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(meta data) TITLE: MHS Transactions: Steamboating on the Red

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MHS Transactions, Series 3, 1950-51 season

MHS Transactions were originally published by the Manitoba Historical Society on the above date.

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In the first half of the nineteenth century the Red River Valley was crisscrossed by cart trails that linked together Fort Garry (Winnipeg) and Fort Snelling (St. Paul).

Graham's Crossing, about three miles south of Fort Abercrombie on the east side on the Red River, was a well used ford as early as 1817.

There was another ford at Frog Point over the Red River, fifteen miles south of Grand Forks, known to our first settlers in the early 1880s, which was used two hundred years earlier by the Red Lake Indians who brought Hudson's Bay Company goods down from the north.

The forks of the Assiniboine and Red rivers, at Winnipeg, was the crossroads of the fur traders' highways.

Later, to accommodate the advancing hordes of settlers and immigrants, flatboats and rafts made their appearance on the Red River and were followed by steamboats.

Manitoba is an inland water province and the old sternwheeler was especially devised for inland navigation.

"A boat to carry 400 tons on about three feet of water," said an old timer.

Major W. F. Butler wrote in The Wild North Land: "Place on the river a steamboat of the rudest construction wherever the banks are easy of ascent or where a smaller stream seeks the main river.

Your new land will be thoroughly civilized."

Wood yards for the accommodation of the boats along the river were often the means of developing frontier towns.

In 1857, the Hudson's Bay Company completed arrangements with the United States Secretary of the Treasury, whereby goods of the Company could be carried in bond through the United States, practically doing away with the traffic through York Factory where vessels had arrived and departed only once a year.

Captain Russell Blakeley, at the instance of the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce, made the first move to establish steamboats on the Red in 1859.

He made a tour of investigation, accompanied by Mr. John R. Irvine, in October 1859, and reported upon his return from Georgetown that steamboat navigation on the Red River was practicable for several months in the year.

The Chamber of Commerce immediately offered a bonus of $1,000 to anyone who would put a boat on the Red River the following spring.

Anson Northup offered to accomplish this feat for $2,000, and his offer was promptly accepted.

On the Mississippi River above the Falls of St. Anthony there was a steamboat called the North Star.

Her machinery had originally been brought to Minneapolis from Bangor, Maine, and put on the Governor Ramsey, built in 1851 by Captain John Rollins.

Anson Northup bought the North Star in Minneapolis and had her taken up the river to Crow Wing in the fall of 1858.

Here she was dismantled and lumber cut for the hull.

Early the next year an expedition left Crow Wing, consisting of sixty men and thirty-four ox teams.

The machinery, cabin and furniture of the North Star, along with the cut and framed lumber, were loaded on wagons, and they made the trip of about one hundred and fifty miles in one of the coldest winters on record.

They arrived at Lafayette, opposite the mouth of the Sheyenne about three miles above Georgetown, on the evening of the first of April.

In about six weeks the boat was finished.

Then she was christened Anson Northup after the owner and run up to Fort Abercrombie and Breckenridge on a trial trip.

She had a capacity of from 50 to 75 tons, engines of 100 horse-power, was 90 feet in length and 22 feet wide, [5] and drew 14 inches of water light.

[6] Captain Russell Blakeley said: "The hull was new but it was made of pine; the machinery was eight years old; the furniture was very limited and the boiler was of locomotive kind.

The head was cracked clear across, leaking so badly that it was not possible to get up a sufficient head of steam to he called seaworthy or hear inspection."

In the winter of 1859-60, it became necessary to have a new head.

Hargrave, in his book, Red River, describes her further, as she was in July 1861, rechristened the Pioneer: "She was provided with four staterooms, each containing two berths.

Passengers over and above the number of those who could be accommodated in these, slept in a series of open berths extending along the main saloon, from which they were separated only by their curtains.

She is a small vessel propelled by a sternwheel."

On the Anson Northup's first trip to Fort Garry, she left Breckenridge on 6 June 1859 and reached Fort Garry on 10 June, thus taking only four days.

The commander of the British force ordered the firing of the cannon in honour of the event.

The British flag was hoisted to greet its sister of the Stars and Stripes, waving at the head of the Anson Northup and the great bells of the St. Boniface Cathedral chimed merrily.

The throngs of people, including Indians, pressed all around in confusion, cheering madly.

The officers of the Hudson's Bay Company were most cordial in welcoming the pioneer of progress and prosperity on that great day.

Samuel Taylor, a carpenter for the Hudson's Bay Company at the Lower Fort, kept a diary at this time, and there is a notation to the effect that the boat took an excursion trip to the Lower Fort on 13 June, and "there were plenty of people on board."

Charles Cavalier of Pembina, who was running a store in Winnipeg at the time, was on hoard with his young wife.

"It was a perfect circus all the way down."

he said, "to see the surprise of the Indians."

For some years the Indians were to protest against the use of the river for steamboats, complaining that the craft drove away the game and that they disturbed the spirits of their dead.

They demanded four kegs of yellow money to quiet the spirits of their fathers.

They said the blowing of the whistles was the cause of it all.

An arrangement was finally made and agreed to, with Chief Red Bear of the Turtle Mountain Indians and others, that it was to be blown only on departure and arrival at Georgetown, Pembina and Fort Garry.

The Anson Northup stayed in Fort Garry for a week and then left on 17 June for Fort Abercrombie, taking twenty-five passengers, one of whom was James Ross, a merchant of Red River Settlement.

They were eight days making the return trip upstream, running only by daylight and having again to stop to cut wood along shore.

On reaching Fort Abercrombie, the boat was tied up and used to ferry passengers and Red River carts back and forth over the Red River.

Anson Northup had agreed to place a steamer on the Red River for the bonus and only that.

He refused to run it on any regular trips.

Captain Blakeley's associate, J. C. Burbank, then bought the Northup for $8,000 and placed Captain Edwin Bell in charge.

He had trouble after leaving Goergetown (the Hudson's Bay Post located on the Minnesota side of Red River sixteen miles north of the site of Moorhead) but he finally navigated the boat past Goose Rapids and reached Fort Garry safely and laid the boat up at Cook's Creek on 18 August.

The pumps were drained and the water blown out of the boilers, and according to Taylor's diary, she was left there for the winter.

In 1860 she was run by Captain C. P. V. Lull, who said she was nothing but "a lumbering old pine basket, which you have to handle as gingerly as a hamper of eggs," but she made regular trips from Georgetown to Fort Garry and hack all that year.

Mr. Burbank told J. J. Hargrave the next summer that he had done it to prove that it could be done, but in 1861 he was going to make the boat pay by running it when there was sufficient freight to carry.

As she had sunk in her winter quarters at Cook's Creek the second winter, he had her rebuilt, and she was thereafter called the Pioneer.

Ultimately the Pioneer passed into the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company, was dismantled and her engines used to run a sawmill.

James W. Taylor, later to be American consul at Winnipeg, was most earnest in his enthusiasm for promoting traffic on the rivers.

He was especially the friend of the water route by way of the Red and the Saskatchewan rivers to the gold fields, and advanced this route so constantly that he was in later times known as "Saskatchewan Taylor".

He expressed his sentiments as follows: "When the whistle shall sound the advent of the first steamboat in Fort Garry, Bishop Tache, who has prayed so earnestly and waited so long, will spring instantly to his feet, and, raising his hands reverently above his head, exclaim, 'In the name of God, let the bells of St. Boniface ring, for civilization has come.'"

There was an old steamboat lying in the Minnesota River, six miles below Big Stone Lake, which it was intended to bring over into Red River in 1859.

The Minnesota River was in flood and Captain Davis thought he could run the old Freighter, which was a small flat-bottomed, square-bowed boat, into the Red River, but the water went down and the boat was left stranded.

It was sold at sheriff's sale, and was bought by Burbank & Co.

Taking the boat to pieces, Burbank's men brought it to Georgetown in the fall of 1861 to be rebuilt.

The hull, left buried in the sand about ten miles below Big Stone Lake, remained visible for twenty or thirty years.

The new boat was launched under the name International towards the end of May 1862, and was 150 feet long, had a 30 foot beam and was rated at 133 tons, drawing 42 inches of water.

Her first trip from Georgetown down to Fort Garry, where she arrived May 26, took seven days three days longer than the Northup's first.

But she brought two hundred passengers, including Governor Dallas, Bishop Tache, and Judge Black.

In August she attempted another trip to the mouth of the Assiniboine, but was turned back by the opening of Indian hostilities and the difficulty of descending Goose Rapids.

A barge attached to the boat was cast off and floated down the river with E. R. Hutchinson in charge.

The Sioux outbreak influenced James W. Taylor to write to Major-General Pope of the United States army in regard to the International.

As a result of this letter, on 15 April 1863, Captain Barrett, with a detachment of troops escorted Captain Painter and crew to Georgetown.

