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Winyan

By Chuck Raasch

Elizabeth Winyan (standing) was long associated with the Riggs family, caring for young Thomas in Minnesota and later joining him at Oahe Mission.

On a spring day in 1830 a family, including a 3-year-old girl, was harvesting sweet syrup from maple trees along the banks of the Minnesota River near present-day Mankato. Suddenly and viciously, they were attacked by an unidentified rival tribe.

The girl’s father was one of several Dakota Sioux killed in that attack. The young girl’s mother realized she could not escape the deadly melee while running with two children, so she emptied a pot of boiling water and hid the girl underneath. She then picked up her son and ran to safety.

For two days and one night the little girl stayed silent under the kettle. Then, her mother crept back and retrieved her.

“Even in her old age,” wrote historian Thomas Hughes,”Winyan never forgot that terrible experience and how, when her mother lifted the kettle, the moonlight showed on the bloody faces of the outstretched dead, her father among them.”

Winyan, who would later be given the name Elizabeth while working with Dakota Territory missionary Stephen Return Riggs, spent the rest of her life serving others. In Dakota, Winyan means mother and protector. She lived the name. Winyan was a human bridge over the most difficult waters of Dakota Territory and early statehood, when the federal government sought to force rapid assimilation of Native people, in part by creating reservations. By the time she died six decades later, Winyan was a legend among Native people, white missionaries and settlers on the Dakota frontier of the 1870s and 1880s.

Oahe Mission Chapel, next to the Riggs family home, was built in 1877. When Lake Oahe flooded the site it was moved to the Oahe Dam Visitors Center, where it stands today.

She often traveled the preaching circuit with the Riggs missionaries, blending her mission work with knowledge and practices of her own Dakota people. The Sioux, with a rich oral history tradition, have tried to keep stories like Winyan’s alive, but in the written annals of Dakota Territory her works are sparsely mentioned.

“She was amazing in her time,” says Winyan’s great-great-great granddaughter, Lora Neilan, of Summit.”And it is sad that it got forgotten.” When Winyan died in 1890, the noted Dakota Territory missionary Mary Collins, a good friend, wrote,”She was one of the grandest women I ever knew.”

Even my introduction to Winyan was accidental, a result of research into an entirely different woman on the Dakota frontier. In 1989, I spent a year studying political migration during a journalism graduate fellowship at Stanford University. While there, I did considerable research on the American frontier, which included paging through countless editions of 19th century newspapers in the archives. One advertisement in an 1888 edition of Minnesota’s St. Paul Daily Globe caught my eye. In huge type, I read:”SHE LOVES A SAVAGE!” It was an advertisement for a dime museum appearance of Corabelle Fellows, a young white missionary, and her new husband, Sam Campbell, a mixed-race man of Dakota Sioux and white blood.

I suspected there was a good story behind this headline. I tucked away a copy of the ad and years later, decided to investigate. I have often been surprised by how few female and Native voices are used in the telling of the history of Dakota Territory. I thought Corabelle may have something to say. This hunch — and years of research — resulted in my book Life Painted Red: The True Story of Corabelle Fellows and How Her Life on the Dakota Frontier Became a National Scandal.

The book follows young Corabelle and Sam as they set out on the sideshow circuits and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show to make ends meet after Corabelle’s family disowned her for marrying a man of mixed blood.

During my research I also discovered Winyan, who had played a role in Corabelle’s early missionary work. In the winter of 1885-1886, she was in her third year of teaching and serving in missions in Nebraska and Dakota Territory. That winter, one of the coldest and harshest on the Plains, she lived and served with Winyan from a rough-hewn cabin at the Oahenoua village on the Cheyenne River, northwest of present-day Pierre. It was one of the most isolated posts on the frontier, serving people who had recently returned from exile in Canada with Sitting Bull. By then, Winyan had gained a reputation as one of the physically strongest women in the territory. She built the log cabin she lived in, hauled water uphill from the river and traveled long distances through harsh conditions to nurse the sick or dying.

Thomas Riggs.

Living with Winyan that winter, Corabelle, whose mother immediately disowned her after the marriage to Campbell, began calling Winyan”Ina,” or mother. Winyan had initially gained notoriety when, as a young woman during the bloody Sioux uprising in Minnesota in 1862, she secretly swam food to an island in the Minnesota River where Riggs and a small band of fellow missionaries and Sioux friends had hidden with their families. After her father died, Winyan had been taken under the tutelage of Riggs and his fellow missionary Thomas Smith Williamson. When the Dakota people in Minnesota were pushed west to reservations, the missionaries went with them, so Elizabeth gave up her life among the lush fauna of the Minnesota River valley to the harsher, starker and more expansive high plains of western South Dakota.

The granddaughter of the legendary Dakota leader Sleepy Eyes, she had grown up with a strong connection to the natural world. Winyan helped raise several generations of Riggs children, nursed the ill with herbs and practices passed on to her from her ancestors and sat with the dying when others were too afraid of evil spirits.

Tales of her physical strength spiced Sioux oral histories. Stories of her quiet mercies were also abundantly shared.”Winyan was a woman of strong character, fine mind and a natural leader,” the historian Hughes wrote.”Her great desire was that her people should hear the Gospel, so as the years went by, her work widened, and she was sent to various fields. She held meetings, discussed the Bible, visited the sick, buried the dead, and occasionally addressed conferences of white people. Even the Indian men held her in the highest esteem.”

Collins, the missionary, was struck by Winyan’s loyalty, her knowledge of her people’s past and her understanding of the natural world, particularly the constellations in expansive prairie night skies.”She is a faithful friend, true to her character as a Dakota,” Collins recalled.”She enjoys camp life with us, and evenings, as we sit by the campfire, she will tell stories of her early life, or fables, or legends of the stars. She is quite an astronomer. She reads the sky like an open book.”

Together, during that rough winter of 1885-86, the broad-shouldered Winyan teased Corabelle — barely 5 feet tall — about being able to keep up with physical work. Hauling water from the river to the cabin, Winyan would balance two large buckets on her shoulders, often while plowing through new fallen snow. Corabelle would follow with one pail, struggling, but rejoicing in Winyan’s eventual approval.”She always looked me over skeptically when we reached the house” after hard work outdoors, Corabelle recalled.”Invariably, when she found me unbroken, she would put her hands on her hips and laugh so hard that I was obliged to join her.”

Thomas Riggs established Oahe Industrial School in the 1870s as a training school for girls.

One night in the middle of that winter, Winyan fell asleep while Corabelle was teaching a group of young Sioux men. One of the men later returned to kidnap the bewildered Corabelle, catching her as she came outside to do a chore before bed. Winyan, awakened by a rush of ice-cold air from an open door, plowed through snowbanks to catch up with the young man, who had wrapped Corabelle in a blanket and was carrying her to his home.

“What bad thing is this!” Winyan shouted, shooing the man away.”Now you stop!” Her unwelcome suitor dropped Corabelle in the snow. Winyan wrapped her in a blanket and escorted her back to the cabin, where she consoled and soothed her with an herbal bath. Winyan scolded Corabelle for carelessly ignoring her warning to never go outside alone.

Corabelle and Winyan talked long into that night, marveling at how this white missionary and the Native missionary ended up together after growing up in such different worlds of culture, customs and religion.”How we talked,” Corabelle remembered.”Really talked, there in that crude cabin, shut away from the rest of the world. She asked and answered, and I asked and answered until that day, with its closeness of spiritual touch, became a highlight of my whole life.”

Missionaries and newspaper reporters alike simply called her Winyan. Eventually, she had a son, Edward Phelps, a minister, who along with his wife, Ellen, became missionaries and served rural South Dakota churches.

In her 50s, Winyan began speaking more frequently to donors and churches, traveling as far as Chicago. Neilan, Winyan’s descendant, has collected photos and articles that highlight her impact. Winyan’s life spanned the great events of the 19th century frontier: the government’s many treaties with the Sioux; the 1862 uprising in Minnesota, in which hundreds of white settlers and Native people were killed, and which ended with the mass hanging of 38 Dakota men; the many battles and massacres between U.S. Army forces and Native people on the Northern Plains in the mid- and late-19th century; the last stand of George Armstrong Custer’s 7th Cavalry on the rolling Montana hills in 1876; and the rapid settlement and statehood of South Dakota in the last quarter of the 19th century.

Louisa Riggs considered Elizabeth Winyan (standing) a colleague. She is pictured with Mary Collins (second from right), another missionary.

“She was a legend,” Neilan says.”What I found out, in the time frame that she lived, with the racism she faced and everything that had happened, I am most proud of how she rose above that, of how she left her mark and how many other ones did as well.”

Even while helping Native people adapt to relocation to the reservations, she often quietly longed for her childhood life along the Minnesota River.”She missed it so much,” Neilan says. Once, when sitting with fellow missionary Collins, Winyan told of something she had just seen that”well represents our present condition as a race.

“A man named Longfeather, dressed in Indian dress paint and feathers, was teaching some boys the Indian dance and song,” Winyan told Collins. There were three boys: One with long hair and painted face and Indian dress, one with shirt and leggings and a white boy’s shoes and stockings on, the third dressed well in entirely white men’s clothes.”One represents the past, the second the present, and the third the future,” Winyan said.”I know it has to be, but to me the one dressed all in the Indian child’s clothing looked the best, but I’m only an Indian.”

Neilan finds inspiration in her ancestor even today. She says she and her daughters (Lauren, Bailee and Falon) have also begun to study native plants, and to learn about the constellations that illuminate our prairie nights.

“She was a beacon,” she says,”a beacon of power in her own self.”

