The little city of Deadwood, where just more than 1,000 people live on steep mountain streets and visitors come to test their luck in glitzy casinos, is winning a reputation as the biennial home to the South Dakota Festival of Books. Photos by Bernie Hunhoff.
Tag: culture
State Fair Fun
South Dakota Magazine finished its 2015″Fair Tour” with a Labor Day weekend visit to the South Dakota State Fair in Huron. We met all sorts of interesting people. Here are just a few of them. Photos by Bernie Hunhoff.
Soul Butter & Hog Wash
Rock Garden Tour, a South Dakota Public Radio show, is doing a barn tour called “Soul Butter and Hog Wash.” They taped at Governor Dennis Daugaard’s rural Dell Rapids barn earlier, and on August 29 they taped the show at the Bernie and Myrna Hunhoff barn north of Yankton near the little farming town of Utica.
Flute Master
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| Bryan Akipa with an eagle whistle. |
As a young artist studying under Oscar Howe, Bryan Akipa was launched on a new trajectory in life by a conversation about mallards. Akipa, who was born and raised on the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Reservation where he still resides, was studying painting under the master Dakota artist at the University of South Dakota.
“He used to do research on his paintings, and he was working on something to do with mallards,” says Akipa. “He asked me if I went duck hunting and I said ‘yes,’ and he asked me about how [mallards] take off from the water.” As they were talking about flight patterns of waterfowl, Howe brought out a mallard-head flute crafted by the late Lakota flute maker Richard Fool Bull.
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| A mallard flute by Lakota artist Richard Fool Bull inspired Akipa to research Native flute making. |
“I had never seen flutes in our culture before. I didn’t realize we had flutes.” The instruments sparked his interest. He began making sketches of traditional flutes, empowered by his high school drafting classes and inspired by the work of Fool Bull, who he met once briefly at the Howe studio. From those sketches, he went on to create his own prototype with a pocketknife.
At the time, Native American flutes were an endangered art form. If it weren’t for a handful of artists like Richard Fool Bull — a tribal member at the Rosebud Indian Reservation — who bridged the gap between the days when much of Dakota/Lakota/Nakota language and heritage was illegal and today, the art may have been lost.
“People started noticing that I was interested and talking about it, and finally someone said, ‘One of my grandmother’s cousins knows about flutes.'” He was introduced to elder Norman Blue and then to another elder, David Marks, who continued his education in flute making.
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| Akipa has a large collection of found and self-made traditional wind instruments, including these eagle-bone whistles. |
“David Marks had made and played flutes when he was younger. He had received a flute in 1918 from his grandfather. [Blue and Marks] taught me a lot of oral history. They taught me the songs. I started learning the flute as a cultural journey.”
Akipa has never studied music. His interest in creating the instruments led him to learn to play.
As his knowledge grew and he mastered the craft he became part a generation of young Native flute players — along with Carlos Nakai, Kevin Locke [Cheyenne River Reservation] and others — from different tribes, who revived the tradition in different ways.
His career took another Howe-like detour after a couple semesters at USD. Coming from a family with a proud history of military service — his uncle Woodrow Wilson Keeble was a legendary hero of the Korean War and one of three Native Americans awarded the Medal of Honor — he enlisted and spent a few years in the Army. While he was away, he corresponded with his mentor.”We kept in contact. I’d come back on leave and go visit him. Then when I got out of the Army I studied under him again.”
Soon after Akipa returned from his time in service though, Howe passed away. Feeling unanchored, he followed in the footsteps of his mentor yet again, completing an internship as a teacher at the Pierre Indian Learning Center (PILC). There he perfected the craft and started again to find his own path, building a reputation as a flute maker.
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| The ċan aaki, or saddle, seen tied with leather cord to these instruments, is unique to Native American flutes. |
The basement of his home on the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate is a woodwind workshop bursting with flutes of all sizes, adorned with the heads of eagles, bear and elk. He carves most of his flutes from eastern red cedar, but experiments with other mediums.
