Street Masters car club held the 24th annual Dam Run in Pierre last month. The event also features down hill gravity drags and a show and shine at the Capitol. Deb Eich shared these photos. View more of her work at lifescapephotos.blogspot.com.
John Mitchell shared these photos of a recent stormy night in Pierre. Mitchell is originally from Spearfish but now lives and works in Pierre as a computer support specialist for the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation. “But don’t get me type-cast as a computer nerd, because I’m a nature-lover and photographer at heart,” he jokes.
Mitchell took one photography class in high school and has been honing his skills ever since. “Photography is my escape, my ‘playing golf,’ if you will. I try to go out and take photos every evening,” he says. “Some people I’ve met over the years often don’t realize how much beauty there is in South Dakota and it is my hope to share that with them.” View more of his photos on Facebook and at sodakmoments.com.
In 1962 President Kennedy proclaimed May 15 as National Peace Officers Memorial Day and the week in which that day falls as National Police Week. Police Week pays special recognition to law enforcement officers who lost their lives in the line of duty for the safety and protection of others.
Pierre hosts South Dakota’s memorial service sponsored by the state Fraternal Order of Police. Each year officers from across the state gather to remember their fallen brethren. Yesterday’s ceremony began at the state Law Enforcement Monument at Capitol Lake. The ceremony included prayer, laying a wreath at the foot of the monument and a 21-gun salute. The gathering continued at Madison Avenue Church of Christ.
A roll call of heroes is read each year during the service. Officers or family members come forward to lay a single blue carnation at the front of the church for each officer announced. This year Rapid City Police Chief Steve Allender addressed the participants. Several students from a local elementary school provided music and two students from Riggs High School played”Taps.” Photos by Bob Grandpre.
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| Lori Holmberg, Dakota Discovery Museum director, says Gilfillan’s wagon is a permanent exhibit. |
The coming winter will force South Dakotans to seek indoor amusement, and high on our list should be a visit to local museums. You might be surprised at what you find. Our writers found all sorts of treasures when we did a search for our state’s most interesting and unusual museum artifacts.
Right beneath our noses, in our hometown of Yankton where we publish South Dakota Magazine, we found a Native American pipe bag with an amazing story at the Dakota Territorial Museum. The bag was the centerpiece of a collection of Indian artifacts gathered by Andrew J. Faulk, a 1860s trader and later the third governor of Dakota Territory. Crow Indians probably made the tanned, 43-inch long deer hide bag.
The bag’s recent history is almost as intriguing as its past. In 1995, it was stolen from the museum. For eight years, Yankton County Historical Society board member and artifact collector Larry Ness carried a photograph of the bag, and asked other collectors if they’d seen it. He found it in New York in 2003, and after some legal maneuvering he was able to bring the pipe bag home to the Yankton museum, where it is once again on display.
The Thoen Stone, located at the Adams Museum in Deadwood, is another prized museum piece with an interesting story. The stone is an 8 1/2 by 10 inch scrap of sandstone, purportedly found near Spearfish in 1887 by Louis Thoen. Inscribed on both sides is a message that is still the subject of controversy. The rough script describes how a band of seven men found”all the gold we could carry” in the northern Black Hills, and then were killed by Indian warriors — all except for the writer, Ezra Kind.
Kind supposedly wrote that he was out of food,”without a gun and hiding for his life.” The inscription is dated 1834, 40 years before the Custer expedition into the Hills. The fate of Mr. Kind is unknown, as is the validity of the stone itself.
Another famous stone can be found at the Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre — and its validity is certain. In 1742, Pierre Gaultier de la Verendrye sent his sons from Hudson Bay in Canada to find a water route to China. On foot and horseback, Louis-Joseph and Francois trekked west for over a year — until their Indian guides refused to go farther. The French-Canadians did not find a route to the sea, but they were among the first Europeans to see the Dakota plains. Camping with Indians along the Missouri on March 30, 1743, they buried a lead plate on a hilltop near the mouth of the Bad River to commemorate their journey. Three teenagers found the Verendryes’ partially-exposed lead plate in February of 1913. The artifact helped historians map the Verendryes’ route in their search for the Pacific.
Some of other amazing discoveries we found at local museums include paintings, like the Harvey Dunn originals at Brookings’ South Dakota Art Museum, sculptures like Borglum’s Statue of Lincoln at Keystone’s Borglum Historical Center and more Native American treasures like parfleche containers at Akta Lakota Museum in Chamberlain. Sometimes the museum building itself is a treasure, like the Pettigrew House in Sioux Falls or Adams Museum and House in Deadwood.