Chuck Raasch is a native of Castlewood and a graduate of South Dakota State University. He has written for the Huron Daily Plainsman, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and USA Today. Raasch has also authored two books, Imperfect Union: A Father’s Search for His Son in the Aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, published in 2016, and Life Painted Red: The True Story of Corabelle Fellows and How Her Life On the Dakota Frontier Became a National Scandal in 2023.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2025 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Following Black Elk’s Good Red Road

By Bernie Hunhoff

ONLY 11 AMERICANS have ever been canonized as Catholic saints. The 12th could be Nicholas Black Elk, a thoughtful and humble Lakota holy man who lived in the Pine Ridge country of southwest South Dakota in a tiny community called Manderson.

Black Elk is remembered as a tragic 19th century visionary who, in his old age, despaired the loss of his lands and culture. That much is true. However, Catholic leaders say he was also an exemplary Christian who preached and practiced hope and forgiveness. There are disagreements over which part of his life was most meaningful, but of course his latter years prompted the Catholic Church to consider him a saint.

His road to canonization, which began in 2017, could span decades. The same process took more than a century for Kateri Tekakwitha, a 17th century Mohawk woman who was canonized in 2012. First, Black Elk must be declared venerable by the Vatican. Then religious leaders will look for miracles attributed to him. However, the very fact that he is a candidate for sainthood has already brought bishops, religious pilgrims and other visitors to Manderson and the Pine Ridge.

*****

MANDERSON HAS 400 residents and one store. That is one store more that it would have if not for Emma Clifford, who for 40 years has operated Pinky’s, a social spot for youth and adults. As Black Elk’s legacy grows with the prospect of sainthood, travelers from far away now occasionally share the counter.

Sunday Mass welcomes worshippers at St. Agnes Church, which has become a centerpoint of the effort to canonize Black Elk.

“We are seeing not only Catholics, but non-Catholics, people of all faiths,” Clifford says.”But that is the story of Black Elk. When we pray to him today, we pray for people of all other faiths, hoping they will respect us.”

The town’s only other private business is Bette’s Kitchen, run by Betty O’Rourke, a great-granddaughter of Black Elk. She and her extended family serve meals in their home to locals and out-of-towners. Some days, they host meetings or gatherings on the hilltop residence, with its expansive views of the chalk-white bluffs that give the Pine Ridge its name.

The family’s land, on the southern edge of town, is where Black Elk famously welcomed Nebraska writer John Neihardt, author of the book Black Elk Speaks that brought literary attention to both of them many years after it was published in 1933. A one-room log cabin where the holy man spent some of his final years stands beneath shade trees halfway up the hill.

The busiest place in Manderson is a tribal school, the smallest of nine on the Pine Ridge with 152 students. Every year on Oct. 8, as the faculty and staff observe Black Elk Day, they track how many of the students are direct descendants of the holy man. At last count, there were 28.

St. Agnes Catholic Church, where Black Elk preached and prayed for decades, stands on the north side of town. The white church is plain even by rural standards. Below eight simple stained-glass windows are two rows of rickety pews — the same wood pews, no doubt, where Black Elk once sat and kneeled.

A brown tipi with a cross has been painted behind the altar. Statues of Mary and Joseph and a picture of Jesus stand at the front, but they share this church with Black Elk: his picture hangs above the sacristy door; prayer cards with his image lie in the pews; another photo of the Lakota holy man rests on a table with a sage bowl and an eagle feather; and just below the picture of Christ is a wood chair, colorfully painted by local artist Mark Anderson with Black Elk’s name and likeness.

*****

ON A WARM SUNDAY last summer, we departed Rapid City, turned left at Hermosa and drove two hours southeast, skirting the southern edge of the hauntingly beautiful Badlands country, to learn more about Manderson.

Black Elk descendants are numerous in Pine Ridge country. Betty O’Rourke, a great-granddaughter, ran a restaurant in Manderson with help from her grandchildren, Austin and Maisena. Photos of the man who may one day be a saint decorated the dining room wall.

When we arrived at 9 a.m., Betty O’Rourke and her family were busily preparing to serve a group of college-age missionaries who were scheduled to arrive for lunch. With her black hair drawn tightly back, you can see a resemblance between Betty and her famous great-grandfather, whose photos hang in the dining room of the restaurant and home.

“I was born a Black Elk,” she said, between checking casseroles in the oven.”My mother, Grace, was a Black Elk. They called her Gracie. My Aunt Kate was the first Native American woman in the U.S. Army.”

Betty says she and her husband, Chuck, are old enough to retire, but they keep running the restaurant for two reasons: the community needs an eatery and,”it teaches our grandchildren how to be in the world and run a business.”

She does not advertise or promote her connections to Black Elk.”Everything Grandpa said was that you should never profit from your culture,” she says.”We have certain people who do but I don’t think it’s right.”

Betty said she wouldn’t join us at Mass. She had to watch the casseroles.”When I was at Holy Rosary School, we would go to church every day. Sometimes two or three times a day, but you can’t get me to church today because I believe God is with me all the time. I don’t have to go to that building to pray to Him.”

She likes the priests from Holy Rosary, who often visit the restaurant.”They know how I feel and when they come here to eat, they don’t talk to me about going to church,” she laughs, and then she returns to the oven.

*****

MASS STARTS AT 11 a.m. on most Sundays. A priest and four Catholic nuns from the Holy Rosary Mission arrived just minutes beforehand because Joyce Tibbitts, the parish catechist, had already prepared the altar. Tibbitts does many duties that Black Elk performed for decades.

The simple but sturdy wood-frame church at Manderson was built by Black Elk and his friends in 1911.

The service began with Ave Maria, led by the nuns who had come from India to work as missionaries. One strummed a guitar. The church could hold a hundred people, but only a few dozen sat in the pews.

Father Edmund Yainao Lunghar, a priest from the Himalayan Mountain country in India, welcomed everyone with a smile. In a short homily, he told a story of a single mother who struggled to raise a troubled teenager. He said the woman steadfastly maintained that,”At the end of the day, no matter how much he misbehaves, he is still my son.”

Father Edmund asked,”How much greater is God’s love? How much will your heavenly Father forgive you if you turn to Him? Let us pray that we have a listening ear. The calling of the Good Shepherd, the whispers of the Good Shepherd, invites us to pastures where life is abundant.”

Midway through Mass, Tibbitts went from pew to pew, waving smoke from a bowl of smoldering sage toward each parishioner. It is a Native American version of the Catholic Church’s use of incense as ceremonial purification.

Rather than ring a bell, Tibbitts beat a drum as Father Edmund consecrated the bread and wine. A service at St. Agnes has the repetitive traditions of the Catholic Mass that bore the youth and comfort their elders, yet it is also like no other religious service in the world. During the Prayers to the Faithful, an appeal was made for a teen who had just died in a hit-and-run accident on the highway; another was said for a boy who was killed in a drive-by shooting that week.

One of the worshippers, a slender woman in her 50s, appeared to be intoxicated. During the Eucharistic prayers while everyone else was kneeling, she approached the altar. She’s not the first troubled person to do so at a Sunday service. It happens in other churches. But never was such a woman treated kindlier. Father Edmund gently assured her they could talk later. She returned to a pew.

At the close of Mass, the congregation recited a special Prayer for the Canonization of Nicholas Black Elk, which includes these lines:

Faithfully he walked the Sacred Red Road

And generously witnessed the Good News

Of our Lord Jesus Christ

Among the Native American people.

Open our hearts also to recognize

The Risen Christ in other cultures and peoples.

The congregation then stepped outside the old church building to socialize in an adjacent hall over coffee and baked goods. An artist’s drawings, featuring Black Elk with a halo, hang in the hall. Tibbitts says the art is considered inappropriate by the Church because halos are reserved for saints, and Black Elk is yet to be canonized.

*****

MANY SAINTS WERE imperfect early in life. Many suffered great injustices. Black Elk fits both categories.

He was born between 1858 and 1866. His tombstone in the weedy cemetery across the road from St. Agnes Church lists the former. The Catholic Church seems to have settled on the latter, while other historians cite 1863.

Black Elk nearly died when he was about 9 years old. He recounted the incident in great detail to Neihardt, whose daughter Hilda took copious notes for days and days during the summer of 1931. Her notes were published in Raymond DeMallie’s 1985 book The Sixth Grandfather. It’s considered more accurate than Black Elk Speaks, which is accepted as a more liberal translation embellished by John Neihardt’s own poetry and spirituality.

Black Elk used the missionaries’ Two Roads Map to teach children and adults about Christ’s life.

Black Elk recalled that his legs, arms and face became swollen and then he drifted into a dream state. He remembered being visited by grandfathers who instructed him in the good that comes from the harmonious red road and the evil that comes from the black road, including war and death. He realized that the sixth grandfather, a very old man with white hair,”was myself Ö at first he was an old man but he got younger and younger until he was a little boy nine years old.”

He saw a village of men, women and children who were dying.”I was frightened at the sight and tried to get away,” he said.”I passed in front of the tipi and all the people got up. The spirit said, ëThat’s the way you shall save men.'”

His recounting of the 12-day dream state took 22 pages in The Sixth Grandfather. Toward the end he notes,”They had taken me all over the world and showed me all the powers. They took me to the center of the earth and to the top of the peak they took me to review it all. I was to see the bad and the good. I was to see what is good for humans and what is not good for humans.”

*****

THREE YEARS LATER, Black Elk and his family were at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where Lt. Col. George Custer and the 7th Cavalry were annihilated by the Lakota. Black Elk, then 12, was kept away from the main battle but he had close encounters with soldiers. At one point he was urged by an adult warrior to scalp a dying soldier. The Neihardt notes record him remembering,”Probably it hurt him because he began to grind his teeth. After I did this I took my pistol and shot him in the forehead.”

As the fighting concluded, he and about six other boys returned to the battle scene.”When we got there some [soldiers] were still alive, kicking. Then many boys came. And we got our arrows out and put arrows into the men and pushed some of the arrows that were sticking out in further.”

He took another scalp and handed it to a younger boy.”Then I got tired of looking around,” he said.”I could smell nothing but blood and gunpowder, so I got sick of it pretty soon. I was a very happy boy. I wasn’t a bit sorry.”

