Our July/August issue features the story of a traditional Native American naming ceremony held by Donna and Mike Stroup for their son, Jett, north of Pierre last summer. Keith Hemmelman photographed the event, but our pages could only hold so many of his images. Here are some that didn’t make the magazine.
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| Brothers Arik (left) and Bryan Williams possess the medal that government officials presented to their ancestors at the signing of the 1851 Treaty. |
People who live on the Coteau des Prairies in northeastern South Dakota know about Fort Sisseton, Sam Brown’s ride and the Lake Traverse Reservation, but may not be well informed about the history of our Native American population.
Several excellent history books detail the western movement of European settlers in North America, and the subsequent western push of the native population. The Heart of Everything That Is, by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, includes a lengthy history lesson setting the table. The Sioux tribes were a part of that movement. Here in northeast South Dakota, the history lesson is really squeezed into about a 20-year period that preceded statehood by 20 years.
On July 23, 1851, near a natural ford on the Minnesota River north of St. Peter, Minnesota, the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands of the Upper Dakota, among others, signed a treaty ceding their lands in Iowa and most of Minnesota while creating two reservations along the Minnesota River. A common practice at treaty signings was the presentation of peace medallions. The custom had begun even before the Revolutionary War to curry favor and recognize tribal leaders that aligned with the British or the French. The practice continued under the new American government as it expanded west into the lands of the Louisiana Purchase … and that’s where my lesson began.
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| The front of the medal includes a bust of George Washington. |
The Williams family has roots reaching back to the days of the first Sioux to come to South Dakota. The current sons, Arik and Bryan, are descendants of Laurs Williams, Dan Williams, Moses Williams, Siyaka and Wa’anta. They have the honor of possessing a peace medallion from the 1851 Treaty signing, and the flag that flew over the event that day.
The peace medallion is solid silver, and has a hole near the top so that it can be worn (old photos often show chiefs wearing the medallions awarded to them). This medallion has a bust of George Washington engraved on the front and an inscription that reads,”George Washington, The Father of Our Country.” The reverse shows two hands shaking, the year 1789 (the year the United States began operation under the Constitution), and”The Pipe of Peace” and”Friendship.”
The flag has 30 stars, consistent with the American flag in production from 1848 to 1851. It is in tender condition and hasn’t been unfurled in many years.
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| The Williams brothers also protect the American flag that flew over the treaty negotiations. |
When people are moved to war, rarely would one event explain the cause — the world is more complicated than that. But in 1862 war did break out in the Minnesota River Valley. At least some of the blame is laid upon the Trader’s Paper, a document signed with the 1851 treaty. It gave priority to payment of Native IOUs to traders, from the Native’s government treaty payments before funds and benefits provided under the treaty were paid to the dependent local Native population. The leader of the Mdewakanton band, Little Crow, began attacking white settlers, and by the end casualties from both sides totaled more than 1,000. The Dakota War is chronicled in detail in Scott Berg’s 38 Nooses. The book derives its title from the mass hanging of 38 Sioux warriors in Mankato, Minnesota on December 26, 1862. The actual number convicted and sentenced to death was 303, after 392 trials spread over 30 court days. Ultimately, President Lincoln pardoned all but 38 of the death sentences. The remaining Sioux in Minnesota were eventually relocated to the present Crow Creek Reservation in central South Dakota as punishment for the uprising, but the real motive was largely to clear western Minnesota for non-Native farmers and settlers.
The boundaries of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate today were established in 1867. The Sisseton and Wahpeton bands had not participated in Little Crow’s war, and had rebuffed his attempts to engage them in the conflict. In recognition for that, the Sisseton and Wahpeton were not relocated west, and the current boundaries are reflected in the 1867 treaty. South Dakotans readily recognize the triangle shaped reservation stretching from Lake Kampeska across the Coteau Hills to just across the North Dakota border. The treaty document even refers to currently recognizable”Kampeska Lake” and the”Coteau des Prairie(s).”
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| The Grand Entrance signifies the opening of the annual Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Pow wow. |
Historically, Fort Sisseton and Sam Brown’s ride happened after the Dakota Wars, but before the peace treaty. Fort Sisseton was built in 1864, two years after the war, but while memories were fresh and tensions still existed. Sam Brown’s ride came in this same time period. Sam Brown, of present-day Browns Valley, rode in the winter to Fort Sisseton to warn of an Indian uprising. Upon reaching the Fort and learning that the news was in error, he rode back into the blizzard to warn locals and avert possible bloodshed. Brown lost his legs to frostbite, and is locally referred to as the Paul Revere of the Midwest.
The Fort was located, ostensibly, to protect the Native population from intruding white settlers. Today the Fort has been restored and its role on the frontier is celebrated each year on the first full weekend in June by thousands of visitors. A month later, over Fourth of July weekend, the Sisseton Wahpeton celebrate their annual pow wow, which is open to all.
The 1876 battle in Montana, commonly referred to as Custer’s Last Stand, might seem far removed from the Coteau of northeast South Dakota, but the lingering tensions Sam Brown recognized existed on both sides of the racial divide. Descendants of Wa’anta report that their family fought with Sitting Bull in Montana that June day 140 years ago. Robert Utley’s Sitting Bull: The Life and Times of an American Patriot confirms that Sitting Bull’s encampment included 15 lodges of Dakotas who were defiant over their treatment after Little Crow’s defeat.
The Williams sons take their tribal legacy seriously. The unfilled treaty promises are recounted in the same breath as their family’s military service to America. Their family fought with the United States in the Civil War as a part of the Minnesota Regiment, both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam. Two of their siblings served in Desert Storm. It’s estimated that 400 descendants of Wa’anta have served in the United States military.
What seems like a long time ago, Gov. George S. Mickelson proposed a Year of Reconciliation. Undoubtedly, Natives and non-Natives interact more and better each year as the invisible boundaries that separate the two cultures dissipate. We’ve elected a Lakota U.S. Congressman, Ben Reifel. I’ve served with Sen. Jim Emery, a tribal member elected to represent a non-reservation district. Circuit Court Judge Tony Portra is of Native descent. It’s all progress, but there’s probably a reason they made those peace medallions so durable — they have to hang around a long time and they still have a lot of work to do.
