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Author delves into steamboats and Missouri River Region

The cover of “Steamboats in Dakota Territory: Transforming the Northern Plains” by Tracy Potter shows the steamboat Yellow Stone arriving at Fort Union Trading Post in the 1800s. Submitted Photo

ota Territory.

Tracy Potter writes about “Steamboats in Dakota Territory: Transforming the Northern Plains” in a 128-page book published July 17.

Potter, of Bismarck, also is the author of “Sheheke, Mandan Indian Diplomat,” “The Story of White Coyote,” “Thomas Jefferson” and “Lewis and Clark.”

He retired in 2015 after a career in heritage tourism with the state of North Dakota and the Fort Abraham Lincoln Foundation, where he was executive director and editor/writer of Past Times, a quarterly historical tabloid. Potter served in the North Dakota Senate and was the Democratic-NPL nominee for the U.S. Senate in 2010.

According to The History Press, publisher of “Steamboats in Dakota Territory,” Potter “takes an in-depth look at the boats, trade and cultural and military relations between the United States and the native inhabitants of Dakota Territory.”

The front cover of the book shows the steamboat Yellow Stone arriving at Fort Union in 1835. The back cover has a drawing of the Far West.

Other photos and illustrations in the book include Capt. Grant Marsh; the steamboat Far West; Sitting Bull, the Hunkpapa leader; Charley “Lonesome” Reynolds, the famed frontier scout who died at the Battle of the Little Bighorn; Curly, the Crow scout who delivered the word of the Battle of the Little Bighorn to Capt. Grant Marsh; Like-A-Fishhook Village, the coalition city of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara by Bears Arm; Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site; Fort Abraham Lincoln; the landing at Washburn; and the Minnie H., a steamboat on Devils Lake.

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