However, in the winter of his 17th year he felt a calling. He told the Neihardts that he heard a voice saying,”Your grandfather told you to do these things. It is time for you to do them.” He developed a horse dance.”After this ceremony was completed it seemed that I was above the earth and I did not touch the earth. I felt very happy and I was also happy to see my people, as it looked like they were renewed and happy. They all greeted me and were very generous to me, telling me that their relatives here and there were sick and were cured in a mysterious way and congratulated me, giving me gifts. I was now recognized as a medicine man at the age of 17.”

“He prayed with a pipe and a rosary,” says Father Daoust of Holy Rosary.

In 1886 he learned that Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show wanted to employ Indians to journey”across the great water” to Europe. He and about 10 friends joined, traveling by train to New York City where they entertained at Madison Square Garden for months.

“As we left New York I could see nothing but water, water, water,” he told the Neihardts. He performed for Queen Victoria in England, and later quoted her as saying that it was wrong for white people”to take you around as beasts to show to the people.”

He and three others became separated from Buffalo Bill’s entourage and found themselves lost in a strange country. None could speak English. Fortunately, London authorities linked them with another traveling show run by a man called Mexican Joe. They toured Italy and France for another year before returning home.

Back at Pine Ridge, he found his relatives and friends confined within reservation borders. Some were ill with strange diseases introduced by settlers and soldiers. Many were hungry and starving due to the demise of the buffalo culture and broken promises. Federal rules titled”The Code of Indian Offences” outlawed traditional dances and religious ceremonies. The rules also limited the practices of medicine men like Black Elk.

A new spirituality called the Ghost Dance was gaining strength. Black Elk heard that friends were dancing it below Manderson at Wounded Knee so he went to observe.”They had a sacred pole in the center,” he told the Neihardts.”It was a circle in which they were dancing and I could clearly see that this was my sacred hoop and in the center they had an exact duplicate of my tree that never blooms and it came to my mind that perhaps with this power the tree would bloom and the people would get into the sacred hoop again.”

The Ghost Dance’s popularity scared U.S. military leaders, and that led to Sitting Bull’s violent death on Dec. 15, 1890. It also contributed to the tragic confrontation between cavalry soldiers and the Lakota at Wounded Knee Creek on the morning of December 29.

Black Elk had spent a sleepless night because he sensed something was about to happen. He was walking at daybreak when he heard gunfire. From afar, Black Elk and a friend saw the wasicus (white men) coming with wagon guns. They heard shooting and cries. They saw women and children running to hide in the gullies. He and about 20 others rode to help. A bullet grazed his leg. He told Neihardt that he felt bulletproof, and that he heard bullets whizzing by.

In Black Elk Speaks, the holy man is quoted as saying that something died in the blood and mud and was buried in the blizzard that followed.”A people’s dream died there,” Neihardt wrote.”It was a beautiful dream Ö the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.”

That tragic poetry is not found in the actual notes, as published in The Sixth Grandfather. In DeMallie’s text, Black Elk describes the massacre and the aftermath. He laments that perhaps he should have died with the many others, and he says he prayed to the spirits above, saying,”Grandfathers, behold me and send me a power for revenge.”

*****

THIS IS WHERE Black Elk’s life story gets even more complicated. After the Wounded Knee massacre, he continued to serve his people as a medicine man. On many occasions, he found himself at sickbeds with Christian missionaries who were also there to serve. He had friends who had converted to Christianity. In fact, his first wife, Katherine War Bonnet, was a Catholic. She died in 1903.

This photo of Black Elk introducing the rosary to a Lakota child was widely used in Holy Rosary’s promotional materials in the 1940s.

In the autumn of 1904, he was tending to a sick boy who lived north of Holy Rosary when Father Joseph Lindebner arrived. The Jesuit priest, a native of Germany, was well-liked by many reservation residents, who called him”the Little Father.” Lindebner had baptized the lad earlier, and reportedly became upset that Black Elk was there with his tobacco offerings, drums, rattles and other items.

“Satan, get out!” Lindebner declared, tossing Black Elk’s belongings out of the tent. At least, that was the story told decades later by Black Elk’s daughter Lucy. She said her father did not return the anger. The priest obviously saw something special in the medicine man and invited him to accompany him back to Holy Rosary to learn more about Jesus Christ.

Black Elk, curious about the new religion, stayed two weeks at the mission. He found Catholic theology compatible with his traditional beliefs in the Great Spirit, wakan tanka, and on Dec. 6, 1904 he was baptized. It was the feast day of St. Nicholas, so he took the saint’s name.

The rest of Black Elk’s story is the era not covered in Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks. He converted hundreds of people. He and his friends built the St. Agnes Church building that stands today. He traveled, sometimes long distances by horseback in stormy weather, to tend to the sick and dying. He served short assignments at St. Stephen’s Mission in Wyoming and Marty Mission on the Yankton Sioux Reservation, but most of his life was spent serving the Pine Ridge people.

Bill White, a descendant by marriage to Black Elk, is a member of the Sainthood Working Group. White is a permanent deacon of the Catholic Diocese, serving at Porcupine on the Pine Ridge. He believes Black Elk became comfortable with Christianity because it fit his childhood vision of unity among men.”He saw the same thing written in Revelation. We are all standing before the Lamb of God. He always was striving to unite people. He had many non-Native friends throughout his life.

“I am certain he fits the model of a man who lived a heroic life and a model life,” White says.”He remained fully Lakota, and he saw that as being compatible with Christianity.”

*****

“BLACK ELK IS MY hero,” Joyce Tibbitts told us, as her congregation departed the church social hall on that Sunday morning. Actually, there are two halls behind St. Agnes Church — a Tekakwitha Hall, where Native American women once met in prayer groups, and a Black Elk Hall for the men. Today, Tekakwitha Hall is Tibbitts’ parish office, and a repository of information for the sainthood effort.

Tibbitts says the process began when relatives of Black Elk, who had attended the canonization service for Tekakwitha in 2012, asked Robert Gruss, then the bishop of the West River Diocese, if their grandfather might also deserve consideration. The working group was created, and it has already submitted a request to the Vatican Congregation of Saints.

Joyce Tibbetts’ tattooed arms reflect both Christian and traditional Lakota spirituality. Her pastoral duties at St. Agnes Church are akin to those performed by Black Elk in the early decades of the 20th century.

Though there are 10,000 saints, none are quite like Black Elk.”He prayed with both a pipe and a rosary,” says Father Joe Daoust, the superior of Holy Rosary Mission and a member of the group.”Some say he walked the two roads between Lakota and Catholic spirituality,” Daoust says.”But he actually blended the two into one red road to God.”

Tibbitts says she and others now walk that same road.”We are a swirl of religions — traditionalists, Christians and combinations of the two. We go to church and we also go to the sweat lodge or the big sun dance in summer.”

She says priests from Holy Rosary once distributed Holy Communion at the sun dance, but the practice was stopped — not by Catholic clergy but by traditional Native American leaders.”If a priest does show up at the sun dance today, the people will be respectful, but they cannot participate anymore.”

Tibbitts believes the challenges of everyday life on the reservation demand that anyone who wants to help — Christian or traditional — must be welcomed.”We’ve once again had a string of suicides,” she said.”The youngest was just 11, the oldest 18. We had a boy hit by a car. This week we buried a 20-year-old who died from illegal booze.”

Because liquor and beer sales are prohibited on the Pine Ridge, bootleggers are making home brews known as skips.”They use everything from hand sanitizers to rubbing alcohol, anything with an alcohol content,” Tibbitts says.”The result is a toxic brew that is killing our people.”

Poverty and health crises further complicate life in Manderson and the surrounding communities. Premature deaths are so frequent that plans are being considered to expand the parish cemetery, which lies just across the highway from St. Agnes Church.

Cynics might surmise that neither Native or Christian spiritualities have done enough to change a sad trajectory that has persisted since the buffalo were nearly exterminated and reservation borders were drawn. Optimists, on the other hand, would find hope among the good people who run the restaurants, stores, schools and churches of Black Elk’s home territory.

When Black Elk and Neihardt climbed Harney Peak (now known as Black Elk Peak) in 1931, the holy man spoke of the troubled times that faced his people.”The good road and the road of difficulties you have made to cross,” he said that day,”and where they cross, the place is holy.”

Seven decades after Black Elk’s death, it’s still easy to encounter holiness in his hometown. Sainthood might someday bring greater attention to the holy man’s humble, forgiving legacy. Maybe it would even bring about miraculous change.

However, the people we met in Manderson are not waiting for miracles. Like their town’s famous native son, they face the intersecting roads of good and bad every day.”I could see that it was next to impossible,” Black Elk said of his vision for a great flowering tree of unity in 1931,”but there was nothing like trying.”

Perhaps the beautiful miracle is that the trying continues today.

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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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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Making Dignity

By Paul Higbee

Dignity, a 50-foot-tall stainless-steel tribute to indigenous culture, stands on a Missouri River bluff near Chamberlain. Photo by Chad Coppess

Editor’s Note: This story appeared in the September/October 2016 issue of South Dakota Magazine in conjunction with the unveiling of Dale Lamphere’s grand sculpture Dignity of Earth and Sky along the Missouri River near Chamberlain.

For a year and a half, anticipation built across South Dakota and beyond about Dignity, Dale Lamphere’s 50-foot sculpture that overlooks the Missouri River from a dominant bluff. Millions see it every year as they drive past Chamberlain on Interstate 90.

The stainless-steel statue depicts a Native woman with a star quilt and is both traditional and boldly innovative in design. The traditional: the figure of the woman whose dress, leggings and moccasins are authentic to the mid-1800s, and whose face is an amalgamation of three Lakota women Lamphere used as models. The innovative: motion and changing light in the quilt, with more than 100 blue diamond shapes that move with the wind, fluttering”like an aspen leaf,” Lamphere explains.