Lee Schoenbeck grew up in Webster, practices law in Watertown, and is a freelance writer for the South Dakota Magazine website.
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| Johnny Cloud, a colorful Sisseton farmer, has many descendants in Roberts County. They include his daughter, Marlene (left) and a grandson, James Cloud. |
When South Dakota Magazine began publication in 1985, we hurried to interview some of South Dakota’s elder statesmen because we wanted to collect their stories firsthand. Ben Reifel and Sigurd Anderson were two such leaders. Reifel was born in a log cabin on the Rosebud Reservation in 1906 and became the first (and only) Native American to win statewide office in South Dakota.
Anderson was born in Norway in 1904, and served as governor in the early 1950s. Although Anderson and Reifel were Republican office-holders of the same age and era, they told very different stories. There was one exception: both mentioned an Indian boy from Roberts County who wanted to be a farmer.
They each spoke of him when we asked about race relations in South Dakota. Neither seemed to know any details about the boy, and the story was almost too cute to be true — like the feel-good anecdotes that politicians like to tell. We figured that one of the old pols had heard it from the other, so we gave it just a few paragraphs in Reifel’s feature article in 1989. However, I did repeat it on occasion when I was asked to speak at various events.
Anderson and Reifel told the story like this: the boy grew up on the reservation speaking only the Dakota language and a little German. His teachers told him he must learn English if he wanted to be a farmer.”After all,” said one teacher,”you don’t know how to farm, so you’re going to have to ask.”
That made sense to Johnny. He worked hard at English and other subjects. Years later, he was able to rent a patch of land in Roberts County. He decided his next step would be to meet the neighbors, who gathered for coffee every morning at the local grain elevator.
In farming country, a grain elevator is like the country club to an advertising executive or insurance agent. That’s where a farmer goes to”network” with his associates. The young Indian boy didn’t know the meaning of networking, but he intuitively understood the concept. So he bravely walked into the grain elevator and sat down at the table, ready to learn.
Imagine his surprise when he found that — after years of learning to speak English — the farmers were not speaking English, but some other language. He wasn’t sure what tongue it was, but it wasn’t German or English or Dakota. He wondered if his new neighbors were intentionally snubbing him. He didn’t know what to do. So he went home.
A few days later, Johnny mustered up the courage to confide in his nearest neighbor. He went to the man’s farm and blurted out his confusing experience at the grain elevator.”I spent years learning to speak English so I could be a farmer, and when I went to meet the other farmers they were talking something else,” he said.
The neighbor explained that nearly everyone in the community spoke Norwegian. He said the farmers at the elevator certainly didn’t mean to slight him.”They just weren’t thinking,” he assured the young man.
The two came up with a plan. The young Indian already knew three languages. Surely he could learn a fourth. A few weeks later, Johnny and his new friend returned to the grain elevator. They sat down at the table and Johnny, the Dakota Indian, introduced himself in Norwegian. Imagine the looks of surprise on his new neighbors.
Speaking in Norwegian, Johnny clumsily explained that he always had wanted to be a farmer. That his teachers told him to learn English so he could talk to his neighbors. That he still wanted to be a farmer, and he knew he needed their help and advice. And that he would help them whenever he could.
Before he could speak any further, because his Norwegian was so torturous to hear, they all welcomed him with handshakes and offers to help — offers spoken in plain English. And Ben Reifel said that was the last time anyone spoke Norwegian at the grain elevator, because they realized they had been excluding their non-Norwegian neighbors. Anderson and Reifel said the Indian boy became a skilled farmer and community leader, and all lived happily ever after.
That was their story. Whenever I told it in public, I admitted that I didn’t know the Indian boy’s name or the community where it happened. And, of course, I wasn’t even sure it was completely true.
A year ago I was asked to speak at the Center for Western Studies’ annual Dakota Conference in Sioux Falls. Wanting a feel-good conclusion to my talk, I told the story of the Indian boy from Roberts County. As I spoke, I could see that Wayne Knutson was paying close attention. He is the retired Dean of Fine Arts at the University of South Dakota and a patriarch of the arts across South Dakota.
As soon as I finished speaking, Knutson hurried to the front of the room and said to me,”That’s Johnny Cloud! I knew him. He was a big, tall Indian farmer from Sisseton who always greeted us with a god dag!” Wayne, it turns out, was born and raised in Roberts County. He said Johnny Cloud was one of the most memorable characters from his childhood in the 1940s.”Most of the Native Americans seemed more reserved, at least when they were downtown, but Johnny was a gregarious man with a hearty laugh that drew me to him,” Knutson said.”And he loved to show off that he could speak Norwegian. We’d heard that he had learned the language so he could do business with the Norwegian families,” he said.
Knutson remembered Johnny Cloud delivering”little Norwegian speeches” to the clerks in Stavig’s Department Store on Main Street.”Then he would laugh his big laugh, because it tickled him so much. I can still hear his laughter ringing out.”
I could hardly believe my ears, as Knutson brought Johnny Cloud back to life. My estimations of Anderson and Reifel — though already immense — grew still higher. Why had I doubted that the story was true?
As soon as I returned to the magazine office in Yankton, I looked in the Sisseton phone book for the Cloud name. I found James Cloud and dialed his number; James promptly answered. I asked if he knew Johnny Cloud, and he said both his father and grandfather were named John.
When I told him my story, he said his grandfather was the tall, successful farmer who spoke Norwegian.”I’m looking out my window at the land he farmed,” James said. He invited me to stop by on my next trip to Roberts County.
Sisseton, a tidy little city of 2,600 people, sits on flatlands just below the Coteau Hills. Sometimes in the winter, the sun is shining in Sisseton while a fierce blizzard rages in the hills west of town. Atop the Coteau, three markers have been erected to memorialize three separate incidents involving travelers lost in such storms.
The Sisseton area has a lot of variety for its size. The Lundstrum family’s religious ministry is headquartered there, as is the Schiltz family’s goose farm and factory, which processes 100,000 geese a year.
