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Tongues in Granite Cheeks

By John Andrews

Mount Rushmore is a point of pride, a vacation destination and a vehicle for the nation’s humorists.

South Dakota Magazine celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2010. For much of the previous year, we discussed how to celebrate such a significant milestone in the publishing world. Ideas for special stories in each of the year’s six issues took shape in editorial meetings and blossomed as we gathered the information and photos. But as we neared press time on the first issue of our anniversary year, one detail seemed to be missing: We needed an impactful way to kick everything off, something that combined the state culture that the magazine had explored for nearly a quarter century and the celebratory energy that we felt in our offices and hoped to convey to our readership.

Someone mentioned that Mount Rushmore, perhaps the most iconic and recognizable image associated with South Dakota, had never appeared on the magazine’s cover. What if we could find a way to make it look like those four, stoic granite heads were celebrating with us?

We located a beautiful photo by Chad Coppess, then a photographer with the South Dakota Department of Tourism and today this magazine’s photo editor. With his permission, we decided to have some fun. Or so we thought.

Our graphic designer skillfully added colorful, conical party hats to the top of each head, embellished with festive, silver tinsel where each hat met a rocky forehead. Directly below George Washington, we added a huge banner that appeared to be fixed to the mountain itself that read,”Happy Birthday SD Magazine,” and below that, the one-liner,”By George, we made the cover.”

We delighted in our mockup and sent the issue off to print around Thanksgiving. Our January/February issue is designed to arrive in mailboxes a few days before Christmas so that subscribers who receive it as a gift can enjoy a new issue during the holidays. Staffers received an unexpected gift, however, when readers saw the cover.

Cartoonist Jeffrey Koterba drew this image of a Roosevelt-less Mount Rushmore during a government shutdown. He says the national memorial is a good vehicle for editorial cartoons because it is widely recognizable.

It was far from the magazine’s most controversial cover image. That goes to a friendly rattlesnake that slithered his way to the top of the list in the fall of 2002 and never again made an appearance in such a prominent position. (Honestly, we had no idea how many people have snake phobias!) But a few readers were upset that we had taken such liberties with the Shrine to Democracy. Some even thought we’d desecrated the national memorial, as if we’d truly traveled across the state and spraypainted birthday wishes onto the billion-year-old granite. We feared what might happen if those readers ever saw the iconic”backside of Mount Rushmore” postcard.

All jokes aside, when it came to Mount Rushmore we began to wonder if people thought all jokes should be set aside. Since the last piece of granite was chiseled away in 1941, the images of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln — locked into their stony gazes across the Black Hills — have slowly seeped into American popular culture. Their likenesses help sell cars, beer, toothpaste, shirts and hats. They show up on music albums, at theme parks, in Hollywood movies and newspapers — both in the comics section for pure entertainment and the opinion page as the vehicle for cartoonists who have something to say.

It seems, though, that Mount Rushmore has always had one foot in pop culture. Even when the memorial was still an idea inside state historian Doane Robinson’s mind, the motivation behind it was to draw tourists into the Black Hills. As roads began to improve in the 1920s, the Hills were already becoming a vacation destination for people longing for the cool mountain air and beautiful topography. But Robinson worried that it wasn’t enough.”Tourists soon get fed up on scenery unless it has something of special interest connected with it to make it impressive,” he said.

About the same time, he began reading reports of sculptor Gutzon Borglum’s massive undertaking east of Atlanta, Georgia, where he was attempting to carve Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis and other heroes of the Southern Confederacy into Stone Mountain. It served as inspiration for Robinson, who began dreaming of historical figures carved into the Needles.

In December of 1923 Robinson wrote to Lorado Taft, considered one of America’s pre-eminent sculptors, to gauge his interest in such a grand project. When Taft demurred, Robinson turned to Borglum in August 1924. Borglum’s relationship with the committee behind the Stone Mountain project had become strained and he was looking for a way out. Intrigued by Robinson’s proposal, he came to the Black Hills the fall of 1924 to see the lay of the land.

Borglum believed whole-heartedly in American exceptionalism, once saying that the records of the American people and their achievement should be”built into, cut into, the crust of this earth so that those records would have to melt or by wind be worn to dust before the record could, as Lincoln said, ‘perish from the earth.'” He also believed in big art.”Volume, great mass, has a greater emotional effect upon the observer than quality of form. Quality of form affects the mind; volume shocks the nerve or soul centers and is emotional in its effect.”

In the Black Hills, he discovered the perfect natural canvas to accomplish both of those aims. After abandoning the idea of full-bodied likenesses in the Needles, he began work at Mount Rushmore, a granite uplift that had been named years earlier for New York lawyer Charles Rushmore.

An air of patriotism and national pride surrounded the memorial from its start. President Calvin Coolidge attended a dedication ceremony during the summer he spent vacationing in the Black Hills in 1927. President Franklin Roosevelt visited in 1936 as Thomas Jefferson’s head was unveiled and was awed by the undertaking.”I had had no conception until about ten minutes ago not only of its magnitude but of its permanent beauty and of its permanent importance,” Roosevelt said in impromptu remarks.

Among the most iconic and irreverent riffs on Mount Rushmore is the view from the “backside” of the mountain. It has appeared on postcards, T-shirts and commemorative plates.

Work concluded on Mount Rushmore in October of 1941 under the leadership of Borglum’s son, Lincoln, who took over after his father’s death earlier that year. In 1933, President Roosevelt had signed an executive order placing the memorial under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. That organization still serves as the guardian of Mount Rushmore, helping more than 2 million visitors each year learn about its history and trying to ensure that its image is not sullied.

Perhaps the earliest and most visible challenge came in 1958 when director Alfred Hitchcock planned to use Mount Rushmore in his thriller North by Northwest. The movie’s climactic scene featured Communist agents chasing stars Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint across the faces.

The National Park Service was worried about such a depiction from the beginning. Officials signed an agreement with film studio Metro-Goldwin-Mayer in which producers promised that no violent scenes would be filmed”near the sculpture [or] on the talus slopes below the sculpture,” or on any simulation or mockup.

Hitchcock was upset with the situation and considered pulling the movie. But when he and film crews arrived to shoot scenes on Sept. 16, 1958, there were no problems. The Park Service even granted MGM permission to take several still images of the memorial before they headed back to California. That led to controversy when Hitchcock filmed the famous chase scene against a backdrop that was created using those images.

Park Service officials argued that Hitchcock had violated their agreement and that audiences would believe those scenes had been staged on the actual memorial. They demanded the removal of a credit line acknowledging the cooperation of the Interior Department and the National Park Service in filming at Mount Rushmore. The feds sought further help from South Dakota Sen. Karl Mundt, who in 1939 had successfully pulled from distribution a government-produced film called The Plow that Broke the Plains because of its inaccurate portrayal of the Midwest and his home state.

By then, however, little could be done. The credit line was removed, and the scene remained. In a 1991 article by Todd Epp for South Dakota History, Nicole Swigart, a seasonal interpreter at Mount Rushmore, wondered what Borglum would have thought.”It’s just my opinion,” she said,”but Borglum probably would’ve liked how the memorial was shown in North by Northwest. He liked publicity.”

Cecelia Tichi, author of Embodiment of a Nation: Human Form in American Places, says the Hitchcock episode likely began the era of satirical depictions of Mount Rushmore, however two years earlier, the cover of the February 1957 issue of MAD Magazine featured a smiling Alfred E. Neuman sculpted at the foot of Rushmore.

Once the Rushmore image was out, it became nearly impossible to police its every use. In 1970, the band Deep Purple released an album called Deep Purple in Rock, which included sleeve art depicting the five band members carved into the mountain in place of the presidents. A Colgate-Palmolive television commercial from 1995 used Theodore Roosevelt to sell toothpaste. Computer graphics showed Roosevelt breaking out in a toothy grin after his teeth had been power washed. That image transitioned to a man using Colgate toothpaste.

Marty Two Bulls rarely draws Mount Rushmore, but he turned to the four faces to help illustrate opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline in 2016. Two Bulls grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in editorial cartooning in 2021.

An episode of the Fox animated series Family Guy parodied the North by Northwest chase scene in 2005. A huge Lego Mount Rushmore stands at California’s Legoland, complete with a crew cleaning Washington’s left ear with a giant Lego Q-tip. One online retailer offers a Mount Rushmore dartboard (you’ll hit the bull’s-eye by firing a dart at the left corner of Jefferson’s mouth). Small replicas are offered on several websites that feature other figures in place of the presidents — stars of classic and modern horror films, Disney characters and the Golden Girls.

Closer to home, a logo of Custer’s Mt. Rushmore Brewing Company and Pounding Fathers restaurant features the four faces, plus an arm added to Washington and Lincoln. Both men are gripping a pint.

The image of Mount Rushmore appears today in ways that Robinson and Borglum likely never imagined. So how much is too much? Is there a line? What makes people care?

ìPeople are fickle,” says James Popovich, who served as Mount Rushmore’s chief of interpretation for 20 years before retiring in 2004.”Some will say it’s just in fun and others will say it degrades the memorial. There are thoughts on both sides, and you have to respect them.”

In his two decades at the memorial, Popovich saw incredible demand for Mount Rushmore imagery in advertising. That usage sometimes rubbed people the wrong way.”People want to use any kind of logo from a national park, or Mount Rushmore especially, because it’s such an iconic symbol of America,” he says.”They want to use them in advertising or in any way to attract people to their business. So people do feel really particular about making sure the memorial is protected and safe for everybody to see and to see it the way they think it should be.

ìThe park service people, I think they feel a little unhappy about it when they first see it, but even me, as I saw it over time, I began to recognize why people do it. It sells literature, T-shirts, cups and hats, and that’s what they’re in business for, too.”

The memorial has also become a favorite for cartoonists, whose riffs on Rushmore have appeared in newspapers and magazines for decades. Jeffrey Koterba is a nationally syndicated cartoonist. He grew up in Omaha and spent 31 years with the Omaha World-Herald, where he drew more than 12,000 cartoons. Today his work is distributed through Cagle Cartoons and appears in 700 to 800 newspapers worldwide. He says Mount Rushmore is a natural fit for cartoonists because it’s recognizable — a trait that he thinks is becoming rarer.”When I was first starting out in cartooning, you could reference a film or a book, and even if you hadn’t seen the film or read the book, you at least had some understating of what it was, and I could use that for a cartoon,” Koterba says.”But today, there aren’t that many things that are so quickly identifiable in American culture. To me, Mount Rushmore stands pretty much at the top of the list. Everyone knows what that is.”

A notable Rushmore cartoon of his was born out of the federal government shutdown in late 2018 and early 2019. Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln gaze at a blank space on the mountain where Roosevelt should be.”Teddy’s been furloughed,” Jefferson quips.

As Mount Rushmore gradually solidified its place in modern popular culture, cartoons became much more widespread, appearing in national publications like The Saturday Evening Post.

Koterba put a lot of thought into that cartoon — the recognizable image, the implications that a government shutdown could have on the memorial itself and his audience’s potential reaction.”It’s my job to look for an image, or something using very few words, to get the idea across in a fast way,” he says.”They say the average reader spends 7 seconds with a cartoon. I thought, ‘What is something we all recognize as a symbol of our country and is somewhat related to the government?’ And I thought it was funny. I am going for a joke, not just for the sake of the joke, but ultimately to make a point.”

And then there’s the art itself.”I chose Teddy because visually, where it landed seemed like a good place. You wouldn’t want to do either president on the end. It made it more glaring. And it’s my job to take the reader by surprise. You don’t expect to see that image missing one of the faces.”

Koterba’s cartoons have featured the Statue of Liberty, George Washington’s famous crossing of the Delaware River during the Revolutionary War and the Mona Lisa. Locally, he’s drawn several cartoons featuring The Sower, a prominent sculpture atop the state capitol in Lincoln. He doesn’t recall any negative feedback in using those as vehicles. That could be because his audience is worldwide. Local readers may be more inclined to object with what they see as an unfit portrayal of a memorial or point of pride in their own backyard.

ìWhen I’m coming up with a cartoon idea, it’s coming from a good place with good intent, based in journalism, based in fact,” Koterba says.”Yes, it’s my opinion, but I’m basing my opinion on fact as I see it. If I’m setting out to make a point that I believe is a valid point, I have to make people think. How can I portray that in a cartoon and get you to think about something in a different way? I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind, just add my voice to the conversation.

ìI have respect for monuments and paintings and symbols and the American flag. It’s never my intent to rile people up,” he says.”But if it’s a symbol that people recognize and I can use it as a vehicle to make a point, then I think it’s fair game. I don’t see it as such a sacred thing that it is above being able to be used for satire or cartoons.”

Maybe it’s true that Borglum — ever the publicity seeker — would delight in the universal access to his grand creation that the 21st century allows, and that millions of people around the world can see it in periodicals, on television, in movies and on the internet, portrayed both solemnly and respectfully and occasionally with tongue planted firmly in cheek. He might even think it’s worth celebrating.

Where are the party hats?

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2023 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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The Respectful Shepherd

By Bernie Hunhoff

Sheep deserve our respect, says Belle Fourche writer and rancher Sentel Schreier.

