CHAPTER XXXII
THE GOVERNORS
During the old fur-trading days the burgeois, or managing officer of the American Fur Company, who resided at Fort Pierre, was the self-constituted chief executive officer of the Dakota country. By common consent he had the powers not only of a governor, but of a magistrate as well, and he tried men for petty offenses, committed them to the guardhouse for punishment, or imposed other punishments upon them, and in the case of high crimes sent them in chains to St. Louis for trial. William Laidlaw was the man who, for the most part, exercised this function for a long period of years.
When the Louisiana purchase was made, in 1803, jurisdiction over the northwest country was, for a time, conferred upon Indiana, and General William Henry Harrison was the governor. After Louisiana territory was organized, Captain Meriwether Lewis was for a time its governor, and after Louisiana territory became Missouri territory Captain William Clark held the same office. But of course these men had little governing to do in the Dakota country. This is true also of the governors, respectively, of Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, whose territorial limits included the east half of South Dakota at one time or another.
When the settlers organized at Sioux Falls in 1858,
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