The engineer on this occasion was E. R. Abell, who later lived at the Lower Fort.

On the 24th, they returned on board the steamer International to Fort Abercrombie.

The boat stayed there for a year and was then sold to the Hudson's Bay Company.

Low water, scarcity of freight, and alarm about the Indians curtailed shipbuilding until 1870.

The International only made one trip to Fort Garry in 1864.

In the winter of 1870-71, the Selkirk, under the ownership of James J. Hill, Alexander Griggs and C. W. Griggs, known as Hill, Griggs & Company of St. Paul, was built at McCauleyville and launched with Alexander Griggs in command in 1871.

She arrived in Winnipeg in May of that year with Hill and George L. Foster as passengers.

There was also lumber on board for J. H. Ashdown's new store.

Her tonnage was 108 and with her flat bottom she was able to move in 18 inches of water travelling light, although she drew four or five feet when loaded, which was often the case.

Mr. John Kelley, who was employed as a clerk in the early 1880s, gives a description which shows that it compared favourably with the Mississippi steamboats of an earlier period: "The boat was handsomely finished inside and out and there were two decks with the usual row of cabins on the upper deck.

The engine room was on the lower deck and it was there the freight was carried.

The pilot house was above the upper deck.

A list of the personnel in 1881 follows:

"Captain, Alexander Griggs; two pilots, two mates, two engineers, two firemen, two clerks, a steward, a cook and even two maids and two cabin boys; seventeen altogether.

Besides these there were required from ten to fifteen roustabouts to handle the freight.

Sometimes half breeds from Manitoba were hired.

They generally made only one or two trips, seeking only to earn enough money to keep supplied with powder and shot for hunting."

Arrangements in 1871 were made for the Selkirk to carry goods in bond, and this marked the dawn of a period of brisk steamboat trade as well as flatboat trade on the Red River.

In the winter of 1871-2, all boats on the river passed into the control of Norman W. Kittson, a St. Paul man who was Canadian-born and whose great-grandfather had fought under General Wolfe at the siege of Quebec.

In the spring he organized and managed the Red River Transportation Company, joining forces with the Hill, Griggs Company of St. Paul, and built the Dakota at Breckenridge.

Next, they built the sidewheeler, Cheyenne, at Grand Forks in the winter of 1873-4, and then bought the Alpha, built at Breckenridge by Captain Harrison of Wayzata and belonged to Captain J. W. Lane.

It was 125 feet long, breadth 24Y2 feet, draught 12 inches and launched July 5, 1873.

Traffic on the Red was considerable, both in freight and passengers by this time.

The Hudson's Bay Company had a large warehouse at Moorhead, Minn., and about 350 tons of miscellaneous freight were stored there awaiting the breakup.

Hundreds of Mennonites had arrived in Winnipeg, with more waiting to come the following spring.

The next August, in two weeks, 880 had come on the International and the Cheyenne.

In 1874, an opposition line of steamers known as the Merchants International Steamboat Line was organized by Manitoba and St. Paul citizens in order to force freight rates down by competition.

The first two boats operated by this line were the Manitoba and Minnesota, built at Moorhead in 1875 with a tonnage of 197.75 each.

This new company passed into Kittson's control in 1876, and once again the Red River Transportation Company held sway, backed by the Hudson's Bay Company.

The Red River, owing to its sharp bends and shallow waters, was by no means an easy river to navigate.

Goose Rapids, (between present Caledonia and Grand Forks, N.D.; there was a town there previously called Belmont, but now known as Caledonia) was a glacial moraine and the river had large boulders and sand bars at this spot which made it difficult to navigate.

J. J. Hargrave in his Red River writes of his trip in July 1861:

"The Pioneer (formerly Anson Northup) would partially ground, while the greater part of her keel would be floating in water flowing like the sluice of a mill.

On such occasions she would whirl cork-like around, setting at defiance the utmost efforts of the rude sternwheel to regulate her motions.

At last the rapids, which extend over a length of about two miles, were passed, and we steamed ahead to good purpose."

In 1877, the railroad, owing to trouble encountered during low water in getting over the bar at Goose Rapids, built a spur track from Crookston to Fisher's Landing, which has since become Fisher, Minnesota, and the rails and other supplies were loaded on barges there instead of Moorhead.

The new shipping point became the head of navigation for a number of years, a large volume of traffic being handled, the steamboats also taking Canadian-bound passengers from the railroad to that point.

Thousands of settlers, both those who located in Northwestern Canada and those stopping in North Dakota, came in by way of Fisher's Landing.

Lord Dufferin, popular Governor-General who had been the first vice-regal representative to visit Winnipeg, and Lady Dufferin, visited Fisher's Landing in August 1877.

They embarked on the Minnesota, and Lady Dufferin, who kept a diary, told of trying to write while proceeding on that part of the

"very narrow and extremely sinuous river.

I can tell you that we go from one bank to the other, crushing and crashing against the trees, which grow down to the waterside; the branches sweep over the deck and fly in our faces, and leave pieces behind them.

I had just written this when I gave a shriek as I saw my ink bottle on the point of being swept overboard by an intrusive tree; and D's (Lord Dufferin's) hat was knocked off his head by it.

The consequence of this curious navigation is that we never really go on for more than three minutes at a time; we run against one bank, our steam is shut off, and in some mysterious manner we swing round till our how is into the other; then we rebound, and go on a few yards, till the sharp curve brings us up against the side.

Our stern wheel is very often ashore, and our captain and pilot must require the patience of saints...

This exceedingly twisty river is the 'Red Lake River'; it is forty miles to travel though the distance is only twelve from point to point.

When we reach the Red River itself, we found the stream wide enough for us to go straight down it, less sinuous.

and one can see nothing beyond them; behind stretches out the prairie, and every now and then we were just able to see how thin the screen of trees really is between the river and the plains."

That evening after dark they met another steamboat, the Manitoba.

"It looked beautiful in the dark, with two great bull's-eyes, green and red lamps and other lights on deck, creeping toward us; we stopped, and backed into the shore, that it might pass us.

It came close and fired off a cannon, and we saw on the deck a large transparency with the words, 'Welcome, Lord Dufferin' on it, and two girls dressed in white with flags in their hands; then a voice sang, 'Canada, Sweet Canada,' and many more voices joined the chorus."

After they had visited Pembina and Emerson, "the gentlemen bathed in the Red River," and they arrived at Winnipeg the next morning.

On their way back in September Lady Dufferin described a cinnamon bear on board the Minnesota, a tame pig, which answered to the name of Dick, and a dog.

"The bear sometimes hugs the pig, and the dog rushes to the rescue.

Someone tied a bun to the pig's tail today, which the bear perceived, and seized; but while he was leisurely arranging himself to enjoy it, the pig seized it, and ate it up."

At the end of the voyage Captain C. B. Thimens of the steamboat Minnesota was presented by Lord and Lady Dufferin with autographed photographs and an autographed copy of His Excellency's book, Letters from High Latitudes; a letter accompanying these presents stated they were meant as mementoes of his lordship's very pleasant trips on Captain Thimen's boat.

At Fisher's Landing again they saw a locomotive which Lady Dufferin records in her diary as "No. 2 of the Canada Pacific Railway.

It is going to Winnipeg," she added, "with a train of railway trucks, and it is to be called the `Lady Dufferin'."

This engine now stands in front of Winnipeg's C.P.R. station, and is designated as "C.P.R. No. 1, Countess of Dufferin".

With the "railway trucks", it was taken on barges to Winnipeg by the Selkirk and used to lay track between Winnipeg and Whitemouth.

Later it took Sir William Van Horne. president of the line, through the West, and pulled the first train to cross the Rockies when it took Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald on his first trans-Canada journey.

The arrival of this first engine with its cars at Winnipeg, on 8 October 1877, was celebrated with great rejoicing.

But it meant the beginning of the end of steamer navigation on the Red River of the North.

It was, however, a few years more before the railroad got in good working order and many more steamers were built for the Red River trade.

In the spring of 1879, attention of steamboat owners was turned to the navigation of the Assiniboine and the Saskatchewan rivers.

An amusing news item in the Free Press of 7 May 1879, reads:

"Winnipeg's first railroad, the Pembina branch, was past the novelty stage, and outgoing passengers, especially the oldtimers, were going back to the comfortable steamboats on the Red, with their open, airy decks and changing scenes on the river loops."

The J. L. Grandin of 218 tons, 125 feet long and 4 foot hold for carrying grain in bulk, was constructed at Fargo, 1878, to carry wheat from the Grandin farms in Traill County, although she was also used for pleasure trips and general cargo.

Her skipper was C. B. Thimens, formerly of the Minnesota.

There were double staterooms, two cabins, kitchen, pantries and captain's and clerk's rooms.

