[9] Because the Sioux were considered very hostile and a threat to early settlers, the white population grew slowly.

The population surge increased the demand for meat spurring expanded cattle ranching on the territory's vast open ranges.

The southern part also considered the north to be somewhat disreputable, "too much controlled by the wild folks, cattle ranchers, fur traders” and too frequently the site of conflict with the indigenous population.

Politically, territorial legislators were appointed by the federal government, and tended to remain in the region only while they served their terms.

The larger population of the southern region began to resent them, while the northerners tended to emphasize that it was cheaper to be a territory, with the federal government funding a wide range of state functions.

Conventions favoring division of Dakota into two states were also held in the northern section, one in 1887 at Fargo, and another in 1888, at Jamestown.

Both adopted provisions memorializing Congress to divide the territory and admit both North and South Dakota as states.

Various bills were introduced in Congress on the matter; one in 1885 to admit South Dakota as a state, and organize the northern half as Lincoln Territory.

But in reality, the Republican Party, which wanted more power in the U.S. Senate, put on pressure to divide Dakota into two states.

After defeating Democratic President Grover Cleveland in the 1888 election, they celebrated by splitting the Republican-dominated Dakota into two territories and admitting both of them as states.

[17] Perhaps, the capital change from Yankton to Bismarck can also be explained by the fact that Yankton was located in southern South Dakota on the territory's border with Nebraska while Bismarck, whose community had recently grown due to the arrival of the Transcontinental railway, had a relatively better central location near the Black Hills of South Dakota where recent gold discovery was a great impetus for growth and led it to becoming a freight-shipping centre on the "Custer Route" from the Black Hills.

As a result of this flood, and the expansion of railroads as a preferred method of shipping goods, Yankton's river boat traffic was reduced, and the city's role as a prominent stopping point on the way west dwindled over the next several years.

At the beginning of 1888, the Democrats under president Grover Cleveland proposed that the four territories of Montana, New Mexico, Dakota and Washington should be admitted together.

To head off the possibility that Congress might only admit Republican territories to statehood, the Democrats agreed to a less favorable deal in which Dakota was divided in two and New Mexico was left out altogether.

Most recently, a commission headed by Richard Henry Pratt in 1888 had completely failed to get the necessary signatures in the face of opposition from Sioux leaders and even government worker Elaine Goodale, later Superintendent of Indian Education for the Dakotas.

The government believed that the Dawes Act (1887), which attempted to move the Indians from hunting to farming, in theory, meant that they needed less land (but in reality was an economic disaster for them) and that at least half was available for sale.

Congress approved an offer of $1.25 per acre ($3.1/ha) for reservation land (a figure they had previously rejected as outrageously high) and $25,000 to induce the Indians to sign.

Crook even allowed white men who had married Sioux to sign, a dubious action given that the blood quantum laws only counted full-blood Indians as members of the tribe.

On February 22, 1889, outgoing President Cleveland signed an omnibus bill that divided the Territory of Dakota in half.

A tree in the open field, the trunk of which is surrounded by a bundle of rods, bound with three bands; on the right plow, anvil, sledge, rake and fork; on the left, bow crossed with three arrows; Indian on horseback pursuing a buffalo toward the setting sun; foliage of the tree arched by half circle of thirteen stars, surrounded by the motto: "Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever", the words "Great Seal" at the top, and at the bottom, "Dakota Territory"; on the left, "March 2"; on the right, "1861".