M.L. Berg

When McHenry County was created in 1873, it was not as large as it is today. Its original boundaries went from Towner and Buffalo Lodge Lake in the north to Anamoose in the south, and from Orrin and Aylmer in the west to Velva in the east.

This area had long been visited by Native Americans, who left signs of their presence there in the forms of several types of burials and myriads of tepee rings formed by circles of stones which indicated where the various tribes had had their camp sites.

There were also a number of well used trails that were etched into the landscape, particularly one connecting the junction of the Wintering River and the Mouse River with the southeast shore of Buffalo Lodge Lake to the northwest; this trail was highly visible as late at 1901, according to Thaddeus Hecker, who visited McHenry County at that time in search of Native American relics.

Various traders had also established trading posts along the Mouse River in this area.

One trading post was located 10 miles north of Towner in the Red Cross Township. Hecker had been told by an early McHenry County resident that “One of the early white burials in this area was of a priest of the Order of Saint Andrew, but some homesteader took the Oak Cross (marking the priest’s grave site) for firewood and another (homesteader) dug him (the priest) out for an Indian,” probably hoping to find relics. The priest had been buried quite close to the post (in the southwest quarter of section 6).

Hecker wrote about his own search for relics in McHenry County in 1901 and from 1935 to 1937, in a type-written report submitted to Minot State Teachers College titled “A Survey of Indian Relics Found in Eight Counties of Northwestern North Dakota” (Minot, 1937). (The quote above is found on page 84.) Hecker’s report is a township by township description of what he found in each township. He had examined almost all of the townships in Ward County and well over half of the townships in McHenry County. Hecker lived by Gasmann Coulee in 1937.

Another trading post along the Mouse River was even busier than the one north of Towner. This one was at the junction of the Wintering River and the Mouse River in Villard Township.

Hecker saw the ruins of a trading post there during his surveys. The trading posts attracted a number of tribes over the years, many of whom camped nearby. In a section adjacent to the one in which this trading post had been built, Hecker saw scores of tepee rings spread out across two hundred acres (See page 152 of his report.).

When Edmund Hackett, George Hofmann, and others settled at the junction of the Mouse and Wintering Rivers in 1882, they were not breaking fresh ground, instead they were taking advantage of a well-used portion of prairie prepared for them, as it were, by generations of Native Americans.

Hacket named their settlement Villard for the president of the Northern Pacific Railroad at the time, Henry Villard. In the 1880s, this modest village offered a hotel, called the Cottage House run by Emma Nichols, a blacksmithery owned by Ira Whitney and a newspaper edited by Richard Copeland (from March 1886 to the end of 1889, when he moved to Washburn). For several months in 1886, Villard had had two newspapers. The second newspaper, called the Mouse River Advocate, was edited by Frank Spear. He issued it in Villard from March to June, 1886, at which time he relocated to Newport and then to Towner. Early in 1887, Spear moved to Minot to publish his paper.

Spear’s Mouse River Advocate was Minot’s first newspaper, appearing in February, 1887. After Spear had left Villard, William Pitts remodeled the Advocate office, so that it could be used as a regional schoolhouse. Pitts was also the director of the Wintering school district.

It was not long before action was taken to arrange for mail delivery to Villard.

George Hofmann seems to have been awarded a mail contract in the summer of 1882.

The list of appointments for Post Masters at Villard does not include his name, even though many people have referred to him as a Post Master. This official list begins with Richard Copeland, who was appointed on Nov. 21, 1884. Copeland was succeeded as Post Master by Martin Young, who was appointed on Sept. 24, 1890. Martin Young was the second, and last, name on the short list of Villard Post Masters. Whatever Hofmann’s status was, contractor or Post Master, it was his responsibility to see the mail was sent out from, and brought in to, Villard, beginning in the summer of 1882.

At first, Hofmann hired Native Americans to carry the mail. This seems a logical choice, since they would be familiar with the terrain across which the mail was to be carried.

In the beginning, this mail route only connected Villard with Washburn. This was a distance of 70 miles. This route touched on the west shore of Strawberry Lake, but kept well away from the ever-dangeous Dog Den, before bearing north-northeast to the junction.

It took four days to make a roundtrip, and two deliveries were scheduled each week.

Other people were awarded a mail contract to provide mail services from Washburn to a number of outlying sites. The person awarded the Washburn mail contract in 1882 might have been a man named Ambrose Call. He resided in Algona, Iowa, a town he helped to found. He was a newspaper editor and had a long career as a mail contractor.

Mary Ann Barnes Williams, author of a two-volume work titled “Pioneer Days of Washburn, North Dakota and Vicinity,” mentioned that Ambrose Call “of Algona, Iowa, secured the contract for several mail lines radiating from Washburn during the early eighties, which extended over a number of years.” In the same passage, Williams refers to Hofmann: “George Hofmann of Villard was the well-known mail contractor between Washburn and Villard from 1882-86.” (See Williams, “Pioneer Days,” Book One, page 119).

To be continued….

M.L. Berg, of Minot, enjoys researching Minot’s history.