A question came up the other day asking do you know the name of the first newspaper in Dakota Territory?
Between 1861, when Dakota Territory was established, until statehood in 1889, 160 newspapers sprang up in the territory. That’s kind of remarkable, but then, the territory included all of present-day South Dakota as well.

But the question remains, what was the first? Does anyone know? Many of us won’t know this answer. It wasn’t a newspaper as we think of them today, but it was an information expositor for the northern Dakota Territory.

That paper was the Frontier Scout, published by two Soldiers who were stationed at Fort Union in what is now Williams County. The first edition was printed July 14, 1864. The Civil War was raging at that time and in fact, on that day and July 15, the Battle of Tupelo was taking place in Mississippi.

The Scout was typically a four-page newspaper without ads and just the first four editions were published at Fort Union. The subsequent 15 editions, that we are aware of, were published at Fort Rice. The Fort Union issues were printed approximately on a monthly schedule, but when it made the transition to Fort Rice, it became mostly a weekly.

The fourth edition was Aug. 17, 1864, but the fifth edition didn’t publish until June 15, 1865. The final edition appeared on Oct. 12, 1865.

That one question a reader asked got my curiosity up. I later found the North Dakota State Historical Society has 18 editions in digital format so they are fairly easy to read if you magnify the print.

I took to analyzing them and as you might imagine, the $3-a-year subscription was filled with military news from across the territory with local segments from Fort Rice.

One thing I found striking was on page 3 of the June 15, 1865 edition. It wasn’t an article, but a list of the Soldiers who died in the previous year in Dakotah (sic) Territory.

It listed deaths from six companies of Soldiers that represents a total of 960 troops. The list had 24 Soldiers dying of chronic diarrhea, 35 died from scurvy, five died from consumption, three succumbed to typhoid fever and one was lost because of heart disease.

We all know what diarrhea is and you have to wonder how Army medics weren’t more informed on how to stop, or at least control it.

We’ve often heard about scurvy on those clipper ships that crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Well, prairie Soldiers died from it too. Scurvy is defined as a disease caused by a severe deficiency of vitamin C. In other words, these Soldiers weren’t consuming enough fruits and vegetables or other forms of Vitamin C.

Consumption later became known as tuberculosis, a bacterial infection that primarily affects the lungs. It’s spread through the air when an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks. Keep in mind, these men were living in close quarter barracks, at least the enlisted men were.

Typhoid fever is an infectious bacterial disease with an eruption of red spots on the chest and abdomen and severe intestinal irritation.

Finally, heart disease could be a number of things and most likely the medical world in 1865, including the Army, didn’t know specifically if it was a heart attack or some other cardiac issue.

Nowhere on that list, from October 1864, through May 1865 were there any deaths from bullets, arrows or cannon blasts. Everyone died of some sort of disease.

It would be interesting to find out how many Soldiers were lost from disease throughout the entire Civil War that started April 12, 1861 until it ended almost exactly four years later on April 9, 1865.