Rapid City entrepreneurs Norm and Eunabel McKie put more than a million dollars into the project. They speak of Dignity as”alive” and, Norm says, carrying a burden of responsibility”to inspire all people to maximize their lives, and also to combat suicide,” sadly prevalent on nearby reservations.

South Dakota Artist Laureate Dale Lamphere’s Dignity took shape during the summer of 2016.

The McKies, owners of the McKie Ford/Lincoln car dealership in Rapid City, started talking in 2008 about giving something back to the state that’s been so good to them. Norm went to another Rapid City businessman, architect Pat Wyss, and over time they discussed possible projects. The day came, Norm remembers, when he realized”we could have this iconic sculpture, on the Missouri, in the heart of the state.” Wyss remained with the project from those conceptual discussions to placement at Chamberlain. He is landscape architect for the site, incorporating the hill’s natural slope toward the highway into the pedestal. The McKies and Wyss knew that in Lamphere, they were involving not only an artist of the highest caliber, but someone who shared their deep respect for South Dakota’s Native peoples.

Dignity also contributes to South Dakota tourism, an aspect of the project that excites supporters for reasons beyond revenue. The statue shines a light on the state’s center, too often overlooked by visitors, and makes a powerful statement about modern South Dakotans’ respect for the region’s original residents and cultures.

As South Dakotans know well, these art forms can take a long time to reach fruition. In this case, though, things moved swiftly after a lunch with Gov. Dennis Daugaard where the Dignity concept was explained in detail.”Let’s make this happen,” the governor said to staff who were present. State government quickly committed to having the statue stand on South Dakota-owned land, at the busy I-90 rest area just east of the river and south of Chamberlain, a place offering a sweeping view of the Missouri, bluffs and prairie.

Lamphere gave the project instant credibility. He’s been a professional sculptor for 50 years, with his main studio in the Black Hills foothills near Sturgis. Lamphere has more than 60 major commissions to his credit across the United States, from the Basilica of the National Shrine in Washington, D.C., to art at the Eisenhower Medical Center in southern California. Recent pieces have been installed in Dallas, Kansas City, Chicago and San Antonio. In his home state, Lamphere’s work is prominent at the state capitol building and public venues from Sioux Falls to Spearfish. Human subjects range from spiritual figures to strong and resilient residents of the Great Plains, many of them women.

Over his career, Lamphere has embraced big-scale sculpture (consider his 33-foot tall Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary, Queen of Peace works at Sioux City, Iowa). That quality draws inevitable comparisons to two historic South Dakota sculptors — Gutzon Borglum (Mount Rushmore) and Korczak Ziolkowski (Crazy Horse Memorial). Lamphere is quick to say he doesn’t consider himself in that league, a self-assessment over which others might squabble. In 2013, the day after he was presented the Governor’s Award in the Arts for his lifetime of distinctive creative achievement, Lamphere was greeted with a long ovation in the state legislature chambers — applause any high-ranking political leader would envy. In 2015 he was named South Dakota Artist Laureate.

More than 100 blue diamond shapes flutter with the wind “like an aspen leaf,” Lamphere says.

Lamphere began creating Dignity by first drawing the form, then sculpting a one eighth-scale model. He communicated regularly with the McKies, who, he notes,”let me pursue my highest vision.”

That vision — including incorporation of light, color and fluttering movement in the quilt — stemmed almost entirely from Lamphere’s imagination.”One of the advantages of living out here in relative isolation is how I have no idea what the rest of the world is doing,” the sculptor says.”So I play around in my imagination.”

The spot where the statue began taking form, where Lamphere multiplied precise measurements from the model and transferred them to steel, is truly isolated. It’s a worksite he’s used before, about 44 miles east of Rapid City on Highway 44, near the Cheyenne River. The location makes it easily accessible to Native people who live in rural southwestern South Dakota, and many stopped by to offer encouragement.”That means a lot,” Lamphere says.

For visitors, the site felt more like a ranch where workers would gather for branding rather than creating art. The Black Hills could be seen off in the distance, with miles of golden prairie in between. About 200 buffalo roam the ranch, and stacked hay bales and tractors decorated the homestead. Dozens of colorful and loud peacocks added flair.

Lamphere fit right in at the Spirited Winds Tatanka Ranch, with his western attire and manner. A shed served as the work base, crammed with tools and home to 30 or 40 kittens and an antler collection. But in front of that shed Dignity rose, surrounded by scaffolding for workers.”They have no idea,” Lamphere quipped,”how tiring it is for me to stand on the ground and yell instructions up to them.”

The ranch is in Tom Trople’s family. Trople has been Lamphere’s chief welder for three decades. Trople had a quip of his own.”These days Dale is pretty understanding that you can’t bend metal every direction — although sometimes he wants to.” Trople has worked on about 20 of Lamphere’s large-scale works, taller than 20 feet.”During that time, Dale’s become more like a brother than employer,” Trople says.

Lamphere transferred measurements from a scale model to the stainless steel sculpture, which took shape on a ranch east of Rapid City.

The involvement of highly regarded sculptors Jim Maher, Andy Roltgen and Grant Standard made the crew something of a dream team. Another important contribution came from Brook Loobey, an automotive paint expert who tackled the challenge of experimenting with colors for the quilt’s diamond-shaped pieces and implied beadwork. He and Lamphere studied color shades in the sun and imagined how those colors might change under different shades of natural light.

Workers dealt with windy conditions along the Cheyenne, which reminded them that the wind is a factor along the Missouri, too. Early on, Lamphere worked with Albertson Engineering of Rapid City to make certain Dignity withstands the most brutal prairie blasts South Dakota can produce. Openings through the quilt, where the diamond shapes hang, help with the wind load.

In considering Dignity‘s full impact, more is at work than the intentions of the artist, benefactors and state of South Dakota. The venue — this exact bluff — witnessed complex history that is intertwined with the art’s statement. Lewis and Clark’s party camped directly across the river in 1804, and traditionally their story has been interpreted as a grand American adventure, with a Native woman playing a key role. But as historians and activists hammered home during the expedition’s bicentennial, those who followed the Lewis and Clark route brought diseases that devastated Native peoples of the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest. Below the bluffs are a rail bed and trestle, reminders of the great political power railroads wielded in opening West River country to immigrants, greatly reducing reservation lands the Lakota people believed would be theirs forever. And the water below the bluff is called Lake Francis Case as often as the Missouri River, because dams completely altered South Dakota’s stretch of the river in the 1950s and ’60s and further stole reservation acreage.

Despite those and other historical indignities, the sculpture boldly proclaims that South Dakota’s Native cultures are alive, standing with dignity.

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Lakota Games on Ice

By Steve Kinsella

The Rosebud’s Mike Marshall is an expert in Lakota winter games.

From the frozen shore it looks like a game of hockey on Lake Mitchell. Youth and adults are bundled in coats, gloves and scarves. But is that a rib bone flying across the ice?

Actually, it’s the Lakota Games on Ice, a project of the Mitchell Prehistoric Indian Village to explore the region’s earliest Native cultures.”Sliding the buffalo rib” is a contest to see who can shove a winged bison rib the farthest. In pte heste (buffalo cow horn sliding game), kids slide an arrow-like gaming piece across the ice with a focus on distance and accuracy. Napeoglece kutepi teaches throwing a willow spear, and pasloghanpi tests accuracy while sliding a stick on ice.

Mike Marshall, an artist, cultural entrepreneur and enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, oversees the games and even makes the gaming pieces. Marshall became interested in the project several years ago when he worked at the Buechel Memorial Lakota Museum in St. Francis, where he helped to digitize a collection of Native American objects that included historic gaming pieces.

Marshall creates the equipment for the Lakota Games on Ice out of bison bones and other objects of nature. Centuries ago, such games were often held in winter because that’s when Native Americans would set up camp. Girls tended to play games that taught how to pack, move and raise camp. Boys played games that taught hunting or fighting skills.

Lakota author and teacher Delphine Red Shirt wrote stories about the games that were passed on to her orally. In her book Turtle Lung Woman’s Daughter, she recalls her grandmother’s words.”She had her group of girl friends who played together. They stayed in small groups and took short walks around the camp or went swimming together in the summer. They played and imitated the women, doing everything they did,” she wrote.”They gave mock feasts and tended to dolls carried in cradle boards, singing songs to them and braiding their hair in neat braids.” They did not play with boys.”We ignored them,” she said. The boys had their own games.”Theirs was a male world, filled with play on horses and games of aggression.”

During the treaty period, many games were banned along with long hair and braids, traditional dress and language — part of a process to force Native Americans to assimilate with the predominantly European cultures that had settled in the United States. But visitors to the reservations recorded the existence of the games a century or more ago, and many of the gaming objects were housed in private collections.

Cindy Gregg, executive director of the Prehistoric Indian Village, says her organization strives to promote an understanding of the first people to inhabit the region. Lakota Games on Ice fits the mission, as do exhibits within the Boehnen Memorial Museum, which includes a reconstructed earth lodge and bison skeleton. More than 1,500 students and teachers from South Dakota, and as far away as North Dakota and the Twin Cities, tour the village and displays each year, including many Native American youth.

The village hosts other events throughout the year to help preserve and celebrate all facets of Native American culture.”The village provides visitors with an in-depth view of pre-white culture on the Great Plains,” Gregg says.”In doing that, it also helps foster a deeper appreciation for the current Native cultures on the reservations and elsewhere.”

Visitors also learn more about prehistoric agriculture and lifestyles. Occupied more than a thousand years ago by hunters and farmers who migrated out of the Mississippi River Valley, the village is believed to have been built by ancestors of the Mandan. More than 70 earth lodges are buried beneath the village, on the banks of Lake Mitchell. On the nearby golf course is a series of burial mounds, one of which covertly underlies a gently sloping green.