He’s begun working with the stalks of sweet corn, inspired by reading about the Hidatsa oral historian Buffalo Bird Woman. He’s also working with giant sunflower stalks. He has a small collection (some self-made) of whistles made from the bones of eagle wings. He keeps reams of meticulously drawn hole-pattern maps that determine the scale and range of different instruments.
A unique component of flutes from various Native American cultures is the incorporation of what some Dakota traditionally called the ċan aaki, also called a saddle or tuning block, a sometimes-ornate, sometimes utilitarian wooden piece that enters the tube from a notch on the top of the instrument.
Instead of a sharper-edged embouchure-hole at one end, Dakota flutes have round openings on both sides and no reed. A vertical bridge in the interior part of the saddle creates two air channels. This manipulates the air jet produced by the player, creating sound. The saddle is usually affixed with leather cord and can be adjusted to fine tune the sound of the instrument.”Every culture has flutes, but [Native American] flutes are the only flutes in the world that use this method.”
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| A table in Akipa’s workshop with hole pattern diagrams and flutes. |
Despite not having a formal musical education, having taught himself to recreate what had almost become a lost art, Akipa also began receiving attention for his playing skills, first at the PILC and local museums, then internationally. He released his first album, The Flute Player, in 1993. He has released five more since, receiving several”Nammy” nominations and traveling around the world. Beyond flute making and music, Akipa is also exploring digital arts.
In the past few years, with elder family members to care for, he hasn’t traveled so far from the Oyate to play, though he did perform last year with the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra as part of the Lakota Music Project. While his work as a performer has made him an international ambassador for the music of the Native American flute, one or more of the instruments he is creating now in his workshop may become draft cards of sorts for the next generation to carry forward the art form, like a mallard-head flute made by Richard Fool Bull was for him.
Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.
Lakota Nation Invitational
We sent a writer to the Lakota Nation Invitational Tournament (LNI) last weekend in Rapid City. We’ll have a major feature article on the LNI in the fall of 2015, but we thought we’d share some photographs of the big winter extravaganza that has been held for the past 38 years at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center in Rapid City. Photos by Bernie Hunhoff.
In the Red
Farm equipment comes in every color of the rainbow, but in Huron, from June 26-28, the color of the day will be red — as in International Harvester red.
International Harvester Collectors Chapter 21 of South Dakota will serve as the host club for the 25th Annual National Red Power Round Up on the state fairgrounds. Collectors, exhibitors, vendors and fans of Big Red from across the country will descend on Huron to talk and gawk at every type of farm equipment the company made, from the steel wheel era to the 1980s.
Many of Chapter 21’s members will be showing one or more of their prized possessions. Jay Graber of Parker can choose from around 100 machines, though not all of them are restored. Jason Sweeter of Lennox will be there with several from the extensive collection started by his father. Nick Osterman, of Groton, has assembled a fleet of nearly all the Hi Boy tractors that IH built to work the cane fields. He plans on bringing 20 down to Huron.
A wide range of activities is planned around the exhibits, including musical performances and a Thursday night chicken feed put on by the Spink and Clark County 4-H clubs. Billy Steers, author of the”Tractor Mac” children’s book series, will be giving presentations all three days. (Click here for a complete event schedule).
Chapter 21 holds a state roundup every year, often in conjunction with other farm events such as the Menno Pioneer Power Show. This is the second time it has hosted a national event.
“We held a national roundup at Prairie Village in Madison in 1997 and we had about 385 exhibitors,” said Wilbur Goehring, chairman of the event’s organizing committee.”This year we’re expecting around 1,200, and many of those will be bringing multiple items to show.”
International Harvester was formed in 1902 by the merger of McCormick Harvesting Machine Company and Deering Harvester Company, along with several smaller agricultural manufacturers. As the company grew its offerings expanded to include cotton pickers, pickups and combines, to name only a few, but the company’s signature product on small farms in this part of the world was its fire engine red Farmall tractors.
