# A Brief History of South Dakota/Chapter 13

CHAPTER XIII
THE REE CONQUEST
The War of 1812 ruined the fur trade for the time being, and it did not begin to revive until about 1817. The records are strangely silent about Lisa's post in the Dakota
Fur and Military Establishments near Fort Pierre from 1817 to 1865
country at this time, but in the autumn of 1817 Joseph La Framboise, a mixed blood, French-Ottawa, established a post at the mouth of the Teton River, where Fort Pierre now stands, and the settlement at that point has been continuous since, making Fort Pierre the oldest continuous settlement in the state.
​The revival of the fur trade led to the organization of several fur companies in St. Louis. Among these was the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, organized by General William H. Ashley, a very prominent man, lieutenant governor of Missouri, and afterward for many years a member of Congress. Associated with Ashley was Major Andrew Henry, another man distinguished in his time. In 1822 Ashley and Henry went to the head waters of the Missouri and established trade there with the native tribes. Henry, with a considerable party of men, remained during the ensuing winter upon the Yellowstone, while Ashley returned to St. Louis to recruit more men and bring up additional cargoes of goods in the spring.
Early in the spring of 1823 Ashley set out from St. Louis to return to the mountains with a party of one hundred hunters, trappers, and river men, and a large stock of merchandise. At the end of May they had arrived safely at the Ree towns at the mouth of Grand River, where they stopped to trade and to purchase horses, for Ashley had determined to send half of his party overland to the Yellowstone by the Grand River route, which had been opened by the Astorians in 1811. The Rees gave them a hearty welcome, and they traded upon the most friendly terms for several days. Finally, on the evening of June 1, Ashley had secured all the horses he desired, and prepared to leave in the morning. Forty men were to go up Grand River, with the horses, and they were encamped on the shore just outside of the lower town. Ashley, with the remainder of the men, slept in the boats anchored in the stream near by.
​Just before daylight a violent thunderstorm passed over, and just as the thunder and lightning was dying away, the Rees, without warning, made a desperate attack upon the white men. Ashley rallied his men to the defense as best he could, but the advantage was all with the Indians. The fight lasted fifteen minutes, and at its close twelve white men lay dead and eleven others were severely wounded, at least one of them mortally. Ashley got the survivors into his boats, cut loose, and allowed them to drift down river, out of range of the enemy. There he attempted to reorganize his forces and boldly push by the towns, and go on upstream, but to his dismay he found that the courage of his men was gone, and scarcely one would assist him in the enterprise; they openly declared that if he insisted upon it, they would all desert and make their way as best they could down the river. In this emergency Ashley made terms with them, by which he agreed to drift down to the mouth of the Cheyenne and there fortify a camp, until messengers could be sent to the nearest military post, which was located at Fort Atkinson, sixteen miles north of Omaha.
The express reached Fort Atkinson on June 18. Colonel Henry Leavenworth was in command of the post, which was garrisoned by a portion of the Sixth Infantry. Situated as he was, without telegraph or other means of communicating with his superiors, Leavenworth was forced to use his best judgment in the matter, and he determined to lead a detachment of troops up the river at once, and to punish the Rees severely for their conduct. The distance was about seven hundred miles by river. Four ​days later, on June 22, with two hundred and twenty men and four keel boats laden with subsistence, ammunition, and two six-pound cannons, he started on the long journey.
The river was high, the winds unfavorable, and the only means of propelling the boats was by towing them with the cordelle. Under the circumstances they made very good time. When near Yankton on the 3d of July, one of the boats struck a submerged General Henry Leavenworth log and was capsized and broken in two, and Sergeant Samuel Stackpole and six privates were drowned. At Fort Recovery, on American Island at Chamberlain, Joshua Pilcher joined Leavenworth with a company of forty men, and at the Cheyenne, Ashley joined them with eighty additional men, making a total of three hundred and forty white men, soldiers, and volunteers all told. Seven hundred and fifty Sioux Indians—Yankton, Yanktonais, and Tetons—also volunteered to go along, but they proved to be a hindrance rather than an assistance. They reached the Ree towns on the 9th of August.
There were two of these villages, separated only by a ​narrow ravine, both of which were stockaded. The lower village contained seventy-one and the upper seventy houses. The Rees came out to meet the soldiers, but were soon driven back to the inclosure of the towns, where they were at once attacked by the military. Pilcher had a howitzer, which with Leavenworth's cannon made three large guns for the siege. Two of these guns were planted before the lower town, and the other one on a hill
Siege of the Ree Towns; Disposition of Leavenworth's Forces
back of the upper town. They kept up an intermittent fire upon the town for two days, when the Rees came out and begged for terms.
Assuming that they had been severely punished, Leavenworth told them that if they would restore the goods, or an equivalent in horses and furs for the goods and horses taken from Ashley, everything would be forgiven. This they promised to do, and they did bring out a few robes; ​but in the darkness of the next night the entire nation abandoned their villages and escaped to the prairie, and though Leavenworth sent messengers after them with assurances of kindness and fair treatment, they could not be prevailed upon to return.
Having exhausted his provisions, Leavenworth was compelled to return to Fort Atkinson. His was the first general military movement in Dakota, and, while little was accomplished, it was really a very brave thing for Leavenworth to venture thus into a hostile country for the purpose of upholding the dignity of the American nation.
One circumstance connected with this Ree outbreak should be borne in mind. Immediately after the massacre, and when it had been determined that Ashley could not go forward up river but must retire, he felt that it was most necessary that a messenger should be sent to Major Henry, who, it will be remembered, remained the previous winter on the Yellowstone. He called for a volunteer to carry this message, and the only response was by Jedediah S. Smith, a boy eighteen years of age. It was a most dangerous undertaking. The entire party were gathered on the deck of General Ashley's boat, the Yellowstone, when Smith received his commission. There, among the dead and dying men, the boy, who was a Methodist, knelt down and made a most eloquent prayer to Heaven for guidance and protection. He was successful in reaching Henry, and at once returned down the river to St. Louis and was back at the Ree town in time ​to command a company of men there in the fight in August. In sixty-six days he had traveled more than four thousand miles, having no means of transportation more rapid than an Indian pony or a canoe. Improbable as this achievement appears, it is substantiated by the military records.
The Rees never were an independent people after Leavenworth's campaign.