Archaeology Awareness Days, held in conjunction with an annual excavation by Augustana University and the University of Exeter in England, takes place under the village’s state-of-the-art Thomsen Center Archeodome. The ongoing excavations have unearthed bone, pottery and tools, as well as hundreds of 1,000-year-old small, charred corncobs and sunflower seeds. Those and other discoveries are evidence that the original village is directly linked to today’s common food products, as well as the corn that adorns the nearby Corn Palace.

“The occupants of this site played a significant role in the continuum of agricultural development that originally started in Mexico and moved up the Mississippi River Valley,” says Jerry Garry, a longtime Mitchell resident and one of the early organizers of the effort to preserve and develop the village as a living educational tool.”Today, because of these people, we enjoy many of the cereals that are consumed worldwide.”

Too often, today’s media focuses only on the historic crises of Indian country rather than the contributions and accomplishments of its ancient cultures — including their playful spirit.”What’s really cool about Lakota Games on Ice is that it makes us more than just a romantic notion,” says Marshall.”We had our games and leisure activities.”

Editor’s Note: The 2021 Lakota Games on Ice is scheduled for Jan. 23. This story is revised from the January/February 2017 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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The Wisdom of the Fool Soldiers

By Michael Zimny

A mural inside Scherr-Howe Arena in Mobridge painted by Oscar Howe depicts the Fool Soldiers rescuing captives during the Dakota War.

In the winter of 1862, 10 Lakota warriors risked their lives and reputations for a novel concept: the rights of civilians during wartime. People called them “Fool Soldiers” because at a time when being indigenous made them targets, they staked a claim for militant humanism, even if it meant alienating some of their own. If they’d expected medals or accolades, the appellation may have proven apt. But the available evidence — the (mostly forgotten) stories told by descendants and historians — indicates another motive. They just wanted to “do good.”

The Fool Soldiers’ leader was a man named Charger, later Anglicized as Martin Charger, who was said to have proven himself in war, but who strove for peace, first in intertribal conflicts, then between Dakota/Lakota and the Euro-American arrivals.

According to Samuel Charger’s biography of his father, in 1860 a young man named Kills and Comes Back received a vision and approached Charger to discuss its meaning. The dream as related by Samuel Charger seems abbreviated, more like a postscript. He wrote that Kills and Comes Back, “had seen ten stags in his dream, all black and as he advanced toward them, one in the lead spoke to him. It said: ‘This vision is to be fulfilled by you and to be complied with by all who are members. You and every member is to be respected and feared and you must be united in your undertakings.’ As the dreamer looked closer he said he identified himself as the one who was speaking.”

What did the black stag, who was Kills and Comes Back, show him(self)? Charger held a council to divine its meaning. “Kills Game afterward interpreted it to mean that the membership should be ten in number and that to be respected by the tribe, they should be generous, not only with food but with their property. Charger agreed as did all the others.”

The following night, the young men shared the dream with Charging Dog, “a man of the same character as Kills Game, also a medicine man of fame throughout the tribe.” Charging Dog reaffirmed the others’ interpretation.

“As a medicine man I do not always get riches, but the good I do my fellow tribesmen is something to strive for. We may be brave in battle, but as everybody knows we do not live long and to do each other harm in our camp is very bad. I have seen a lot of it during my life. I believe the hardest thing for anybody to do is to do good to others, but it makes their hearts rejoice.”

Four Bear, a member of the Fool Soldiers band.

So they organized a Society based on those principles. In August of 1862, Dakota people at Upper and Lower Sioux Agencies of Minnesota were brought to the brink of starvation. They’d been hit by famine, and the annuities the government owed them were late, when agency storeowner Andrew Myrick was reputed to say, “If they are hungry let them eat grass or their own dung.” Myrick was killed on the first day of the Dakota War.

You know how the lines blur if you’ve been there, and what happened next. Civilians killed. Reprisals that kill more innocents. That’s how it was going on August 20, when a band led by White Lodge attacked the tiny settlement of Lake Shetek, near present-day Currie, Minnesota, killing 15 settlers and taking eight captives — two women and six children.

When news traveled to Charger and the Fool Soldiers that White Lodge and his band were camped, with their captives, on the west side of the Missouri, they saw an opportunity to live their commitment to the vision.

They left their camp near Fort Pierre, traded horses and pelts for food they could offer as ransom, and set out for White Lodge’s camp. As they crossed the river, people were said to implore them not to go. “They thought the ‘boys’ as they called them, would not come back alive,” wrote Samuel Charger, “and the undertaking was foolish. But Charger told the crowd ‘there is only one life and that is short, hence we should do what we think is good.'”

According to South Dakota historian Doane Robinson, the band included: “Charger, Kills and Comes, Four Bear, Mad Bear, Pretty Bear, Sitting Bear, Swift Bird, One Rib, Strikes Fire, Red Dog and Charging Dog.” Along the way, they encountered a Yanktonais camp, where they were told that White Lodge’s Band was camped near present-day Mobridge.

As the stories tell it, White Lodge did not warmly welcome the Fool Soldiers. Negotiations were tense, and could easily have degenerated into shooting. In the end, White Lodge’s son, Black Hawk, agreed with the Fool Soldiers and helped them secure the hostages — the two women and five children, one child had died — but they weren’t victorious yet.

They’d had to trade away all their horses and provisions, and had a 100-mile journey ahead, through blizzard conditions with a group of ragged, hungry children. As they started back, they received some help from Don’t Know How, a Yanktonais man who may have traveled with them to White Lodge’s camp, or met them coming and going. He furnished them with one horse and helped them fashion a travois to carry the children. (Don’t Know How was the paternal grandfather of the great Dakota artist Oscar Howe, who depicted the Fool Soldiers’ rescue of the Lake Shetek captives in one of his murals at the Scherr-Howe Arena in Mobridge.)

Don’t Know How’s kindness helped, but the Fool Soldiers still had to complete a journey akin to Washington’s crossing of the Delaware to make it home. Seeing that Laura Duley, one of the two adult female captives, was barefoot, Charger is said to have given her his moccasins, wrapping his own feet in old clothes.

The group camped only twice, walking through the third night, arriving the next morning at the river, where several traders helped them make a treacherous ford of the river, which wasn’t wholly covered with ice. From there, a trader named Charles Primeau housed the freed captives until the U.S. Army returned them to their relatives.

A monument recognizing the Fool Soldiers stands in Mobridge City Park.

Then the Fool Soldiers’ story faded into obscurity. They had set out to do good and succeeded. If they’d harbored any less selfless motives, they’d have failed.

Fool Soldier Joseph Four Bear didn’t benefit from his actions, says his great-granddaughter Marcella LeBeau.

“He signed the peace treaty [Treaty of Fort Laramie, 1868], and he had to live on the northeast corner of our reservation and not leave. If he left he’d have to have a signed permit to come and go, otherwise he would have been shot as a hostile. They gave him land allotments on the reservation. That was already our land. That was treaty land. What kind of sense is that, to give back his own land to him, and he had to live there?

“And he had to live by that peace treaty. So he didn’t dance Indian. He didn’t follow his own ways. He didn’t hunt for his people and provide for them like he did in the past. So my thought is: if you can’t be who you are then who are you? So he lived out his life like that.”

Were the Fool Soldiers misguided in helping the captives?

“I believe they did a good deed,” LeBeau says.

Joseph Four Bear did receive a token of posthumous gratitude.

“On his tombstone, a white marble tombstone, it said something about: He was a friend to the white man for over seventy some years,” LeBeau says. “And I know that his own people didn’t have the funds to do that.”

There is also a modest quartzite marker in Mobridge City Park that reads: SHETAK [sic] CAPTIVES RESCUED HERE NOVEMBER 1862 BY FOOL SOLDIER BAND.

In 1996, Paul Carpenter, a descendant of one of the rescued captives, brought gifts to the descendants of the Fool Soldiers and honored them in a ceremony. “There was standing room only in that building,” LeBeau says.

People lined Main Street and reenacted scenes from the rescue — Martin Charger giving Laura Duley his moccasins, wrapping his feet in rags, the children transported by travois, pulled by their single horse.

The tribute, 134 years after the event, raised some awareness momentarily.

“I think in school they should learn about it,” LeBeau says. “But I don’t think that’s happening. I know when I went to the boarding school we didn’t learn anything.”

The Fool Soldiers were revolutionaries. While their own people were steadily losing their land and way of life, they took a stand for people who looked like the enemy, 87 years before the Fourth Geneva Convention codified civilian wartime rights — including a prohibition on taking civilian hostages — into international law.

The reasons they haven’t been recognized probably range from the obvious (they were Native American) to the thornier issue of their acceptance within their own group. “Their own people — some of them — were against them,” LeBeau says.

The Fool Soldiers may be perceived, by some, as capitulators, and any recognition of them may, in kind, be seen as an exclusive endorsement of their response to the times in which they lived, like the epitaph on Four Bear’s tombstone. Their act, though, is not a negation of the survival strategies of warriors like Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull. Rather, it was the antithesis of Custer’s attack on civilian camps, or the massacre of disarmed noncombatants at Wounded Knee. The Fool Soldiers have been called pacifists, but Samuel Charger’s biography of his father depicts them not as pacifists but warriors turned militant humanists.

Martin Charger and his men are the moral forebears of Hugh Thompson and the American GIs who stopped the massacre at My Lai (and others like them). Decades later, Thompson and his men got their medals. On March 16, 1968, they didn’t know if they would make it out alive. That’s how it’s always going to be for a Fool Soldier. The conventioneers can call for Twister as a means of conflict resolution if they want. Wartime ethics live or die on the barrel side of White Lodge’s (or William Calley’s) guns. What the nations codified on Lac LÈman, the Fool Soldiers lived on the Mni Sose. There are greater monuments to lesser men.

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.