In its time the company manufactured everything from M-1 rifles to toys and commemorative items, and a little bit of everything will be on display in Huron. An exhibitor from Missouri will even be bringing an entire Irma Harding kitchen — complete with a kitchen sink, of course — to the fairgrounds. Irma was a marketing creation, like Betty Crocker or Aunt Jemima, who promoted the IH line of refrigerators and freezers during the 1950s.
“IH was the king of the hill [among farm equipment manufacturers] for many years,” said Goehring, but stiff competition and poor management combined to put pressure on the company’s bottom line. After many years of slim profits, the agricultural manufacturing sector of the business was sold in 1984 to Tenneco Inc. Since then they have been marketed under the Case IH nameplate.
Case IH will be bringing the earliest and last tractors built by International Harvester to the Round Up: a gas-powered 1924 Farmall Regular, and a 5488 from 1985, which was the last one to roll off its assembly line in Rock Island, Illinois. A brand new tanker/pumper fire truck, fabricated on an International 4400 Workstar 4X2 truck chassis, will also be on display.
People who need a golf cart or side-by-side to get around the fairgrounds are welcome to bring them along.”We’ve had people call and ask if it’s okay to use their John Deere Gator,” said Goehring.”We tell them yeah, that’s OK. If you’re not too embarrassed to drive it that’s fine with us.”
Hang a Left on 438th Street
When or how or why it happened, I do not know. Perhaps it was while I was asleep, or when I was brushing my teeth. It may even have occurred while I was improving my mind by watching reruns of “Baywatch.”
All I know is that, not so very long ago, I was living at the intersection of two plain old gravel roads, complete with a pair of stop signs that most drivers didn’t even see as they raced by at the speed of Nolan Ryan’s fastball. But today I live at the corner of 438th Street and 310th Avenue. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Thanks to this new Rural Addressing System I was able to move, sort of, and I didn’t have to spend weeks digging in grocery store Dumpsters for boxes to pack stuff in.
While I am profoundly grateful for that, I have decided that this situation represents more; it is an opportunity for a new career. Some men hope for high public office, or great wealth. Not I. My ambition has always been to be a chronically crabby, suspicious, complaining, guaranteed-to-see-the-worst-in-everything whiner.
This rural addressing business could be just the issue I need.
My mentors in this new career are those guys, found in nearly every donut shop, cafe or tavern, who complain constantly about everything. From their perches at the bar or counter they nurse a cup of coffee or schooner of beer for hours while eavesdropping on the conversations around them, ever alert for opportunities to let others know this (town, county, state, nation, world) is going to hell. Since they invariably know everybody, and have opinions on all subjects from commodity price supports to whether the high school basketball team should use a zone or man-to-man defense, they are never silent for long.
Incidentally, I hope no women are offended by my excluding them from this group. Let’s be frank. Women simply don’t have what it takes to be negative for decades on end. Either that or they have sense enough not to do their complaining in front of strangers. Whatever the reason, constant public complaining seems to be almost exclusively a male pastime.
My whining colleagues and I have a rich history in these United States. Back in 1776 our grumbling forefathers were heard to mutter, “Independence my @#%&*! What did those fools think the British were going to do? They’ll get us all killed! And whose idea was it to make Washington a general? My %$&#@* horse could do a better job!”
And so on. With every political turn and technological development we were dependably, loudly and profanely there, declaring this or that would not work. We never actually halted anything; most of the time we could be seen in the country’s rear view mirror, fuming and sputtering and vowing, “You’ll never find any of that electricity stuff in my house!”
In the great engine of progress, we are the sand.
Which brings me to the Rural Addressing System. Was there ever an issue more in tune to the needs of complainers? Think about it. It requires us all to learn something new, which is one sure strike against it. For another, the whole scheme is figured by how many miles your section line road is from Wyoming (going east-west) and North Dakota (going north-south).
Does that sound like a system ordinary people would invent?
If you were using something equivalent in your home, and a guest asked if they could use the bathroom, you wouldn’t tell them, “It’s right down the hall, last door on the left.” No, no, no. You would say, “It’s 50 feet east of the garage and 4 feet north of the bedroom.”