A glacier slid across this land a mere 20,000 years ago, creating dozens of pretty little lakes that are now ringed by cabins and resorts. The Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate Sioux Tribe runs a bingo hall and a community college just south of Sisseton. The tribe has a rich history. Its people, starving and denied supplies in Minnesota, battled the Minnesota militia in 1862. When the hostilities ended, 38 Indian warriors were hung on Christmas Day. It is called the largest mass execution in America’s history. Chief Gabriel Renville led the tribe into the 20th century, and many of his descendants live in Roberts County today.
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| Johnny Cloud and Bessie Derby were married at Sisseton in 1912. |
Northwest of town is the West’s smallest and prettiest forest, a 900-acre state park known as Sica Hollow. Hikers, horse enthusiasts, photographers and bird-watchers frequent the place, and sightseers come in the autumn to marvel at the hardwood trees’ golden foliage. Who could blame Johnny Cloud or any young man for wanting to make a living here on the land?
Driving into Sisseton on a weekday morning, I wondered if anyone other than James would remember Johnny Cloud. It was too early to call on James, so I stopped at the Cottage Restaurant on Highway 10 for coffee and eggs. Ken Erdahl, a longtime Sisseton banker, was seated in the next booth. We struck up a conversation, so I asked him if he knew Johnny Cloud.
ìHe was a big, tall guy,” answered the banker.”He was kind of husky. He was a good customer of ours, and a good farmer. When he wasn’t farming, he liked to hunt on Buffalo Lake. He liked to be called Goose Hunter.”
Erdahl recalled that Johnny spoke Norwegian, but he hadn’t heard the story of why he learned the language. He wasn’t surprised that Anderson and Reifel might have known the Indian farmer.”Johnny was well respected around here and very sociable,” said the banker.”He hung around Mel’s Diner for coffee. He was a very nice fellow.”
Erdahl was working at the Roberts County National Bank when Johnny borrowed $1,400 to buy his first new tractor, a shiny red”M” Farmall.”He sold it 20 years later for $1,500 and he was very proud of that,” said the banker.
Everywhere we went in Sisseton, old-timers remembered Johnny Cloud. They didn’t know of his encounter with the neighbors at the grain elevator, but their memories of his good nature, his intelligence and his passion for farming all supported the Anderson/Reifel story.
At the Roberts County National Bank, the Torness family paged through their local history books and found some specific information on John Melvin Cloud. He was born on the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana in 1891 and came to the Sisseton area as a teenager to live with relatives. His ancestry, like many Indians in Roberts County, traces to Chief Renville. Johnny married Bessie Derby in 1912 and they began a small farm on land just north of Sisseton.
Late in the morning, I drove north of town to the old Cloud farm. James, a short and slender man with jet-black hair, said he was young when his grandfather died in 1968.”I do remember helping him to feed the chickens, and if you didn’t do it right he would get after you,” he laughed.
ìCome in the house,” he said.”My mother knew him.” There in the living room, lying in a hospital bed, was James’ mother, Goldie. She was injured in a car accident in 1974, and has been confined to bed ever since. She was already the mother of 10 young children when the accident happened. Today, nine of the 10 still live in the Sisseton area and James says they all help care for mom, but he is there constantly, attending to her needs.
Goldie, despite her paralysis, is a happy and content woman. Her living room is filled with pictures of grandchildren, and she looks out a big picture window at the fields that her father-in-law once farmed. She remembers him as a big, friendly fellow who loved his neighbors and his family.
She married his only son, John Jr., in 1947. Goldie’s nearest neighbor is Marlene Campbell, her sister-in-law and Johnny’s daughter. Marlene lives less than a quarter-mile down a gravel road. We knocked on her door, and she was happy to answer our questions as well; but she noted that her husband had died two years earlier, and the shock affected her memory. Still, she had good recollections of her father.”A lot of the farmers would come to him because he could speak German and Dakota,” she said.”He probably learned it in Montana before he moved back here. He was always happy to translate for people.
ìHe helped people out, and he loaned machinery to the neighbors,” Marlene said.”He also would go to the jail and take the prisoners for a day or two. They were always so glad to get outside and work in the fresh air.”
None of the Cloud family remembered a specific story of Johnny learning Norwegian to speak at the grain elevator. But they agreed that it sounded a lot like him, and they confirmed his passion for farming. Marlene says her father built a barn even before he built a house.”He loved his farm and he was very successful,” she says. The big red barn was recently torn down, but a grove of trees and his old granary still stand on the Cloud farm.
ìHe encouraged all of his children to go to school,” said Marlene,”but I was the only one who went to the university.” She earned a master’s degree in education, and taught at Sisseton High School and the Sisseton-Wahpeton Tribal College.
Cloud family members have worked in education, health care, religious ministries and other professions. Because a boy wanted to farm — and possibly because a neighbor helped him learn a little Norwegian — his family took root in Roberts County. The benefits to the area continue to multiply, as does the Cloud family; as we visited with Marlene, her granddaughter came by the house with the family’s newest member, a three-month old baby called Azriel who has the bloodlines of a great chief and a fun-loving farmer.
While driving away from the Cloud farm, we thought that Azriel deserves the opportunity to know about her Norwegian-speaking great-grandfather. He overcame the gulfs of not just two, but three cultures — and he did it with laughter and good cheer. So, with apologies and appreciation to Ben Reifel and Sig Anderson, we’ll continue to tell the story of the Indian boy who wanted to farm.
Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2008 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.
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| Native American legends, passed to each generation through oral history, are behind the names of many of South Dakota’s glacial lakes. Painting by Ron Backer. |
Punished Woman’s Lake and Enemy Swim Lake are just a few of the beautiful names assigned to the Glacial Lakes in northeast South Dakota.
Legends behind the names include tales of lost love, bountiful hunts and bloody battles. And the stories preserve an important part of Indian and South Dakota culture.
The last huge glacier, during the Wisconsin Period (between 75,000 and 10,000 years ago), created the Glacial Lakes that dot the Coteau des Prairies, a rise that covers much of South Dakota’s eastern quarter. In A New South Dakota History, geographer Ed Hogan explains that two glaciers sat on either side of the Big Sioux River, which drains and bisects the coteau. The glacier on the east side melted quickly, leaving valleys, while the western glacier melted more slowly, resulting in lakes and sloughs.