She had cost less than $15,000, thanks to the good management of the builder, Captain W. W. Allen.

A boatyard was established in Grand Forks by D. P. Reeves, and the steamer Cheyenne, one of the few Red River sidewheelers, was purchased by the Hudson's Bay Company.

It was used as a traffic boat first on the Red and later on the Assiniboine.

It was noted for the latest arrival on record up until 26 November 1878 and for enormous loads of freight pulled on barges.

She had also done heroic work in the flood of 1882.

The steamer H. W. Alsop, 157 tons, was built by H. W. Alsop of Fargo, in 1881-2.

He had built the White Swan at Brainerd, then cut the hull in two and transported it by rail to Moorhead where he lengthened it and again launched it under the name Pluck.

Both the Alsop and the Pluck were later bought by the Red River Transportation Company and subsequently the same company constructed another steamer and numerous barges.

The Pluck, 36 tons, was a sidewheeler and noted for pulling loaded barged of freight.

On one occasion, she had pulled out of Moorhead with one of the largest loads of freight from that port, namely 400 tons.

She was sold along with the Alsop to the Red River Transportation Company in 1883.

The William Robinson, the Marquette and the Northwest, were built at Moorhead in the eighties for Winnipeg owners for service on the Assiniboine.

The first was a small propeller and the others sternwheelers.

The Northwest finally was used on the Saskatchewan river.

The Manitoba spent her last days there also after plying on the Assiniboine river for a short while.

The last two boats built in the United States for use on the Red River were the Fram at East Grand Forks in 1895, and the Grand Forks at Grand Forks in 1895.

The latter was built by the Red River Transportation Company, was of 100 tons and powered by the machinery of the Alsop.

Boats of the Hudson's Bay Company and the Winnipeg & Western Transportation Company, built for use on the Assiniboine and the Saskatchewan rivers, are too numerous to mention here, but life on the Red River, particularly at Winnipeg, was very busy even after the railroad came to this city in 1878.

Racing was the order of the day, beginning with one between two flatboats where a keg of whiskey was involved.

The one between the Selkirk and the International to Fisher's Landing in 1876 was outstanding, followed by one between the Manitoba and the Minnesota in 1878.

The Manitoba, on her way from Moorhead to Winnipeg in 1875, was rammed amidships by her rival International on a sharp bend, and foundered in shallow water.

Her owners entered suit against Kittson's Company for $50,000; but the vessel was soon raised and six weeks after the collision she was again puffing up and down the river.

Two years later she established a record by arriving at Winnipeg on April 23, and the next spring she beat that record by a month.

Accidents were by no means infrequent on these river boats.

Sometimes pranksters fell in and had to be rescued.

Careless sleepers on the decks fell off and were sometimes drowned.

On the Dakota in May, 1874, a child who had fallen in was spectacularly rescued by a shackled prisoner.

More violent was the murder of a passenger on the International in 1871 - a mystery that was never solved.

Another murder was of a cabin boy on the Manitoba in 1878.

Extraordinary floods had occurred in the steamboat years of 1860, 1861, 1882 and 1897, and caused trouble for the boats, but the dry seasons, particularly 1877 and 1878, were worse.

There is the story of a captain yelling to a man on shore dipping water into a pail: "Hey! You put that water back."

Considerable immigration caused new towns and villages to spring up, and the Red River Valley began to take on new life, although between 1873 and 1876 it lessened from 50,150 in the former year to 24,633 in the latter, a decline attributed mainly to two causes.

The condition of the agricultural labourers in Great Britain had been greatly improved and secondly, the crowded labour markets in the United States sending workmen back to Europe.

The Winnipeg papers printed longer and longer lists of passengers; the record for 4 May 1878, being over a column long.

By that year Canada was supplying wheat to Britain.

On 5 May, Higgins, Young & Jackson, a Winnipeg firm, shipped on board the Selkirk 2,100 bushels of Manitoba wheat consigned to the Old Country.

The Minnesota had carried the first shipment of wheat, 857-1/6 bushels in 21 October 1876, to Messrs. Steele Brothers of Toronto who have the credit of being the first buyers for shipment as well as the first shippers of grain from the Province of Manitoba.

More than 10,000 bushels were shipped up the river in 1877, with one shipment alone of 5,266 bushels from J. H. Ashdown.

In April 1878, the International took out over 100 tons of wheat—the largest shipment ever made by water from Manitoba.

This wheat was loaded at Bannatyne's warehouse and was consigned to David Dowes & Company, New York, in bond for exportation to Europe.

Freight consisted of numerous items on these boats; in the early days, bags of flour and barrels of pork.

Then stoves, organs, furniture, safes, billiard tables, horses and animals.

One woman said: "It is nice to have our cow along so we can have fresh milk on the boat."

A circus was brought to Winnipeg on the Grandin and a photographer put his equipment on a boat and toured the river looking for business.

There were seventeen steamboats operating in Canadian waters in 1878, with eighteen being built for Peter McArthur of Winnipeg.

Many of the captains had served as skippers on Mississippi and Missouri river steamboats.

Captain Townsend of the Minnesota in 1878, said that he had been running steamboats on the Missouri during the Sioux trouble.

Sitting Bull, in his opinion, "wasn't much to look at, but was a brainy redskin."

Not until 1909 did the last steamer run from the United States to Winnipeg.

She was the Grand Forks, and arrived at her destination, Winnipeg, on 7 June, thus bringing to a close fifty years of steamboat traffic between the two countries.

1 Russell Blakely, "Opening of the Red River of the North to Commerce and Civilization," in Minnesota Historical Collections, vol. 8, p. 47.

2 Dr. O. G. Libby, "Convocation Address to University of North Dakota," Grand Forks, N.D., October 19, 1939, p.7.

3 Douglas Mackay, The Honourable Company, Toronto, 1948, p. 135.

4 Letter from Russell Blakeley, Manitoba Free Press Weekly, 22 December 1877.

(The daily edition of the Free Press is cited throughout, unless otherwise indicated.)

7 Minnesota Historical Collections, vol. 8, p. 56.

J. J. Hargrave, Red River, (Montreal, 1871).

8 The Detroit Free Press, 16 July 1859; Earl of Southesk, Saskatchewan and the Rocky Mountains, (Edinburgh, 1875), p. 34.

9 History of the Red River Valley, I, 221.

11 St. Paul Pioneer & Democrat, 13 July 1859.

Captain Edwin Bell, "Steamboating on the Minnesota and Red River, 1859," Minnesota Historical Collections.

12 Thomas Hughes, "Steamboating on The Minnesota River," Minnesota Historical Collections.

13 Robert B. Hill, History of Manitoba, (Toronto, 1890), 146; Alexander Begg, The Great Canadian North West, (Montreal, 1881), 41; Collections of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, II, 2 and 24.

14 Winnipeg Evening Tribune, 17 September 1949; Walsh Country Record, Grafton, N.D., 25 July 1940, Section 5.

15 Free Press, 11 May 1888; History of the Red River Valley, X, 804; Red River Star, Moorhead, Minn., 12 July 1873.

16 Canadian Illustrated News, Montreal, 27 November 1874.

17 Fred. A. Bill, Life on the Red River of the North, 1857-1887, (Baltimore 1947), 74; The Manitoba was the same as the Minnesota.

Built at Fargo, 1875; hull, 135 feet long, 31.4 foot beam.

18 Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, My Canadian Journal, 1872-78, (London, 1891), 316.

20 John Macoun, Manitoba and the Great North-West, (Guelph, 1882), 583.

22 History of the Red River Valley, I, 89.

23 Free Press, 14 October 1881; Free Press, 26 November 1887; Hill, Manitoba, 308.

24 History of the Red River Valley, II, 804.

26 Moorehead Star, 2 October 1875; Free Press, 23 April 1877; Free Press, 22 March 1878.

28 Free Press (Weekly), 24 November 1877; Free Press, 5 May 1878.

30 Free Press, 3 November 1877; Free Press, 7 January 1878; Free Press, 12 April 1878; Alexander Begg and Walter R. Nursey, Ten Years in Winnipeg, (Winnipeg, 1879), 186.

31 Free Press, 2 January 1877; Free Press, 6 December 1879.

Free Press, February 1879; Free Press, 15 April 1878.

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At times, some ox cart trains did not go all the way through, but were supplemented by river craft. First flatboats and then shallow-draft steamboats ascended the Minnesota River to Traverse des Sioux and upstream points, where they were met by cart brigades travelling the West Plains Trail. In 1851, weekly steamboat service on the Mississippi began between Saint Anthony Falls and Sauk Rapids on the Middle and Woods trails. In 1859, steamboat machinery was carried overland to the Red River where a boat was built, but service was intermittent. The Dakota War of 1862 delayed further improvements.


The Court announced judgment in favor of the bank on April 24, 2018.