Sentel Schreier learned the usual life lessons when she left her hometown of Belle Fourche to study economics at Augustana University in Sioux Falls — things like self-confidence and independent thinking — but she also had a dietary revelation.

“I just figured everyone enjoyed lamb once or twice a day,” she says. She was surprised to discover that most of her new friends didn’t know a lamb chop from a karate move.”They hadn’t grown up with it like I had,” she says. Lamb wasn’t served at the Augie dining hall and wasn’t to be found on the menus of restaurants in her home state’s largest city.

It was a culinary culture shock for a young girl who grew up on a fourth-generation family ranch believing that sheep are magical creatures that generously provide food and wool for mankind, all while maintaining an aura of dignity that she notes is even lauded in Bible passages.

On a college field trip to India, she was even more chagrined to discover that lamb was more popular there than it is in her home state, which ranks sixth in the nation in sheep production.”And most people are vegetarians in India,” she says.

Despite the change in diet, Schreier’s love for her West River roots never changed, and upon graduation in 2018 she returned home to teach Spanish at a secondary school. She married Nathan Schreier in July of 2021, and of course barbecued lamb was served at the wedding dinner.

Now she’s hoping to turn her husband into a sheepherder (he works in technology at the Belle Fourche schools). After two years, she left the classroom to join her father, Johnny Johnson, on the ranch. On a typical day, she rises long before the sun. She often”rounds up” a few ranch hands to help, and then makes the 50-mile trip north to the ranch where — depending on the season — they might rotate livestock to greener pastures, do some fencing, tend to newborn lambs or do the myriad other tasks related to raising cattle and sheep in western South Dakota.

South Dakota ranks sixth in the nation in sheep production.

Over the summer, she was also taming and breaking two wild mustangs that came from a Bureau of Land Management range, while keeping watch on a big ranch dog that was hiding a litter of pups in the high grass that surrounds the outbuildings.

Through it all, Schreier still accomplishes some teaching; she does it now through a website she created to share thoughts on rural living and lamb chops. Her online essays are not the mushy cliches and stereotypes penned by too many western writers who only glorify the blue skies, beautiful landscapes and resilient cowboys.”Rugged individualism isn’t all that great,” she suggested in a recent article.”People who make a life out of isolation tend to be bitter towards society — perhaps because interacting with others takes practice. Complete solitude makes one rusty and we typically don’t like things we’re not good at. But it’s also really easy to hate people; we’re all infected with normalized self-absorption, greed, slander, everything that’s always, always been a problem for our species ….”

She even dared to critique Archer Gilfillan, an early 20th century sheepherder who became regionally famous for his humorous books and entertaining speeches to livestock groups. While she enjoyed reading Gilfillan’s book Sheep, she adds,”I do remember how egotistical and bitter towards other people this guy was … plus he put random Latin in the book everywhere. I hate it when authors do this without any reason other than to say, ‘Hey, I know Latin.'”

In another essay, she admits that as a teenager she sometimes wanted more entertainment.”On the ranch, there isn’t a whole lot of recreation. Your options are limited to either reading, radio talk shows or roping buckets. We barely have cell service so social media is an option only if you want to walk out to a hill or stand on top of a truck.” She surmised, however, that”when you have no one to entertain you, you see what a good, amusing friend you can be to yourself.”

Schreier also writes about her workdays, her family and her faith, including highlights and doubts. Her thoughtful reflections on the complicated culture of consuming the creatures she coddles are a rare take on rural life.

“Last week my dad, husband and I butchered a sheep so we could have grass-fed meat in our freezer for the summer,” she writes.”In about five seconds it was over, and the sheep was dead. It struck me how remarkable it is that the sheep never made a sound. They are silent under stress. Even when docking, it’s very rare for a sheep to cry out in pain. The prophet Isaiah related Jesus’ dignity in the face of death like that of a sheep for a reason. ‘He was oppressed and afflicted yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.'”

Schreier believes there should always be”an air of respect” when eating meat.”Try to buy meat from someone who gave that animal a good life,” she suggests.”Perhaps before a dinner of delicious lamb chops, thank God for that creature’s life and ask Him to make you more generous like the critter whose life ended to preserve yours. Let’s make dinner sacred and special again.”

The hubbub of shearing season interrupts the solitude of life on a West River sheep ranch.

She and her father sell their lambs in the fall to feedlots but someday she hopes they might market meat directly to consumers.”Nathan and I even flirt with the idea of opening a restaurant that features lamb,” she says.

However, she says people need not wait for their grand opening to enjoy the flavor because there’s nothing very difficult about cooking lamb meat.”Lamb chops are comparable to a good beef steak,” she says.”Maybe marinate them with some olive oil and lemon, something acidic just as you would the steak. My dad and I will sometimes grill a lamb chop for breakfast. Lamb and eggs.”

She also recommends serving lamb with a Grecian sauce called tzatziki, which is made from sheep’s milk mixed with seasonings, herbs and cucumbers.”Nathan likes to go Mediterranean, and that’s always delicious,” she says.

She has learned that some people seem to avoid lamb because they think it is more complicated to cook than other red meats.”Or maybe they worry that they are going to mess it up,” she says.”But really there is no difference. You can go rare, medium or well done. You can make burger patties from ground lamb. And you can go traditional, just lamb and potatoes.”

She says her father remembers hearing that Americans soured on lamb after World War II, when the U.S. military supposedly served rations of poor-quality lamb to the troops. For many, it was their first taste of the meat, and they brought home a bad impression.

Give it another chance, suggests the young rancher who at age 25 is already developing a reputation as a rural spokeswoman who thinks for herself and respectfully encourages others to do the same.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2022 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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This is Our Family

By Rebecca Johnson

Rosana Jamous helps her daughter Sarah choose from traditional Thanksgiving foods and Middle Eastern fare. Photo by Bill Goehring.

Sioux Falls is South Dakota’s melting pot, with over 120 languages spoken in its schools. Moving to the rural Midwest can be a shock for immigrants trying to learn a new culture and new traditions. Thanks to restaurateur Sanaa Abourezk, the city’s Middle Eastern community has fully embraced one of America’s most loved holidays — Thanksgiving.

Abourezk and her husband James, who served as South Dakota’s U.S. congressman and senator in the 1970s, met while Abourezk was working at the Embassy of Qatar in Washington, D.C. Once married, the couple moved to Rapid City, but Sanaa was lonely so they relocated to Sioux Falls where she quickly befriended other immigrants from her home country of Syria and neighboring countries.

“We used to get together and the kids played,” Abourezk says.”Then it dawned on us that the kids go to school and they hear about Thanksgiving. ‘My grandma made this. My aunt made this.'” So the friends decided to celebrate the quintessential American holiday together to give their children that communal experience.

Farid Kutayli and his wife Salwa hosted the first few gatherings in their home about 15 years ago. But the celebration quickly relocated to the Abourezks’ restaurant, Sanaa’s 8th Street Gourmet, in downtown Sioux Falls.”If we know somebody who moved to town we also invite them because we want them to have Thanksgiving with us as a family,” Abourezk says.”Last year I think we had about 60 adults and we have kids running all over. That’s why no house can fit us anymore.”

Khalil Yousef photographs the growing group each year. “They’re not blood relatives, but for us this is the family,” he says. “That’s really the key. It makes you feel like you belong and that you’re not alone. The good food is a bonus.”

Abourezk made all the food when she first hosted the Thanksgiving party in her restaurant but she was too exhausted to enjoy the party, so now the gathering is potluck. Abourezk still provides the turkeys and American staples like baked breads, mashed potatoes and corn. It is common for platters of green bean casserole and sweet potatoes to sit beside Arabic delicacies like kibbeh (bulgar wheat mixed with beef or lamb, topped with pine nuts), kanafeh (a cheese pastry soaked in sugary syrup) or hashwet ruz (a rice pilaf that the group prefers over bread stuffing).

Raed Sulaiman, a pathologist, dons an apron to carve the turkeys.”My little one is always excited to see it,” says Rosana Jamous, a stay-at-home mom to three daughters.”The kids, their eyes are so big watching.” The bird isn’t unusual to the adults; it’s commonly served on Christmas in Lebanon and on Easter in Syria. A prayer follows the carving, sometimes spoken in Spanish because students study it in high school”and if you say the Thanksgiving prayer in Spanish at your Thanksgiving you get extra credit,” says Alya, Abourezk’s daughter.”Usually we end up doing it in English, especially for the kids because none of us speak Arabic well.”

Christiane Maroun, a pediatrician, recalls introducing herself to a newcomer last year as she waited in line for food.”She was expecting a baby and she said, ‘Oh, I’m so happy that somebody here is from Lebanon so I will be more comfortable bringing my baby to you,'” Maroun says.”She was so relieved she wouldn’t need a translator.”

Riyad Mohama, a cardiologist, and his wife Rima, a pharmacist, moved to Sioux Falls 22 years ago. The transition wasn’t easy; they came in January to a lot of snow.”I told my husband, ‘I don’t think I’m going to be staying here for a long time. We should move somewhere else,'” Rima recalls. But she loves Sioux Falls now.”Thanksgiving reminds me of my country because that’s how we live there. It’s very social,” she says.”It’s hard that we don’t have any relatives here, but when we do this, the kids can see that this is our family.”

Vegetable Almond Rice Pilaf

(Hashwet Ruz)

1/2 cup olive oil

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon finely shredded fresh ginger

2 cups basmati rice

1 cup sweet peas, fresh or frozen

1 cup diced carrots, about 1/2-inch cubes, fresh or frozen

1/2 cup chopped dried cranberries

2 tablespoons finely chopped candied orange peels or orange marmalade

1/2 cup slivered almonds, toasted

1 teaspoon turmeric

dash of red pepper

sea salt to taste

Heat 1/4 cup olive oil and sautÈ onion for 4 minutes. Add garlic and ginger, then stir for 1 minute. Add 4 1/2 cups water, salt and turmeric and bring to a boil. Add rice and stir, returning mixture to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Then turn off heat and rest on the stove for another 15 minutes.

While rice is resting, heat remaining olive oil on medium heat in a sautÈ pan. Add the vegetables, stirring for 2 minutes. Stir in cranberries and chopped orange peels or marmalade. Season with salt and red pepper, then cook another 2 minutes. Turn off heat and set aside. Spoon rice into deep serving platter, spoon vegetable mixture over the rice and sprinkle toasted almonds on top. Serves 6.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2015 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Warriors First

By Bernie Hunhoff

The World War I doughboy statue at Rock Creek.

Rock Creek is not a forgotten place. A town must be discovered before it’s forgotten, and most Americans — even most South Dakotans — have never heard of the town on the Standing Rock Reservation. Rock Creek is a dot on the state road map but it’s listed as Bullhead. The U.S. Postal Service still calls it Bullhead (zip code 57621). And road signs on nearby U.S. Highway 12 still point motorists to Bullhead.

“They changed the name to Rock Creek years ago,” says Joseph Montana, commander of the Brough-Brownotter American Legion Post 82, perhaps the most active organization in town other than the elementary school.

Montana believes the change occurred because Bullhead was the name of the man who shot Sitting Bull in 1890. Neither he nor any of the other 300 residents seem to mind what a visitor calls the town. They aren’t likely to correct you, even if you’re writing a story for a magazine.

The people of Rock Creek are busy enough with daily living. Visit on any weekday morning and you’ll hear the happy shrieks of children playing at Rock Creek School. Cowboys might be loading saddled horses onto stock trailers for a trip to the tribal pasture. A young career woman — perhaps a teacher or a nurse — may be fueling her small car at the only gas pump in front of a tiny, old store as rooster pheasants scurry through tall grass on the banks of a nearby creek.

“They know it’s hunting season,” laughed Ivan Brownotter, a community leader and historian, when we asked about the pheasants.”Hunting’s not allowed within a mile of town and when the shooting starts they know enough to come to town.”

Joseph Montana and Ivan Brownotter fly flags on a butte above the little reservation town of Rock Creek.

Posed in the center of Rock Creek is a life-size image of a man with a rifle, a tribute to local soldiers who fought in World War I. Indiana artist E.M. Viquesney sculpted the infantryman and eventually produced more than 100 copies for courthouse squares, city halls and parks across the United States. He titled it The Spirit of the American Doughboy.

South Dakota’s only Viquesney doughboy is the one in Rock Creek. It was placed there in 1935, when the town was still Bullhead, after a $1,600 fundraising drive that culminated when Corson County Sheriff Charles Martin gave $500. The statue has been lovingly maintained in a tiny park with a bomb shell displayed over the entrance. Brownotter and other members of the Legion post recently transplanted ash saplings from the river to create a shady border.

Rock Creek has another unusual sight: Numerous tall steel flagpoles, created by a local welder and planted in cemeteries on the north and south ends of town, mark the graves of every deceased veteran since World War I.

The United States government has had a troubled relationship with Rock Creek and other towns on South Dakota’s nine reservations.Many residents trace their ancestries to Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, two of American history’s most famous warriors who fought the U.S. military, and were killed — martyred in the eyes of the Lakota — as their people were being banished to hardscrabble prairies.