Many lake legends originated in prehistoric times, making them impossible to trace.”Most of what was thought to be reality in those days got changed, or became legends,” says Elden Lawrence, a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribe and former president of Sisseton Wahpeton College.”Legends are kind of a safe haven. They don’t have to be true or false, they’re just there. So a lot of them, we don’t know for sure what they’re based on. Some of them go into mythology, which was part of the old culture. It’s hard to track down what’s authentic.”
Lawrence says legends were an important part of oral history, an integral component of Native culture.”We didn’t have any written books. History was passed down from one generation to another. It’s just like any modern school system. You can tell people things and they’ll forget. But you always remember a story, or a legend. It was a way of preserving a record of certain events or places. To oral history, legends were like a library, and the more you could remember the more knowledge you had. It was their one way, maybe their only way, of preserving history.”
Legends are still revered by tribal elders, but Lawrence believes younger generations don’t have the same appreciation. For years elders and youth gathered on the shore of Enemy Swim Lake so the elders could tell the lake’s story, but that tradition ended.”An elder told me that young kids no longer sit at the feet of the elders, they sit at the feet of the TV,” Lawrence says.
If that’s the case, then perhaps we’re fortunate that history isn’t always oral today. Here are written versions of some favorite South Dakota lake legends.
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Warring bands of Sioux and Chippewas fought in 1812 at Enemy Swim Lake, northeast of Waubay. Today the battle makes a captivating campfire story for visitors to NeSoDak Bible Camp, which sits on the site where the battle began.
Sioux men danced and sang around a campfire built on a peninsula jutting from the lake’s southern shore. A group of Chippewas on a hunting trip saw the firelight and planned a surprise attack as the Sioux slept.
Sioux warriors guarded the peninsula, so the Chippewas made rafts and floated quietly to a nearby island, then waded in waist deep water. The Sioux heard their splashing and attacked, shouting”Toka nuapi” (the enemy swims) as the Chippewas swam north toward Shepherds Point. The Sioux chased them over land and eventually killed the entire party.
In 1918 Jack Rommel built Camp Dacotah, a hotel and fishing resort, on the peninsula and decorated it with Indian artifacts found around the lake. The site became NeSoDak Bible Camp in 1942, one of five camps operated by Lutherans Outdoors. Rommel’s hotel is NeSoDak’s main lodge and Rommel’s cabin houses campers. A stone fireplace in the lodge features grindstones and arrowheads, and the cabin boasts a large native stone chimney.
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When homesteaders settled around Punished Woman’s Lake in Codington County, they found two huge stone effigies lying atop a grassy mound three miles south of the lake. Indians had used 104 boulders to create a 13-foot outline of a man lying on his back with outstretched arms. About 40 feet away was the slightly smaller figure of a woman, lying in the same position. They likely memorialized the sad tale of Wewake and Black Bear.
The two were in love, but Wewake’s father opposed the union. Four times Black Bear brought gifts to Wewake’s father, but he refused them. Instead he accepted offerings from White Tail Wolf, a 60-year-old chief, and gave his daughter to him. The young lovers eloped and fled to the knoll south of the lake, where warriors from the tribe captured them. White Tail Wolf killed Black Bear and tied Wewake to a tree. She declared her love for Black Bear until the old chief stabbed her in the heart. White Tail Wolf prayed that the two be buried dishonorably, and crafted the stone effigies as a reminder of his unfaithful wife. The Great Spirit heard him and sent a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky that killed him.
Archaeologist T.H. Lewis sketched the effigies in 1883, but they were almost completely destroyed by 1914. Today South Shore community members re-enact the legend at the Punished Woman’s Pageant. An Indian chief tells the story to children as local actors recreate the scenes. An exhibit is also displayed at the Overland Country School and Museum in South Shore.
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When the water is low around Stony Point, on the southeastern shore of Lake Kampeska near Watertown, you can see a rocky island surrounded by buoys to protect unsuspecting boaters. It is a popular resting spot for water birds and the place where centuries ago a young Indian maiden named Minnecotah was left to die.
Many warriors from her tribe wanted to marry Minnecotah, but she was in love with a Wahpeton hunter. To satisfy the locals, Minnecotah said she would marry the man who could throw a stone the farthest into the lake. The men spent days heaving tiny pebbles and huge rocks, but the waves tossed them until no one could tell who won. They threw so many stones an island formed. By then they realized the contest was a ruse, so they kidnapped Minnecotah and placed her on the rocky island with no food. She survived with help from a white pelican that brought fish and berries. Her lover returned to rescue her and they went to live near his home in Wahpeton country. The warriors, discovering that Minnecotah was gone, believed that the sun god had sent the white pelican to take her away.
Stony Point was once an Indian campsite; arrowheads are still found there. And the legend of Maiden’s Isle has become an important part of local culture. Florence Bruhn, a former high school art teacher, adapted it to establish Ki-Yi Days, Watertown’s homecoming celebration.
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Lake Tetonkaha is one of eight connected glacial lakes that surround Oakwood Lakes State Park, northwest of Brookings. The place was once a summer camp and popular gathering place for Indians. One summer a group of Sioux warriors stayed late into autumn because a large buffalo herd was there. They became trapped when an early blizzard caught them off guard. Wood was scarce, so the hunters built a huge community tent.
They stayed the entire winter. When spring arrived they removed the buffalo hides they used for shelter, but left the poles standing. Indians who saw the poles called the place Tetonkaha Bde (the standing of the big lodge house), and the lake became known as Lake Tetonkaha.
In 1869 settler Samuel Mortimer built a cabin nearby that still stands, and the park visitors center displays Indian artifacts found around the lakes.
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There are several Long Lakes in South Dakota, but the one northeast of Lake City in Marshall County might hold treasure. A Santee Sioux named Gray Foot told his sons on his deathbed in 1910 that he buried a flour sack full of gold coins worth $56,000 between two willow trees on the lake’s east shore.
A group of Santees, including Gray Foot, raided the agency in Martin, Minn., on payday during the Sioux Uprising of 1862. Some soldiers were killed and the government payroll chest looted. When Gray Foot heard the War Department declare that anyone found with gold from the chest would be hanged, he buried it. His sons tried many times to find the hidden gold, but left Long Lake none the richer.
Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.
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| Bryan Akipa with an eagle whistle. |
As a young artist studying under Oscar Howe, Bryan Akipa was launched on a new trajectory in life by a conversation about mallards. Akipa, who was born and raised on the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Reservation where he still resides, was studying painting under the master Dakota artist at the University of South Dakota.
“He used to do research on his paintings, and he was working on something to do with mallards,” says Akipa. “He asked me if I went duck hunting and I said ‘yes,’ and he asked me about how [mallards] take off from the water.” As they were talking about flight patterns of waterfowl, Howe brought out a mallard-head flute crafted by the late Lakota flute maker Richard Fool Bull.
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| A mallard flute by Lakota artist Richard Fool Bull inspired Akipa to research Native flute making. |
“I had never seen flutes in our culture before. I didn’t realize we had flutes.” The instruments sparked his interest. He began making sketches of traditional flutes, empowered by his high school drafting classes and inspired by the work of Fool Bull, who he met once briefly at the Howe studio. From those sketches, he went on to create his own prototype with a pocketknife.
At the time, Native American flutes were an endangered art form. If it weren’t for a handful of artists like Richard Fool Bull — a tribal member at the Rosebud Indian Reservation — who bridged the gap between the days when much of Dakota/Lakota/Nakota language and heritage was illegal and today, the art may have been lost.
“People started noticing that I was interested and talking about it, and finally someone said, ‘One of my grandmother’s cousins knows about flutes.'” He was introduced to elder Norman Blue and then to another elder, David Marks, who continued his education in flute making.
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| Akipa has a large collection of found and self-made traditional wind instruments, including these eagle-bone whistles. |
“David Marks had made and played flutes when he was younger. He had received a flute in 1918 from his grandfather. [Blue and Marks] taught me a lot of oral history. They taught me the songs. I started learning the flute as a cultural journey.”
Akipa has never studied music. His interest in creating the instruments led him to learn to play.
As his knowledge grew and he mastered the craft he became part a generation of young Native flute players — along with Carlos Nakai, Kevin Locke [Cheyenne River Reservation] and others — from different tribes, who revived the tradition in different ways.
His career took another Howe-like detour after a couple semesters at USD. Coming from a family with a proud history of military service — his uncle Woodrow Wilson Keeble was a legendary hero of the Korean War and one of three Native Americans awarded the Medal of Honor — he enlisted and spent a few years in the Army. While he was away, he corresponded with his mentor.”We kept in contact. I’d come back on leave and go visit him. Then when I got out of the Army I studied under him again.”
Soon after Akipa returned from his time in service though, Howe passed away. Feeling unanchored, he followed in the footsteps of his mentor yet again, completing an internship as a teacher at the Pierre Indian Learning Center (PILC). There he perfected the craft and started again to find his own path, building a reputation as a flute maker.
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| The ċan aaki, or saddle, seen tied with leather cord to these instruments, is unique to Native American flutes. |
The basement of his home on the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate is a woodwind workshop bursting with flutes of all sizes, adorned with the heads of eagles, bear and elk. He carves most of his flutes from eastern red cedar, but experiments with other mediums.
He’s begun working with the stalks of sweet corn, inspired by reading about the Hidatsa oral historian Buffalo Bird Woman. He’s also working with giant sunflower stalks. He has a small collection (some self-made) of whistles made from the bones of eagle wings. He keeps reams of meticulously drawn hole-pattern maps that determine the scale and range of different instruments.
A unique component of flutes from various Native American cultures is the incorporation of what some Dakota traditionally called the ċan aaki, also called a saddle or tuning block, a sometimes-ornate, sometimes utilitarian wooden piece that enters the tube from a notch on the top of the instrument.
Instead of a sharper-edged embouchure-hole at one end, Dakota flutes have round openings on both sides and no reed. A vertical bridge in the interior part of the saddle creates two air channels. This manipulates the air jet produced by the player, creating sound. The saddle is usually affixed with leather cord and can be adjusted to fine tune the sound of the instrument.”Every culture has flutes, but [Native American] flutes are the only flutes in the world that use this method.”
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| A table in Akipa’s workshop with hole pattern diagrams and flutes. |
Despite not having a formal musical education, having taught himself to recreate what had almost become a lost art, Akipa also began receiving attention for his playing skills, first at the PILC and local museums, then internationally. He released his first album, The Flute Player, in 1993. He has released five more since, receiving several”Nammy” nominations and traveling around the world. Beyond flute making and music, Akipa is also exploring digital arts.
In the past few years, with elder family members to care for, he hasn’t traveled so far from the Oyate to play, though he did perform last year with the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra as part of the Lakota Music Project. While his work as a performer has made him an international ambassador for the music of the Native American flute, one or more of the instruments he is creating now in his workshop may become draft cards of sorts for the next generation to carry forward the art form, like a mallard-head flute made by Richard Fool Bull was for him.
Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.
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Look at a detailed road atlas of Marshall County in northeastern South Dakota and you’ll see a distinct divide. The western half is an almost undisturbed patchwork of county roads leading to towns like Britton, Langford, Kidder and Amherst. East Marshall County is pockmarked with glacial lakes, ponds and sloughs, meaning the distance between Lake City and Fort Sisseton as the crow flies is much different than actual drive time.
We talk much about the cultural differences between West River and East River South Dakota, but I doubt they pertain to Marshall County. This is farm country through and through, although the lakes do add recreational fun and historical mystique.
Marshall County was created in 1885. Day County, which then extended north to the 46th parallel, was cut nearly in half. The new northern county was then named for Marshall Vincent, a New York native who homesteaded near Andover in 1881 and was a county commissioner at the time of the split.
An 1886 history of the area credits Charles Bailey as the first occupant of Marshall County; he homesteaded in Victor Township in 1881. But of course Plains Indians inhabited the region for centuries. In fact, the western boundary of the Lake Traverse Reservation runs diagonally north to south through the eastern quarter of the county.
