This Day…

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.

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

1785-The Ottawa and Wyandot Indians cede their land in the present-day state of Ohio to the new government in the Treaty of Fort McIntosh.

1887-The Hawaiian Reciprocity Treaty of 1875, which had been renewed in 1884, is finally ratified by the Senate when it is amended to give the United States the exclusive right to build a navel base at Pearl Harbor.

1860-Arizona mining at Tubac, and in the Santa Rita, Cuerro Colorado, and Santa Cruz Mountains is halted when US Army troops pull out of the area to prepare for the Civil War. The Apache in the area take back control. Gold is in the Orofina Creek in Nez Pearce country. The miners, largely from the West, arrive from gold fields in British Columbia, prospects in Idaho, then move farther east to Montana.

1836-William A. Slacum, official agent of President Jackson, helps settlers in Oregon to organize the Willamette Cattle Company, which raises money and sends Ewing Young to California to buy several hundred head of cattle. The object is to give the American missions economic independence from the Hudson’s Bay Company.