(meta data) TITLE: Supreme Court Bars Human Rights Suits Against Foreign Corporations - The New York Times

(meta data) AUTHOR: http://www.nytimes.com/by/adam-liptak

(meta data) PUBLISHED DATETIME: 2013-04-17

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# Supreme Court Bars Human Rights Suits Against Foreign Corporations

ImageThe Supreme Court case, decided by a 5-to-4 vote, concerned a bank based in Jordan that has been accused of processing financial transactions through a New York branch for groups linked to terrorism.

CreditCreditEric Thayer for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Foreign corporations may not be sued in American courts for complicity in human rights abuses abroad, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.

The vote was 5 to 4, with the court's more conservative justices in the majority.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for a plurality of the justices, said such suits should not be allowed without explicit congressional authorization.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Supreme Court had created a double standard for corporations.

"It allows these entities to take advantage of the significant benefits of the corporate form and enjoy fundamental rights without having to shoulder attendant fundamental responsibilities," she wrote, citing decisions allowing corporations to spend freely in candidate elections and to deny contraception coverage to female workers for religious reasons.

The case decided on Tuesday concerned Arab Bank, which is based in Jordan and has been accused of processing financial transactions through a branch in New York for groups linked to terrorism.

The plaintiffs in the case sought to hold the bank liable for attacks in Israel and in the Palestinian territories by Hamas and other groups.

The plaintiffs in the case said the bank had "served as the 'paymaster' for Hamas and other terrorist organizations, helping them identify and pay the families of suicide bombers and other terrorists."

The bank responded that it had helped the United States in "the fight against terrorism financing and money laundering" and was not accused by the plaintiffs of being "involved in the planning, financing or commission of the attacks that caused their injuries."

The case turned on the meaning of the Alien Tort Statute, a cryptic 1789 law that allows federal district courts to hear "any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States."

The law was largely ignored until the 1980s, when federal courts started to apply it in international human rights cases.

A 2004 Supreme Court decision, Sosa v. Álvarez-Machain, left the door open to some claims under the law, as long as they involved violations of international norms with "definite content and acceptance among civilized nations."

Justice Kennedy wrote that the evidence about whether suits against foreign corporations were among those norms was mixed.

That meant, he wrote, that a clear answer from Congress was required before the suits could be allowed in light of the diplomatic friction they can create.

"Courts are not well suited to make the required policy judgments that are implicated by corporate liability in cases like this one," he wrote.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Clarence Thomas joined all of Justice Kennedy's opinion, and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch much of it.

In concurring opinions, Justices Alito and Gorsuch wrote that they would have gone further, expressing doubts about whether the court has interpreted the 1789 law correctly.

In dissent, Justice Sotomayor said Justice Kennedy's analysis was flawed.

"Nothing about the corporate form in itself justifies categorically foreclosing corporate liability," she wrote.

"Each source of diplomatic friction that respondent Arab Bank and the plurality identify can be addressed with a tool more tailored to the source of the problem than a blanket ban on corporate liability."

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan joined Justice Sotomayor's dissent.

The Supreme Court had agreed to decide the question of corporate liability for human rights violations once before, in 2011, in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum.

After hearing arguments on the question in 2012, though, the court asked the parties to brief and argue a broader issue: whether American courts may ever hear disputes under the law for human rights abuses abroad, whether the defendant was a corporation or not.

In 2013, the court said that there was a general presumption against the extraterritorial application of American law, ruling against Nigerian plaintiffs who said foreign oil companies had aided in atrocities by Nigerian military and police forces against Ogoni villagers.

But the Supreme Court did not answer the question it had initially agreed to consider, whether corporations are categorically excluded from the law.

The case decided on Tuesday, Jesner v. Arab Bank, No. 16-499, largely answered the question.

It affirmed a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, which ruled in favor of Arab Bank, saying that corporations may not be sued under the 1789 law.

Justice Sotomayor wrote that the majority on Tuesday had taken a too rosy view of corporate conduct.

"Corporations can be and often are a force for innovation and growth," she wrote.

"Many of their contributions to society should be celebrated.

But the unique power that corporations wield can be used both for good and for bad.

Just as corporations can increase the capacity for production, so, too, some can increase the capacity for suffering."

Follow Adam Liptak on Twitter: @adamliptak.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: Supreme Court Bars Human Rights Suits In the U.S. Against Foreign Corporations.

Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

## Justices Bar Nigerian Human Rights Case From U.S. Courts

## Justices Weigh Immunity for Corporations in Human Rights Cases Abroad


The Court voted to affirm the lower court by a vote of 5-4.

(meta data) TITLE: Supreme Court Bars Human Rights Suits Against Foreign Corporations - The New York Times

(meta data) AUTHOR: http://www.nytimes.com/by/adam-liptak

(meta data) PUBLISHED DATETIME: 2013-04-17

Skip to contentSkip to site indexBusinessLog InToday's PaperBusiness|Supreme Court Bars Human Rights Suits Against Foreign Corporations

# Supreme Court Bars Human Rights Suits Against Foreign Corporations

ImageThe Supreme Court case, decided by a 5-to-4 vote, concerned a bank based in Jordan that has been accused of processing financial transactions through a New York branch for groups linked to terrorism.

CreditCreditEric Thayer for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Foreign corporations may not be sued in American courts for complicity in human rights abuses abroad, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.

The vote was 5 to 4, with the court's more conservative justices in the majority.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for a plurality of the justices, said such suits should not be allowed without explicit congressional authorization.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Supreme Court had created a double standard for corporations.

"It allows these entities to take advantage of the significant benefits of the corporate form and enjoy fundamental rights without having to shoulder attendant fundamental responsibilities," she wrote, citing decisions allowing corporations to spend freely in candidate elections and to deny contraception coverage to female workers for religious reasons.

The case decided on Tuesday concerned Arab Bank, which is based in Jordan and has been accused of processing financial transactions through a branch in New York for groups linked to terrorism.

The plaintiffs in the case sought to hold the bank liable for attacks in Israel and in the Palestinian territories by Hamas and other groups.

The plaintiffs in the case said the bank had "served as the 'paymaster' for Hamas and other terrorist organizations, helping them identify and pay the families of suicide bombers and other terrorists."

The bank responded that it had helped the United States in "the fight against terrorism financing and money laundering" and was not accused by the plaintiffs of being "involved in the planning, financing or commission of the attacks that caused their injuries."

The case turned on the meaning of the Alien Tort Statute, a cryptic 1789 law that allows federal district courts to hear "any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States."

The law was largely ignored until the 1980s, when federal courts started to apply it in international human rights cases.

A 2004 Supreme Court decision, Sosa v. Álvarez-Machain, left the door open to some claims under the law, as long as they involved violations of international norms with "definite content and acceptance among civilized nations."

Justice Kennedy wrote that the evidence about whether suits against foreign corporations were among those norms was mixed.

That meant, he wrote, that a clear answer from Congress was required before the suits could be allowed in light of the diplomatic friction they can create.

"Courts are not well suited to make the required policy judgments that are implicated by corporate liability in cases like this one," he wrote.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Clarence Thomas joined all of Justice Kennedy's opinion, and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch much of it.

In concurring opinions, Justices Alito and Gorsuch wrote that they would have gone further, expressing doubts about whether the court has interpreted the 1789 law correctly.

In dissent, Justice Sotomayor said Justice Kennedy's analysis was flawed.

"Nothing about the corporate form in itself justifies categorically foreclosing corporate liability," she wrote.

"Each source of diplomatic friction that respondent Arab Bank and the plurality identify can be addressed with a tool more tailored to the source of the problem than a blanket ban on corporate liability."

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan joined Justice Sotomayor's dissent.

The Supreme Court had agreed to decide the question of corporate liability for human rights violations once before, in 2011, in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum.

After hearing arguments on the question in 2012, though, the court asked the parties to brief and argue a broader issue: whether American courts may ever hear disputes under the law for human rights abuses abroad, whether the defendant was a corporation or not.

In 2013, the court said that there was a general presumption against the extraterritorial application of American law, ruling against Nigerian plaintiffs who said foreign oil companies had aided in atrocities by Nigerian military and police forces against Ogoni villagers.

But the Supreme Court did not answer the question it had initially agreed to consider, whether corporations are categorically excluded from the law.

The case decided on Tuesday, Jesner v. Arab Bank, No. 16-499, largely answered the question.

It affirmed a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, which ruled in favor of Arab Bank, saying that corporations may not be sued under the 1789 law.

Justice Sotomayor wrote that the majority on Tuesday had taken a too rosy view of corporate conduct.

"Corporations can be and often are a force for innovation and growth," she wrote.

"Many of their contributions to society should be celebrated.

But the unique power that corporations wield can be used both for good and for bad.