Or if you needed to tell someone how to get to your farm you’d tell them, “Go to Wyoming, and when you’re 127 miles away from North Dakota, hang a right. Then go 391 miles east and you can’t miss us, a white house with green trim. If you hit Minnesota, you’ve gone too far.”
I just hope I’m not too late. All of the good lines have probably been used a million times already. “Some $%&#@ bureaucrat in Pierre with nothin’ better to do!” And, “What a bunch of @&*%$# foolishness! A waste of taxpayers’ money, all them %$#&@ signs! Ain’t but one $%*&@# place out that way and they need two dozen signs to tell you how to get there!”
There’s still probably room on the lunatic fringe, but I’m not up to speculating about how the Rural Addressing System is part of a CIA plot. Since I’m a novice I will probably stick to some basic grumbling about the cost, followed by the tried and true complainers anthem: “Well I’ll be %$#&@ if I ever use it! I’ll get my mail at the post office!”
Luckily, it’s not far from the donut shop.
Editor’s note: This article is revised from the May/June 1996 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.
Too Much of a Good Thing
“You’re sure? Four hundred across … what’s this state?”
“South Dakota.”
“Four hundred miles across South Dakota? I didn’t think I was even near the place. It never occurred to me I’d ever set foot in South Dakota.” By this time the original information has sunk in. “Anyway, I thought it was a little state.”
Living near the South Dakota-Wyoming border, I’ve had several such conversations. Call these folks South Dakota’s accidental tourists, motorists using the nation’s interstate highways to get from the Pacific Northwest to jobs in Chicago, basic training in Texas, funerals in Ohio. Nobody told them they’d spend the better part of a day in the great unknown between Spearfish and Brandon. Or Spearfish and North Sioux City, if they hang a right on I-29.
They wonder, in perfectly serious tones, will there be gas? Food? AAA? ATMs? Fellow travelers?
“All those things,” I assure them. Sometimes they believe me.
For Americans who label themselves “bicoastal,” the region between the Cascades and Appalachians might be quaint. We’ve got all the necessary ingredients — scenery and a generous supply of out-of-the-ordinary people, places and things — it just needs to be condensed somewhat.
Montana is trendy these days, so west-to-east travelers on I-90 can relax and enjoy the scenery. Which is a good thing since there’s so much of it, nearly 600 miles worth. Next up is a few hundred miles of Wyoming. Then comes South Dakota.
It’s right there in Rand McNally, but South Dakota still comes as a whopper of a surprise for some drivers. Between our western border and Spearfish the country looks a whole lot like … well, Montana and Wyoming. The state seems a tad redundant.
So these accidental tourists pull into the first gas or food joint they spot, as long as they’re still within sight of the I-90 lifeline, seeking not gas or food as much as human contact. Black Hills folk have learned to recognize them by their awkward opening lines.
“Wind always blow like this?”
“Get a lot of snow here?”
“Think people will ever outnumber cows in these parts?”
To which locals offer well-rehearsed replies.
“It stopped blowing after you crossed into the shelter of the Hills.”
“Not enough to keep the fire danger low through summer.”
“Hope not, because cattle are more profitable than people most years.”
Accidental tourists are completely a breed apart from traditional ones, who South Dakotans know are eager to hear of Indian lore, shortcuts to Wind Cave and lurid details of Wild Bill Hickok’s assassination.
So it comes as a shock to be describing, say, how the bullet passed through Wild Bill’s skull and into his poker pal’s arm only to have an accidental tourist interrupt you.
“Yeah, yeah,” they say impatiently, “but if I drop down to I-80 and cross Nebraska instead of South Dakota, does that put me into St. Louis any sooner?”
Joan Bockwoldt, who ran the I-90 information and rest area on the South Dakota-Wyoming border for 20 years, told me accidental tourists may be a vanishing species. “There were a lot more 10 or 20 years ago,” she says, crediting better information systems for motorists, including on-board computer mapping, for the decline.