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| Families glimpse 19th century life at Fort Sisseton. Photo by S.D State Parks. |
Legends passed through oral history are an important part of Native culture. Several lakes in eastern Marshall County have names with origins rooted in ancient stories. Emma Lake lies along the Marshall and Roberts County line, just north of Highway 10. It is named for Emma Mato, who had a lodge on the lakeshore. One winter her lover tried to walk to her home across the frozen pond but fell through. Emma paced the shoreline for months calling his name, but he never returned. Locals began calling it Emma’s Lake.
A huge buffalo herd became trapped in the thick trees around a chain of lakes in southeastern Marshall County during a four-day blizzard. Pleased with their kill, Indians named the place”The Buffalo Hunt in the Woods,” later shortened to Buffalo Lakes.
Long Lake near Lake City could hold buried treasure. A Santee named Gray Food told his sons on his deathbed in 1910 that he buried a flour sack full of gold coins worth $56,000 between two willow trees on the lake’s east shore. His sons tried many times to find the gold, but always left empty handed.
The Indian presence in the area was the reason behind building Fort Sisseton in 1864. The fort lies southwest of Lake City and hosts an annual historical festival (June 5-7). Visitors can walk the grounds and step inside the original officers’ quarters, stone barracks, guardhouse and other buildings. New this summer is the display of a rediscovered 38-star post flag. The staff believes it was the last flag to fly over Fort Sisseton before it was decommissioned in 1889.
There are other unique places to visit around Marshall County. Several years ago a writer stopped in Eden, pop. 91, and discovered that the bar and grill called Club Eden hosted an all-you-can-eat bullhead fish fry every Friday night. Since then, about 20 local investors bought the business and replaced the bullheads with chicken wing Wednesdays.
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| If you look hard enough in Britton, you’ll find the 1930s. |
A farm just outside of Langford features a tribute to a young homesteader who died aboard the Titanic in 1912. Ole Olson’s parents were from Norway and homesteaded near Langford. He grew up there and later moved to Canada. He was returning from a trip to Norway when the Titanic sunk.
In 2003, Olson’s grandnephew Harlan was refurbishing the granary when he found Ole’s name carved into the wall. They figure Ole did it sometime between 1885 and 1912.
We were surprised in Britton one day when we encountered an entire 1930s Main Street. There was a saloon, hotel, bank and gas station with vintage cars parked outside. It’s the creation of Don Schumaker, who runs Schumaker Home Furnishings. He and his wife Norma operate the unique setup as Apple Valley Rentals.
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| “I’m a sucker for clouds,” Marshall County photographer John Front told us. “I often don’t go out unless there are clouds.” |
We’ve met plenty of interesting people from Marshall County including Frank Farrar, who served as governor of South Dakota from 1969-71. The 85-year-old was the subject of a recent television news story about his athletic and aerial exploits (he’s a pilot and triathlete). We’ve been meaning to get to Britton to catch up with Frank.
Another was John Front, who provided a window into Marshall County through his photographs. When we met him in 2004 he was 85 and had a collection of about 30,000 images, many of them taken in his home county. You’ll see John Front photos hanging in businesses around Britton today, and we used several of them to illustrate a book called South Dakota Farmscapes. He showed us why landlubbers and sailors alike enjoy their time in Marshall County.
Editor’s Note: This is the third installment in an ongoing series featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here for previous articles.
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| A small village of tipis rises beyond the trees and boulders at the sacred Sun Dance site. |
Early on a sunny June afternoon I turn from Highway 71 onto a gravel road and enter the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary south of Hot Springs. Within a mile, I see the hand-lettered”Sun Dance — Please Respect This Sacred Land.”
A dusty track leads higher into remote hills adorned with pine and cedar. Emerald green carpets the piedmont, and a warm breeze tugs at the brome, wild mustard and cheat grass. Patches of sweet clover bloom yellow and the air is thick with the piquant scent of sage.
In 1883, the U.S. government outlawed the Sun Dance, and Catholic and Episcopalian missionaries discouraged it. In his book The Lakota Way, Joseph M. Marshall III, wrote that the dance was characterized as”uncivilized and barbaric.”
They failed or chose not to see the ceremony for what it was: a symbolic act of sacrifice performed so that the people might live. Native Americans went underground with the Sun Dance until 1978, when the American Indian Religious Freedom Act legalized it.
Far back in the hills I pass a small herd of wild Sorraia Mustangs grazing beneath a stand of ponderosas on the sanctuary. Over another hill, the Cheyenne River runs high and muddy from recent rains. Along its bottom cottonwood leaves turn their silvery undersides to the breeze.
Passing through a livestock gate, I stop at another hand-lettered”Security” sign. Two Lakota men sit beneath a shade arbor next to a tipi. They welcome me, but also remind me that no recording devices or cameras are allowed.
It was one of many Sun Dances celebrated in summer on the Indian reservations of South Dakota, but the only one undertaken in the Black Hills. I was invited by Vic Glover, a former U.S. Army medic who flew helicopter medevac missions in Vietnam. A former journalist, he is author of the book Keeping Heart on Pine Ridge. A practitioner of traditional native spirituality, he is also a student of Buddhism and Christianity. Glover went to Asia several years ago as a volunteer after the huge Indian Ocean tsunami, and now lives much of the time in Thailand. He returns home each year to fulfill his pledge to take part in the Sun Dance.
I drive another half-mile to the dance site, where six poles fly American flags above MIA-POW flags. Just beyond, a forked cottonwood trunk stands 40 feet high in the center of a great circle. Colored cloth banners (red, green, blue, yellow) adorn its heights, flapping in the breeze. Other banners hang further down, as well as eagle feathers. Small”tobacco tie” prayer offerings to Tunkashila (God, the grandfather) wrap the entire trunk from top to bottom. Beyond, a fire pit heats rocks for sweat lodges bordering one side of the sacred dance site.
I park by other dusty cars and trucks and campers with license plates from Connecticut to California. Men and women nod or smile, though I am both a stranger walking into their most sacred ceremony and a wasicu (white guy). While some Sun Dances’ organizers do not allow non-native people to attend, others welcome people of different faiths and backgrounds. A third of the people at this Sun Dance appear to be non-native.
