Henry Jones (most often just plain “Hank”), the veteran DeGrey postmaster, desired to get into government service.  This was at the time of the Civil War; however, he had not yet reached military age.

In 1865 he set out from Ackley, Iowa, with the Col. Sawyers expedition bound for the Black Hills.  This expedition was to find a good route for a wagon road from Sioux City to Montana and Idaho.  At Sioux City they left him to look after the stock in the government corrals.

He later left this employment and in 1866 joined a mule team train loaded with provisions for Fort Sully.  This brought the young man into territory which was to be his home.  So far as officials have been able to verify, this made him the living pioneer resident of Hughes County, having been in the county eight years before Rev. Thomas L. Riggs (who located there in 1874.)

In 1871 John Smith got the contract for moving the Spotted Tail Indians from the Agency at Whetstone to the Big White Clay Creek (in Shannon County) and later to Little White Clay Creek, near Crow Butte.  He remained with the Spotted Tails until the spring of 1872.

Then for a year and a half he helped supply wood for steamboats.  During the next eighteen months he drove stage from Yankton to Fort Randall.  Later he was employed by the Bosler Cattle Co. who had the contract for furnishing beef to the Indian agencies along the Missouri.

The cattle were grown in Texas and then driven north, crossing at the mouth of the Niobrara near Springfield.  They had to swim the cattle that went to the agencies of Lower Brule, Cheyenne, and Grand River (later Standing Rock) on the west bank of the “Muddy.”

On July 1, 1877, he took the contract for carrying the mail between Fort Thompson and Fort Sully.  He started a team each way from DeGrey three times a week and maintained a three-trip-a-week route.  He retained this job until December, 1878, when he took over the Fort Pierre – Rapid City Route.

The mail was carried on horseback, but freighters were employed to carry provisions and take care of the traffic.  On February 14, 1878, near where the Northwestern Bridge spans the Cheyenne River, his two freighters were murdered.  All that was left was the empty wagons and two horses.

There were over a hundred freighters camped in that locality, but this threw such a scare into them that none ventured forward for two or three days.  The attack was reported to Fort Meade and a detachment of soldiers was sent out, but the guilty parties were never apprehended.

In the fall of 1880 the Bosler Cattle Co. put 4800 head of cattle in the Big Bend, but so severe was the winter that when spring came they had only 1300.  A local paper reported:  “. . . the snow was six feet deep on the level all over these prairies and not a train was run from Huron to Pierre from November until April.”

Jones said that men carried flour on their backs out of Pierre that winter.  The ground was so thoroughly soaked that good crops were the rule for the next three years.  In 1884 it turned dry for several seasons.

The years 1880 to 1885 were the homestead days when every quarter section outside the original boundary of the Crow Creek Reservation was filed on.  This settlement helped the railroad towns.

President Arthur opened the reservation to settlement on February 28, 1885, just four days before retiring from office.  Many home seekers rushed in and staked out claims.

Jones was out west of the river looking for cattle at the time.  As soon as the news reached him he returned home.

Upon arriving back home, he found that a stranger had four loads of lumber on his land ready to build a home.  Based on his past experiences, Jones had little trouble in having the “claim jumper” removed.  He didn’t take the lumber with him!

Earlier, in April of 1883, settlers west of the Pembina Mountains (far northeast corner of Dakota Territory) captured a claim jumper.  Whether to add dignity to the decision or because hemp was scarce, a chain was used to hang him.  In April of 1886, a claim jumper in Marshall County (below the North Dakota border) was given a coat of tar and feathers.

In August of 1904, a news story with a Bonesteel dateline reported that William McCormick was lucky enough to draw No. 1 in the Rosebud lottery and he had arrived in town.  He had come to pick out the best claim near a town.

“Several people,” the story revealed, “are here preparing to contest his claim.  In fact, there is an organized gang of claim jumpers here, whose method is to accost a lucky drawer on the train and get him to make a proposition to relinquish before witnesses, and then contest his claim.”

The short-lived “oil boom” at Edgemont in 1919 resulted in claim jumping becoming a common sport.  This caused the “shotgun policy” to be widely adopted.

 

Author Clarence Shoemaker, originally published in the Gregory Times-Advocate on January 10, 2024