But their deaths and many other atrocities, disagreements, broken treaties and conflicts that divided the Lakota and the federal government have not deterred South Dakota’s Native Americans from signing up with the U.S. military, sometimes joining the very same units that wreaked destruction on their Native culture.

That’s not a mystery for Brownotter, who served in the Army in the 1980s and now devotes much of his spare time to the Legion post’s activities. He sees no contradiction to being a Native American in the military.”We love our country and we go to war to make sure our families are protected and so we can protect our culture and our heritage,” he says, while guiding us around town with Joseph Montana, his first cousin.

Montana came home to Rock Creek after serving in the U.S. Army and then living in Spokane, Washington. “My dad was Lincoln Hairy Chin and he was the commander when I was a boy,” he said.”He did all the work of painting and decorating the doughboy and he was the one who put the bomb up at the gate.”

***

The tradition of military service among Native Americans dates back to the Revolutionary War, when some Indians fought with the colonial army while others sided with the British. Indian men also served as scouts and trackers for the Union during the Civil War. In 1898, four women from the Standing Rock Reservation served the War Department as nurses in the Spanish American War. They belonged to the Congregation of American Sisters, a Catholic convent for Native women started by Father Francis Craft, the first priest ordained in Dakota Territory by legendary Bishop Martin Marty. Father Craft, who had Mohawk ancestry, spent 16 years in the territory and survived the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre; he was attempting to defuse the conflict when the shooting began.

He and the four sisters worked at a military hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, and then were transferred to Havana, Cuba, where life must have seemed very foreign from the reservation prairie.

The Rev. Mother Mary Anthony, the leader of the sisters and a granddaughter of Chief Spotted Tail, died of tuberculosis in Cuba and was buried there with military honors by the Seventh Cavalry, the same regiment that was decimated at the Little Big Horn in 1876 and then killed 300 Indian men, women and children at Wounded Knee.

Holidays for veterans highlight the social calendar at Rock Creek. Major Tim Reisch (back row, second from left) marched with Larry Zimmerman, the state Secretary of Veterans Affairs, in a Veterans Day pow wow.

A generation later, U.S. military officials reached out to tribal leaders during World War I, asking them to encourage young men to join the fight against Germany and its allies. Robert Dunsmore, the veterans’ service officer for the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, says oral history suggests that a general visited with a chief from the Standing Rock Reservation.”Then the chief sent runners to all the other tribes and told them it was OK for the men to go fight,” he says.”We were not even citizens of the United States at that time.”

The federal government had forbidden Indians to conduct traditional religious and cultural practices, such as the Sun Dance, and discouraged them from speaking their native language. Ironically, it was partly their language that captured the attention of some military leaders, who sought out bilingual Indians to transmit secret messages.

Little information can be found on the number of Native American soldiers who died during World War I, but among the 12,000 who served was Moses Clown, a young army private from Thunder Butte in Ziebach County. Forty-two years before Moses joined the army, his father, Amos, had fought Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at the Little Big Horn. His mother, Julia, was the sister of Crazy Horse, who said he would”fight to stay free (or) die a free Lakota if it comes to that.”

Crazy Horse’s death is well documented. Far fewer details are available of his nephew Moses’ death in 1918, but we know it happened during a battle in France, and that he received a hero’s burial in South Dakota.”None who witnessed the scene will ever forget it,” wrote the editor of the Dupree Leader.”The father, mother, brothers and sisters of the dead soldier, together with a large number of their friends, had gathered to await the coming of the train and as it came slowly to rest and the flag-covered coffin in the express car came into view, a great wail of sorrow went up from the waiting throng. As it was unloaded, the grief-stricken Indians gathered around with loud lamentations, laying hands and heads sadly and pitifully upon the flag.”

The next morning, Pvt. Clown’s body was buried several miles north of Thunder Butte, along a peaceful stretch of the Moreau River. The Dupree editor described the scene:”To the visitors it looked like a canvas city as their cars came into view over the summit of surrounding hills and descended to the river bank. In the center was a great teepee that had been specially constructed to contain the body. Its outer side was adorned in Indian fashion with illustrations of the tribal history and Old Glory floated beside at half mast.”

Many descendants of the young soldier still live in the shadow of legendary Thunder Butte — a promontory important to the Lakota and a natural landmark that mountain man Hugh Glass supposedly used to keep his bearings on his 1823 cross-country crawl to survival after being mauled by a grizzly bear.

The Cheyenne River Indian Reservation community of Thunder Butte, named for the nearby peak, has a few dozen houses, a church and school. Most of the residents are Clowns, and many of the grave markers in the cemetery bear that family name, which translates to heyoka in Lakota, meaning a wise person who teaches or leads by communicating in unusual ways.

All the Clowns of Thunder Butte know the history of the soldier who died in 1918, even 18-year-old Arnelle Clown who works as a nurse’s aide in Eagle Butte. She heard stories from older relatives, and has visited Moses’ grave in a small, private family plot several miles from town.

***

Moses Clown’s uncle, Crazy Horse, was killed in 1877 by U.S. soldiers at Fort Robinson in Nebraska. Thirteen years later, Sitting Bull was shot when a contingent of 39 tribal policemen tried to arrest the old warrior and holy man at his cabin because the U.S. military feared that he might join the Ghost Dance movement. Sitting Bull and his teenage son, Crow Foot, died during the botched arrest on Dec. 15, 1890 near the village now called Rock Creek.

Arnelle Clown and her extended family know the story of their ancestors’ war history dating back to Crazy Horse.

Historians believe the first bullet to hit Sitting Bull was fired by Lt. Henry Bullhead, the police leader who was also shot in the melee and died several days later. The community was later named in his honor, possibly by James McLaughlin, the longtime agent for the Standing Rock Reservation. A nearby town bears the name of McLaughlin.

Sitting Bull’s cabin was hauled away in 1893 for an exhibit at the World’s Fair in Chicago. Today a simple sign marks the spot along the Grand River, a few miles south of the community previously known as Bullhead.

The residents of Rock Creek never made an issue of their town’s former name — they just changed it and went on with life — but the history of the tribe over the past 150 years is complicated and contentious. Lakota leaders still clash with the U.S. government over health care, housing, education, law enforcement, taxation and the environment. A text of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which lists the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation, is posted on the tribe’s website. In 2016, Standing Rock Reservation officials led a well-publicized protest over an oil pipeline in North Dakota. But it seems that neither historic nor current disagreements stifle the warrior mentality of serving and defending the homeland.

***

Rock Creek’s social calendar revolves around soldiers and veterans. On Memorial Day, the Brownotters, the Montanas and other veteran families hold services at six nearby cemeteries. Flags are hoisted on every veteran’s grave and an honor guard fires a salute. The second weekend of August is dedicated to a VJ Day pow wow, remembering the 1945 Japanese surrender that ended World War II.

The celebration includes Native dancing, races, tug-of-wars and other games. Teenagers re-enact the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, and the Legion and auxiliary prepare several feasts.”We barbecue a whole cow for each meal,” says Brownotter.”We call it a waechujpi, which kinda means you should fill your plate more than once and then take some home with you.”

Adjutant General Tim Reisch experienced the reservation-style patriotism when he and several other officers of the South Dakota National Guard helicoptered into Rock Creek to participate in last year’s Veterans Day pow wow.”We saw great pride in the military,” he says.”The government conquered them and put them on reservations, broke the treaties, killed the buffalo herds and didn’t even provide them food. You could expect there’d be great animosity, but we see no animosity.”

Reisch agrees with Brownotter and others who credit the patriotism to a warrior culture.”Serving in the military fits their history where the warriors were highly revered. I know that a lot of Native Americans will go to active duty and then go back home, a veteran for life. They are proud of their service.”

Reisch served as sheriff of Miner County and head of the state Department of Corrections before assuming command of the state’s National Guard.”Back when I was in corrections I learned about the over-representation of Native Americans in our prisons, which is pretty disturbing.”

He hopes there may be opportunities in his current position to create more positive statistics.”Even before I had this job, the Guard was big on diversity. But we’ve really focused on it,” he said, pulling from the breast pocket of his uniform a plastic card that lists his nine priorities. Near the top — following family support, readiness and safety — is”Embrace Diversity,” which he describes as not just recruiting Native soldiers but going to great lengths to help them succeed.

A sign in Memorial Park at Rock Creek still refers to the town as Bullhead, its former name.

“Every member of our organization needs to feel that they can make it to the top,” he says.”But if you look at the wall of pictures of generals and senior commanders in our headquarters and nobody there looks like you then you will feel you can’t be in one of those positions.” Under Reisch’s command, the number of Native American guardsmen and women has grown from 100 to 142, a 42 percent increase in seven years. The number of officers has grown from four to seven.

Most of the growth has occurred in the Army National Guard, probably because it has units in 22 towns, including many rural communities near reservations. The Army Guard has also worked on visible projects on the reservations, including hauling timber from the Black Hills for firewood, infrastructure missions and medical support.

Based in Sioux Falls, the Air Guard doesn’t have those outreach opportunities.”The Army Guard has two dozen recruiters and they are spread around the state. The Air Guard has two recruiters in Sioux Falls, and you end up recruiting people like the body of people that are already there — so we have to continue to make an effort to expand from that,” Reisch says.

Despite the Army Guard’s recent successes, Native Americans are under-represented: they constitute 8.9 percent of South Dakota’s population, but only 4.5 percent of the Guard. Native American participation appears to be slightly higher in the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines based on figures from the state Department of Veterans Affairs indicating that 6.2 percent of the state’s 72,030 veterans are Native American.

***

Stories from Rock Creek and other reservation communities further illustrate why Native Americans embrace the warrior culture. Robert Dunsmore, the Cheyenne River Reservation veterans’ service officer, hears them daily.

“If not for code talkers in World War I and World War II and Korea, the U.S. might have lost those wars,” he says.”They were sworn to secrecy, and they kept their words so they never talked about it. We’ve heard there were at least 200 code talkers from South Dakota, but we’ve only identified 70 of them. That’s a part of our history we’ve lost.”

Ron Eagle Charging of Eagle Butte says his father was a code talker who never spoke of the experience but instructed his children on the warrior’s duty.”Boys in the family are taught to fight for those who can’t — the weak, the women, the less fortunate. Even if you have differences among warriors you still fight together. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull never got along but they shared a purpose.”

Paul Lawrence (left) and Ron Eagle Charging of Eagle Butte say Native American veterans struggle for access to health care.

Eagle Charging, 69, is one of several hundred Vietnam veterans on the Cheyenne River Reservation. He began his Vietnam tour as an ammunition specialist.”All I did was put the weapons together. We screwed the rocket heads on and loaded the helicopters.” Out of boredom and curiosity, he volunteered to be a door gunner on a helicopter, a position with a famously short lifespan.

Eagle Charging says he and other door gunners bolstered their courage by smoking marijuana laced with opium.”It made you so you’re not afraid to die,” he says, and it helped temporarily. But he came home with a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder and diabetes, which he blames on Agent Orange.

Paul Lawrence, a fellow Vietnam veteran and a friend of Eagle Charging, lives with prostate cancer and diabetes. He says Native American veterans face special challenges, especially regarding PTSD.”They (Veterans Administration officials) like to blame the PTSD on the poverty and problems on the reservations instead of what happened to you in the war.”

Eagle Charging laughed in agreement:”To me PTSD is misnamed. Politicians made me sick. The P should be for the politicians.”

On the day we met the two Vietnam vets, they were planning to attend a meeting that was called to examine why the veterans clinic at Eagle Butte had suddenly closed. The story circulating around town was that the contract for the clinic had expired without any prior notification from the VA.

***

Cecilia Brownotter has received two Gold Stars from the U.S. government as recognition of family members lost in battle. Her brother, Joseph Hairy Chin, was killed in World War II, and a son, Dean, died in Vietnam in 1967. Five of her seven sons joined the U.S. military.

A deceased soldier’s marble headstone stands among several hundred graves that lie in a church cemetery at Thunder Butte. Wood crosses, many with names erased by the ravages of time and weather, mark most of the burial sites.

Cecilia, 89, lives with relatives in a small house near Rock Creek’s doughboy. For years, her husband, Clayton, a World War II veteran, and his cousin Lincoln Hairy Chin tended to the statue. Clayton, a tribal councilman, was known as the guy who could raise the funds, while Lincoln preferred the more solitary work of brushing red, white and blue paints on a picket fence that surrounded the doughboy.

Today, the fence is gone. Now the little park features the sacred circle of the Lakota, formed in cement blocks painted white, yellow, red and black. The ash trees from the river valley are starting to grow.

Children at the school watch as adults show respect to the warrior vets with tree plantings, flag raisings and pow wows. Veterans also talk to the youth about the benefits of joining the military.”I tell the kids that you get to see the world,” Ivan Brownotter says.”You learn a trade and you have benefits that will help you further your education.”

He suspects his preaching probably has less impact than the annual events, especially the VJ Day re-enactment of Iwo Jima.”We always give the teenagers plastic guns and helmets and camouflage shirts,” says Brownotter.”We shoot fireworks as the flag goes up on the hill. There are always a few girls who join in. It’s impressive to watch.”