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Naming Jett

Story By Roger Holtzmann

Photos by Keith Hemmelman

A tipi was erected atop Snake Butte near Lake Oahe for the traditional Lakota naming ceremony of Mike and Donna Stroup’s son, Jett.

Children are guided along paths laid out by their parents. That is the natural order of things, but for one Lakota family it may not be the only way.

Donna and Mike Stroup, of rural Pierre, welcomed a son, their second child, into the world on Sept. 25, 2013. They named him Jett, and he was about a year old when Donna was approached by Violet Catches, her close friend of many years.

“Violet had seen Jett after his birth and always commented on how he was a ‘real’ Indian baby,” said Donna.”She said, ‘He needs a spirit name.'”

Sometime later,”Violet told me she had a dream in which she came upon an old-time Indian camp,” said Donna. Their tipis were gathered in a circle, with children playing all around, and when Violet entered the circle she saw Jett.”He turned and saw [Catches] and ran to her with arms outstretched, and said, ‘Grandma! I’m so happy you’re back in my life!'”

Clark Zephyr (left), a Fort Thompson medicine man, officiated at the naming ceremony for Jett, shown being held by his father, Mike.

Catches grew up on the Cheyenne River Reservation, in a traditional Lakota family, one in which the old ways were her first ways.”My first language was Lakota,” said Catches.”My first teachings in life were in the Lakota culture. My grandmother told me stories about our culture, and it wasn’t just for my ears. It was for all the kids in the house — my older sister and younger brother, and a cousin we called older sister.”

Lakota kinship is different,”more complex,” than the American system, said Catches. Relationships include the bonds between immediate and extended family members, but they can be equally close and meaningful beyond those traditional ties.”In life, you feel really connected to certain people,” said Catches.”That’s how I feel about Donna and Mike and their children.”

That connection to the Stroup family, and her Lakota background, moved Catches to see her dream as more than a simple dream: it was an invitation to help her friends recover a pearl of great price.”I asked Donna and Mike if they would permit me to have a naming ceremony for Jett,” said Catches.

Native children receive a given name at birth, as Jett did, but naming ceremonies — in which another name is bestowed and celebrated — have long been a part of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota traditions. Names sometimes pass from parent to child, or within a tiospaye (extended family), according to Mike. This may happen when the christened is young, but they can be conferred at any time from the teenaged to gray-haired years.

Names can also be original to an individual, as when they reflect a unique spiritual vision, or recognize some significant achievement or service.

“My wife and I didn’t seek out a name,” said Mike.”Violet saw Jett early on, and had a connection with him. She didn’t know why.”

Donna, Mike and Violet prepared for the naming ceremony by visiting the sweat lodge at Wakpa Sica Reconciliation Place outside of Fort Pierre (Jett would have participated if he were older). In that place of purification and prayer they offered thanks for the honor accorded Jett and their family, and asked for guidance.

The inside of the ceremonial tipi.

On the appointed day, friends and family gathered at the Stroup home 5 miles north of Pierre, near the top of Zuze’ca Paha (Snake Butte) overlooking Lake Oahe. Clark Zephyr, a medicine man from Fort Thompson, performed the ceremony. Chris Mexican, of Pierre, served as the drummer and singer.

Mike had erected a ceremonial tipi, adorned with sacred symbols, which will be Jett’s to keep throughout his lifetime. The naming ceremony began inside, with Jett, Zephyr, Mexican, Donna, Mike and their older son Spencer present. (Violet was unable to attend because of family obligations.)

A naming ceremony can vary somewhat from one medicine man to another. Zephyr began with three traditional songs, sung to the cardinal directions; these served as the ceremony’s foundation for they appealed to Jett’s living and dead relatives to guide him in the coming years.

When they emerged from the tipi Jett was placed on a buffalo robe. Zephyr tied an eagle feather into his hair and Mike and Donna proclaimed his name for the first time: OyÈ Aku,”One Who Brings Back Tradition.”

“Jett’s spirit name came to Violet while she was at Sun Dance before the naming ceremony, and it was a pretty fitting name,” said Donna.”When I was pregnant Mike and I discussed ways to expose Jett to as much of our culture as we could after his birth.”

Purifying sage smoke wafted around the sacred circle while the assembled company lifted their voices in an honor song for the family. Mike and Donna served water and wasna — a mixture of dried chokecherries and buffalo meat — to their corporeal guests, and left some on a nearby butte for those of the spirit realm. These elements have been used in naming ceremonies”forever,” said Mike,”reflecting that water and the buffalo have been around since the beginning.”

Webster Two Hawk, an Episcopal minister from Pierre, offered a prayer of thanksgiving over the feast that followed. This brought the ceremony to a close, and began the many years of patient teaching it will take to help OyÈ Aku understand the significance of his name.

“For us to accept that name, to allow him to accept that name, is a great honor, but a great burden as well,” said Mike.”It kind of sets the direction of his life because it becomes his responsibility to bring back tradition.”

Jett was just 2 when he received a Lakota name meaning, “One Who Brings Back Tradition.”

Before they can teach and guide their son, Mike and Donna must first reconnect more deeply with their own pasts. They are both Lakota, enrolled tribal members on the Lower Brule and Cheyenne River reservations respectively, but they didn’t come of age in traditional families, where their ancestral culture and language were woven into daily life.

“Neither one of us is fluent [in Lakota],” said Mike.”We know a lot of common words, but not much more.” Like many Lakota their age, the Stroups’ grandparents were all native speakers. For a variety of reasons the essential language link between old and young was never made during their formative years, making them part of what Mike termed”a lost generation.”

They do have one decided advantage going forward: both of the Stroups have extensive experience in education. Mike started his career teaching at Flandreau Indian School, then moved on to White River, Rosebud and Sinte Gleska University, before returning to his hometown of Pierre as the high school principal and district superintendent.

After graduating from college with a degree in psychology and early childhood development, Donna’s first position was with the Pierre Indian Learning Center. Stints with the Department of Social Services Child Protection Services and Department of Human Services Division of Developmental Disabilities followed; she is currently the Director of Indian Education for the Pierre School District.

OyÈ Aku and his siblings could hardly be in better hands. They will grow up in a home where education is valued, with parents who will be learning about their treasured Lakota heritage as they teach it to them.

“Our responsibility will be to give OyÈ the opportunity to dance, to sing, to learn about and carry on those traditions,” said Donna.

In this task they will, fortunately, have Catches to support them.”I am going to be helping them learn some of the larger concepts of Lakota culture,” said Catches. One of those is mit·kuye oy·s’in, a sacred term that should be used only in prayer,”at the right time and the right place. What it means is we are all related. Not just to other human beings, but to the earth, the sky, the water, the animals.”

And our precious past.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2016 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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The Turtle on Snake Butte

By Michael Zimny

The stone turtle atop Snake Butte. Photo by John Mitchell.

There are runic legends written in stone on hilltops across South Dakota — giant snakes, turtles, mythical beasts, human-like forms, sacred symbols. The meanings within these hieroglyphs are a mystery to most of us. Do they commemorate the deeds of flesh-and-blood beings of our corporeal world? Cosmic or supernatural events? If you could stand on a mountain and read the land like a topographical novel, would it read top-down, left-to-right?

Archaeologists try to unlock the secrets in the stone through methodical research. Others make like Moses drawing water from the rock of Horeb and listen to the voices in their heads.

In any case, you can’t get a handle on Black Elk Speaks or Thus Spoke Zarathustra or Their Eyes Were Watching God without bothering to read them. How many of the stories once held in the collections of the vast land library have been lost to the elements, vandals or time? We’ll never know, but plenty remain.

One such story-writ-in-stone is the Snake Butte turtle effigy near Pierre — one of hundreds of petroforms depicting animals, humans and mythical creatures that have been documented in South Dakota. Some have disappeared or been altered. Most — including the turtle effigy — are on private land and not officially protected.

A marker directs visitors to Snake Butte, near Pierre.

The Snake Butte turtle effigy site is accessible; though it’s on private land, the owners welcome considerate visitors. Take Highway 1804 about 4 miles north of Pierre. The turn off (which is a private driveway) is on the left just past Grey Goose Road. At the corner, you’ll see a South Dakota State Historical Society sign with the heading, “Sioux Indian Mosaic.” From there you can drive to the top of the driveway, park your vehicle (without blocking the driveway) and a sign to the left will direct you to a quarter-mile walk to the top of Snake Butte, overlooking the Missouri River just downstream from Oahe Dam. The effigy is inside a fenced enclosure.

Archaeologist T.H. Lewis was the first to non-verbally document the site in 1889. He described the outline of a turtle (or possibly a beetle in his estimation), 15 feet long from nose to nail, and 8 feet wide, with four legs and a tail. “Running in a northerly direction along the edge of the bluff for from 500 to 800 yards there is a row of bowlders [sic], placed at irregular intervals. According to Indian tradition these bowlders mark the places where blood dripped from an Arikara chief, as he fled from the Dakotas, who had mortally wounded him.”

Lewis also described, “many squares, circles, some parallelograms, and other figures” along the bluff.

In 1904, Thomas Riggs — a missionary who lived among the Dakota — related the story that he said a Dakota elder had told him about the stones “thirty years ago.”

To paraphrase: An Arikara scout attempted to raid a Dakota camp on Snake Butte. He was discovered at dawn by a Dakota guard, who shot him with an arrow.

“The arrow,” Riggs said, “had entered the hip in such a way as to render the leg useless and an incumbrance. He ran, or hopped rather, with marvelous swiftness, falling to the ground again and again; in agony and desperation he rose and continued his hopeless flight till overtaken and slain.”

This illustration appeared with an article written by archaeologist T.H. Lewis in 1889.

“The victorious Dakota,” said Riggs, “was filled with wonder and admiration, and that such astonishing spirit might have a fitting memorial, retracing his steps, he carefully placed a stone over each drop of blood and along the course where the wounded man had fallen he gathered small piles of stones, and larger piles to show the starting in the race and the end.”