Ranchers will be nostalgic about Archer Gilfillan’s sheepherder wagon at the Dakota Discovery Museum in Mitchell. The early-day”mobile home,” a double floored and heated covered wagon, came to the museum 50 years ago. Gilfillan, a popular Harding County writer and speaker, was born in White Earth, Minn. in 1886, the son of an Episcopal missionary to the Ojibway Indians. Gilfillan studied Latin and Greek in prestigious universities and traveled in Europe. He returned to the West to homestead in Harding County. That venture failed and he worked for other ranchers, keeping a journal of the people and events he encountered. He gave a speech about sheep, coyote and human behavior at a wool growers’ convention at Helena, Mont., in 1924 called”Secret Sorrows of a Sheepherder,” and it was so well received he compiled his stories into a book, Sheep: Life on the South Dakota Range.
Every South Dakota museum, large and small, has treasures awaiting us. What better time to discover them than on a cold winter’s day?
Mysteries are rare these days in South Dakota’s hill country. Nearly every square foot of grass has been explored by hunters, ranchers, farmers, historians and archaeologists. Although most everything has been identified, a few finds still baffle researchers — like the stone mosaics of snakes and turtles on bluffs above the Missouri and James rivers. The snake outlines stretch several hundred feet and are made of boulders the size of footballs and bowling balls. The turtle effigies are smaller; they could fit inside a single car garage.
We explored the mystery of the effigies in 2003. Ray Salathe, a cattle rancher, told us he drove over a stone snake pattern many times before realizing what it was.”We didn’t know it was a snake until we got to looking things over,” he said. Salathe never learned who placed the stones in the shape of a snake, even after archaeologists and historians visited his ranch and nearby buttes to study the rocks.”They figure the Indians made them,” he said.”Some think the war parties camped up there because it is so high you can see forever and there’s a spring for water right below the hill. I’ve heard the theory that the stones had something to do with honoring an Indian chief who was killed there. How true it is, I don’t know. Neither does anyone else.”
Eighteen miles northwest of Salathe’s ranch lies Medicine Knoll, which is home to both turtle and snake outlines. The butte that rises about 400 feet above the town of Blunt in Hughes County held special significance to the late Vine Deloria Jr., a respected scholar and author. His great-grandfather, Saswe, survived a surreal experience at Medicine Knoll with rattlesnakes while on a vision quest in 1831.
Saswe had been praying night and day for two days without food or water. On the afternoon of the third day, he was no longer visible on the hill. His mother became frightened and asked a cousin, Brown Bear, to see if Saswe had fainted. As Brown Bear rode to the top of Medicine Butte, his horse became nervous so he tried to turn back. Suddenly the horse and rider found themselves surrounded by hundreds of snakes.
Determined to find his cousin, Brown Bear swung his rope at the snakes to open a path. He found a large bundle of snakes writhing back and forth over Saswe’s prostrate body. He figured he had fainted and the snakes, finding his warm body, had swarmed over him and killed him.
Brown Bear returned to camp to tell what he had seen. The family was devastated and mourning began. But suddenly Saswe walked into the camp. When asked about the snakes he was perplexed, remembering nothing about them. The account was among the 19th century stories passed down within Deloria’s family. Saswe grew to be a respected Yanktonai Chief, so his vision quest added even more mystery to the snake mosaics on Medicine Butte.
According to the Deloria family history, the rattlesnake effigy was already in place on the butte in 1831 when Saswe did his vision quest. Deloria says to the best of his knowledge, the origins of the mosaics are unknown.”Nobody I know in the scholarly world or the Indian worlds can say for certain how old they are or who made them or even why they made them.”
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| Carroll Hardy of Sturgis was one of South Dakota’s noteworthy athletes. |
This week I got my registration form for the annual history conference in Pierre. I’ve never attended, but this year’s focus on our sports history looks especially interesting. Conferences like these love to focus on the political or economic aspects of our history, which are important. But cultural and social components like athletics are just as important, and sometimes overlooked.
One of the speakers is Mel Antonen, who grew up across the street from the baseball field in Lake Norden and became a national baseball writer. He’s going to talk about how baseball games in Yankee Stadium and South Dakota are alike. I’ve heard the presentation before, and it’s well worth hearing again. Not to steal his thunder, but he’ll probably tell the story of covering Cal Ripken when he was going through contract negotiations in Baltimore. He ultimately decided to stay with the Orioles, and when Antonen asked why he turned down more money and bigger markets, Ripken said,”Mel, you just don’t understand baseball in a small town.”