The re-enactment was started long ago when Lincoln Hairy Chin was commander of the Legion post in Rock Creek. Montana, his son, revived it when he returned from Spokane a few years ago to work with the local Head Start program. Montana also founded a group called Band of Brothers that organizes holiday dinners, dances, movie nights and other events for the people of Rock Creek.

The legacies of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull may be partly responsible for a strong military tradition on the reservations, but the present-day service of Montana, Brownotter and their generation plays an even bigger role in how today’s Indian youth view the world that surrounds Rock Creek and zip code 57621.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2017 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Pilgrimage for the Soul

By Lex Talamo

Lex Talamo became immersed in Lakota culture as she spent several years teaching writing to middle schoolers on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

I was 22 when I struck out from my home in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, for the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, teaching license in hand. My assignment seemed simple: teach 80 Lakota middle school students how to love writing, and to write well.

Pine Ridge, among the poorest places in the United States, soon assailed me with unanticipated problems. Many of my students’ home lives were marred by violence, poverty and abuse, which often resulted in unruly classroom behavior. My isolation, two hours from Rapid City, led to many”dark nights of the soul” that threatened to swallow me. I had fallen into a slump of dreading the mornings, the days, the rest of my life, and I didn’t know how to refocus my energy.

One afternoon, the Lakota Studies teacher wheeled his squeaky cart, complete with feathered rod and buffalo skull, into my classroom. His lesson was about the seven sites he said were sacred to the Lakota. “There is still power for our people in those places,” he told the students.”That is why our people still make pilgrimages, to this very day, to reconnect with the Great Spirit and pray for healing.”

I copied the list: Wind Cave, Sylvan Lake, Black Elk Peak, Bear Butte, the Badlands, the Black Hills and Devil’s Tower. I promised myself I would visit them all.

***

I decided that Wind Cave — the origin place of the Buffalo People, according to Lakota legend — would be the perfect place to start. The 115-mile trip would take me about two hours from the village where I taught. I spotted only a handful of cars as I followed Highway 18 west through a land of windswept beauty that left me dazed. Tawny prairie dogs barked and bustled around their colonies and several majestic buffalo grazed nearby as I arrived in Wind Cave National Park.

Bison, the noble beasts at the core of Lakota culture and once on the verge of extinction, still dot the West River landscape.

I signed up for a cave tour, which our guide began by recounting the story of Alvin McDonald, an eccentric teenager who moved with his family to the area in 1890. He had trouble making friends, so he sought sanctuary within the cave’s uncharted depths. Our guide flipped a switch in the large room, plunging the space into absolute darkness.”Think about that,” she said.”Think about exploring this cave, with its sudden drop offs, by yourself, and with only a candle for light.” She flipped the switch again, illuminating the water dripping off cave formations and cratered walls.

McDonald rolled out string as he explored so he could find his way around the cave, she continued. He left little puzzles — strings of letters — along the cave’s walls with the candle’s flame. Our guide showed us sooty markings on the cave ceiling, and then beamed her light into a crevice in the rock wall.”But my favorite story about Alvin involves this room and this passage,” she said.”If you’ll look toward my light, you’ll see a rare and beautiful crystal formation. Alvin knew there was a passage behind this, but to get there, he would have to destroy the crystal. He chose to leave the passage unknown, and the crystal intact, out of his respect for his cave.”

After the tour, I found McDonald’s grave, marked by a bronze plaque, near the natural entrance to Wind Cave. A Native American proverb popped into my mind:”Give thanks for unexpected blessings on their way.” McDonald’s story had sparked something in me, made me feel alive and reminded me that every day could hold unexpected blessings, as long as I showed up.

***

My next pilgrimage took me to Black Elk Peak, the sacred mountain where the Lakota welcomed the Thunder Beings each spring. KILI radio, the single station my car picked up, blared from my stereo as I tore down Highway 44. The road to Sylvan Lake, from which I could access the mountain trailhead, meandered through such tight turns above sheer rock precipices that my palms were sweaty and white. I reminded myself of what Reagan, my teacher friend on the Rosebud Reservation, had written to me once:”The hard stuff is always the good stuff. The hard stuff is what makes the story.”

Prayer flags adorn tree branches near the summit of Black Elk Peak. Photo by Paul Horsted

Halfway around the lake (really a manmade dam), I found a trailhead leading to Black Elk Peak and veered off the paved path. The way was steep and rocky, with giant metal handrails posted in one haphazard section of boulders. Jumping from craggy rock faces to the trail below, I felt like a child. I felt free. Unhindered. The sunlight on my face, which I missed so often due to the long hours I put in at school, invigorated my spirit. The solitude of the trail also strengthened me; I passed only a few people on my ascent.

I reached a point where the dirt path led to a wash of tangled woods; when I retraced my steps, I could not find the trail. I was still lost when the sun set and the temperature dropped. I found a cave-like crawlspace under an outcropping of rock. It was at least 10 degrees warmer inside than out, so I crawled in. I listened to the wind shriek past my sanctuary. I resolved to sleep if I could.

The sun’s rays peeked into my cave at dawn the next morning. I crawled from the space and tried to find the trail. Hours passed. Miles passed. When the sun shone directly overhead, hot and heavy in the sky, I abandoned all efforts to find a path. I picked a direction and ran. I did not stop until I heard the sound of a highway. I burst from the woods and found myself on an endless stretch of asphalt that gave no clue as to my location. No signs. No cars. No people. Then, a red sedan. I stayed by the side of the road, waving my arms above my head in distress. The car sped up and rushed past me.

I had no watch, no phone and I was out of water. I am going to die out here, I thought. Then a white minivan appeared on the horizon, making slow but steady progress down the hill. I prayed there were nice people inside. Then I stepped into the center of the road, waving my arms wildly. This time, the vehicle slowed and stopped.

I knew I must look crazy. My arms were scratched and bleeding from my crazed run through the woods. I had bits of leaf litter and twigs in my hair. I kept my hands loose and visible by my sides as I approached the minivan.

“Hello,” I tried, when the driver’s side window rolled down an inch. My voice came out choked and scratchy. I tried again.”I was hiking and I got lost …” My voice cracked. I took a step back, wanting to show that I was harmless, terrified he or she would leave me.”I was hoping you could point me in the right direction,” I said.”I’ve been wandering for the last 14 hours. I had to spend the night on the mountain.”

The window rolled down to reveal a pale-skinned couple in the upper bounds of middle age.”You poor thing,” the woman said. She sounded British.”You must be frozen. It was 34 degrees last night.”

Arriving at Sylvan Lake proved to be a turning point in Talamo’s pilgrimage.

I waited while the British gentleman searched for Sylvan Lake in his phone’s GPS.”It’s that way,” he said, pointing down the hill. I asked how far. He said,”Thirteen miles.” I started crying. The woman twisted in her seat and started clearing out the back of the minivan.”Get in,” she said.”We’ll give you a ride.”

The man got out of the driver’s seat and opened the door for me. I slipped inside, babbling my thanks.”I promise I’m not a serial killer,” I said. They laughed; the man assured me they were not serial killers, either,”just an old British couple eager to see the great United States of America.”

They seemed at ease with me. They were also chatty. They asked what I did for a living. I told them I worked as a teacher in a reservation school. They showed genuine interest.”How is that?” the man asked.

“It’s hard,” I said. The woman asked how I coped, if I believed in God. I told the woman I did not know.”God is my answer to just about everything,” she said.”I trust that the people He puts in my way will be the ones I am supposed to meet and learn from.”

About 5 miles later, the Silver Bullet came into view.”There!” I shouted, way too loud.”That’s my car!” The man pulled into a parking spot near mine. They refused money when I offered. The man thanked me for”adding some excitement” to their lives. The woman said, softly,”I can’t wait to tell our friends that we picked up a hitchhiker.”

I waved as they drove off and thought, too late, that I had not asked for their names. I turned and looked out over Sylvan Lake.

The pilgrimage’s mission was accomplished. I had never been so glad to be alive.

***

In November, temperatures plunged. I knew I had only a short amount of time left to explore before blizzards, with their shrieking winds and bone-chilling cold, ravaged the state. After Sylvan Lake, I was terrified of getting lost while hiking by myself. But I wanted to continue my journey.

I took my scathed soul to the Badlands. The sky was a wet, watercolor blue, in sharp contrast to the sand-colored rocks and white cliffs I passed on the way into a parking lot by an overlook. The rest of the parking spots were empty.

I chose Notch Trail, the shortest of three trails detailed on a brown sign. The trail led to a breathtaking vista — layers upon layers of striated rock, sharp angles, peaks like steeples stretching out to specks on the horizon. I found a rock crevice that cradled my body perfectly. I sat down. I put my palms flat against the rock. I closed my eyes. I felt the increased pulse of my heart, and through my hands, the heartbeat of the earth. I felt the strength of the land lace up my palms, through my body. When I opened my eyes, the world seemed three shades brighter.

The Badlands hold significance for the Lakota and several other indigenous tribes. Photo by Paul Horsted

“Thank you,” I told the winds, the earth, and whatever might be listening.

I walked back to my car, believing I had completed a successful hike. Then the wind blew, so fiercely that it turned me around toward an exhibit sign that declared,”The Baddest of the Badlands.” I spotted the first trail marker, a stubby yellow pole about a foot high just beyond the sign, and I felt a hunger so sharp and fierce it surprised me. I wanted the challenge. I started forward.

Mushroom-like formations sprouted from a sea of craggy rock. I felt alive, following this trail across the beautiful land of extremes. My walk became a symbolic act of spirit. I was not sure where I was going or how much farther I had to go, but I was willing to take the journey. Going one step at a time, I reached the final yellow marker, identifiable by a corresponding red stripe at the top. Another canyon vista stretched out to the horizon. Below, the rock dropped steeply away, leaving me dizzy from the height.

I stood on the precipice, lost in the savage beauty surrounding me, until the wind buffeted me away from the edge. The sun was sinking, and I beat a reflective retreat to my car. Blown by the wind, now caught under one of my car’s tires was a crumpled Badlands brochure.

While my GPS calculated my route back to the reservation, I flipped through the brochure, with its colorful photographs of narrow-leaf yucca, prairie dogs and black-footed ferrets. My eyes settled on a quote, attributed to author Kathleen Norris:

“The prairie is not forgiving. Anything that is shallow — the easy optimism of the homesteader… the trees whose roots don’t reach ground water — will dry up and blow away.”

The trip left me feeling empowered, eager and unafraid for what might come. That night, safely ensconced in my school-issued housing, I emailed my principal.”I feel very grateful and blessed to have this job,” I wrote.”I would like to stay for a third year as the middle school writing teacher, if you think I am doing a satisfactory job.”

I looked at what I had written, felt a trill of fear in my heart, and hit”Send.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2019 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Desert or Not?

By Bernie Hunhoff

The flora of western South Dakota, which includes cactus, yucca and deep-rooted native grasses, reflect the region’s semi-arid climate.

FAMOUS EXPLORERS and scientists labeled a big portion of the Northern Prairie a desert in the 19th century, including all of South Dakota’s modern day West River country.

The description took hold for more than a century because desert is one of those words in the English language that has a mysterious and ominous aura, especially to any brave man or woman who owns cattle — or, even more disconcerting, a corn planter — in western South Dakota.

Zebulon Pike, the namesake of Colorado’s Pike’s Peak, was among the first to use the”D” word. Pike made several expeditions in the early 19th century, and though he probably never reached the borders of today’s South Dakota, he compared lands west of here to the African deserts.

Thomas Nuttall, an English naturalist, traveled up the Missouri River valley in 1819 and collected samples of the prairie cactus and yucca plants that still thrive today. Perhaps he encountered a stretch of hot and dry weather, but for whatever reason he also described it as an inhospitable desert.

A few years later, the highly regarded explorer Stephen Long — who was born in New Hampshire and educated as an engineer at Dartmouth — came to the region and famously proclaimed it,”The Great American Desert.” It’s unlikely that Long also never set foot in the borders of South Dakota. Most of his explorations followed the Platte River in Nebraska, but his blanket assessment was considered geographic gospel for decades.

Even in the 1890s, a generation after the Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged western settlement, scientists were warning that the plains climate could be incompatible with East Coast expectations. John Wesley Powell, a geologist who mapped the plains states and was often called the dean of the American West, bravely bucked the pro-development optimists and warned that land west of the 100th meridian, which divides South Dakota east and west, was too arid to farm.

However, politicians and railroad officials promised that the western plains were not a desert but an untapped Garden of Eden that only needed cultivation.”Rains follows the plow,” promised Illinois entomologist Cyrus Thomas. Rain might even condense from the steam of the locomotives, boasted one railroader. Land-hungry pioneers became believers.

Edith Ammons Kohl was one of those hopeful homesteaders. She settled in Lyman County, and later wrote about the experience in her book, Land of the Burnt Thigh, in which she tells of a well-dressed land agent who came from Pierre to see if she was ready to sell her land. She offered him a drink of dirty well water from a can she kept in the shade of the shack, but the agent couldn’t stand to drink it.

He looked at the glazing sky, the baked earth, a snake slithering from the path back into the dry grass which rustled as it moved.

“So this is the land you want to save,” he exclaimed.”The incredible thing is that people have managed to stay on it at all.”

“They will stay,” I assured him.