Just as corporations can increase the capacity for production, so, too, some can increase the capacity for suffering."

Follow Adam Liptak on Twitter: @adamliptak.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: Supreme Court Bars Human Rights Suits In the U.S. Against Foreign Corporations.

Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

## Justices Bar Nigerian Human Rights Case From U.S. Courts

## Justices Weigh Immunity for Corporations in Human Rights Cases Abroad

The Court announced judgment in favor of the bank on April 24, 2018.


Hayden Norman Thorpe is an English singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.

(meta data) TITLE: Wild Beasts frontman Hayden Thorpe goes solo: "it's like playing chess against yourself..." - NME

(meta data) PUBLISHER: https://www.facebook.com/nmemagazine

# Wild Beasts frontman Hayden Thorpe goes solo: "it's like playing chess against yourself

Former Wild Beasts frontman Hayden Thorpe tells NME's Tom Connick how the dissolution of his old band, and the subsequent rediscovery of his own, individual identify, informed 'Diviner'.

The spilt of Wild Beasts was a knock for fans.

Held up as one of British indie's most individualistic talents, the four boys from Kendal held a mystery that set them apart from the trilby and winkle-picker-wearing hordes of noughties indie boys.

At the heart of their appeal was frontman Hayden Thorpe, a whisper-delicate vocalist whose lyrics targeted toxic masculinity and latent sexuality long before such things became regular headlines.

Their final shows, a sold-out trio of mid-February gigs in Dublin, Manchester and London, were treated like a "funeral", he admits.

But last month, Thorpe returned from the dead.

'Diviner', his debut solo single, is an atmospheric cut of piano-led balladry, Hayden singing of the titular "diviner" like a man discovering a new spirituality.

"I'm a keeper of secrets," he sings in hearty falsetto: "I'll be your disciple – show me where to go."

It's that sense of relinquishing control that informed 'Diviner', and paved the way for Hayden's singular return, he explains.

Now, Thorpe has announced a full-length release under that ethereal new guise, also titled 'Diviner'.

A record of "torch songs about intuition, belief and mysticism", 'Diviner' is set for release on May 24 via Domino.

We discussed its creation, and the "gargantuan abyss" left by the dissolution of Wild Beasts, with Thorpe himself.

How have you found it, returning to music solo?

Hayden Thorpe: "It's a huge relief, to be honest.

I always remember a documentary with Gary Barlow, saying how quiet it went after Take That, and how the phone wouldn't ring.

I always thought, 'Oh, get over it, Gary, pull your socks up!'

"For a while there, my internal world and my external world weren't matching up.

The reality of having music ready to go and it not being out, it's kind of like a secret pregnancy.

It feels good just to have my inner world and my outer world finally in sync."

### So much of your life and identity has been wrapped up in being creative.

Is it nice to have that element of yourself back out there?

I often think musicians are kind of like tennis players, in that they become so hyper-specialised at that one very specific thing, they're actually ultimately very useless at other ways of being.

I kind of feel either hyper-specialised, or completely maladjusted – or maybe both at the same time.

The thing is, once you're used to crafting beauty and the cadence of your life is towards trying to create beauty, that becomes the compulsion, and nothing else matches that.

### Those final Wild Beasts shows must have been incredibly emotional.

How did the comedown after all that feel?

I feel like I lived that life, and I no longer live it.

The beauty of doing this is that I'm in a game which is constantly looking for the fountain of youth.

We're all absolute slaves to finding that, and music, in itself, is kind of a form of reincarnation.

It doesn't degrade, it doesn't erode; music stays the same.

The forces of time don't apply to music.

So, in many ways, music is the best way to deal with these things, because you can kind of get away without time passing.

"There was, I'll put it mildly, a gargantuan abyss, that it was a joy to explore, in truth."

### Had you always intended to go it alone, once the band came to an end?

"I had no idea what I wanted to do, because I had always relied on music as a compulsion.

And you can't rely on compulsion – it's either there or it's not.

To start to make plans upon a compulsion, it's a bit like navigating by the stars, it's trial-and-error.

I didn't want to bank on it, and I had no expectation that anyone would want to listen to my [solo] music.

There was no sensation of inheritance or righteousness to this position.

All-in-all, what happened felt so right –

the alignment and the perfection of the ending of the band, and how much closure and peace it gave meant that there was a massive forward propulsion from that.

### So, you used the break-up as a springboard, rather than a dead end?

"If you've lived a musical life your entire adult life, then the only response to the ending of that musical life, is music.

It was the only appropriate response, really."

Read more: Hayden Thorpe discusses Wild Beasts' split, and what's next, in 2017

Wild Beasts live at The Roundhouse, London (Photo: Getty)

### When did you start recording these things? Was it straight off the bat, or did you take some time to process it all?

"I went into the studio the week after the last gig.

There wasn't a distinct plan, that was just the office.

I remember, it was in London, and it snowed that week – the 'Beast From The East' rolled in – and London was covered in white.

It was a renewal – I remember feeling a great sense of it being literally a blank space.

### A blank space can be quite scary when you've had all this noise going on for a decade.

"Yeah, but I didn't find it scary – I found it peaceful.

A blank slate; a blank canvas; as long as you don't start firing blanks, then you're alright!

My main compulsion, if I see anything blank, is to fuck it up a bit.

Was it hard not to have bandmates to bounce ideas off?

"It was a lot of alone time, I'll be honest.

If you're in a band, you're in a family, you're in a gang.

You have your community, and that was the main, stark difference – the amount of time spent inward was long and intense.

"In terms of bouncing ideas, that was a funny one.

When you're bouncing them off yourself, it's kind of like playing chess against yourself.

There can be days sat in your dressing gown thinking about the next move.

By nature, I'm a pretty reclusive person who has to be dragged out into the daylight, so it kinda suits me in a lot of ways.

"You have to look at yourself cold and hard, that's for sure.

the idea of myself as the frontman, the idea of myself as the guy in the gang he has always had.

Even the idea of me being the singer wasn't really definite.

I had to break up with the idea of myself.

It felt like a privilege to be able to do, to be honest.

It can be really empowering and essential."

### What kind of things did you find yourself exploring during this process?

"I guess belief, and ideas of belief, because the band was my religion and the band was my belief system.

Once that went, I had to build my own new belief system through scraps of whatever I could find lying around… mostly YouTube philosophers and Instagram [laughs]."

"I also became very compelled by how I had experienced a living funeral.

I felt so privileged to have experienced that, to have survived it, to have walked away and to have seen so many people crying in front of you, for a part of you.

I saw so many people crying over that time: close friends, people I had never known, strangers, family.

"I became really fascinated with what music means to people and what belief means to people.

To be honest, I became quite obsessed with mysticism, became convinced that there is no such thing as a coincidence.

I became completely convinced this was always going to happen and this was how it was meant to be.

I am completely non-religious but I became more and more engrossed in the kind of mysticism of our days today.

Especially when we are in an era of science, and technology, and fact.

To me, to get sense and meaning to this, I still had to look to superstitious reasoning."

### Is that where the YouTube philosophers came in?

Is there anyone in particular or ideas you were drawn to?

"I would watch The School of Life cartoons every morning.

I felt like a little kid again – eating my cereal, watching the cartoons.

Those cartoons used to be moral tales and these are now our moral tales.

It's just trying to teach you 'how to adult'.

[laughs] That is something I had not encountered fully – a band does allow you suspend that process a little bit.

I had to figure out, a little bit, how to do this 'grown-up' business."

### Anything you struggled with in particular?

"[laughs] I guess it is, how do you do people?

When you have brought your world to the world.

I never stepped into the world – I created a world within which I could live, and that existed within the wider, 'real' world.

### Is that something that inspires the record? Your rediscovery of how to interact with people?

I guess the record, in a sense, is a break-up record, about me breaking up with myself, and therefore my new relationship with my new self.

But I'm not sure how strongly it informs the record.

Hayden Thorpe performing with Wild Beasts (Photo: Getty)

### A lot of the ideas Wild Beasts explored were about the expression of masculinity.

It's become a hot topic in the months since Wild Beasts split up.

A lot of people were kind of saying you were perhaps ahead of your time exploring these things.

In terms of the notion of toxic masculinity, I felt like I've been kind tolerating the intravenous of the toxicity of it for the best part of my adult life.

It comes as a great relief that these outmoded ways of being are being called out.

I got a no sense of satisfaction that this was something I had expressed before.

It was expressed in anguish, and is still expressed in anguish.

But, the rebalance is true and the rebalance is right.

### What are your plans for your solo work?

You say was such a personal pursuit – a break up from yourself.

Do you think people will relate to it, and what would you hope they get from it?

"I actually think we all exist now in the church of self, where we all have available to us all ways of seeing the world and believing in the world.

"That's something that we all have to face, and we all share – the sense of, 'I have to believe this to get through this thing, and then, in the next bit, that might change.'