South Dakota has a rich sports tradition. A few years back we asked longtime Yankton sports writer Hod Nielsen to compile a list of 12 of our greatest athletes. That’s not to be read,”the 12 greatest athletes in South Dakota history.” It’s simply a list of impressive athletes that Nielsen saw during his decades of work for the Yankton Press & Dakotan.
He chose all-time greats like Billy Mills, the Pine Ridge native who won the 10,000-meter race at the 1964 Olympics.”Smokey Joe” Mendel briefly held the world record in the 100-meter-dash when he ran it in 9.5 seconds as a senior at Yankton College. Sturgis native Carroll Hardy made an impact on professional football, but he’s probably best known as the only man ever to pinch-hit for the great Ted Williams.
And South Dakota’s athletes continue to make history this week. The University of South Dakota women’s basketball team is in the WNIT for the first time. They welcome Drake to the DakotaDome in Vermillion Thursday at 7 p.m. Also Thursday, South Dakota State University’s men’s team makes its first ever appearance in the NCAA tournament. The Jacks play Baylor at 6:30 p.m., on truTV. And SDSU’s women, in the tournament for the fourth consecutive year, play Purdue Saturday at 12:30.
If you’re near a television or radio, watch and listen. You might hear names we’ll be talking about 50 years from now at another history conference.
The South Dakota Discovery Center and Aquarium in Pierre provides interactive exhibits and science activities that are fun for the whole family. Their goal is to create curiosity in children, inspire teachers and motivate everyone to seek scientific knowledge and value a healthy environment.
Railroad depots fill a special place in the hearts of small-town citizens who remember memorable visits to the station. Maybe they collected a box of Christmas gifts. Maybe dad came home from war. Or grandparents from afar came to vist. Or the youngsters boarded a train that took them on a school trip to the great world beyond their cornfields and cow pastures.
So it’s not surprising that Fort Pierre residents want their 1906 depot back, even though it was moved to the Miller ranch near Mud Butte in 1964.
Lance Nixon of the Pierre Capitol Journal reports today that over $125,000 has already been raised by the Verendrye Museum to re-relocate the depot. Museum board members think the total cost may be five times that number.
Big-city depots have often been reborn as restaurants, bars and offices. The best example is in downtown Mitchell.
New purposes for small-town depots have been harder to find, so we’ve lost a lot of them. Our old wood depot at my hometown of Utica suffered a slow decay until the men behind the Menno Power Show moved it to their frontier town and restored it. Thankfully they left the station sign that reads UTICA.
And thankfully for Fort Pierre, the Miller family has mothballed, so to speak, that town’s depot for nearly 50 years. Now its next stop is Fort Pierre.
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| Caitlin Kettler and a border collie called Jack bring the cows into the yard of the Kettler ranch near Blunt. |
Caitlin Kettler rounds up the cows at her family’s Blunt ranch without a horse or even a holler. All she needs is Jack, the Kettler family’s rambunctious but obedient border collie.”Away to me,” she says, and Jack circles counterclockwise.”Come by,” she says and he changes direction.
“There,” she says, stopping him in his tracks.”Look back,” she continues, and he turns his head to see that he forgot a cow. He happily scampers after it.
Nobody knows just how many South Dakota farms use dogs to guide their cattle and sheep, but the number is growing.”It will surprise you how many border collies are on farms and ranches,” says Pete Carmichael, a Timber Lake rancher who raises, trains and shows stockdogs.
Carmichael says there’s a difference between a good ranch dog and a trained stockdog.”A ranch dog knows your habits and where your fences are and what you’re going to do. But take him away from home and he won’t know what to do as well.”
Cattle dogs are more popular than sheep dogs, probably because cattle are more common than sheep in South Dakota.”Probably nine out of 10 calls I get are for people wanting cattle dogs,” he says.”They say I can’t hire help and the kids are grown up and the old lady gets mad at me when she tries to help.”
Border collies are the most popular breed of working dogs both in South Dakota and elsewhere because they are so intelligent and trainable. Retrievers, corgis, mastiffs and even mutts are also used but the best dogs in field trials generally come from lines that have been refined for years — some for centuries — through selective breeding.
A dog’s herding ability stems from genetic behavior shared with wolves and coyotes. Though centuries of domestication and selective breeding have diminished the killing instinct, the desire to circle and gather a target is strong in border collies and some other breeds.