Recalling Riggs’ retelling, state historian Doane Robinson wrote that the memorialist placed the turtle at the end of the line of stones, “to show the tribal lodge to which he belonged.” The SDSHS sign near the site agrees with this interpretation of the turtle as a signifier for the Dakota band.

“As for which Lakota band is identified as the attackers, some say It·zipƒçho, some say Hokwojus,” says Sebastian LeBeau, a BIA archaeologist and member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Either way: “It’s an authentic Lakota story.”

One difference: in the version he knows, the Arikara warrior was defending his village, not the other way around. “He was running for his life to warn his people of an impending attack.” There is plenty of archaeological evidence of Arikara village sites in the area around Oahe Dam, though there is no historical record of a particular battle between the Arikara and the Dakota/Lakota connected to this event. “Even in the oral tradition, there is no specification on whether or not a raid was carried out. It just stops with the creation of the turtle effigy.”

“What’s important is the commemoration of the great deed demonstrated by the dying Arikara.”

Another difference in LeBeau’s version of the story is what the turtle symbolizes. “As I was told, the significance of the turtle goes back to creating kinship. Through the brave act of the Arikara — the Lakota in respecting him and honoring him, created a kinship recognition. In some tellings, I’ve heard old people say they recognized this one as a relative because of his bravery. His concern was for his people and he struggled mightily to try and warn them.”

“The central aspect of why one shares that story is to acknowledge not a great deed of the Lakota, but a great deed of an enemy. You measure your own self-worth or cultural worth as a warrior by who you fight with,” says LeBeau, laughing. “The Arikaras were good fighters. They couldn’t whip us, but we respected their ability in combat.”

“What made me feel sad about [the effigy] when I first went to it, was that the actual stone path — elements of it are still there, but the whole path isn’t.”

While the turtle figure is protected by the enclosure, many of the stones the stories say symbolize the blood trail left by the brave warrior have disappeared, along with the geometric shapes and figures documented by T.H. Lewis.

The physical work itself isn’t imposing — it’s a big (by-turtle-standards) stone outline of a turtle on a hill — dwarfed by panoramic views of the river valley below. Conceptually, it stands alone. Memorials to fallen warriors, built by their enemies, are hard to find.

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.

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Pollock’s Stone Idols

By Michael Zimny

Three stones on the Campbell County prairie could be the source of a centuries-old Arikara legend.

Three seemingly ordinary stones sit on a hill above some cabins at the Oahe Sunset Lodge on Lake Pocasse, just west of Pollock. Some believe these stones are the subject of an Arikara legend — concerning a pair of star-crossed lovers and their dog — reported in the journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

To find the stones, take Highway 1804 north and turn left at the sign for the Oahe Sunset. The stones are on a small hill to the right, just past the cabins. Though some have described them as “boulders,” they’re not all that imposing — small enough that a Strongman contestant or a Bobcat could lift them. Are these the stones of legend?

That may be impossible to know.

We do know that on October 10, 1804, the Corps of Discovery happened upon an Arikara village near the Missouri River. Three days later the journals relayed an ostensible Arikara legend about three stones near a creek they called Stone Idol Creek, now known as Spring Creek.

Clark described a stone trio “resembling humane persons & one resembling a Dog … situated on the open Prairie,” to which the “Rickores pay Great Reverance [and] make offerings.”

The story — as retold by nearby Mound City native, historian, South Dakota state representative and gubernatorial candidate Alice Kundert — concerned a pair of young lovers forbidden to marry by the young woman’s father, a chief. “When the youth persisted in his attention, his weapons were taken from him and he was driven out onto the prairie to starve or freeze in the winter cold. The Indian maiden resolved to die with her lover and so slipped away unnoticed from her father’s lodge. Close behind the two lovers followed the young brave’s dog.”

Winter passed. The chief was out riding one spring morning when he “came upon a startling sight.”

“There side by side stood the two young lovers … Their faces and forms showed young and strong with neither signs of gaunt hunger or suffering upon them. Close beside them stood the faithful dog. The Great Spirit had pitied the plight of these young children and of the prairie and turned them into stone images. About them he had placed an abundance of food, and clusters of wild grapes hung in festoons from a tree above the stone images, with one purple cluster reaching down to touch the maiden’s outstretched hand.”

Was this a real Arikara story?

“It sounds very plausible,” says Jasper Young Bear, a co-founder of the Medicine Lodge Confederacy, an organization — concerned with preserving “the Arikara culture, language, health and sustainable lifestyle” on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota.

“That motif — that a person has been turned to stone because of heartache — is the same type of story that was told about the woman that Standing Rock was named after. Right out in front of the Standing Rock tribal headquarters in Fort Yates, there’s the actual rock — on a pedestal, moved from its original place — named after an Arikara woman that was turned to stone by the powers above because she was broken-hearted.

“Stones in Arikara culture are considered animated objects. A rock is the symbol of the will of God. Over and over — you will hear this, you will see this, you will dream this.

“The rocks are actually people anyway. You’re not turning into some inanimate object. The word we gave to the Mandan people is a high term of respect — the Arikara word for Mandan is “kunit,” which literally means “rocks.” The [Arikara] considered the Mandan a powerful, knowledgeable people that stood for the will of God.

“A big part of this [rock] motif that continually reoccurs within our stories is that they have power, and that this power is connected to the thunder and lightning. There’s a [longstanding] ideology regarding the thunder and lightning, and the wind and the rain as Gods that sit in the West, and that these powers, visible on earth, were born from the power of the rocks. In the beginning of our creation story, the Creator himself squeezed a rock and from it gave birth to these four Gods that sit and protect the Evening Star, which is the mother of our people.”

The Arikara people have a long history in present day South Dakota. Archaeologist William Strong suggested that pottery fragments found at the Arzberger archaeological site — a fortified village near Pierre, occupied in the 13th and 14th centuries — showed “a general resemblance to historic and protohistoric Arikara wares.” Surveys at the Vanderbilt site show that during that era indigenous earth lodge villages existed in the Missouri River Valley in what is now Campbell County.

Even before the Lewis and Clark expedition, European traders had brought a series of devastating smallpox epidemics to the Middle Missouri Valley and disrupted the Arikara role in the continental indigenous trade network.

“The Arikara’s hatred of Americans had several roots,” wrote historian William R. Nester in The Arikara War. “The most important was the succession of trading expeditions up the Missouri, which threatened the Arikara position as one of the region’s trade middlemen. The animosity was inflamed by the death by smallpox of one of their chiefs during a visit to Washington in 1806.”

Less than 20 years after the Corps of Discovery were regaled with the story behind the stones, the amity between the Arikara and the Euro-American newcomers had dissolved.

In 1823, Arikara warriors struck a fur-trading party. The U.S. Army responded by bombarding their villages with artillery. The conflict — which became known as the Arikara War — was the first between the U.S. military and the indigenous people of the Plains.

Though the roots of the conflict went back further, Arikara animus towards these particular trappers began in 1822, when a Rocky Mountain Fur Company expedition led by William Ashley and Andrew Henry set out to trap pelts in the Rockies and transport them east rather than trade with Indians for them. That fall the expedition stopped at the Arikara villages on the Missouri River to trade for horses, and promised to set up a trading post there the following spring. The company reneged on their promise, angering the Arikara.

When Ashley and a party of around 100 trappers returned the following year to trade horses again, tensions were already high. A couple months earlier an Arikara war party had traveled downriver to what later became known as American Island, near Chamberlain, and attacked Fort Cedar — a post where the Missouri Fur Company traded with the Dakota/Lakota. The raid was successful but Grey Eyes, an Arikara chief, lost his son in the battle.

When Ashley’s party disembarked at the village, Grey Eyes demanded reparations for the loss of his son. Ashley managed to defuse the situation by explaining that Fort Cedar belonged to another outfit, and the two parties agreed to trade horses the following morning. Ashley acquired 19 horses in exchange for muskets, ammunition and other goods, and resolved to leave the following day, but wasn’t able. Stranded by a storm, the party was forced to hold off for another day.

That afternoon, according to Ashley’s journals, two upper village chiefs named Bear and Little Soldier warned him that some lower village chiefs were planning to attack. Then later that night, a trapper named Aaron Stephens slipped into the village, reportedly looking for “female companionship.” Whatever he did, he didn’t live through the night. A man named Edward Rose ran towards the keelboats, followed by an Arikara war party of several hundred, to tell Ashley that Stephens had been killed. Near dawn, the war party attacked the trapper camp on the shore, killing 12 men.

The surviving men fled to the keelboats and then to a nearby island, where they buried two of their dead. One of these boats features in South Dakota lore as the scene of a solemn prayer by famous frontiersman Jedediah Smith, the “gentleman trapper” who was said to pack a burner and a bible. According to Dale L. Morgan’s Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West, the trapper/ordained minister “stepped forward, and while the men stood silent around, with bowed head he prayed to that God in whose sternness all were prepared to believe, in whose compassion at this moment they much needed to believe.” This devotional moment is enshrined in the State Capitol in a mural — The Peace that Passes Understanding — by artist Charles Holloway.

That August, a combined force of Army soldiers led by Lieutenant Colonel Henry Leavenworth — along with Ashley’s trappers, a Missouri Fur Company militia and Dakota/Lakota allies — marched on the Arikara villages, bombarding them with artillery. Grey Eyes and perhaps 50 others were killed. Then Leavenworth surprised everyone by agreeing to a ceasefire, which didn’t satisfy the fur traders. When the Arikara abandoned their villages for fear of reprisals, members of the Missouri Fur Company party burnt them to the ground. This began the long Arikara flight that ended at the Fort Berthold Reservation, established in 1870 for the three-affiliated tribes — the Arikara, Mandan and Hidatsa. The legend has since lingered around the banks of Stone Idol Creek, but any certain knowledge as to the identity of the sacred stones left with them.

