St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-03-22

The Stool; Interests-THe Siouc Reservation
1t Must be Opened to Settlers--4 Ne,c
Empire of Observation-Disclosures VII Give
Us It's Trade-The Coeur az 4lene Mines
in the Black Hills-4n 4drancisg From
tier TOtUn.
Especial Correspondence of the Globe
RAPID CITY, D. T., March 17.-The storms
of February, with the opening ones of this
month, caused much apprehension among
stock-men, and gave rise to reports of heavy
losses in the BLACK Hills ranges; but we
now know, I am glad to write, that the APP
prehensions were in the main groundless,
and that the reports of heavy losses wholly
so. The per centage of loss in the cattle
herds will not exceed 81 per cent, and the
probability is that it will be less. The
loss of sheep will be somewhat great
er, owing to the great num-
Der that were brought in last year, and were
therefore unacclimated. l have heard of but
trifing losses in the old flocks.
Upon the whole our stockmen are jubilant,
and the close of the winter finds them valu
ing the Forks of the Cheyenne for stock rails
ing more highly than ever. They claim that
no part of the continent is superior to this
for their business.
The subject of aIl-absorbing interest here
Just now is the bill pending in congress to
open the great Sioux reservation to settle
ment; that is to make the needed provision
for carrying into effect the conditions on the
governments side of the treaty agreed to by
the Sioux commission and the head, ,men of
the tribe. The people here in the Black
Hills, as well as those on opposite sides Of
this immense Indian reserve which stretches
away to the eastward and southwark several
hundred miles from our outlying settlements,
enclosing US in a dreary isolation and arrest
ing settlements in northern Nebraska and
west of the Missouri in Dakota-wil enter
upon new and their greatest era of pros
perity when it shall have been thrown open
to the enterprise of the pioneer. True, both
the c., NJ. & st. P. and the G. & n. W. r. R.
Cos. have secured right of ways through the
reservation to the Black Hills towns; but
their directors have decided that two COM
peting lines (f one builds the other must)
could not be proitably operated between
the Missouri river and the Hills
toWns-from $50 to 200 miles-with-
out local business all along their routes.
The same with the s. G. 81 P,
now completed to Valentine, in the Upper
d,
would undoubtedly be extended to the Hills
did not that portion of the Sioux reservation
intervene to prevent extension to the north
ward. But let the reservation be thrown
open to settlement and emigrants will soon
fill up all the country east and south of us,
making the extension to the Hills or to the
three roads designated a necessity and a
profitable investment. And this would be
but the first step in the grand progressive
movement: the final result would be to give
st. Paul and Minneapolis q new and more
direct route to the mining districts and stock
ranges of Montana, and to make tributary to
them in trade vast and valuable regions
which are only just beginningto be settled.
Having reached the Hills there will be still
greater inducements for railroads to push on
further to the northwest. The very best por-
tons of Montana for farming and stock rails
ing are along the eastern base of the Big
Horn mountains and on the head waters of
the southern tributaries of the Yellowstone;
and there is also immense and varied min
eral wealth-townships of the best of btu
minous coal and mountains of pure iron ore
besides gold and silver, stretching almost the
entire distance from Rapid City to the National
Park. Within three years from the time the
Sioux Preservation is thrown open to set
Element all this promising country will be as
thickly settled as any part of Dakota now is,
and then no one will doubt the
high distiny of st. Paul and Mime
apolis-that they will at the close of the tenth
census decade, be united and boast as great
a population and aggregate taxable valuation
as Chicago had at the close of the eighth.
The versatile and brilliant Col. Pat DOMAIN
has many tried and true personal friends
here in the Black Hills, and hosts of ad-
mirers of his peculiar genius as a writer-in
fact, all may be counted in the latter class
except those few little jealous spirits who are
always found furiously buZzing around their
superiors like '.gad-lies" pursuing bound
ing charger-and.. nothing would suit Black
Killers better than to see the colonel ap-
pointed governor of the territory he has
done so much to advertise. | have
heard his name mentioned in con-
nection with the high Office, but 1 fear
there is too strong Democratic sentiment
inherent in the coloners nature, and too
much independence of character, for him to
succeed-if he has aspirations for the posi-
ton, and do not know that he has.
Rapid City has not received the consid-
Grafton among frontier towns that the enter
prise of its citizens and its substantial pros
pecIS eDbiGie IL TO- OuT pOpuldGlOu Is HOW
fully fifteen hundred, and rapidly increasing.
We have magnificent stone and brick grad
ed-school edifice; a public library hall, with
a well-flled library Of new books; a court
house that cost S25, 900; three excellent no
tells, and several of minor Importance; and
a number Of creditable church buildings.
The town is on the east
ern foothills, at the head of the fer
tile Raid valley, and commands the mining
trade of the central portions of the Hills and
of the most extensive farming districts. In
all the preliminary railroad surveys, Rapid
City has been the first Black Hills town
reached.
The few who have gone from this point
to the Ceurd' Alene mountains, have sent
back letters that will have the effect of pre-
venting other Black Killers starting for there
until more is known about that country than
now. j. B.
He GiVnc His Reasons