*****

EDITH AMMONS KOHL was correct. Stay they have. It’s common to meet fourth, fifth and sixth generation ranchers, surviving on lands where yucca and cacti still grow, and where snakes still crawl — the very land that was once labeled a desert by educated and worldly travelers. We traveled to Butte County, one of the driest places in South Dakota, to meet some of the survivors.

David and Holly Ollila and their sons, Tate (far right) and Finn (seated on fence) raise sheep and cattle on their Butte County ranch. “Sheep are a desert animal,” David Ollila says. “They’ll do fine on what the cattle won’t even touch.”

David Ollila’s great-grandfather immigrated from Finland to work at Homestake Gold Mine, and then homesteaded in Butte County in 1916. He died of miner’s lung in 1936, leaving his son (David’s grandfather) to run the ranch.

Ollila (pronounced O-la-la) is a lanky, soft-spoken South Dakotan who has the appearance of someone Big Tobacco might have once recruited for their cigarette commercials, though he’s not a smoker. He and his wife, Holly, have three sons. Ethan works as an electrical lineman in Wyoming. His parents believe it’s likely that he’ll someday return to the ranch. Finn, 11, and Tate, 17, are still at home and actively involved in raising sheep and cattle.

Butte County enjoys 13 or 14 inches of moisture from snow and rain in an average year. During droughts, the moisture often dips below the 10-inch threshold that soil scientists now use to separate arid (desert) lands from semi-arid regions.

“Stephen Long was not wrong [to call the land a desert], considering where he came from and what he knew,” Ollila says.”Neither was Frank Popper, who called this country the Buffalo Commons and declared it wasn’t fit for farming. If you take Midwest farm practices and try to do them here, then it’s not sustainable. Take away crop insurance and you’d fail in a hurry.”

Ollila, who taught agriculture at the Lemmon and Newell high schools for 25 years, says most of the people who survive today have learned to temper their expectations, lifestyle and practices with the land.

“They often say that the only ones who make money are the ones who sell out before they are broke,” Ollila jests. However, his wry country wisdom has a ring of truth. Regardless of the desert connotation (and maybe in part because of its wilderness mystique), land prices have far outgrown any reasonable assessment on what an acre of ground might be worth as an investment. The surest path to success for most ranchers would be to sell their land and cattle.

The land was free to homesteaders who promised to plow a few fields, plant trees and build a shack. A generation later, during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the land could hardly be given away. Ollila remembers it selling for $25 an acre as recently as the 1980s, which was another difficult era for agriculture.

“Now the same land brings $800 an acre,” he says.”Think of that. Try to factor $800 an acre into how much a cow can return.”

*****

OLLILA SAYS HE and many of his neighbors are looking to the past, trying to learn from both the mistakes and the successes of their predecessors. He says the buffalo culture that predated the arrival of homesteaders is a centuries-old example of what today’s ranchers call rotational grazing. Buffalo herds constantly migrated across the short-grass prairie, moving on quickly before they damaged the roots of the all-important native grasses. Deer, elk and pronghorns followed them, grazing on shrubs and weeds that the buffalo wouldn’t eat.

Sassafras is one of three donkeys that protect sheep from predators on the Ollila ranch.

Today, conservation-minded ranchers do the same — rotating cattle from one pasture to another, then following with sheep or goats.”Sheep are a desert animal,” Ollila says.”They’ll do fine on what the cattle won’t even touch.”

Every generation of ranchers has learned new tricks.”Our grandfathers developed the idea of cover crops, and now today that’s a huge part of good management of cropland,” Ollila says.

Ranchers have also developed the concept of”flushing,” a practice of feeding ewes a rich diet during breeding season to boost the number of multiple births. Just like deer and elk in the wild, domestic sheep are much more likely to have twins and triplets when nature is signaling that the food supply is good.

“We’ve moved our lamb crop from 120 percent to 180 percent, and we’ve even hit 200 percent, by pasturing them on cover crops,” Ollila says. Most ewes can manage to nurse twins, but when triplets are born the Ollilas usually remove one of the lambs from the mother and bottle feed it in a big pen of”orphans,” though that’s a misnomer because the Ollila orphan lambs are very pampered. Finn even gives them each a name.

Sharing such ideas and best practices is the mission of two new organizations, The South Dakota Soil Health Coalition and the South Dakota Grasslands Coalition. Ollila, who is active in both, says they are landowner groups that cooperate with other organizations, such as the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, Nature Conservancy, the Audubon Society and anyone who has an interest in the land.

“What we’re doing is encouraging people in ranching and farming to maximize their natural environments,” he says.”Part of this is just lessening the expectations and figuring out how to work with the land and what it will provide — not trying to make it produce more than it can.”

That’s in stark contrast to much of the agri-business world, where chemicals and fertilizers are used to chase bigger and bigger yields.”Sadly, some folks pay too much for the land and then they have to expect too much out of it, even in more fertile parts of the country,” Ollila says.

*****

WE LEFT THE OLLILA RANCH, crossed Dry Creek, and drove west on Highway 212 to Belle Fourche, the biggest city (pop. 5,600) in Butte County and a place that clearly exists to serve farm and ranch families. The most visible business enterprises involve tractors, fencing, livestock services, irrigation equipment and wool.

Hills along the Bad River valley near Wendte are subtle reminders of when the region was an ancient desert of sand dunes. Today, the soils are rooted in place by a dense but fragile ecosystem of native grasses.

Belle Fourche has bragging rights as the Center of the Nation. The geographic middle of the continental U.S. is just a short drive north of town. It’s also known as the convergence of the Redwater and Belle Fourche rivers.

Yes, there’s water in this arid country. Just a few miles east of town lies an 8,000-acre lake known as the Belle Fourche Reservoir, which was created in 1911 by a mile-long dam on Owl Creek.

Tucked into a small house near the junction of the two rivers is the town’s Green Bean Coffee House. That’s where we met Mary Clarkson Buchholz, whose family ranches northwest of town near the Montana border. Mary also serves on the board of Pioneer Bank, which is just west of the coffee shop, and she writes a history column for the town’s weekly newspaper, the Belle Fourche Beacon.

She says the drought-stricken 1930s were a defining era.”My dad always said that before that, there was one homesteader on every quarter section [160 acres] and now it takes 40 acres for one cow-calf pair, maybe twice that much in dry years. When it got tough, some left, and others dug in.”

Ed Goss, a friend of the Buchholz family and a retired manager of the town’s big wool cooperative, was born and raised 350 miles east of Belle Fourche in Kingsbury County, where the average rainfall is double that of Butte County.

He says he learned at an early age that the very concept of drought and deserts is relative. He recalls that farmers on the west side of Kingsbury County always lamented that they got less rain than their counterparts on the east side, just 20 miles away.

Mary Buchholz says the same is true in Butte County, where there are grain fields on the east side, thanks in part to the irrigation systems, and nothing but cattle and sheep on the drier western side.

It must be human nature to look for dividing lines. Goss says there is such a line between the arid west and the eastern croplands — the invisible 100th meridian, a longitudinal line that divides South Dakota in half.

“Go look by the town of Blunt, east of Pierre,” Goss advised us.”There’s an historical marker there that says the bankers shouldn’t loan money for farming west of that point, on the 100th meridian, because it’s just too darn dry for anything to grow beyond that point.”

*****

AS DRY AS IT GETS in West River, two of its best-known wordsmiths say they don’t often hear their rural neighbors use the word desert.

Rancher and author Dan O’Brien practices “regenerative agriculture” on his family’s Wild Idea Buffalo Ranch.

“I’ve never heard that term applied to the landscape here,” says Linda Hasselstrom, a writer and ranch owner at Hermosa.”My father used to joke that where our land over east of the ranch broke into the Badlands that it was desert, but that was a very small portion of what we owned.”

Regardless of terminology, Hasselstrom says West River is a challenging environment that requires a close relationship with Mother Nature.”One of the best conversations I ever had with my father was when I was about 12 and we were haying,” she says.”We were lying down after lunch, under the trees in the field. He said he wondered if trees were really conscious beings and aware of us, only living at a slower tempo than ours so we never grasp their consciousness. I’ve never looked at a tree the same way since.”

Dan O’Brien, a buffalo rancher and writer, agrees with Hasselstrom.”I don’t look at this place as a desert, even though there are some similarities.” He pictures a desert as a barren land of blowing sand,”while our prairie is a diverse ecosystem of grasses that have evolved not only to survive but to thrive.”

O’Brien’s book, Buffalo for the Broken Heart, is a parallel story of how his own life has become woven with the natural world, particularly the native grasses and buffalo.

He borrowed money to buy a small ranch southeast of Rapid City in the 1990s because he was attracted to the wildness of the region, but he soon discovered that neither his heart nor his pocketbook found satisfaction in raising cattle, the traditional hard-luck method of making a living on grass.

O’Brien switched to buffalo, and soon realized that the wild beasts were a better fit for both him and the land. Today, he and his family run Wild Idea Buffalo Company, a ranch devoted to what he terms”regenerative agriculture.” Their goal is to have a positive impact on both the arid landscape and the food supply. The experience has given him both hope and worry for the future.

“This landscape has been politically charged from the very beginning,” he says.”The railroads were out to get people here and they promoted it as a Garden of Eden. Of course, there were a lot of disappointed people. There are seven old homesteads on our land alone. Every now and then, I’ll see an old cast iron stove that was left behind or some lilacs still blooming that were planted long ago by some woman who was trying so hard, and I’ll think, ëDamn it, things aren’t so tough today.'”

America’s founding fathers championed an agrarian ideology.”I would rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world,” said George Washington. Thomas Jefferson designed a plow and advocated for a”manicured democracy,” a dream world in which everyone might have a few chickens and a cow. Unfortunately, he didn’t realize that there was a land west of that 100th meridian where it might take 40 acres of grass for a cow — and 500 cows to pay the bills and taxes.

“Jefferson thought there’d never be 25,000 people in the state of Kentucky. That’s how short-sighted one of our wisest presidents proved to be,” O’Brien says, and he fears that modern-day leaders are even less prepared to produce good public policy for farmers and ranchers.

O’Brien once flew over West River with a U.S. senator who wondered aloud why there were so many”tiny lakes” scattered among the grasslands. He says the senator was shocked when he learned that they were all man-made stock dams.

He believes such a lack of understanding from urban policymakers, mixed with modern agriculture’s insatiable appetite for short-term profits, might be more of a threat to the grasslands than the lack of rainfall.

A U.S. Geological Survey map of the 1890s reflects scientist John Wesley Powell’s concerns about the agricultural viability of western lands.

“When I see anybody trying to fix it, I’m rooting for them,” he says,”but I’m also pitying them because most of the government programs have actually encouraged the plowing of the prairie and other bad practices.”

O’Brien sees some neighbors practicing good management, but he says that’s not the norm.”Too often guys are running their cattle the same way and in the same places where their grandfathers ran the cattle, and generally that’s been destructive.”

Jefferson’s plow also remains a threat, he says.”These grasses are our rain forest. Their roots can go 10 feet deep. Our long-stemmed native grasses store as much carbon as the rain forest. They’ve been packing carbon in our soil forever. Every time we plow one of these up and put in a corn field or a golf course or a trailer park, that disappears forever.”

*****

WEST RIVER ranchers might avoid the”D” word, but not Mark Sweeney, who lives in Vermillion — a college town surrounded by flat, lush fields of corn, soybeans and alfalfa.

Sweeney is a professor of sustainability and environment at the University of South Dakota. A native of Phoenix, Arizona, he has researched and studied arid landscapes. Much of his field research has been in the southwestern United States, where sand dunes and the saguaro cactus leave little doubt about the ecosystem. However, Sweeney is also well-acquainted with West River country, and he is well versed on John Wesley Powell’s 19th century assertion that the 100th meridian is a dividing line.

“Powell was quite a character,” he says.”He was a one-armed Civil War veteran who was also a geologist. He led some of the first expeditions through the American West, including the Grand Canyon. The notion of him canoeing down the rapids with one arm is pretty amazing.”

Powell’s climate stance took courage in the 1890s, and it even cost him his position as director of the U.S. Geological Survey. However, Sweeney says time has proved Powell to be right. In fact, just 25 years after Powell’s death, the western plains were decimated by drought.

Sweeney recently mentored a student from Baylor University, Taylor Weeden, who documented over 700 dust storms that hit South Dakota in the 1930s.”One of the leading reasons it was so dusty probably had to do with the percentage of cultivated land at the time. Taylor found that between 50 and 70 percent of the land was in cultivation in East River, and if you go West River, it was less than 20 percent except in Tripp County, where it was closer to 40.”

Like the West River ranchers, Sweeney still stops short of the”D” word.”Semi-arid is probably a better descriptor of that region today,” he says.”Not quite desert, because it still has grasses and other vegetation that have adapted to the climate. The grasses that grow there are critical to binding the soil. If they were not there, you’d be generating dust storms and there would be barren soil farther than the eye can see.”

Actually, says Sweeney,”there’s evidence of that in the past. If you go back to the last Ice Age, maybe 17,000 years ago, there were glaciers east of the Missouri River but west of the river there was no glacial ice and big areas were wind eroded.”