The beauty of it is that change is constant; flux is the nature of our lives.

Therefore, thematically, I don't have to worry about people getting something from it.

Unless someone has been frozen, they are facing the forces of change at all times.

That can be both beautiful and terrifying."

Hayden Thorpe's debut solo album 'Diviner' is out May 24 via Domino Recordings.

### The Big Read – Brockhampton: "Shia LaBeouf is our idol and inspiration"


Hayden Norman Thorpe is originally from Kendal, Cumbria.

(meta data) TITLE: Wild Beasts frontman Hayden Thorpe goes solo: "it's like playing chess against yourself..." - NME

(meta data) PUBLISHER: https://www.facebook.com/nmemagazine

# Wild Beasts frontman Hayden Thorpe goes solo: "it's like playing chess against yourself

Former Wild Beasts frontman Hayden Thorpe tells NME's Tom Connick how the dissolution of his old band, and the subsequent rediscovery of his own, individual identify, informed 'Diviner'.

The spilt of Wild Beasts was a knock for fans.

Held up as one of British indie's most individualistic talents, the four boys from Kendal held a mystery that set them apart from the trilby and winkle-picker-wearing hordes of noughties indie boys.

At the heart of their appeal was frontman Hayden Thorpe, a whisper-delicate vocalist whose lyrics targeted toxic masculinity and latent sexuality long before such things became regular headlines.

Their final shows, a sold-out trio of mid-February gigs in Dublin, Manchester and London, were treated like a "funeral", he admits.

But last month, Thorpe returned from the dead.

'Diviner', his debut solo single, is an atmospheric cut of piano-led balladry, Hayden singing of the titular "diviner" like a man discovering a new spirituality.

"I'm a keeper of secrets," he sings in hearty falsetto: "I'll be your disciple – show me where to go."

It's that sense of relinquishing control that informed 'Diviner', and paved the way for Hayden's singular return, he explains.

Now, Thorpe has announced a full-length release under that ethereal new guise, also titled 'Diviner'.

A record of "torch songs about intuition, belief and mysticism", 'Diviner' is set for release on May 24 via Domino.

We discussed its creation, and the "gargantuan abyss" left by the dissolution of Wild Beasts, with Thorpe himself.

How have you found it, returning to music solo?

Hayden Thorpe: "It's a huge relief, to be honest.

I always remember a documentary with Gary Barlow, saying how quiet it went after Take That, and how the phone wouldn't ring.

I always thought, 'Oh, get over it, Gary, pull your socks up!'

"For a while there, my internal world and my external world weren't matching up.

The reality of having music ready to go and it not being out, it's kind of like a secret pregnancy.

It feels good just to have my inner world and my outer world finally in sync."

### So much of your life and identity has been wrapped up in being creative.

Is it nice to have that element of yourself back out there?

I often think musicians are kind of like tennis players, in that they become so hyper-specialised at that one very specific thing, they're actually ultimately very useless at other ways of being.

I kind of feel either hyper-specialised, or completely maladjusted – or maybe both at the same time.

The thing is, once you're used to crafting beauty and the cadence of your life is towards trying to create beauty, that becomes the compulsion, and nothing else matches that.

### Those final Wild Beasts shows must have been incredibly emotional.

How did the comedown after all that feel?

I feel like I lived that life, and I no longer live it.

The beauty of doing this is that I'm in a game which is constantly looking for the fountain of youth.

We're all absolute slaves to finding that, and music, in itself, is kind of a form of reincarnation.

It doesn't degrade, it doesn't erode; music stays the same.

The forces of time don't apply to music.

So, in many ways, music is the best way to deal with these things, because you can kind of get away without time passing.

"There was, I'll put it mildly, a gargantuan abyss, that it was a joy to explore, in truth."

### Had you always intended to go it alone, once the band came to an end?

"I had no idea what I wanted to do, because I had always relied on music as a compulsion.

And you can't rely on compulsion – it's either there or it's not.

To start to make plans upon a compulsion, it's a bit like navigating by the stars, it's trial-and-error.

I didn't want to bank on it, and I had no expectation that anyone would want to listen to my [solo] music.

There was no sensation of inheritance or righteousness to this position.

All-in-all, what happened felt so right –

the alignment and the perfection of the ending of the band, and how much closure and peace it gave meant that there was a massive forward propulsion from that.

### So, you used the break-up as a springboard, rather than a dead end?

"If you've lived a musical life your entire adult life, then the only response to the ending of that musical life, is music.

It was the only appropriate response, really."

Read more: Hayden Thorpe discusses Wild Beasts' split, and what's next, in 2017

Wild Beasts live at The Roundhouse, London (Photo: Getty)

### When did you start recording these things? Was it straight off the bat, or did you take some time to process it all?

"I went into the studio the week after the last gig.

There wasn't a distinct plan, that was just the office.

I remember, it was in London, and it snowed that week – the 'Beast From The East' rolled in – and London was covered in white.

It was a renewal – I remember feeling a great sense of it being literally a blank space.

### A blank space can be quite scary when you've had all this noise going on for a decade.

"Yeah, but I didn't find it scary – I found it peaceful.

A blank slate; a blank canvas; as long as you don't start firing blanks, then you're alright!

My main compulsion, if I see anything blank, is to fuck it up a bit.

Was it hard not to have bandmates to bounce ideas off?

"It was a lot of alone time, I'll be honest.

If you're in a band, you're in a family, you're in a gang.

You have your community, and that was the main, stark difference – the amount of time spent inward was long and intense.

"In terms of bouncing ideas, that was a funny one.

When you're bouncing them off yourself, it's kind of like playing chess against yourself.

There can be days sat in your dressing gown thinking about the next move.

By nature, I'm a pretty reclusive person who has to be dragged out into the daylight, so it kinda suits me in a lot of ways.

"You have to look at yourself cold and hard, that's for sure.

the idea of myself as the frontman, the idea of myself as the guy in the gang he has always had.

Even the idea of me being the singer wasn't really definite.

I had to break up with the idea of myself.

It felt like a privilege to be able to do, to be honest.

It can be really empowering and essential."

### What kind of things did you find yourself exploring during this process?

"I guess belief, and ideas of belief, because the band was my religion and the band was my belief system.

Once that went, I had to build my own new belief system through scraps of whatever I could find lying around… mostly YouTube philosophers and Instagram [laughs]."

"I also became very compelled by how I had experienced a living funeral.

I felt so privileged to have experienced that, to have survived it, to have walked away and to have seen so many people crying in front of you, for a part of you.

I saw so many people crying over that time: close friends, people I had never known, strangers, family.

"I became really fascinated with what music means to people and what belief means to people.

To be honest, I became quite obsessed with mysticism, became convinced that there is no such thing as a coincidence.

I became completely convinced this was always going to happen and this was how it was meant to be.

I am completely non-religious but I became more and more engrossed in the kind of mysticism of our days today.

Especially when we are in an era of science, and technology, and fact.

To me, to get sense and meaning to this, I still had to look to superstitious reasoning."

### Is that where the YouTube philosophers came in?

Is there anyone in particular or ideas you were drawn to?

"I would watch The School of Life cartoons every morning.

I felt like a little kid again – eating my cereal, watching the cartoons.

Those cartoons used to be moral tales and these are now our moral tales.

It's just trying to teach you 'how to adult'.

[laughs] That is something I had not encountered fully – a band does allow you suspend that process a little bit.

I had to figure out, a little bit, how to do this 'grown-up' business."

### Anything you struggled with in particular?

"[laughs] I guess it is, how do you do people?

When you have brought your world to the world.

I never stepped into the world – I created a world within which I could live, and that existed within the wider, 'real' world.

### Is that something that inspires the record? Your rediscovery of how to interact with people?

I guess the record, in a sense, is a break-up record, about me breaking up with myself, and therefore my new relationship with my new self.

But I'm not sure how strongly it informs the record.

Hayden Thorpe performing with Wild Beasts (Photo: Getty)

### A lot of the ideas Wild Beasts explored were about the expression of masculinity.

It's become a hot topic in the months since Wild Beasts split up.

A lot of people were kind of saying you were perhaps ahead of your time exploring these things.

In terms of the notion of toxic masculinity, I felt like I've been kind tolerating the intravenous of the toxicity of it for the best part of my adult life.

It comes as a great relief that these outmoded ways of being are being called out.

I got a no sense of satisfaction that this was something I had expressed before.

It was expressed in anguish, and is still expressed in anguish.

But, the rebalance is true and the rebalance is right.

### What are your plans for your solo work?

You say was such a personal pursuit – a break up from yourself.

Do you think people will relate to it, and what would you hope they get from it?

"I actually think we all exist now in the church of self, where we all have available to us all ways of seeing the world and believing in the world.

