This Day…

2013-An internet user from Ottawa, Ontario continues to view every entry on my site. Would he or she please make themselves known.

1922-In San Francisco, Samuel Dashiell Hammett resigns from Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency. Hammet has worked since 1915 as a professional detective, and his experiences will become the basis for his trendsetting detective novels, several of which are set in Western locales. Butte, Montana, is the Poisonville of Red Harvest, and The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man take place in San Francisco.

After 52 days of work, the Colorado River is diverted to its old channel to empty into the Gulf of Mexico. The river was flooded many times-interfering with plans to exploit California’s Imperial Valley.

1805 – Meriweather Lewis acts as the midwife at the birth of a child to Sacajawea, a Shoshone squaw who will act as a guide for the expedition.

1802 – Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, proposes that an allotment be made from the sales of public lands for the construction of roads from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ohio River.

1858 – President Buchanan recommends to Congress admission of the territory of Kansas as a state under the unpopular Lecompton Constitution.

1903 – A gang of masked men kill sheepman William Minnick and slaughter 200 of his sheep between Thermopolis and Meeteetse, Wyoming.

1865-Outraged Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux warriors launched a series of attacks all along the valley of the South Platte River in Colorado. The Indians strike at wagon trains, stage stations, and military outposts. The town of Julesburg, in northeast Colorado, is burned, anbd its white residents scalped in retaliation for the massacre at Sand Creek. Denver is threatened. Communications and supplies throughout the area are halted.

1881-Helen Hunt Jackson publishes A Century of Dishonor, an account of the atrocities committed against Indian tribes in the West and an indicment of the nation’s reservation policy. Jackson sends copies of the book to every member of Congress and to most federal officials.

1903-Great Britain and the United States sign an agreement establishing a joint commission to decide boundaries between Canada and the Alaska Panhandle.