“They are the predator,” Carmichael says.”The prey is a chicken or a cow or a horse, regardless of how big an animal they’re working. They originated from wolves and wolves worked in packs. There is always an alpha, so that’s the reason you’ve got to approach them right. They have to know that you’re the alpha — so you don’t let them run loose or do other things that let them forget who’s in charge.”
Carmichael’s admiration for a good dog is obvious.”They’ll amaze you sometimes at how smart they are and the things they can do,” he says.”Stealth isn’t necessary but it’s part of the predator’s thing. And they can move stock with their eyes a lot of times, especially sheep. A sheep can only look at them so long before it gets fidgety.”
Training a young dog is a lot like raising a child.”You want to keep them happy,” he says.”If you put too much pressure on a young dog and they get so they’re not having fun, then you better back off a little bit.
He says training a young dog is a lot like raising a child.”You want to keep them happy,” he says.”If you put too much pressure on a young dog and they get so they’re not having fun, then you better back off a little bit. I start them on sheep and let them have their fun. Do that a few times and man they know that’s the most fun they’re going to have today. Overwork them and they’ll lose that enthusiasm.”
Carmichael, lanky and soft-spoken by nature, advocates a gentle approach.”The dogs don’t understand words but they understand tone, so we use a gentle voice. That’s the trouble with some people, they are way too loud for them.”
Some trainers prefer to use a whistle with their dogs, he says.”If you get a little upset they might pick it up in the tone of your voice, but they won’t pick it up on the whistle.”
Competitive stockdog trials are serious business.”The sheep trials are pretty much professionals who wouldn’t know one end of a sheep from another,” grins Carmichael, who both enters and judges at the events.”For the most part they are living in a fantasy world. The cattle dog trials are still pretty much cowboys but that will probably change and they’ll be beating us cattlemen out.” Dogs are tested at trials on how smoothly and quickly they move sheep or cattle through a pattern of obstacles.
Some dogs can compete with both sheep and cattle, but not all can handle cows.”Some lines of dogs aren’t strong enough to work cattle,” Carmichael says.”It takes a stronger dog with more guts. A lot of the imported dogs that come from Great Britain are sheep dogs and they are bred to handle sheep without being rough. You put those dogs on cattle and the old cow thinks ‘sshhh … you’re nothing to me.’ You need a dog that will stand its ground because if the dog gives ground the cow learns right quick.”
Trials are open to all breeds but border collies dominate in competitions, just as they do in the real world. The result has been a steady increase in the value of a good dog. The very best may bring $5,000.”The other chapter to that story,” says Carmichael,”is that if a dog isn’t for sale you can’t buy him. It’s like trying to buy that grandson of mine.”
The Timber Lake cowboy does raise litters to sell but he’s fussy about where the dogs go.”A guy might give you $3,500 and take him back to the ranch and not treat him right. He might let him ride in the back of the pickup truck and he falls out, or he lets him in with some bulls where he gets hurt. So if I have a good one I’m going to question the guy and see if he’s going to take care of him when he’s using him and when he’s not using him.” Carmichael hosts clinics on how to treat and train dogs to work with stock.
Show dogs are vastly outnumbered by real work dogs in South Dakota, and they’re to be found anywhere in the state. The Kettlers of rural Blunt train and sell border collies. They also use them daily for farm chores and Caitlin and her sisters show them in 4-H. Their dad, Murray, a Fort Pierre veterinarian, enters the dogs in trials.
Scott Jepsen and his family raise sheep near Vermillion with an old dog called Maggie. Jepsen says Maggie is especially useful when he must drive a tractor through a gate, a challenging task for one person because a savvy sheep or cow is quick to bolt.”They seem to know when the gate is open and when you can’t get there in time,” he says. Maggie stands at the opening, daring the sheep to escape, as Scott stays on the tractor and completes his chores.
Maggie needs expensive medication to treat congestive heart failure but the Jepsens consider her a bargain at any price. Scott’s wife, Jeanne, used to haul fat lambs to the Sioux Falls Stockyards, and took along Maggie to help unload. Maggie would jump into the trailer and nip the first lamb, who would depart with the rest following like the proverbial sheep in a dream. However, a stockyards crew knows from experience that sheep seldom unload so easily. Duly impressed, one of the crew asked if he could buy Maggie.
“I suppose you could,” said Mrs. Jepsen.”But then my husband would have to get out of the sheep business.”
EDITOR’S NOTE ñ This story is revised from the July/Aug 2009 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order this back issue or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.