Perhaps sensing this development, some Black Hills residents are insisting that accidental tourists shape up right now and behave like traditional ones. Recently I overheard an elderly woman scolding a man whose only hope was to see Minnesota by nightfall. He had no intention of seeking out Mount Rushmore.
“You’ve got to see it!” she insisted. “It’s the Shrine of Democracy!”
“Okay, I’ll take a look. I can see it from I-90, right?
“No!”
“Why not?”
Why not, indeed. If only South Dakota could be condensed, so all our finest features were adjacent to I-90 and I-29, we’d rank first in quaint.
Editor’s Note: Paul Higbee has written regularly for South Dakota Magazine since 1991, serving as our Black Hills correspondent. This column appeared in our May/June 1998 issue. To order a copy or to subscribe, call us at 800-456-5117.
Boots, Caps and Taxes
Editor’s Note: This examination of South Dakota culture appeared in the September 1985 issue of South Dakota Magazine, one of the first issues to be published. The state has changed, but many of these observations seem as true today as they did over 30 years ago.
It isn’t like I’ve been a logger or a merchant marine or a soldier of fortune or anything, but I guess I’ve kicked around a little even if I’ve never lived anywhere but the Midwest. I spent my adolescence here in this Land of Infinite Variety, four years in college in Omaha, then a little more than five in the Twin Cities before returning to Sioux Falls late last year.
Along the way, I’ve made stops of varying duration — a few hours, a few days, a week — in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Athens, Paris, Washington, and more. It didn’t strike me while I was in any of these places, but it certainly has since we’ve relocated to Sioux Falls. Namely, South Dakota is different from the rest of the world. Here are a few examples:
- In South Dakota, there are no supermarkets. Just”grocery stores.”
- In South Dakota, people do not drive like maniacs. They don’t drive especially well, but this seems to have more to do with a relative lack of other vehicles on the thoroughfares than with pride, vindictiveness or insanity.
- In South Dakota, there are more cowboy boots per capita than in any other Midwestern state. Only a few of them are on the feet of people who look anything like cowboys.
- In South Dakota, a $50,000 house costs $60,000. A $50,000 house costs $75,000 to $90,000 in neighboring states.
- In South Dakota, people do not drink soda. They drink”pop.”
- In South Dakota, an awful lot of towns have the word”city” in their names. And none of them is a city (see below).
- In South Dakota, there are no cities. Just”towns.”
- In South Dakota, the”gimme cap” is king. The mesh-backed adjustable-cap industry would collapse without the active support of nearly every South Dakotan.
- In South Dakota, people seldom say,”Have a nice day.” However, when they do, they usually mean it.
- In South Dakota, automobile mechanics, electricians, contractors, repairmen and the like speak English. They speak some kind of prehistoric patois in other nearby states. Auto mechanics in the Twin Cities don’t speak at all.
- In South Dakota, you can still put out your arm, bend your elbow, yank your fist up and down in the air, and have a passing semi driver give you a blast on his horn. Which is of a lot more interest to kids than it ought to be to you.
- In South Dakota, stop signs are seen as suggestions. Yield signs aren’t seen at all.
- In South Dakota, people say hello to you in shopping centers, in office buildings, or along the sidewalk. I mean, total strangers!
- In South Dakota, the driver of any kind or size of truck will wave at you when you meet on the highway. But only if you’re driving a truck, too.
- In South Dakota, people invariably ask you how it’s going. I have no idea what”it” is, or how it should be going.
- In South Dakota, residents enjoy playing tricks on folks from other states. That’s why Pierre, Hayti, Belle Fourche and Flandreau are pronounced as they are.
- In South Dakota, you’re constantly asked what on earth you’re doing in South Dakota. The correct answer is,”Not paying state income taxes.”
About the Author: William J. Reynolds is the author of The Nebraska Quotient and Moving Targets and does not own a pair of cowboy boots. He lives in Sioux Falls.