Sweeney says the resulting geographic depressions are still visible in western South Dakota, subtle reminders of the ancient desert.”The troughs are all aligned with the ancient prevailing winds,” he says.”Some streams that occupy these troughs today took advantage of the topography created by the wind.”

Researchers have found evidence of other long periods of mega drought, one as recently as 1,000 years ago that caused some of the dune crests in the Sandhills to reactivate. The Sandhills are considered a Nebraska ecosystem, but they begin on the south edge of Bennett and Todd counties in South Dakota.

An abandoned church southeast of Edgemont by Hat Creek is a relic of when the West River prairie had many more farmers and ranchers.

The Vermillion professor says that, without the grass cover, the soil makeup of the West River prairie is quite vulnerable to wind erosion.”You find Pierre shale west of the Missouri River, and when it gets dry and exposed it breaks down into tiny aggregates, little mud balls, that dance about and generate dust as they break away in the wind. It’s like a sandblasting of the prairie.”

*****

SURE ENOUGH, IF YOU drive east of Pierre on Highway 14, you’ll find an historical marker at the 100th meridian, just west of Blunt where Ed Goss said it would be.

Erected in 1956, the marker notes that lending agencies would not,”lend a shiny dime west of this line because some geographer had labeled it the EAST EDGE of the Great American Desert. Today, more than a quarter of America’s new animal wealth alone is produced from that misnamed desert.”

The marker seems to be a 20th century rebuke of Long, Powell and other 19th century explorers and scientists who dared to use the”D” word. Yes, they slightly underestimated the average rainfall, and they underappreciated the tenacity of the native grasses. They also couldn’t know how ranchers like Dave Ollila, Dan O’Brien and others might treat the land.

However, it once was a great American desert. Will it be a desert again?

Sweeney and other modern-day scientists say that depends on climate, as well as on how landowners and public policymakers treat the native grasses. The answer to the future of the arid plains, as the poets say, is blowing in the wind.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2022 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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The Joys of Farm Toys

By Bernie Hunhoff

Ken Girard (above) and his brother, Mike, understand the human impulse to collect. Their office walls and warehouses are adorned with their own treasures.

Travis Hughes roused two of his sons early on a Saturday last spring, but instead of working on their Andover farm, as they might normally do, they drove south four hours to the little town of Wakonda for a toy tractor auction.

More than 100 farm toy aficionados were already in the Wakonda Legion Hall when the Hugheses arrived at mid-morning. The Legion ladies were serving coffee and homemade sweets from behind a long counter as the auction-goers — most of them wearing blue jeans and farm caps — admired and inspected hundreds of toys on several rows of tables. Some were in their original boxes. Sometimes there was only a box for sale.

Travis, 43, was among the youngest to register as a buyer that morning; his boys Scott, 14, and Orin, 11, were the only school-age youth in the metal folding chairs of the Legion Hall.

Rural South Dakotans are familiar with auctions and markets, but Wakonda’s toy tractor sales are quite unlike farm country’s somber sales of grain and livestock. Frowns are rare and nobody loses.

“Like one buyer told me, ‘It’s toys!'” laughs Ken Girard who, along with his brother Mike and a small team, has turned antique farm toys into the biggest attraction in Wakonda. The family business operates from 11 buildings within the city limits, including several large warehouses where a Clay County farmer may walk in the door with a single toy tractor while the Girards and their crew are unloading a semi-trailer load from Canada.

Walls in several of the buildings are adorned with the Girards’ personal collections. Ken’s office is a maze of marine memorabilia and plastic toys from the 1950s. Mike likes vintage root beer advertising signs. Parked throughout are antique tractors and trucks, outboard motors, hunting paraphernalia and other artifacts of America’s great outdoors.

Wakonda, a town of 300, lies northwest of Vermillion in Clay County. Its name comes from a Santee Sioux word that means wonderful. Wakonda’s most recent claim to fame is the 101-game winning streak by the high school girls basketball team from 1987 to 1991. The school has since merged with nearby Irene. The only restaurant in town, modestly called The Pit, operates from the basement of an old hotel. The big Legion Hall is the social center, home to everything from wedding receptions to fundraisers and funeral dinners.

Wakonda’s auctions attract collectors and spectators from throughout farm country, including brothers Scott and Orin Hughes of Andover.

Ken and Mike’s parents, Marvin and Pat, started the family auction business at Wakonda in 1970. For years, they kept busy with farm and household auctions, and the sons spent weekends lining up furniture and appliances on the lawns.

“Back then, I had no desire to be in the auction business,” admits Ken.”But I spent one year in college and I didn’t like that, so the next summer, in 1998, I started auctioneer school.”

Just as he and Mike joined the business as adults, farm auctions began to dwindle.”Once there was a family making a living on 80 acres or every quarter section,” Ken says,”but they are all gone. We had to find some other specialties.”

The Girards began to focus on real estate auctions, and they also investigated the Internet.”I took a class in online auctions from Kurt Aumann of Illinois,” says Ken.”Kurt also specialized in toy sales so I figured if he can do it, so can we.”

In 2001, the Girards invited consignments from friends and neighbors in southeast South Dakota. Local families brought a few tractors and trucks, and Harrisburg toy dealer Cam Lind brought a few hundred items.”I don’t remember the prices that day,” says Ken.”All I remember is that we had a lot of really happy sellers and a lot of smiling buyers. I thought, heck we are in farming country so maybe this can work.”

The Girard brothers have also gained a reputation for firearm auctions, but they can only schedule a few every year.”Guns take a lot of space and they require a lot of paperwork,” says Mike.”The ATF keeps track from the time we log in a consignment until the buyer takes it home.” Federal agents seem far less interested in toy tractors and the people who collect them.

The brothers hold toy tractor auctions nearly every Saturday at the Legion Hall. Sometimes, the sale spills over into Sunday. Many of their consignments are shipped from hundreds of miles away, sometimes by the truckful. When the bidding stops, the auction crew spends the next few days shipping hundreds of toys to buyers from all 50 states and foreign countries. Through the years, Wakonda has become the national hub of farm toy trading.

Marvin Girard died two years ago, but his wife Pat still helps to clerk the sales. Scott Moore, a Centerville auctioneer, takes a turn at the microphone along with Mike and Ken and they all perform as ring men, meaning they roam the auction floor, looking for bids and encouraging the buyers.

The live auction is a show, and most of the people in the seats are there to watch.”We get that,” says Ken.”You don’t have to buy anything and we don’t charge anything to attend.”

While online bidders are a major reason for the Girards’ success, in-person attendees like the Hugheses are still a big part of every sale. Travis Hughes and his boys farm with”green equipment,” meaning John Deere. They have a few antique Deere tractors in a farm shed, and they collect the company’s old toys, especially the early grain combines.

When the bids for toy tractors began to exceed $1,000 at the Wakonda auction, Scott Hughes leaned over to his dad and said,”We could buy the real equipment cheaper than we can buy the toys!”

Scott is correct, says Ken Girard.”That was hard to wrap your head around when it first started happening, but now I completely understand.” The toy is easier to maintain and store than a full-size tractor. Also, perhaps there’s more nostalgia for the toy than an exhaust-spouting, back-breaking, hard-to-start two-ton pile of bolts and metal.

The Girards’ own collections range from tractors to boat memorabilia.

Even stranger, the cardboard box that came with the toy from the factory can be worth more than the toy and the real tractor.”We’ve seen that the box can often double the value,” says Girard.”We’ve sold a toy tractor for a few hundred dollars and then turned around and sold a mint of the same toy in its original box for thousands of dollars.”

Ken says farm toys are like a lot of things in life, from bitcoins to pork bellies and baseball cards; it’s hard to decide what’s a fair value or a good investment.

Consequently, the young auctioneer — who now knows the values of farm toys as well as anyone in America — has simple advice for buyers who join him in the Wakonda Legion Hall or online:”Buy it if you like it. Don’t do it to invest. You have to be pretty savvy to invest in toys. Just buy what you like. Don’t buy if you’re worried about what it might sell for later.” He believes few of his bidders bank on the notion that their purchases will be good financial investments.

Still, the toys keep gaining value. The national record for a toy tractor is $74,000 for a rare”Coffin Block” John Deere Model A pedal tractor.”We haven’t had a chance to sell one of those — yet,” says Ken. The Girards’ highest bid was $9,000 for a gold-plated Farmall 560 1/8th scale.

“There’s been an ongoing argument among toy dealers that there’ll soon be no young guys in the hobby and then the stuff won’t be worth much of anything,” says Ken.”But the fact is there’s never been any young people in the hobby. Almost nobody collects until they have space in their home, maybe because the children have grown and gone, and that’s also when they have some disposable income.”

Bidders are generally males who were raised on a farm, or at least have good memories of summers on a relative’s farm. They begin by collecting the tractor their dad drove.”Then they want the tractor an uncle had. Then they say, ‘My neighbor had one of those so we should maybe have one of them.’ Before you know it, you want them all!”

Ken believes toy tractor enthusiasts are different from risk-takers who invest in cryptocurrencies, and even a breed apart from collectors who focus on comic books, sports memorabilia and rare coins.

The Wakonda auctioneers also organize several gun sales every year. Mike Girard (above) says the government is much more interested in firearms than farm toys.

Many of the Girards’ customers, both online and those who show up in person, come from states east of South Dakota.”Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania — that’s probably where the biggest portion come from,” Ken says.”But we’ve shipped tractors to Hawaii and Alaska.” Interest in farm toys seems to lessen in ranching country, which begins west of Wakonda, but Ken surmises that it’s only because there are fewer people living there.

Just as farmers enjoy the long-standing”color wars” of tractor companies, toy collectors also play favorites. John Deere has the most fans, partly because the company makes more tractors — real and toy — than their competitors. Deere’s famous red rival Farmall (which morphed into IH and today’s Case IH) also has many fans and there are buyers for every make and color, including lesser-known companies like Cockshutt, Oliver, Massey-Harris and Allis-Chalmers.

The Girards enjoy the nostalgia-fueled camaraderie and good-natured rivalry of toy collectors.”They’ll drive here together, sit together and then bid against each other,” Ken says. Some are such regular attendees that they have a favorite chair in the Legion Hall.”It’s just like church,” he laughs.”They always show up and sit in the same place, and if they miss a day then their friends want to know if they’re okay.”

Seeing an empty chair is the hardest part of the profession, Ken says.”We’ve come to develop quite a relationship with many of these guys. Some I see a lot more than I see my own relatives. But let’s face it, some are on the senior side of life and suddenly they are gone — gone to a nursing home or they leave this Earth. Then maybe you have to sell the toys you sold them over the last 15 years. While we’re proud to do it, it’s hard sometimes.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 2021 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Pine Needle Basketry

By Bernie Hunhoff

Trisha Blair’s baskets continue a centuries-old practice that traces to the Anasazis of the Southwest.

Trisha Blair believes that anyone who appreciates the concept of making something from nothing — and who has a persistent nature — may want to try creating coil baskets from ponderosa pine needles.

Despite droughts, forest fires, pine beetle infestations and civilization, the ponderosa pine remains the dominant tree in the Black Hills. The mountain range’s very name was inspired centuries ago by its peaks and valleys forested with darkish green pine needles. The Lakota called it Paha Sapa, which translates to”dark hills.”

A typical needle grows to 6 inches over three or four years before shedding. Sometimes the mat of needles on the forest floor becomes so thick that it represents a fire hazard in dry conditions. Property owners often rake up the needles, both for aesthetics and to eliminate them as tinder. Some “green thumbers” use them as mulch in their mountain gardens.

Blair has found a higher use. Like Native Americans of centuries past, she uses the needles to create beautiful baskets — not by weaving but by coiling. The former English teacher, an accomplished oil and acrylics painter, says her art career began as a child.”We had an outdoor toilet and the four rough walls were conducive to drawing and painting, which I did. I covered them with pictures of horses and naked ladies. It seems that I liked Lady Godiva with long, flowing hair, and that’s where my art started.”

In the 1970s, Blair was studying in New Hampshire and exploring the East Coast when she toured the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. A friend was working there, so she got to enter the backrooms and see collections not open to the public, including blankets and baskets made by the Anasazis hundreds of years ago.

She held the baskets, studied the coils and noticed both their perfection and the imperfections.”I remember thinking even then that it’s something I felt I could do.”

Upon returning to South Dakota, Blair worked as a teacher and began painting pictures. Through the years, she developed a problem:”I couldn’t bring myself to sell the paintings. They are too much a part of me. I have a treasure room full of them and every relative has them hanging on their walls.”

When she embarked on basket making, a friend wondered if the baskets would end up in the treasure room with the paintings.”You know what’s going to happen,” warned the friend.”When you die, your son is going to box them all up and sell them for a quarter.”

Thanks to her friend’s honesty, Blair pledged to enter her new art phase with less sentimentality. As soon as she was satisfied with the quality of her baskets, she offered them for sale at a Deadwood art gallery.

Several years ago, she joined the Chautauqua Artisans Market, a group of artists who share a gallery on River Street in Hot Springs. Her baskets are also exhibited at Art Expressions in Custer and ArtForms in Hill City. She has sold them to appreciative buyers throughout the United States, and as far away as Russia and the Middle East.

