in England. Small, home-based businesses were replaced by large factories, and workers were forced to move to cities, where they endured harsh working conditions and low wages.

The twelfth day of Christmas or Twelfth Night, is known as Kings Day at Turtle Mountain. In Catholic tradition, it is the Feast of Epiphany, honoring the three wise men who traveled to Bethlehem to see the Christ Child.

The road to the vote was a long one for North Dakota women. In 1883, they gained the right to vote in school elections. In 1885, state legislators laughed when J.A. Pickler introduced a bill granting universal suffrage to women. The measure passed, but Dakota Territory Governor Gilbert Pierce, claiming women didn’t want the vote, refused to sign it.

In 1958, 96-year-old Joseph Gourneau, father of Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribal chairman and historian Pat Gourneau, was interviewed by Bob Cory of the Minot Daily News. Joseph was one of the last generations born to follow the buffalo.

Robbery abounds! Though North Dakota may not be the first state thought of when considering the Wild West, the state and its people are no strangers to criminal activity. On this date in 1904, T.J. Fordham was found guilty of highway robbery.

A shocking scandal involving P.M. Mattson of New Rockford broke on this date in 1900. Mattson, the state's attorney of Eddy County, faced sensational charges. Attorney E.C. Greene was in New Rockford to investigate allegations that Mattson had charged gamblers and blind piggers for protection. The charges were so serious that the state was considering initiating impeachment proceedings against him.

It’s hard to remember why there was fear that the world might end on January 1, 2000, when we now know that nothing happened. During the late 1990s, computer programmers around the world worked hard to fix computer software to ensure that computers did not mistake the year 2000 for the year 1900, which could have caused infrastructure crashes. Despite reassurances from experts that nothing bad would happen, many people reacted in panic, hoarding supplies or foreseeing an apocalypse.

In the days when the Wild West was still wild, organized gangs roamed the frontier, holding up trains and stagecoaches, and targeting banks. One of the earliest documented bank robberies occurred in 1866, when Frank and Jesse James robbed the Clay County Savings Association in Liberty, Missouri, escaping with sixty thousand dollars. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid led the Wild Bunch into the early 1900s. While they primarily robbed trains, the Wild Bunch was also responsible for several bank robberies, including one in which they took over $32,000.

Mail delivery was a sporadic and unreliable system in the eighteenth century, both irregular and limited. The United States did not have a government postal service until 1847. Transatlantic service became more reliable with the advent of steamships, which were more dependable than sailing ships, but it took time to develop a truly reliable system.