Pap. Na isf' ^O^T PIERRE U — SMITH 107 



(Harfcness, 1896, p. 359) . Harkness was a member of the short-lived 

 opposition firm of La Barge, Harkness and Company, whose trader 

 in the Fort Pierre area, Frank Laframboise, had just established the 

 new opposition post, Fort Laframboise, above Fort Pierre II (cf. 

 p. 95). Departing downriver from his company's new establishment, 

 Harkness mentions reaching the older post in a gale and obtain- 

 ing there some meat and other things during an hour's stay, so 

 it is clear that relations between the opposed traders were then 

 cordial. Perhaps the ominous state of Indian affairs — it was then 

 little more than a month after the Minnesota outbreak — drew the 

 traders together as nothing else would have been likely to do. 



Among the units combined in Sully's force of 1863 were several 

 volunteer cavalry and infantry units. When the force collected in 

 July in the Fort Pierre area, a temporary depot seems to have been 

 established at Laframboise's post, to which the 41st Iowa Infantry 

 (actually mounted) was assigned, and where some of the military sup- 

 plies were deposited, the remainder aboard the steamboats that had 

 brought the troops upriver. The 6th Iowa Cavalry is said to have 

 camped "under the bluff below the fort" (i.e., Laframboise's post, 

 and probably somewhere near Fort Pierre II), and the 2d Nebraska 

 Cavalry above it, while the 7th Iowa Infantry was left "at the site 

 of old Fort Pierre, 3 miles [sic] below" (Wilson, 1902, p. 307; 

 probably based upon Sully's reports) . 



A brief rem,iniscent account of experiences during the Sully expedi- 

 tions, based upon a diary kept at the time by Frank Myers, a private 

 of Company B, 6th Iowa Cavalry, gives some further details of these 

 months of the summer of 1863 (Myers, 1888, p. 6). From this source 

 it is known that Myers' unit reached "Ft. Pierre" about June 5. 

 While there, an Indian scout. Crazy Dog, brought in a captive white 

 woman, Lavinia Engels, who had been taken prisoner at New Ulm 

 the year previous — a widely reported incident. Myers refers to "Ft. 

 Pierre" (i.e., Fort Pierre II) as "only a trading post belonging to the 

 Northwestern Fur Co., which was at that time doing an immense 

 business buying hides from trappers and Indians." ^ 



Myers noted that after a brief stay at Fort Pierre, his company 

 moved 25 miles upriver and camped, but that after 2 or 3 weeks there, 

 the Indians had becom,e so numerous and aggressive that his unit was 

 compelled to return to the fort to await the arrival of ammunition, 

 their supply having run short. On July 7, the balance of the com- 

 mand having arrived, Myers' company moved across the river by 

 steamboat to meet them. Thence the command was moved to the 

 mouth of Little Cheyenne Creek, in present Potter County, S. Dak. 



* The Northwestern Fur Co. Is known to have been formally organized by Hubbell & 

 Hawley, of St. Paul, In 1865, but It seems to have been active previously (cf. Kane, 1955, 

 p. 325). The firm had purchased the upper Missouri posts of the Chouteau firm, Includ- 

 ing Fort Pierre II. 