North American basket making likely began with the Anasazi, a people known as”the ancient ones” who lived in cliff dwellings and stone pueblos in today’s Utah and New Mexico. The Anasazi mysteriously departed the area about 700 years ago, but many of their crafts and traditions were embraced by other tribes.

Blair is entirely self-taught; her encounter with the Anasazi baskets at the Smithsonian was her only tutorial.”That’s where I was inspired, though I never thought then that I would be doing it today.

“Their baskets had no knots, which is a challenge,” she says.”I also noticed that they made tiny mistakes,” which freed her from the burden of trying to perfect each stitch.”Another thing, you couldn’t tell where the coiling ended so that’s always been a goal of mine.”

Blair says coil basket making is slow and tedious.”I can spend a couple of weeks on a basket,” she says.”My son says I make 5 cents an hour.” However, like the”ancient ones,” she doesn’t do it for money. There’s satisfaction in making something beautiful from nature’s bounty. She has developed her own techniques and tricks. She even copyrighted a unique method of using a tooled leather base.

Blair believes almost anyone can learn, though it’s akin to hitting a baseball or riding a bike: you could read about it forever, but you need to see and do.

Fortunately, numerous YouTube videos and tutorials can be found online for visual learning — and Blair generously offered to explain the process as it works for her.

Needle Selection

Never take healthy green needles from a branch unless the branch is already broken and dying, and, conversely, try not to take needles off the forest floor because they may have bark lice or fungi, especially if they appear black.

“The most beautiful needles come from trees that have been stressed out by a fire or from the bug infestation,” she says.”When there is a fire that’s the first place I look.”

It’s easiest to work with longer needles; hopefully you can find some that are 4 to 5 inches long. She says pines in the Northern Hills generally have longer needles than those in the Southern Hills. If you harvest green needles, it takes a year to dry them and even then they don’t have the beauty of a needle that dries on the branch.

Blair tried a shortcut that nearly ended in disaster.”My son found some wonderful green needles, and I thought I would try to dry them in the oven.” She quickly learned why pine needles are such a fire threat.”They caught fire and I could have burned the house down,” she says.”Don’t do what I did.”

Blair washes the needles with soap and water, boils them, lays them on newspapers to dry and then puts them away until she is ready to coil. She also decaps the needles while they are wet, though she notes that some basket makers leave the caps for a more rustic look. Decapping is a laborious job, so she says you can expect friends and relatives to avoid you at that stage.

Gathering the Tools

Basket making requires pine needles, waxed thread (Native Americans used sinew, and some basket makers still prefer it), a base material such as wood or plastic, a sharp scissors, a sharp sewing needle with a large eye and a gauge to hold the coil of needles as you sew them together.

The gauge also maintains a uniformity in the coil size as you circle the basket. Some people use a 2-inch piece of 3/8-inch copper or plastic tubing; Blair simply uses a short piece of a large soda straw (again, about 3/4 of an inch wide and 2 inches long).

The base can be anything — round, square or rectangle. Nature-loving artists use a section of a black walnut shell; the natural holes in the cavity provide a way to sew it to the first coil of needles.

A round bit of plastic, wood or any other material is suitable. Drill or punch holes around the edge so it can be sewed to a coil. A 4-inch coil of needles can also serve as the base, and that’s the method described below by Blair.

Begin to Coil

Blair says the needles must be wet and flexible, so wash them and pull off the caps at the end, but don’t separate them if they don’t separate themselves (often there will be three needles to a nodule or cap).

Put about 3 feet of string on the sewing needle. Fill the tube or straw with pine needles (it will probably hold 4-6). Start wrapping the thread tightly around the needles for three inches or so, moving the tube as you go.

After you have 3 to 4 inches sewn, force the coil into a circle, bending the needles back on themselves; secure the circle by pushing the needle and thread through the circle.

Making the Bottom

Reload the tube and continue with your first coil. Each time you wrap thread around the coil, you also stitch it through the previous coil. For aesthetics, find a method to keep the threading even from coil to coil; Blair uses her thumb to measure the distance. Keep adding needles to the tube as you go, always keeping it full so the coils are an equal thickness.

Whenever you get down to about 4 or 5 inches of thread, filter the thread onto another 3-foot string. If you find it too difficult to weave one length of thread into another, you could tie a knot and then hide the knot between the coils, but remember that the Anasazi never used knots.

Once the bottom is as wide as you wish (and why not begin with a small basket?), start to slant the needle upwards so the basket will naturally go up.

Creating the Walls

You can choose to make a straight wall around the bottom or taper it by gradually sloping each coil outward. As you spiral out, the stitches should get farther apart; again, find a method to space them properly. Keep the coils tight. Once you’ve reached the desired height, stop adding needles to the tube and allow the needles to taper down. Trim the needles with a scissors if they don’t taper properly. In the Anasazi baskets, it is hard to see where the coil ends.

Don’t hurry. Blair says even experienced basket makers can spend an hour per coil.

Finishing the Basket

Blair says”the ancients” used pitch bark to seal and preserve their baskets, but today it’s probably easier to use beeswax or shellac.”I thought I would use pine sap. I burned a tank of gas, driving through the forest. Hours later I had this little wad of pitch, mostly from bark beetle trees. It was just about enough to do an eighth of a basket.” She recommends varnish, beeswax or nothing at all.

Start with a small project, perhaps even a coaster, to avoid frustration. Blair suggests that beginners do small baskets of perhaps 3-4 inches in diameter. Explore opportunities to learn online or in person at a class or workshop. Even inspecting a coil basket in your hands can inspire and educate.

Finally, Blair suggests from experience, don’t hide your pine needle crafts under a bushel basket or in a treasure room; show them off, offer them at a gallery or use them in your home.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2021 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Our Goat Renaissance

By Laura Johnson Andrews

Humans and goats share a deep bond, one that’s rich with fun and laughter. Photo by Mark Smither

When I was growing up in eastern Yankton County, we only knew one person who raised goats — an eccentric bachelor named Ernie Stortvedt, who lived across the road from my grandparents and was famous for his lackadaisical approach to cleanliness. Even in our fun-loving neighborhood, Ernie didn’t set an example anyone was apt to emulate. Goats and Ernie remained linked in my mind for decades.

That changed five years ago, when my niece blew her birthday money on a goat. My family quickly learned that goats are kind of like potato chips — nobody has just one. Soon, my brother and sister-in-law started going to livestock sales in search of goat bargains. Friends offer them goats. Bucks and does regularly escape their sex-segregated pastures and five months later, baby goats arrive. It’s not unusual to find a diapered kid or two in their house, confined in a playpen as they await their next bottle feeding. Now my family describes themselves as goat hoarders. They even have a sweet brown Boer named Honey earmarked for my daughter to work with when she starts 4-H.

Goats will probably never supplant cattle in South Dakota, but ownership is rising. According to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, South Dakota’s goat population consisted of 17,868 animals in 2017, an increase of about 7,000 over the previous 10 years. That number will undoubtedly be higher when the next goat census is released in 2022. I asked Katie Freng Doty, Yankton County 4-H’s Youth Development Assistant, if she’d noticed the change. Doty, who raises 30 Boer goats with her husband, Tyler, and daughter, Avery, on their farm north of Mission Hill, said that she and her sister were among the first to show meat goats in our area in 2011.”In my younger years of 4-H I don’t recall there being a Market Meat Goat show at the state fair,” Doty says.”It is now just as big of a show as any of the other species.”

I turned to a few other goat-loving South Dakotans to find out what makes the animals so popular. Most people agreed that goats are livestock on a human scale, which makes sense — archeological evidence indicates that humans first tamed the goat around 10,000 years ago, making it one of the earliest species to become domesticated. Goats also require less space, feed and money than other, larger creatures. But the animals are also intelligent and full of personality, so it’s easy for human and goat to create a deep bond, one that’s often full of laughter. Doty remembers her sister’s first goat, a runt named Bambi.”Any time we would take our goats for walks, her goat would only make it so far and he would just flop over. My sister, who was only 9 at the time, would pick him up and carry him home,” she says.”He caught on to that pretty quick. It didn’t take long and we would only make it a couple steps before he was done walking.”

Four-Legged Hospitality

Visitors of all ages enjoy getting to know the livestock at Pleasant Valley Farm and Cabins of Custer. Photo by Ardent Photography.

In a quiet valley in the southern Black Hills, a guard llama named Batman watches over his herd of goats with a sharp eye and deadly feet, ever on the lookout for mountain lions, coyotes and other threats.”He is not a pet,” says Susan Barnes of Pleasant Valley Farm and Cabins.”We’ve seen him kill coyotes. He stomped them to death.”

Susan worked at the University of Wyoming for decades, while her husband, Tom, was an environmental engineer. But when they retired in 2004, they knew they wanted to return to the 120-acre farm near Custer that Susan’s family had called home for generations. They divided the land into 17 pastures, leaving 40 acres for growing winter feed, and began to raise Boer show goats, but their interests quickly morphed into creating a herd of crossbred Boer, Spanish and Savannah goats for meat purposes. In 2019, the couple opened three vacation cabins and started giving farm tours to Black Hills visitors curious about the goats, Batman, and the rest of the menagerie: two herd dogs, Lily and Monte, a flock of free-range chickens and a few pigs.”A lot of these people are from Chicago and places like that and have never really seen animals,” Susan says. And while the guests may giggle at a goat’s antics and get a kick out of feeding the livestock, Susan makes it clear that farm life is not all fun and games.”You have to be here all the time. It’s dirty. It’s heavy. It can be sad if you have a goat that gets hurt. This kind of work isn’t for everybody.”

Tom, who passed away in August 2020, was a driving force in the promotion of goats as livestock and as food animals in South Dakota — not always an easy task in cattle country. He served as vice president of the South Dakota Specialty Producers for two years, teamed with area chefs to introduce goat meat, also known as chevon, to local palates and was willing to talk goats any time he had a willing listener.”Tom was a good promoter. He really liked people and loved his goats,” Susan says.”He set a pretty good standard for me to keep up. Tom was crazy to get people to buy goats.”

Luckily, Susan has ample support from their two children, who have been heavily involved in business decisions from the beginning. Daughter Molly Schultz and her husband Clayton manage the farm’s social media, Airbnb listing and website, PleasantValleyFarmandCabins.com. Son Tony and his wife Heather live in Alaska, but they helped Tom build the cabins and come home to handle maintenance jobs.”It’s a real family deal,” Susan says.

Susan describes goat meat as healthy, lean and mild.”It’s just kind of unique and it’s not something that overpowers you. I use goat hamburger for everything that I would use regular hamburger for,” she says. The farm supplies meat to A&D Jamaican Restaurant in Rapid City, Wild Spruce Market, Skogen Kitchen and Black Hills Burger & Bun of Custer, which sometimes serves a goatburger special. But their best customers are a group of Pakistani doctors at Monument Health, who use the meat in dishes from their homeland.

Having a local market for meat ensures that the Barnes’ goats are all more or less friendly — a bad attitude is a death sentence at Pleasant Valley Farm.”If you’re mean, you turn into goatburger,” Susan says.

***

New Mexico-Style Green Chili

by Suzanne Stemme of The Goat Rancher

1 pound goat meat, cubed

1 sweet onion, chopped

1 tablespoon oil

1 can black beans

1 can cream-style corn

1/2 cup Hatch green chiles

2 tablespoons ground cumin

1 tablespoon chili powder

SautÈ goat and chopped onion in oil until onion is soft (about 5 to 7 minutes). Add black beans, corn, green chiles and spices. Cover pan and simmer on low heat for 1 1/2 hours, stirring frequently. Top with grated cheese and serve with tortilla chips or corn bread.

Soap Making in Smithwick

Connie Koski snuggles with Zoey, a small-eared Alpine-LaMancha cross from the High Prairie Dairy Goats herd near Smithwick.

Anita Mason and Connie Koski, Smithwick’s goat herding soap makers, came to South Dakota for the climate. Mason ran a raw milk cow share program and kept Alpine goats in her native Virginia for decades before she was diagnosed with lupus. Southern humidity exacerbated the inflammatory disease, so the pair moved someplace more arid.”We’re both getting older and we said, ëIf we’re going to do this farming thing, we need to be able to walk,'” Mason says. In 2019, Koski took a job teaching social science at Oglala Lakota College. The two settled in Fall River County and started High Prairie Dairy Goats and the Grubby Goat Soap Company.

Their South Dakota herd primarily consists of LaManchas, a breed with a sweet disposition, high-butterfat milk and nubby, barely-there”gopher ears.””Everybody always asks about the LaManchas: ëWhat happened to their ears?’ They think it’s like docking tails on dogs. You can make lots of jokes,” Koski says. There’s also a rescue Toggenburg who suffered ear loss due to frostbite, but the queen of the herd is a sassy Alpine doe named Lucy.”Lucy’s the boss around here. She’s the only goat with ears,” Koski says.

There are several ways to make soap, but the basic process involves milk, fat and lye, which creates a chemical reaction called saponification. Goggles and heavy-duty gloves are worn to avoid lye burns.”It’s pretty much a cross between a chemistry experiment and a math venture,” Mason says.”Everything has to work out in relation to how much lye you use or you’ll melt your house.” She is not exaggerating — she and her father once tried to wing their way through a batch of soap, with disastrous results.”It ate through an aluminum stockpot we were using, ate through the linoleum, burned through the floor and burned through a rug,” she says.