The stones at the Oahe Sunset Lodge were actually moved, from a place closer to the creek to their present spot, by previous lodge owner Denny Jensen.

Jensen may have sincerely believed he had found the same stones Lewis and Clark reported seeing. Assistant State Archaeologist Mike Fosha visited the site in 2000 and concluded that the owner was likely in the general vicinity of the site but that “Stone Idol Creek is several miles long and any location along this stretch has equal probability for the location.” Some local papers ran with that, presenting Fosha’s visit as a certificate of authenticity, prompting him to respond in the South Dakota Archaeological Society Newsletter that, “next time I will just nod my head and say nice rocks.”

In a 2004 SDAS Newsletter article, archaeologist Linea Sundstrom posited two possible locations for the stones — Spring Creek near Pollock, and Porcupine Creek near Fort Yates. “Lewis and Clark noted the stone idols … when the explorers were somewhere between the mouth of the Grand River (October 8) and the Cannonball River (October 18); thus, either of these locations could be correct,” though “the more likely of the two locations for the stone idols is present-day Spring Creek.”

Sundstrom contextualized the stones within a diverse Native American tradition of stone person stories among various tribes throughout the region. Native American scholar Vine Deloria Jr. wrote an entire chapter on “Sacred Stones and Places” in his last book, The World We Used to Live In. “One of the most prevalent entities in the traditional Indian spiritual universe,” wrote Deloria, “was the sacred stone.”

Sundstrom also noted that, “Most of the historical accounts describe offerings piled at the feet of the stone persons.”

“[Making offerings] is a relation to a natural, or in this case a semi-unnatural event, regarding power,” says Jasper Young Bear. ìThere’s an idea that there’s luck and power around that area. So what the Indians are doing is they’re creating a transference and counter-transference, to allow that sacredness to seep into their lives by acknowledging the Great Mystery.”

“This [giving of offerings] shows up archaeologically,” says Fosha, “at the base of stone features that are unique in the landscape.” Unsurprisingly, since the stones had been moved, no evidence of offerings was found where Denny Jensen placed the stones he found with a backhoe.

Maybe one day the SDAS will take a call from someone who’s found three unusual stones near Spring Creek, and find evidence of offerings at their feet. Or maybe an offering site will be found minus the stones, perhaps because they’ve been moved by water or a backhoe. Maybe there are people who know — but aren’t telling or haven’t been asked — exactly which stones are the story’s home. The story itself isn’t stoneless.

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.

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The Creek That Thinks It’s a River

By Jeanne Richardson

Split Rock Creek flows 55 miles through lush woodlands accentuated with quartzite outcroppings.

They call it Split Rock Creek, which is probably an accurate description as far as geographers are concerned. But who can blame some of its aficionados for considering it a river? Beautiful vistas. History. Even its own tour boat. Split Rock has everything a self-respecting river could want — and a charm all its own.

That which we call Split Rock, whether creek or river, was called Eminija before the arrival of white settlers. It springs to life in a pasture northeast of Ihlen, Minnesota, growing slowly before flowing into Split Rock Lake, formed in 1938 when the WPA (Works Progress Administration) dammed the creek south of town. One of the large rocks that protrudes from the ground on the east side of the lake is cleaved nearly in two, hence the name Split Rock. (Some believe that the split occurred over a long period of time, from water freezing, while others think lightning split the rock). Formations of that same reddish-pink stone, known as quartzite, can be found at many spots along the creek, forming the waterway’s spectacular, scenic views.

The meandering creek begins its South Dakota life east of Sherman — a town that once boasted five grain elevators, a stockyard, and an opera house where Lawrence Welk kept toes tapping. But Sherman isn’t what it used to be. About 1 mile west of town, Split Rock bubbles over 486th Avenue. There is no bridge, only a cement pad for the water to flow over, but it serves well enough. Most of the time.

From there the creek wends southwesterly, through Dakota farms, making its way toward Garretson and Devil’s Gulch, a picturesque canyon where scraggly cedar trees and bushes cling to the quartzite walls for life. Even to the unimaginative, Devil’s Gulch is a vaguely ominous place; its name derives from the eerie noises that come from its bowels as the winds blow through. Within the gulch the water lies oily and motionless, except for an occasional gurgle of life, but it is said that powerful currents rage below the surface. Some areas are reported to be bottomless.

Devil’s Gulch is also known as Spirit Canyon, a name based upon Indian legend. It seems that Iktomi, one who was fond of tricks, jokes and “keeping the pot stirred” while making other spirits and men look ridiculous, was challenged by an Indian warrior, Ha-Shootch-Ga, to a tomahawk duel. Iktomi raised his tomahawk and let it fly, high into the sky, then it plummeted to earth and cut a huge, gaping gash. That was the birth of Spirit Canyon. When he witnessed Iktomi’s power, Ha-Shootch-Ga disappeared.

In more recent times, relatively speaking, Devil’s Gulch was visited by the outlaws Jesse and Frank James. They stumbled upon it in 1876, during their escape from the law after a botched bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota. As a posse was closing in the brothers decided to ride in different directions. Jesse soon found himself on the rim of the gulch. Desperately he spurred his stolen horse onward, and with a Pegasus-like leap jumped the 20 foot-wide canyon. Once he was safely on the other side Jesse took refuge in a cave hollowed out of the quartzite canyon walls.

After the creek skirts Garretson’s west side, it flows toward Palisades State Park, a pocket-sized park at scarcely more than 150 acres, but one of the most beautiful spots in all of South Dakota. Its name comes from the steep cliffs of quartzite that rise to heights of 50 feet or more along the creek. Some of the rock formations have been given names such as Castle Rock and Balancing Rock. The park is a paradise for hiking, picnicking, camping, fishing, swimming, rock climbing, nature walks and memory making.

Within the park’s boundaries is the former town of Palisades, but all that remains is the schoolhouse, resting in a barnyard at the south end of the park. These days the school beckons not to scholars but to cud-chewing cows and spirited horses. One day it will be nothing but a memory. As unlikely as it might sound, this area was once the site of a silver mining boom. In 1886, along the shores of the Split Rock Creek and in its guardian quartzite walls at Palisades, Charles Patten discovered silver. His claim was called the Merrimac.

News traveled fast. Within two weeks 300 claims were staked out over 1,000 acres in the area. Records show that even a woman staked a claim: Mrs. Abbie Peterson filed the “Abbie Lode” on March 26, 1886.

Unfortunately, assay reports found the ore to be very low grade — about 3 ounces of silver to a ton of rock. Mining would be just too expensive. It was reported that only two people made money from silver. One was Shanny Kincaid, who charged a dollar to record a claim, and the other a young man who sold his claim for $25.

There still is a possibility of finding wealth in the Palisades, though. According to legend, a railroad paymaster once disappeared in these parts, along with the payroll entrusted to him. The paymaster was later found sitting along the railroad tracks, near Palisades, clothed only in boots and underwear. He couldn’t explain his lack of clothes or where the payroll was, but he did mention something about leaving the money in a satchel in the kitchen and his clothes in a closet. His clothes were found a few years later, tucked in a rock crevice in the Palisades, but no reports ever surfaced about the money being found.

Next on the Split Rock’s journey to the sea comes Corson — which some have been unkind enough to call a suburb of Brandon. You won’t hear that from those with generations of roots there, going back to the Norwegians and Swedes who originally settled the area. But some of those who have made Brandon one of South Dakota’s fastest growing towns might be excused for saying that — once.

On the southeast edge of Brandon lies McHardy Park, a former cow pasture with Split Rock Creek horseshoeing its way through. The land was donated to the Brandon Lions Club by Bryson and Hazel McHardy, who once lived on the banks of the creek, and the Lions in turn passed it on to Minnehaha County to develop into a park.

Near McHardy Park is a spot where, in 1879, the Split Rock showed its deadly side. Two couples set out on a trip to Beaver Creek, Minnesota, from Sioux Falls: Mr. and Mrs. Ole Thompson, and their teenage daughter, Louisa; and Mr. and Mrs. E. K. Lee, accompanied by their 9 month-old son, Clarence, (Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Lee were sisters). The travelers easily forded the creek in their carriage on their way out, but on the return trip, after a couple days of summer rains, the travelers found Split Rock Creek swollen. They believed they could safely cross anyway. Upon entering the creek, though, the current swept their carriage downstream.

Mr. and Mrs. Thompson drowned that day. Louisa was floundering in the swirling waters when another traveler, George Eells, who was waiting on the west bank for the creek to subside so he could cross, heard her hollering. He dove into the creek and rescued her. Mr. Lee managed to struggle to safety, but his wife and their son disappeared in the creek. After rescuing Louisa, Eells noticed a baby’s foot break the surface of the water. Once again he dove in, and finally found the baby. After struggling to shore, he tried to resuscitate him, but Clarence died in his arms. Mrs. Lee’s body was found the next day.

Split Rock Creek, then and now, occasionally demands respect.

About 2 miles south of Brandon is a parcel of ground where, in 1857, a townsite was established by the Dakota Land Company. It was called Eminija, and included the area where Split Rock Creek empties into the Big Sioux River. Eminija’s promoters believed steamboats might one day ply their way from the Missouri River, up the Big Sioux, to the site. Like so many other dreams of that era, however, that one never came to pass. Some old-timers talk about a cabin that once stood there, but no evidence remains.

Just west of the creek, in part of what was to have been Eminija, is a group of 38 dome shaped, earthen mounds, burial sites of Blood Run, a 17th century Oneota city with an estimated population of at least 5,000. In 2013, Good Earth State Park at Blood Run became South Dakotaís newest state park.

All told, Split Rock Creek runs about 55 miles from beginning to end. Not long, as such things are measured. But what Split Rock lacks in length, it makes up for in character.

Editorís Note: This story is revised from the July/August 1999 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.