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SOME LAND CLAIMS

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CHAPTER V

SOME LAND CLAIMS

On the strength of the discoveries of Columbus, and especially of Coronado, who came from Mexico up through New Mexico and into Kansas in 1540–1541, Spain claimed all of the interior of the American continent, including the South Dakota country. She did nothing, however, in the way of exploration or occupancy, to make the claim good, though for more than a hundred years her right was undisputed, until the French from Canada began to trade with the Sioux Indians and claimed for France all of the territory which they entered.

On September 18, 1712, the king of France granted the monopoly of trade in all of the territory lying in the Mississippi valley to Anthony Crozat, a banker of Paris, for the term of sixteen years. The action of the French led the Spaniards to take measures to assert their claims, and they sent men from Santa Fé to drive the French from the lower Missouri and Mississippi rivers. The Spanish plan was to excite the Osage Indians to make war on the Missouri Indians, who were friendly to the French, but by a mistake the Spaniards went directly to the Missouri camp, where the entire party, with one exception, were killed. This led the French to build a fort near the mouth of the Missouri.

​In 1732 the king of France reasserted his sovereignty over the Mississippi and Missouri valleys, and governed the section through a governor general who lived at New Orleans. There is no record or probability that either France or Spain took any actual possession of the South Dakota country until young Verendrye claimed it for France in March, 1743.

For nearly twenty years after Verendrye claimed the land France's title seems to have been undisputed, but in 1762 she ceded all of Louisiana, which included South Dakota, to Spain, in return for certain political favors. Spain took possession and governed the land west of the Mississippi for nearly forty years thereafter; then in 1800 she secretly deeded it back to France.

When the American people learned of this secret cession of the Louisiana country to France, the western pioneers in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee were greatly concerned and aroused. The great Napoleon had just made himself the head of the French government; his fame as a soldier and conqueror had spread over the world, and the American frontiersman did not like to have him for a near neighbor.

Thomas Jefferson was then President of the United States. The importance of the control of the Mississippi River was clear to his far-seeing eye. He determined that we must, at least, have a joint right to its free passage and must have a site for a commercial city at its mouth, and he undertook, by sending special representatives to France, to secure these rights. At the same time he prevailed upon Congress to permit him to undertake the ​exploration of the far West with a view to finding a means of crossing the continent to the Pacific Ocean, and while his ambassadors were at Paris, bargaining for free rights on the Mississippi, Jefferson was pushing his plan to send an exploring party across the American continent. He had his party organized and his plans well matured when, to his surprise, and the surprise of all America, the news came from Paris that the American ministers had bought not only the desired free rights on the Mississippi, but all of the great Louisiana territory as well. Thus it came about that, as a part of Louisiana, South Dakota came into the possession of the United States, having been first claimed by Spain, then by France, again by Spain, again passing to France, and finally falling to the American commonwealth.