Picture this. It is early October, 1803. You are in what we now know as northeast North Dakota, near where the Park River flows into the Red River. You are keeping a journal, and part of the day’s entry is that “fire is raging at every point of the compass, thick clouds of smoke nearly deprive us of the sight of the sun, and at night the view from the top of my house is awful indeed.” Those are the observations of Alexander Henry.