"That's something that we all have to face, and we all share – the sense of, 'I have to believe this to get through this thing, and then, in the next bit, that might change.'

The beauty of it is that change is constant; flux is the nature of our lives.

Therefore, thematically, I don't have to worry about people getting something from it.

Unless someone has been frozen, they are facing the forces of change at all times.

That can be both beautiful and terrifying."

Hayden Thorpe's debut solo album 'Diviner' is out May 24 via Domino Recordings.

### The Big Read – Brockhampton: "Shia LaBeouf is our idol and inspiration"

Hayden Norman Thorpe is an English singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.


Hayden Norman Thorpe is currently based in Walthamstow, London.

(meta data) TITLE: Wild Beasts frontman Hayden Thorpe goes solo: "it's like playing chess against yourself..." - NME

(meta data) PUBLISHER: https://www.facebook.com/nmemagazine

# Wild Beasts frontman Hayden Thorpe goes solo: "it's like playing chess against yourself

Former Wild Beasts frontman Hayden Thorpe tells NME's Tom Connick how the dissolution of his old band, and the subsequent rediscovery of his own, individual identify, informed 'Diviner'.

The spilt of Wild Beasts was a knock for fans.

Held up as one of British indie's most individualistic talents, the four boys from Kendal held a mystery that set them apart from the trilby and winkle-picker-wearing hordes of noughties indie boys.

At the heart of their appeal was frontman Hayden Thorpe, a whisper-delicate vocalist whose lyrics targeted toxic masculinity and latent sexuality long before such things became regular headlines.

Their final shows, a sold-out trio of mid-February gigs in Dublin, Manchester and London, were treated like a "funeral", he admits.

But last month, Thorpe returned from the dead.

'Diviner', his debut solo single, is an atmospheric cut of piano-led balladry, Hayden singing of the titular "diviner" like a man discovering a new spirituality.

"I'm a keeper of secrets," he sings in hearty falsetto: "I'll be your disciple – show me where to go."

It's that sense of relinquishing control that informed 'Diviner', and paved the way for Hayden's singular return, he explains.

Now, Thorpe has announced a full-length release under that ethereal new guise, also titled 'Diviner'.

A record of "torch songs about intuition, belief and mysticism", 'Diviner' is set for release on May 24 via Domino.

We discussed its creation, and the "gargantuan abyss" left by the dissolution of Wild Beasts, with Thorpe himself.

How have you found it, returning to music solo?

Hayden Thorpe: "It's a huge relief, to be honest.

I always remember a documentary with Gary Barlow, saying how quiet it went after Take That, and how the phone wouldn't ring.

I always thought, 'Oh, get over it, Gary, pull your socks up!'

"For a while there, my internal world and my external world weren't matching up.

The reality of having music ready to go and it not being out, it's kind of like a secret pregnancy.

It feels good just to have my inner world and my outer world finally in sync."

### So much of your life and identity has been wrapped up in being creative.

Is it nice to have that element of yourself back out there?

I often think musicians are kind of like tennis players, in that they become so hyper-specialised at that one very specific thing, they're actually ultimately very useless at other ways of being.

I kind of feel either hyper-specialised, or completely maladjusted – or maybe both at the same time.

The thing is, once you're used to crafting beauty and the cadence of your life is towards trying to create beauty, that becomes the compulsion, and nothing else matches that.

### Those final Wild Beasts shows must have been incredibly emotional.

How did the comedown after all that feel?

I feel like I lived that life, and I no longer live it.

The beauty of doing this is that I'm in a game which is constantly looking for the fountain of youth.

We're all absolute slaves to finding that, and music, in itself, is kind of a form of reincarnation.

It doesn't degrade, it doesn't erode; music stays the same.

The forces of time don't apply to music.

So, in many ways, music is the best way to deal with these things, because you can kind of get away without time passing.

"There was, I'll put it mildly, a gargantuan abyss, that it was a joy to explore, in truth."

### Had you always intended to go it alone, once the band came to an end?

"I had no idea what I wanted to do, because I had always relied on music as a compulsion.

And you can't rely on compulsion – it's either there or it's not.

To start to make plans upon a compulsion, it's a bit like navigating by the stars, it's trial-and-error.

I didn't want to bank on it, and I had no expectation that anyone would want to listen to my [solo] music.

There was no sensation of inheritance or righteousness to this position.

All-in-all, what happened felt so right –

the alignment and the perfection of the ending of the band, and how much closure and peace it gave meant that there was a massive forward propulsion from that.

### So, you used the break-up as a springboard, rather than a dead end?

"If you've lived a musical life your entire adult life, then the only response to the ending of that musical life, is music.

It was the only appropriate response, really."

Read more: Hayden Thorpe discusses Wild Beasts' split, and what's next, in 2017

Wild Beasts live at The Roundhouse, London (Photo: Getty)

### When did you start recording these things? Was it straight off the bat, or did you take some time to process it all?

"I went into the studio the week after the last gig.

There wasn't a distinct plan, that was just the office.

I remember, it was in London, and it snowed that week – the 'Beast From The East' rolled in – and London was covered in white.

It was a renewal – I remember feeling a great sense of it being literally a blank space.

### A blank space can be quite scary when you've had all this noise going on for a decade.

"Yeah, but I didn't find it scary – I found it peaceful.

A blank slate; a blank canvas; as long as you don't start firing blanks, then you're alright!

My main compulsion, if I see anything blank, is to fuck it up a bit.

Was it hard not to have bandmates to bounce ideas off?

"It was a lot of alone time, I'll be honest.

If you're in a band, you're in a family, you're in a gang.

You have your community, and that was the main, stark difference – the amount of time spent inward was long and intense.

"In terms of bouncing ideas, that was a funny one.

When you're bouncing them off yourself, it's kind of like playing chess against yourself.

There can be days sat in your dressing gown thinking about the next move.

By nature, I'm a pretty reclusive person who has to be dragged out into the daylight, so it kinda suits me in a lot of ways.

"You have to look at yourself cold and hard, that's for sure.

the idea of myself as the frontman, the idea of myself as the guy in the gang he has always had.

Even the idea of me being the singer wasn't really definite.

I had to break up with the idea of myself.

It felt like a privilege to be able to do, to be honest.

It can be really empowering and essential."

### What kind of things did you find yourself exploring during this process?

"I guess belief, and ideas of belief, because the band was my religion and the band was my belief system.

Once that went, I had to build my own new belief system through scraps of whatever I could find lying around… mostly YouTube philosophers and Instagram [laughs]."

"I also became very compelled by how I had experienced a living funeral.

I felt so privileged to have experienced that, to have survived it, to have walked away and to have seen so many people crying in front of you, for a part of you.

I saw so many people crying over that time: close friends, people I had never known, strangers, family.

"I became really fascinated with what music means to people and what belief means to people.

To be honest, I became quite obsessed with mysticism, became convinced that there is no such thing as a coincidence.

I became completely convinced this was always going to happen and this was how it was meant to be.

I am completely non-religious but I became more and more engrossed in the kind of mysticism of our days today.

Especially when we are in an era of science, and technology, and fact.

To me, to get sense and meaning to this, I still had to look to superstitious reasoning."

### Is that where the YouTube philosophers came in?

Is there anyone in particular or ideas you were drawn to?

"I would watch The School of Life cartoons every morning.

I felt like a little kid again – eating my cereal, watching the cartoons.

Those cartoons used to be moral tales and these are now our moral tales.

It's just trying to teach you 'how to adult'.

[laughs] That is something I had not encountered fully – a band does allow you suspend that process a little bit.

I had to figure out, a little bit, how to do this 'grown-up' business."

### Anything you struggled with in particular?

"[laughs] I guess it is, how do you do people?

When you have brought your world to the world.

I never stepped into the world – I created a world within which I could live, and that existed within the wider, 'real' world.

### Is that something that inspires the record? Your rediscovery of how to interact with people?

I guess the record, in a sense, is a break-up record, about me breaking up with myself, and therefore my new relationship with my new self.

But I'm not sure how strongly it informs the record.

Hayden Thorpe performing with Wild Beasts (Photo: Getty)

### A lot of the ideas Wild Beasts explored were about the expression of masculinity.

It's become a hot topic in the months since Wild Beasts split up.

A lot of people were kind of saying you were perhaps ahead of your time exploring these things.

In terms of the notion of toxic masculinity, I felt like I've been kind tolerating the intravenous of the toxicity of it for the best part of my adult life.

It comes as a great relief that these outmoded ways of being are being called out.

I got a no sense of satisfaction that this was something I had expressed before.

It was expressed in anguish, and is still expressed in anguish.

But, the rebalance is true and the rebalance is right.

### What are your plans for your solo work?

You say was such a personal pursuit – a break up from yourself.

Do you think people will relate to it, and what would you hope they get from it?