Mason and Koski make a cold-process soap. First, frozen milk is mixed with lye in an ice-cold bowl. Then coconut oil, safflower oil, shea butter or other fats are gently heated to about 110 to 125 degrees. The milk/lye mixture is slowly combined with the warm oil until it becomes thick. The mixture is then poured into bread loaf pans, allowed to rest for 48 hours, then sliced, wrapped and placed on a shelf. The soap blocks cure for five weeks, which allows excess water to evaporate and eliminates any residual harshness from the lye.

Some soap makers would stop there, but Mason and Koski take an additional step called remilling, in which the blocks of soap are melted in the microwave, along with a small amount of additional milk, fragrance and other additives as desired. The soap is then repoured into molds and allowed to dry for about 24 hours. The remilling creates a soft, smooth soap that is gentle enough for Mason’s sensitive skin.”I like the softer bar,” she says.”If I’m comfortable, then everybody else should be comfortable.”

The pandemic halted craft shows, so goat’s milk soap production has slowed accordingly. Instead, the pair focuses on raising milk-fed pork.”It really makes a difference in the meat. It’s a super moist pork,” Mason says.”It tends to be very flavorful, like somebody slow-cooked it for two days.”

Once the pandemic ends, Koski hopes to introduce South Dakotans to their docile LaManchas.”Our plan was to bring some of these awesome East Coast lines out this way. It’s hard to go meet the kids at 4-H because COVID put the kibosh on that. Maybe we aren’t super awesome yet, but we’d really like to start showing,” she says. Mason wants to educate people about the value of dairy goats as part of a self-sustaining lifestyle.”There’s just no better animal than a dairy goat for that. You can make your own dairy products. You can raise bum lambs and calves off of their milk. Most people could have one in their backyard.” But perhaps their greatest challenge is finding a trusted neighbor so they can take a vacation.”We’re trying to sucker somebody into looking after the goats so we can get away for a while. It’s not working out very well for us. As soon as we say ëdairy goats’ they run,” Mason says.

Raised by Goats in Groton

Tessa Erdmann of Groton had learned patience and adaptability through her work in the show ring. Photo by Jacee J Photography.

After his family sold off their herd of registered Angus cattle, third-generation farmer Darrin Erdmann of Groton vowed to stick to corn and soybeans. Then his daughter, Tessa, joined 4-H. Erdmann bought her three goats, two does and a wether, and it all went downhill from there.”You can’t keep a waterer open for just three, so I got about 15 more. Then you can’t pay for the water with just 15 so I got about 20 more. Then we bought some more. At one point we had about 150,” Darrin says.”A project like this is hard to run as a business. It turns into a hobby, so you’re not really watching your balance sheet on it.”

The Erdmann family, which includes wife Julie and son Jarrett, raises predominantly Boer-based show goats, supplying animals to 4-H kids and to the local population of Karen and Somali immigrants. Darrin also owns Texkota Panel and Gate, distributing durable American-made steel pens to livestock producers.

Darrin remembers the public’s puzzlement when his daughter first showed goats at the South Dakota State Fair.”These old farmers would walk through and they were just amazed. ëWhy do we have goats here? This is South Dakota.'” But as a member of the state’s 4-H meat goat committee, Darrin has seen firsthand the goat explosion, which he credits in part to the bond that children develop with their animals.”Every one of them has almost a pet quality. Other livestock do not get that bond with a kid,” he says.

Tessa, a senior at Groton High School, has had the opportunity to bond with many goats since she first started showing in 2013 — some more successfully than others. Her first year, she wrangled a 100-pound hellion named Thunderbolt.”He had the worst personality. He was just absolutely wild. Holding that goat was never easy,” Tessa says. But she didn’t give up.”It drove me to try new things, different coolers, different feed, sit in their pen a little bit more. The next year, all the changes that I made paid off.”

That adaptability has served Tessa well, both when it comes to bonding with goats and when dealing with surprises in the show ring. One of her most harrowing experiences happened when her goat got diarrhea in front of a first-time judge in the middle of the 2018 Senior Showmanship competition.”I didn’t know what to do because obviously that’s not good looking for a show animal,” she says.”I wiped it off on my hand and wiped it on the side of my leg and kept going. That was probably the most disgusting thing I’ve ever done.” The judge never mentioned the mishap, and Tessa and her goat won the competition.

But whether Tessa won or lost, perhaps one of the greatest gifts Tessa has gotten from the goat world is friendship.”When I would go to these shows, all the kids there were just like me. They worked with their livestock day in and day out. They’ve become like a second family,” she says. Tessa is deciding whether to attend South Dakota State University or Oklahoma State University, but wherever she goes, she knows that friendly faces will make college feel like home.”4-H and FFA have given me the opportunity to branch out and meet so many different people,” she says.”My friends always joke if they meet a new person I probably know them first.”

Tessa gives 4-H a lot of credit in shaping her into the confident young woman she is today, but her father puts it more bluntly.”People always say, ëTessa’s such a good kid. Who raised her? It wasn’t you.’ It was the goats.”

From Finance to Fromage

Rapid City cheesemaker Spencer Crawford believes dairy goats are a good addition to a self-sufficient homestead.

Spencer Crawford went overseas to study finance and came home a goat farmer. After attending graduate school in Paris, he found himself drawn to socially and environmentally responsible entrepreneurship. During the course of his 10-year stay in France, he raised bees outside of Paris, dabbled in permaculture and was considering a move to West Africa to raise goats when a phone call from his mother changed everything.”My mom says, ëNo, no, no. I can visit you in Paris, but I don’t think I can make it to West Africa. Why don’t you come home? Why are you going to be a farmer in Africa? You can be a farmer in Pennington County,'” Crawford remembers.”Listen to Mom. Usually she’s right.”

Crawford returned to his native Rapid City three years ago, where he teaches French and Spanish at St. Thomas More Middle School and practices small-scale agriculture on his parents’ acreage north of town. His father, Tony, watches the farm during the day.”He helps out, but he and his friends are still scratching their heads. He never thought that his horse barn would be filled with a bunch of goats. I think the horses might be a little confused too,” Crawford says.

Some cowboys mock goats as”the poor man’s cow,” but Crawford appreciates the animal.”In terms of what they eat and what they produce, it’s just a lot more human scale,” he says.”You don’t need a ton of land, a ton of infrastructure. To milk the goats, you need a bucket with a lid, and the home kitchen is enough to have your family totally self-sufficient with milk and cheese and soap.”

With his herd of 10 Alpine dairy goats, plus chickens, honeybees and a number of cats, Crawford engages in permaculture, an interconnected style of farming in which all of the elements work together holistically.”Every plant that you plant, you can eat it or the goats can eat it,” he says.”No loafers. Everyone has a job.” One of the goats’ jobs is to provide rich milk, which Crawford uses to create tomme, an aged, washed-rind cheese.

The origins of cheesemaking are lost to time, but it is believed that the first cheeses were made when fresh milk was stored in pouches made from animal stomachs. Rennet, a mixture of enzymes found in the stomach’s lining, coagulated the milk and caused curds and whey to form. Crawford’s method is a bit more sophisticated. First, goat milk is heated in a sterilized pot. Next, bacteria is added to help the cheese develop flavor, followed by the curd-forming rennet. The curds are separated from the whey, placed in a mold or cheesecloth, weighted down and salted. This helps remove moisture from the cheese and encourages a crust to form.”It’s going to look a little spooky sometimes, but what’s inside is the good stuff,” Crawford says. His cheeses are left to age in a spare refrigerator in his basement. Cheese ages best in a humid environment at a temperature of about 50 degrees, so Crawford stores the cheeses in Tupperware containers with the lids cracked open and periodically washes each cheese with salt water. This helps kill bad bacteria or mold, develops the cheese’s protective crust and draws out additional moisture.

Unlike a commercial operation, there are many variables involved in Crawford’s cheese, so every wheel is a surprise.”The cheese is kind of a living, changing entity of its own,” he says.”You cut into a cheese that you’ve been saving for 10 months and then the wheel of cheese next to it that you made three days later and you think, ëWhat the heck? Why is this one so delicious?'”

Crawford would like to build a commercial kitchen, but due to government regulations, a health department-compliant cheesemaking facility is an expensive proposition. For now, he’s content to watch the comic interactions between his animals, share his best cheeses at potlucks and enjoy his after-school farm venture.”Some people go to the bar after work. I go milk some goats,” he says.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2021 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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A 66-County Tree

By Steve Riedel

Steve Riedel turned weathered wood gathered from across the state into ornate Christmas ornaments representing every county.

I was stranded at home during the bitter cold winter of 2020-2021 and the isolation that came with the COVID-19 pandemic made matters worse. I desperately needed something to do. My thoughts turned to Christmas at the Capitol. My wife Marietta and I rarely missed the annual festival in which dozens of colorful and brightly illuminated Christmas trees fill the halls of the Capitol in Pierre. I thought,”I wish I could decorate one of those trees.”

My boredom collided with inspiration. What if I made a collection of wooden Christmas ornaments, crafted out of wood gathered from each county in South Dakota, in the hope of displaying them in Pierre? As soon as the weather allowed — and being mindful of social distancing — Marietta and I set out to visit the 66 counties in the state and ask South Dakotans if they would donate a piece or two of old wood.

Asking for our first donation was an anxious moment. I was so nervous that I planned the first stop at the home of acquaintances in Beadle County not far from our home in Huron. We drove into the farmyard and parked in front of the house. Nervously, Marietta asked,”You aren’t really going to walk up there and ask for wood, are you?”

Riedel’s Minnehaha County ornament.

I nodded and walked timidly to the home’s front door, where I found myself talking to both husband and wife.”That’s actually a good idea,” they said, and then gave me directions to two large piles of old wood.”If you don’t find enough wood this time, you can come back for more.” We scoured the piles and left with four posts and a sense of optimism.

I quickly learned that I needed to explain what I meant by”old wood.” While I was merely hoping to collect short pieces of wood that most people would think to be rotten and useless, folks seemed to think I was asking for more. I also learned that people almost universally liked my idea. While I sheepishly laughed at myself when explaining my project, others listened intently and took the idea to heart. Before we finished, people had donated weathered wood from broken fence posts, fallen barns and buildings, cattle corrals, rodeo grounds, original family homesteads, broken telephone poles, horse tack and collapsed bridges.

One rancher plucked several fence posts from a retired manure spreader. Another gave me a horse yoke complete with a double tree. We also came home with a few dozen fresh eggs, though we turned down some turkeys that were free if we butchered them ourselves.

As we traveled door to door, we marveled that people placed such trust in us. We were often sent off on our own, completely trusted on private property. At one farm, I knocked on the door and explained my purpose.”We’d love to help you,” said the gentleman who answered the door,”but I can’t right now. We need to go to town to have our picture taken.” He got in his car and, speaking through his car window, encouraged us to search through his old wood pile.”Take a look around and if you see something that will work, help yourself. If not, there’s more wood behind the barn,” he said as the family drove away.

The more people donated, the more meaningful my ornament project became. People proudly gave us pieces of South Dakota history. We were given the very wood that our ancestors used to build South Dakota. In some cases, I suspect the wood helped build South Dakotans. As a rancher handed me an old fence post, he said,”You can take this. It was hand-split by my grandfather when he was a young man.” His grandfather was former Governor Tom Berry.

Faulk County ornament.

Another elderly donor, while digging through a small collection of posts hiding under a rusty truck fender, came up with a unique piece.”Would this post work? I’ve been saving it forever but don’t know what I will ever do with it.” As it turns out, it was a post he had saved from the World War II era.”We couldn’t get round posts during the war,” he said. Remarkably, the ornament I made with it has two dark holes left behind by a staple driven into it sometime during the war years.

When cold weather did not permit traveling, I worked obsessively at making 66 ornaments. Creating one to represent Lake County was especially meaningful. My ancestors settled there in the 1890s, and I was raised on a homestead established by my grandfather in the early 1900s. I had searched his homestead nine years earlier to find a post to make an ornament that would be our only grandson’s first Christmas ornament. That was one of the first ornaments I ever made. The post I found was comprised of wood with a rich burgundy color. I made Lake County’s ornament from that same post. The wood was so brittle that during my first attempt, it imploded in my lathe. Fortunately, I learned a lighter touch, and I have since made an ornament to give to both my son and daughter from that same old post.

After thousands of miles on the road and as many hours in my workshop, the only question that remained was whether my Christmas at the Capitol wish would come true. Marietta and I summarized the project and our experiences on the road and sent it to the committee in Pierre. Their approval arrived shortly thereafter. I got misty-eyed when I read the news.

The abundance of wood I collected actually allowed me to make more than one ornament from some counties. By the time I was finished, I had crafted finial ornaments, candles, Christmas trees, snowmen, bells, candy canes, Christmas baskets, bird houses … all related to the spirit of Christmas. Some aren’t perfect, but each ornament — like the many South Dakotans we met — is unique.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2021 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.