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| Several Sun Dances are celebrated on South Dakota’s Indian reservation every summer, but this was the only dance held in the Black Hills. |
Father William Stolzman, a Jesuit priest, spent years on the Rosebud Reservation. For six years he convened bi-weekly meetings with other priests and Lakota medicine men to discuss Christianity and traditional Lakota spirituality. His meetings resulted in his 1986 book The Pipe and Christ, which describes similarities and differences between Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota peoples’ traditional spiritual practices and Christian religious practices.
The book shows our shared humanity, but also the gulf between the ways two cultures see the world in general, and American popular culture in particular. At Stolzman’s meetings between priests and medicine men, the priests — curates of a religious culture full of complex doctrine and righteous certainty — spoke quickly and confidently and asked pointed questions of the medicine men.
The Lakotas were often upset by this bluntness of manners. Careful and slow to speak, they came to any topic indirectly, then spoke for longer periods. About some wakan (sacred) matters they were reluctant to speak at all, considering that disrespectful.
At the sun dance site, a huge circular dance area is marked off by a two-foot high fence of willow switches painted bright red around half of the circle, and bright blue around the other half. The base of each vertically arrayed willow switch has been buried and it forms one fragile stick of the fence that demarcates the sacred dance area. Near the top of each of the hundreds of willow switches that formed the circle, a small tobacco tie is knotted, alternating in the sacred colors of the four compass directions: red, yellow, black, white. They are offerings of tobacco to each of the 405 spirits that have something to do with humans.
Four openings in the great circle mark the four directions. Surrounding the entire circular site a vast brush arbor was constructed, consisting of forked pine tree trunks perhaps four inches in diameter. The base of each is now buried into the ground so that each trunk stands vertically. Lashed atop their forks, and crisscrossed in a rough lattice on top, tree limbs have been tied in place with cord or wire. Shaded beneath the arbor are some 50 spectators, plus three bands of drummers and singers who sit in circles around their drums.
Within the dance circle itself, perhaps 60 men and women in traditional Lakota garb dance in the day’s third of four dances. The men, naked from the waist up, are attired in ankle length wraps of red or blue cloth. Some carry eagle wing fans and their personal or family canupas (pipes made of traditional pipestone –“peace pipes” as we wasicus have called them).
Many men wear two standing eagle feathers attached within a thick cylinder of sage wrapped in spirals of red cloth and worn around their heads like a crown. Tufts of sage hang from the front over their brows. Sage cleanses a person’s body and spirit, and perhaps in wearing it this way the sage precedes the wearer on his path to cleanse him as he moves forward in the dance — just as in life.
Some male dancers bear healed scars in their chests and backs from past years’ piercings. Several others have fresh wounds from the morning’s dances, when some men were pierced with scalpels and lashed to the great tree by buffalo hide or plain manila ropes. One man has dabs of shredded tobacco stuck like a poultice to his still-raw wounds.
Beneath the brush arbor, I ask around and finally locate Vic Glover resting and talking with five other male dancers in one of the tipis. We’ve corresponded via e-mail for the last year, yet until today have never met face-to-face. He introduces me to each of the men and they greet me politely and bring me into their conversation.
After a time, I step outside as they prepare for the day’s fourth and last dance. The dance ensues, and at its conclusion all the young and old spectators, myself included, step outside the arbor’s shade. We stand side by side as the long line of dancers passes slowly. Each dancer looks into our eyes and acknowledges each of us, pausing to purify us with smoldering sage, or grace our shoulders and hands by a touch of their pipes, or stroke us all around with eagle wing fans.
Each dancer, whether pierced or un-pierced, is a person who pledged to dance long ago, then prepared a year or more for these four days of fasting and dancing. And now, after his or her exertions and personal sacrifice, each pointedly blesses each of us.
Then, one dancer looks at me as he touches his pipe and eagle wing to my shoulders, forehead and hips. He says firmly,”Take off your glasses. Don’t wear glasses while you’re being blessed.” I feel a rush of irritability, for no one in the long line of dancers that preceded him complained about my eyeglasses. In an instant, though, I make a decision to treat his words as education rather than insult; I remove my glasses and thank him. He nods and moves on to bless the next person. (Later, I learn that he serves as one of the Sun Dance’s overseers.)
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| The twisting Cheyenne River runs high and muddy, and the land beyond is a carpet of green from spring rains. |
Afterward, Glover invites me to eat at the main camp with the other spectators, though he and other dancers will remain in the tipis at the dance site for four days, fasting and praying and resting between dances. I drive down to the camp beside the Cheyenne River. On a beach in the river bend a sweat lodge has been erected and above it on the meadowed bench of matted grass is a small village of tents and tipis.
The sinking sun lingers, its light falling yellow-green on the small camp and the nearby sandstone cliffs. I walk to the cliffs and examine a wide wall of petroglyphs that have been scored into the sandstone over millennia. Beside this ancient artwork, listening to the children’s laughter in the tipi camp, I place my palm on the glyph of what looks like a mammoth, extinct now for thousands of years.
People continue to pull up in cars and pickups and vans from the dusty gravel track that leads about a mile from the hilltop Sun Dance site. Some crank up their Coleman stoves or campfires, though many converge on the cook tent and brush arbor where a group of women have been preparing food. Kids yell and play and rush around while the adults, from vigorous young to frail elders, laugh and greet one another with smiles and hugs.
Watching such camaraderie with its warm and cheery flavor of a homecoming of relatives — and as welcome as these folks have helped me feel — I still feel strangely shy and a bit overwhelmed so I start my car and steal away.
The next day, I arrive at the dance site in early afternoon, just before the beginning of the third dance. One young man from Glover’s tipi has two new wounds in his chest — the marks of selflessness and sacrifice.
This day’s third dance begins. Men and women dancers move into the circle to the drummers’ and singers’ song. The dance lasts a long time, and though finally the dancers stop, the drummers and singers continue, and one of the ceremony’s overseers brings a tanned buffalo hide to the great tree and unfolds it on the ground.
Now, another young man will be pierced, a fulfillment of his vow to willingly suffer so that his people might be relieved of their afflictions. Sun Dance sponsors and dance leaders Tom and Loretta Cook of Chadron, Neb., lay the volunteer dancer down on the buffalo hide with the help of two other dancers. One of the assistants is the former Army medic, Vic Glover.