"I actually think we all exist now in the church of self, where we all have available to us all ways of seeing the world and believing in the world.

"That's something that we all have to face, and we all share – the sense of, 'I have to believe this to get through this thing, and then, in the next bit, that might change.'

The beauty of it is that change is constant; flux is the nature of our lives.

Therefore, thematically, I don't have to worry about people getting something from it.

Unless someone has been frozen, they are facing the forces of change at all times.

That can be both beautiful and terrifying."

Hayden Thorpe's debut solo album 'Diviner' is out May 24 via Domino Recordings.

### The Big Read – Brockhampton: "Shia LaBeouf is our idol and inspiration"

Hayden Norman Thorpe is an English singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Hayden Norman Thorpe is originally from Kendal, Cumbria.


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## Tunisia: Stories from the Unfinished Revolution

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The annual 'Back to School' series runs at the start of each school year and looks at the challenges of the education system in the region.

## Tunisia: Stories from the Unfinished Revolution

Regulations Leave Bitter Taste for Tunisian Candy MakersTunisian Farmers have the Know-how but Lack Support

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Maha El-SwaisSocial media communications strategist

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The annual 'Back to School' series runs at the start of each school year and looks at the challenges of the education system in the region.

## Tunisia: Stories from the Unfinished Revolution

Regulations Leave Bitter Taste for Tunisian Candy MakersTunisian Farmers have the Know-how but Lack Support

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The dinosaur is named "Sarmientosaurus musacchio."

(meta data) TITLE: Sarmientosaurus Was a 10-Ton Dinosaur With a Plum-Sized Brain - The New York Times

(meta data) AUTHOR: http://www.nytimes.com/by/kenneth-chang

(meta data) PUBLISHED DATETIME: 2014-09-04

Skip to contentSkip to site indexScienceLog InToday's PaperScience|Sarmientosaurus Was a 10-Ton Dinosaur With a Plum-Sized Brain

# Sarmientosaurus Was a 10-Ton Dinosaur With a Plum-Sized Brain

ImageMatthew C. Lamanna and Rubén D. F. Martínez with bones from Sarmientosaurus musacchioi.CreditCreditMatt Lamanna/Carnegie Museum of Natural History

A rare and finely preserved skull unearthed in Argentina belonged to a dinosaur with a drooping head, far bigger eyes and keener hearing than some of its more evolved relatives, providing new clues about this group of lumbering plant-eaters.

The discovery of the skull and part of the neck led paleontologists to announce on Tuesday in the journal PLOS One the naming of a new dinosaur, Sarmientosaurus musacchioi.

The fossil is from a dinosaur that was part of a group known as titanosaurs, and is considered modest in size, about 40 feet long and 10 tons in weight, in contrast to some others in that grouping.

"About two elephants' worth," estimated Matthew C. Lamanna, an assistant curator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.

Titanosaurs were plant-eaters with long necks and long tails that could be as small as a cow or as big as a house.

While much is known about them, researchers still do not know much about their brains because so few skulls have been found.

"This group, to me, they're quite mysterious," Dr. Lamanna said.

"By combining data from these different discoveries, we're gradually building up a picture as to what the biology of these animals was like.

In other words, what makes the largest land animals of all time tick?"

ImageBones from the titanosaur known as Rapetosaurus, named for a mischievous giant in Madagascar folklore.

CreditK. Curry Rogers, M. Whitney, M. D'Emic, and B. Bagley

Meanwhile, in a paper published last week in the journal Science, a second group of paleontologists described the remains of a baby titanosaur, noting its quick growth in a couple of months to the size of a large dog.

Its bones had the same proportions of an adult, which suggests that young titanosaurs were quickly on their feet after hatching and fending for themselves.

For almost all known titanosaurs, paleontologists have fossils of parts of the body like leg bones that are taller than a person, but no pieces of the skull, which consisted of bones that were thinner, more delicate, and less likely to fossilize.

For Sarmientosaurus, which lived about 95 million years ago, scientists have the opposite: almost all of the head, which was about a foot and a half long, and part of the neck, but nothing from the rest of the body.

Paleontologists including Rubén D. F. Martínez of the National University of Patagonia in Argentina found the skull in 1997.

(Sarmientosaurus is named after the town of Sarmiento, close to where the skull was discovered; musacchioi honors Eduardo Musacchio, a paleontologist who died in 2011.)

For a while, it was not clear what kind of dinosaur it was.

With CT scans, the scientists could study the skull in detail, including some defining characteristics seen in the few other titanosaur skulls that have been found.

In other ways, Sarmientosaurus was unlike other titanosaurs, with a broad snout and fatter teeth.

It also had very large eye sockets, suggesting better-than-average eyesight, and an inner ear structure that appears tuned to low-frequency sounds.

"Maybe to track predators," said Lawrence M. Witmer, a professor of paleontology at Ohio University and another of the authors of the PLOS One paper.

"Maybe to track the movement of its own herd."

ImageThe baby Rapetosaurus looked like a miniature adult, suggesting that the young animals were not being fed by parents.

Curiously, from the scattered skull data, the more evolved titanosaurs appeared to have worse eyesight and hearing, Dr. Witmer said.

The orientation of the inner ear also suggests that Sarmientosaurus typically held its head pointing downward at a 45-degree angle.

The scientists infer that it foraged on plants near the ground.

"The head of titanosaurs is totally key to understanding them as living animals," Dr. Lamanna said.

Sarmientosaurus's brain was the size of a plum or a lime.

"You try not to judge him, but it's a pretty small brain."

On the other hand, perhaps brains are overrated.

Titanosaurs survived for tens of millions of years and lived on every continent, thriving in particular in the Southern Hemisphere.

"The lime-size brain of Sarmientosaurus was adequate," Dr. Witmer said.

In the Science paper, Kristina A. Curry Rogers, a professor of geology and biology at Macalester College in Minnesota, and her colleagues describe 17 bones that were excavated in Madagascar in 1993.

Dr. Curry Rogers came upon them in drawers at Stony Brook University in Long Island, where they had been misidentified as crocodiles.

Her doctoral thesis research had been describing a Madagascar titanosaur named Rapetosaurus — Rapeto is a mischievous giant in Madagascar folklore — and these bones looked like miniature versions of what she had worked with years earlier.

"I just happened to be the right person to be looking at them," she said.

Titanosaur embryos had previously been found at a nesting site, but baby dinosaurs are rare.

"This is surely the smallest out-of-the-egg sauropod," Dr. Curry Rogers said.

Closer study confirmed this was a young Rapetosaurus.

Slicing thin sections of the bones and looking at them under a microscope, the scientists could see lines that indicated how big the dinosaur was at hatching — about 7.5 pounds.

When it died, 39 to 77 days later, it had grown to 14 inches tall and about 90 pounds, the scientists estimated.

Comparing the bones with fossils of other Rapetosauruses, the scientists found that baby Rapetosaurus looked like a miniature adult.

That suggests that the baby dinosaurs were not being fed by the parents, but were already on their feet and foraging.

The microscopic structures of the leg bones also indicated that they were already bearing weight, adding evidence to the argument.

With a robust skeleton, a baby Rapetosaurus might have been able to jump, trot and roll on the ground in ways that its parents would not have been able to.

The bone structure also hints at the baby's demise — starvation in a region prone to droughts.

Kenneth J. Lacovara, a paleontologist at Rowan University in New Jersey who was not involved in either study, said the research highlighted how much modern technology like CT scans have added to the study of dinosaurs.

"Those are great examples of paleobiology," said Dr. Lacovara, the discoverer of Dreadnoughtus, one of the leviathan titanosaurs.

"Now I think we're getting to the point where we're functioning more like biologists than geologists."

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A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: Sharp Eyes, Keen Ears and a Dinosaur Name of Its Own.

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## In Argentina, Rancher's Discovery Leads to Largest Titanosaur

## Argentine Dinosaur Was an Estimated 130,000 Pounds, and Still Growing

In the early 1900s it also experienced an influx of immigrants from Lithuania.
 In 1900, Argentine authority was locally established when the Swedish former sailor Oscar Lundqwist, who had been appointed police commissioner to Sarmiento, set up the first "comisaría" ever in Sarmiento. It was situated next to "Las Tres Casas" where the Jones families from Wales and the Briton Pryce lived.
 In 1903, 600 Afrikaner families arrived in Argentina following the loss of the Second Boer War.   They settled in the region as it had access to water unlike the coastal city of Comodoro Rivadavia where they first settled.   The descendants of these colonists make up a large portion of the population of Sarmiento and still speak Afrikaans and attend the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk ("Dutch Reformed Church") to this day. As recently as the 1960s Afrikaans was the most commonly spoken language however this has changed as the town's Afrikaans population has become more assimilated into Argentinian culture and society. In 2016, an important fossil dinosaur was discovered near the town.