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Co-kan-tan-ka was really quite a man, and I well remember one day in January 1881, when he and I climbed the southern end of Slim Butte. It was a wonderful view, looking down to the east, down the valley of the Moreau River, clear beyond the Missouri to the divide or coteau; the great river valley from north to south not showing at all; a full hundred and fifty miles of snow covered hills and valleys lying nearly flat. There was nearly two foot of snow, brilliant, glittering, hostile; and not a bush, tree, or bare hilltop to break the expanse. Co-can-tan-ka seated himself on a boulder and drawing his blanket over his head, covering all but his face, looked eastward down the valley of the Moreau. After fully half an hour of silence, as the sun began to go down, Co-can turned to me, and rising from the stone, said: "I have been crying and praying, for I shall never again see this country as I have seen it before." Sunset to Sunset by Thomas Riggs a missionary to the Lakota, writing about the winter of 1881, when he had an opportunity to hunt buffalo with one hundred Native Americans, in what he calls the "last winter hunt".

"I had my first look at the [Dakota] territory that is now Perkins County in 1881, on my way home from Fort Yates, where I had delivered over seven hundred head of beef cattle, the first the Sitting Bull Indians got for their exclusive use. When we came up onto the tableland now known as Delaney Flats it was simply swarming with buffalo. The reason there were so many was that the country was then an Indian reservation and hide hunters were not allowed inside it. ' Boss Cowman by Ed Lemmon

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Dakota Territory 1874