We watch from the shade beneath the brush arbor as Tom Cook pierces the man’s chest with a scalpel and inserts bone or hardwood skewers on left and right above his nipples, then ties buffalo hide ropes to the awls. Finally, Glover and Cook help the man to his feet and he begins to dance. The far end of the long rope is looped over a cross bar high on the tree, and two other male dancers take up that end of the rope.
The high cross bar becomes a rough pulley, so that when the men who hold the rope dance away from the tree the rope becomes taut and pulls the pierced dancer’s muscles so tight that they are drawn out from his chest, a great agony. Blood streams down his belly as, arms spread wide, he waves his two eagle wing fans and looks toward the sky and sun, beseeching Tunkashila and praying for his people.
The two dancers opposite the circle pull their rope harder and the man lifts into the air, spinning, hanging by the bone skewers hooked through his chest muscles until finally, from the weight of his suspended body, the two skewers rip through his chest muscles and come free. He spins to the ground where the assistants instantly provide support. For long seconds the man stands, resting shakily with their help.
Gathering himself, he raises his eagle wing fans, spreads his arms and dances around the circle. Cook and Glover go along to attend him, glancing repeatedly at his face as he progresses. As he arrives at each of the four openings in the circle, the pierced dancer turns and raises his arms toward God and the sun.
When the three men finally stop by the great tree, other dancers and members of the dancer’s family approach him, placing hands on him in gratitude and praying for him and for the community. His torn muscles still extend an inch or more through the two holes in his chest, though gradually they will withdraw back within his twin wounds.
In The Pipe and Christ Stotzman wrote,”Some people have great difficulty understanding and appreciating the tearing of flesh that takes place in the Sun Dance. Many cannot understand that there are higher values for which health is to be sacrificed. Modern Christians generally have little appreciation for the early Christian’s eagerness and joy in material penances, persecution, and martyrdom.”
Stolzman interviewed young men who had been pierced and tethered in the Sun Dance. Some told him that they identified”with Christ, asking Him for strengthÖ They gave themselves completely, body and soul, to God in ways they had never done before. They recognized their failings and their weaknesses Ö their limitations and their strengths. They discovered the love they had for their God and their people.”
The hilltop ceremony will last two more days, but in late afternoon I leave for home. At a rocky promontory nearby, I pull off the dusty track, shut off my car’s engine and step outside. My eyes drift down the bouldered scarp to the distant river bottom where, far below, seven huge white pelicans slowly flap along the winding Cheyenne, casting dark shadows on its muddy waters. Beyond, the rim rock mesas glow red and tan and the firmament above shimmers cobalt blue. Far to the north, evening thunderheads are blooming above the Black Hills.
Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2008 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.
We sent a writer to the Lakota Nation Invitational Tournament (LNI) last weekend in Rapid City. We’ll have a major feature article on the LNI in the fall of 2015, but we thought we’d share some photographs of the big winter extravaganza that has been held for the past 38 years at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center in Rapid City. Photos by Bernie Hunhoff.
Yes, I can write a short sketch of my life, but there would not be very much, just a continual chain of duties day in and day out, always on a ranch, lonely and far from other habitations… Took care of ten children that came to me. I studied history of our own people to keep my mind occupied.
Josephine Waggoner wrote those words in 1932 to Frank Herriott, a professor who was trying to help her publish her writings of Native American history and life. Despite the work, the”chain of duties” she endured, she never stopped collecting the stories of her people. She wrote at night after her family members were asleep, and the cabin on the Standing Rock Reservation was quiet.
She began writing in the 1920s because she worried the history and culture of the Lakota were being lost as elders passed away without handing down their knowledge in the traditional way. She also wanted to correct untruths written by white journalists and scholars. Waggoner started to interview chiefs, elders, tribal historians and, unlike other white or Indian writers, she also interviewed women.
Although she never saw her work printed during her lifetime, it was finally published in 2013 thanks to Emily Levine, an independent scholar, author and editor in Lincoln, Neb., who took on the messy job of compiling Waggoner’s writings into one book, Witness: A Hunkpapa Historian’s Strong-Heart Song of the Lakotas.
Waggoner was born in 1871 at Grand River Agency, at the confluence of the Grand and Lakota rivers. Her father, Charles McCarthy, owned a trading store on the east side of the Missouri. When she was 10, Waggoner volunteered to be a part of a group of Indian children who went east to finish their education. She attended Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia. She returned home after her schooling to work at St. Elizabeth Mission at Wakpala. Waggoner met her husband while working at another mission a mile south of Fort Yates. She married Frank Waggoner on Thanksgiving Day in 1889. Her husband was in the Army, stationed at Fort Yates. It was during her time at Fort Yates that Waggoner began to document what was happening around her, as well as conducting interviews and recording tribal stories.
Levine organized the documents into two parts. The first part contains stories of Lakota/Dakota history and culture and Josephine’s own story. The second part contains 60 biographies of chiefs and other Indians. The book starts with the oldest of the Sioux legends.”The oldest stories refer back to the stars; then stories of kingdoms; then next in line come stories of the ocean, water, animals, and tropical animals.”
She writes that the North American Indians once lived in Central America, before Aztecs. The Aztecs came from the north and conquered the people in the south.”Stories are told of tropical animals that never existed here in North America. The work with feathers and quills, the pottery and basket weaving were arts that were first learned in the south country, where civilization once reached a high standard,” she wrote.”Whether our people are of Mayan or Toltec descent can still be found out someday, perhaps, by someone who can make a deeper study of customs and languages. In the meantime, every true Indian that dies believes that his spirit will journey to the land of his forefathers by the same route that brought them north, the starry pathway called the Spirit Trail. The Milky Way is called the Spirit Road. The Sioux believe that that trail will take them back to where they came from.”
Unfortunately, she never had a chance to understand her contribution to preserving her people’s history. She once wrote to an editor, George Will:”You know Mr. Will I didn’t do much for my race after receiving an education at their expense. I got married and lived on isolated ranches living only for myself and family.” If only she could see Witness, a new, fresh look at the history of Native Americans during the tumultuous early 1920s and long before.
Witness (824 pp, hardcover) was published by the University of Nebraska Press in Lincoln. To order call (800) 848-6224.
