Fort Randall on the Missouri, 1856-1892 (review)

Fort Randall on the Missouri is another of Jerome A. Greene's thorough efforts to illuminate the trans-Mississippi west. In this one, he recounts the history and purpose of a fort built at the beginning of the Great Sioux War. Fort Randall was sited on the Missouri River in southeast Dakota Territory in order to protect Iowa and Dakota settlers, as well as remnants of the Ponca and Yankton Indian tribes. No walls were necessary at Randall, rather its defense was based on two blockhouses, good siting, a garrison of 350 to 500 soldiers until the Civil War ended, and its proximity to Sioux City, Iowa.

Following the Minnesota (Sioux) uprising in 1862 and the Lincoln administration's decision to remove the Sioux from eastern Dakota, Fort Randall became the staging area for Alfred Sully's 1863 and 1864 expeditions. These campaigns resulted in major Sioux defeats at Whitestone Hill and Killdeer Mountain, as well as leading to construction of a half dozen forts on the Missouri as far as the Yellowstone River, with each new post further reducing Randall's strategic importance.

By 1871, when Northern Pacific Railroad surveyors entered the Yellowstone Valley, they left from Fort Rice (north-central Dakota) and Fort Randall was relegated to serving as a supply depot and training center. Although not discussed in the book, the fort's role was further reduced in 1873 when the Northern Pacific reached the Missouri: military supplies shipped into large parts of Dakota and eastern Montana were rerouted via Fargo and Bismarck, bypassing Randall and Sioux City.

If Fort Randall no longer served the Upper Missouri, it did take the lead role during the opening of the Black Hills. However, attempts by Sioux City businessmen to finance a road to Montana via the fort invariably failed. For twenty months between 1881 and 1883, Randall was the site of Sitting Bull's imprisonment, and Greene's description of this (with numerous photos) is of singular interest. However, even then the post's closure was just a matter of when. Census data tell the story: the 1856 population of what became North and South Dakota was, at best, 2,500 (excluding Native Americans); when Fort Randall closed in 1892 the two states had at least 550,000 inhabitants.

During the Great Sioux War, almost a score of forts and Indian agencies were established in North and South Dakota. Histories are available for most of these, but Fort Randall is easily amongst the most readable and best researched. Readers will find the bibliography detailed and quite useful, although the reviewer was surprised not to see the inclusion of Michael Clodfelter's excellent The Dakota War: The United States Army Versus the Sioux, 1862–1865 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 1998).

Fort Randall is a valuable addition for those interested in the Great Sioux War and regional history. Unfortunately, Greene's objectivity and meticulous research only calls attention to the story's one significant weakness: very little happened at the post; more often than not Fort Randall was an observer and jumping off point, seldom a participant. In 1866 the post's newspaper editor lamented, "Few people are fully aware how dull things are here[!]" It fell to other Dakota forts—such as Abercrombie, Buford, Abraham Lincoln, and Rice—to see heavy fighting or play greater strategic roles. From the standpoint of historical drama, Fort Randall guarded the frontier only too well.