North Dakota was visited by several documented early travelers. The first to explore North Dakota was Canadian fur trader Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur (Lord) de La Verendrye in 1738 who came here to visit the Mandan Indians. One of the objectives of the Lewis & Clark Expedition in 1804-05 was to gather information on the abundance and distribution of furbearers.

Chartered in 1670, the Hudson Bay Company was the leading fur trading company in the northern Great Plains. David Thompson was an explorer and surveyor for the Hudson Bay Company. A monument honoring Thompson is located east of Verendrye.

In 1783, a second large fur trading company was organized by independent fur traders who formed a partnership with Montreal businessmen — the North West Company. The North West Company had an agent by the name of Charles Chaboillez who established the first trading post in North Dakota in 1797. It was located at the confluence of the Pembina and Red Rivers in the northeast corner of the state.

Louis Robinson may have been the most well-known early trapper who hunted up and down the Mouse (Souris) River Valley for the Hudson Bay Company.

Other early trappers along the Mouse River Valley were C.A. Parker, H.C. Cartwright and Angus Smith. Cartwright settled in a picturesque bend of the Mouse River to what later become known as “Smith’s Grove,” 1-1/4 miles north of the town of Greene, located in Renville County, north of Carpio. Smith traveled up and down the valley telling stories of his trapping, fishing and buffalo hunting adventures along the Mouse River.

Robinson was an interesting man and had a very eventful career. When he was 16 years old, he enlisted with an Ohio regiment and served during the Civil War. After the war he traveled west settling in the Mouse River Valley in McHenry County.

Robinson roved up and down the valley, but later found property that suited him and later built the first permanent residence in 1881. It’s quite likely he spent about 20 years in the area before homesteaders arrived in 1881-1882.

Under the Homestead Act of 1862, Robinson applied for a homestead through the land office in Devils Lake and received the patent on July 1, 1889. The document granted ownership of the land to him which is situated in the W1/2 of the SW1/4 of Sec. 23 and the E1/2 of the SE1/4 of Sec. 22 in Township 154N, Range 78W of the 5th Parallel in what is now Falsen Township in McHenry County.

According to the 1900 U.S. Census, he was born in Ohio in February 1845 and his parents had been born in New York. He could read, write and speak English well. It also stated he owned his land free and clear and was a farmer.

In 1904 the Washburn Leader quoted Robinson saying that he came to this part of the country in 1866. He described killing buffalo for their tongues, which brought good prices from the steamboats. Steamboats on the Missouri River brought back a full cargo of goods from the wilderness including pelts, buffalo robes, hides and 10,000 pounds of buffalo tongue. Tongue was considered a gourmet delight. The tongue had to be dried or pickled to make the long trip south.

How he earned the name “Yankee” is a matter of speculation. It may be the Norwegian settlers called him that to distinguish between him and other Norwegian settlers of the same name. Another possibility may have been that the French-Canadian trappers in the Mouse River country had given him the name long before. In any event, he was known as “Yankee” and was a generous and helpful neighbor to the early homesteaders.

Robinson helped the earliest settlers in the area including Lewis Larson who, with his family, came in early 1880. Mr. Larson only had two neighbors — Robinson and another only remembered as Mr. Swenson.

In 1882 other settlers arriving were Ivar Gjellstad, Andrew and James Pendroy, who met with Robinson elsewhere and followed him to the valley; Ole Hovind, Hans Fjore, A. Olslie, and Nils and Ole Westgaard.

Mr. Robinson was described as being about 6 feet tall, well built with black hair and black moustache — a gentleman who was always welcome in a settler’s home. He continued to hunt and trap and was often joined by one or more men from the settlement.

When John E. Chamberlain was lost and presumed frozen to death in the March blizzard of 1885, Robinson was in the party of eight men who spent three days searching for him at the Dog Den Mountain area. The Indians called it The Mountain Which Looks and is located in northeast McLean County. It is not known if Chamberlain survived.

Robinson was often a solitary man. The only record of him and his family joining in a community event was this entry in James M. Pendroy’s journal on July 4, 1884: “We all drove out to Fish Lake about four and a half miles from our place together with Jacob A. Pendroy and family, Thos. S. Donnel and family, J.L Robinson and family, Lewis Larson and family, T.F. Berry, J. Kindle and Frank Marlenee. We had two boats, plenty of grub and cooking utensils. Caught a fine lot of fish – 85 altogether. Cooked up a mess for dinner and had a splendid time. All seemed to enjoy themselves.”

In a failed attempt, Mrs. Robinson put arsenic that was used to bait traps, in her husband’s pancakes (so the story went) and departed from the Mouse River area leaving her two young daughters behind. Ida, the youngest, would have been eight years old when this entry was made in J.M. Pendroy’s diary: “Ida Robinson came today to stay with us awhile until her father comes to look after her and find a place where she can board.”

As things developed, Ida remained with the Pendroy family for four or five years and attended the Oak Valley School. Emma went to live with the H. B. Johnson family in Minot. With his daughters being cared for and educated, Robinson found the influx of settlers too confining and once again struck out for the wilderness, this time going to the Missouri River and eventually established a horse ranch on the Yellowstone River in Montana.

(See Part 2 in the June 25-26 Weekend Edition of The Minot Daily News)