“AN IMPORTANT OCCASION ALL AROUND THE BELT” boasted headlines in the April 19 Black Hills Daily Pioneer.

Prominent businessmen escorted the Marquis on a tour of Deadwood, surrounding towns and Homestake Gold Mine. They met privately to hear about his plans for a stage line connecting the Northern Pacific railroad to the Black Hills, the proposed route he had just personally reconnoitered on his 52-hour ride.

            Isolated from railroads, the Black Hills was entirely dependent on supplies transported by wagon train or stagecoach from railroad terminals at Pierre and Chamberlain, Cheyenne, Bismarck and Sidney. A northern connection to the transcontinental Northern Pacific appealed to Black Hills entrepreneurs.

The wealthy young patrician had already created his own fiefdom in the rugged Badlands of northern Dakota Territory. In just one year he had built a new town on the wide-open spaces that became the state of North Dakota six years later. Deadwood citizens were aware the Marquis was a millionaire with an abundant annual income, a wealthy French father and affluent father-in-law.  > >

Black Hills newspapers had also published accounts of the Frenchman’s conflicts with outlaws, roughnecks and commercial hunters who were violently opposed to civilization and  establishment of law and order in the Badlands.

De Morés came to Dakota Territory in March 1883 to investigate business opportunities in the untamed west, arriving by train at the wild and lawless railroad town on the west bank of the Little Missouri River known as “Little Misery.”

The Marquis was convinced the western cattle business was an untapped bonanza. Instead of shipping live cattle, de Morés proposed to raise, buy and slaughter livestock on the range, then ship the dressed meat to eastern markets.  He believed the area where the Northern Pacific railroad crossed the Little Missouri River was an ideal spot to establish such an innovative enterprise.

 “I like this country for there is room to move about without stepping on the feet of others,” he said in a letter to his wife who was awaiting the birth of their first child back in New York.

The Paris-born nobleman didn’t realize he would be stepping on toes of Dakotans.

Little Misery lived up to its name. Respectable citizens were outnumbered by Ne’er-do-wells -- drifters, rustlers, gunmen and thieves who viewed the “crazy Frenchman” and his original ideas with skepticism and outright hostility. Inherited fortunes and titles meant nothing to self-made frontiersmen offended by the unconscious arrogance that was a natural result of privileged upbringing.

The town of Little Missouri wasn’t a suitable place for the massive enterprise de Mores had in mind, but he noted there was a fine town site just across the river. He pitched his tent along the east bank of the Little Missouri River, cracked a bottle of wine over an iron tent peg and christened the new town for his wife, Medora von Hoffman, daughter of a wealthy Wall Street banker.

The date – April Fools Day 1883 – would prove to be prophetic.

The Marquis began buying up thousands of acres, including strips of land that stretched along both sides of the river. Because of water rights, he thereby effectively controlled an additional several thousand acres abutting his property, a fact unlikely to endear him to his neighbors.

A tent city sprang up on the prairie as carpenters, bricklayers and masons arrived to build a new community --- an abattoir (slaughterhouse) that could process 150 carcasses a day, offices, general store, hotel, brick plant, houses and recreation hall for employees. Construction began on the de Morés home, a 26-room chateau perched on a high bluff overlooking the town.

Slaughtering and dressing beef where it was raised, instead of shipping live cattle to Chicago or St. Louis slaughterhouses, would make more sense and be more profitable, de Morés reasoned. Within six weeks of his arrival in Dakota, he incorporated the Northern Pacific Refrigerator Car Company, capitalized at $200,000.

Most ranchers were delighted to have a local buyer for their livestock, but the imperious attitude of the Marquis and ostentatious use of his French title alienated many rough and tough Dakotans from the day he stepped off the train.

Six feet tall with curly black hair and black mustache waxed to needle points, the Frenchman had a keen mind coupled with enormous energy — traits that should have endeared him to his new neighbors. His fearlessness, skilled marksmanship, aristocratic good looks and self-confidence were attributes generally admired in westerners, but resented in a foreign-born nobleman.

When de Morés fenced in his land with barbed wire, an unforgivable sin on the open range, and brought in 15,000 sheep, anathema to cattle ranchers, he incurred open animosity.

Rancher Gregor Lang, a dour Scotsman, took an instant dislike to the “grandiose foreigner” he called a “land grabber.” Lang and his son Lincoln may not have directly participated in threats against the Marquis, but their open criticism gave support and encouragement to his most active enemies. Hunters Reilly Luffsey, Frank McDonald (O’Donnell) and Jack Reuter (Dutch Wannegan) were particularly enraged by the fences that blocked their hunting trails.

By early summer, covert animosity erupted into open warfare intended to drive the Marquis out, or at the very least, take down his hated barbed wire.

Fence cutting, death threats and shots from ambush became an almost daily occurrence in a land where the nearest peace officer was at Mandan, 130 miles to the east. In mid-June gunmen made a series of assaults on the chateau, firing a barrage of bullets through the windows.

In an attempt to seek legal recourse, the Marquis consulted a territorial justice of the peace in Mandan. “Why, shoot,” advised Justice Bateman, quoting the unwritten law of the frontier. De Morés returned to Medora prepared to defend himself and his property.

On June 26, the inevitable confrontation took place on the banks of the Little Missouri. De Morés and three of his men returned rifle fire from the trio of hunters. Luffsey died on the spot; the wounded O’Donnell and Wannegan were turned over to a deputy sheriff.

Court appearances in Mandan consumed much of the Frenchman’s time during the summer of 1883. Justice Bateman, who three weeks earlier had advised the Marquis to shoot, dismissed murder charges. Despite Bateman’s decision, the Marquis was served with another warrant for his arrest.  Justice Collins also ruled the Marquis and his men had acted in self-defense.

That should have put an end to the affair, but didn’t. Two years later, in September 1885, the Marquis was brought to trial an unprecedented third time on the same charges. It took the Bismarck jury just 10 minutes to return a not guilty verdict.

The chateau began reflecting a woman’s touch when the charming Titian-haired Marquise

 joined her husband at the town named for her late that summer. Society leaders of America and European royalty were entertained in a luxurious style never before seen on the frontier. The spacious home, staffed with dozens of servants, was furnished with Oriental rugs, fine china, crystal and silver, a wine cellar stocked with the finest vintages.

Both the Marquis and Marquise loved outdoor life and the rugged scenery of a Badlands abounding in wild game. Riding sidesaddle, she accompanied him on hunting excursions and was as accomplished with firearms as her husband.

Another eastern dude came to hunt buffalo in the Badlands that fall. Because he wore steel-rimmed glasses, Theodore Roosevelt was initially referred to as “that four-eyed son of a bitch.” After he took on an armed drunken cowboy with his bare fists, he became affectionately known as “Old Four Eyes.” 

Roosevelt first bought a cattle ranch south of Medora, then the Elkhorn Ranch north of town, where he lived intermittently for the next three years. T. R. often dined at the chateau and relished conversations about common interests --- guns, books, horses, the outdoors, the military and politics.

With the 1883 fall roundup, ice-packed cars loaded with quarters and halves of beef rolled from Medora to Chicago’s wholesale market. The Marquis, as he predicted, was able to undersell competition.

 The de Morés family left for the East when the packing plant closed for the winter, then returned the following spring in their own private railroad car. Looking around for new business opportunities, the energetic, restless Marquis decided on a direct Medora-Deadwood stage route.

 If he could have an exclusive option on the stage business, he told Deadwood businessmen, he would also establish a much-needed freight line and promote construction of a railroad into Deadwood.

A whirlwind of activity went into setting up the Medora Stage and Forwarding Company, incorporated for $30,000 in November 1884. From the Gilmer and Salisbury Stage Company that had folded its operation out of Sidney, the Marquis snapped up four deluxe Concord coaches at a bargain price of $300 each. He bought horses and heavy duty harnesses, established stage stops every 10 to 15 miles along the route, built a freight depot in Medora and a stage barn on Seth Bullock’s land at the forks of the Redwater and Belle Fourche rivers. 

On November 27 the Badlands Cowboy newspaper reported, “The coach arrived here Tuesday night just 32 hours and 5 minutes out of Deadwood. This beats the best time in or out of Deadwood by any stage over any line by nearly four hours.”

Unfortunately, the Marquis was unable to secure the government mail contract he had counted on to cover operating costs. The Medora-Deadwood stage line ceased to operate after the winter of 1884-85.

In all of his Dakota Territory enterprises, the far-thinking de Morés had the right ideas, but the wrong timing. Unhampered by anti-trust laws, collusive forces of the beef trust monopolized the meat business and weren’t about to let the brash Dakota upstart undercut their business. Meat packers from the Middle West to the eastern seaboard were determined to destroy him. Eventually they did.

But there were other contributing factors. The liberal Marquis, who believed in improving life for the common people, hired and relied on employees that were less than loyal and trustworthy. Court appearances consumed his time and energy; high-priced defense lawyers were a drain on his finances.

By the time Louis von Hoffman withdrew financial backing from his son-in-law, the banker and the Marquis had dropped more than a million dollars into the Badlands empire. Construction costs for the packing plant alone exceeded a quarter million.

            The abattoir was always shut down for the winter. When the doors closed in late 1886 it was for the last time. The de Morés family returned to France.

Descended from a noble line of Spanish and French soldiers and soldiers of fortune, the Marquis had an unquenchable thirst for adventure. He tried to get financial backing for building an Indochina railroad, then made an unsuccessful effort to enter French politics.

His final venture, sponsoring a dubious attempt to drive the British from North Africa, led to his death five days before his 38^th birthday. On June 9, 1896, he was assassinated by Toureg natives on the Sahara Desert.

 Seven years after his death, the Marquise brought her daughter Athenais and son Louis back to the Badlands to spend a six-week summer vacation at the chateau. Virtually the entire population of Billings County turned out for a party the de Morés family hosted at the Medora town hall, where cowboys stood in line to claim a dance with Athenais.   

            The packing plant burned to the ground not long afterward. The Marquise lived in Paris and Cannes until her death in 1921. Louis and Paul Vallombrosa sold the North Dakota ranch properties and bequeathed St. Mary’s Church to the Catholic parish. Caretakers maintained the chateau until 1936, when Louis donated it and the packing plant site to the North Dakota State Historical Society, stipulating the chateau be maintained as a museum.

            Former U. S. President Theodore Roosevelt might have been speaking of the Marquis de Morés when he said:

            It is not the critic who counts. The credit belongs to the man who personally descends into the arena, who struggles valiantly, who makes mistakes, who tries and tries again, but who struggles with all his might in doing what he> > is doing, who knows great enthusiasms, great devotions, so fully that his place will  never be at the side of those cool and timid souls who are ignorant of defeats, but of victory as well.

Deadwood Magazine ©2003