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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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Bullhead Remembers the Doughboy

By Michael Zimny

South Dakota’s only Spirit of the American Doughboy sculpture, in honor of America’s World War I infantrymen, is found in Bullhead on the Standing Rock Reservation.

Though they often go unnoticed, “doughboys” are a staple in America’s small town squares. Not the Pillsbury creation but the ubiquitous, if barely noticed, monuments to American soldiers who fought in the so-called, “war to end all wars.”

The term “doughboy” originated as in-group military slang, working its way out into popular culture. It’s a strangely jolly sounding word for the people to which it referred, given where they’d been, but it stuck.

After the war, as millions of veterans returned to their communities, there was a drive to memorialize the doughboys. Doughboy statues popped up in hundreds of towns. Artists competed to capitalize on the trend. Many were made of cast bronze. Then an artist named Ernest Viquesney, of Spencer, Indiana, developed a mass-produceable number he titled The Spirit of the American Doughboy that became the most widely proliferated.

“The original model was made out of pressed copper, so it was cheaper than ordinary bronze,” says Les Kopel, who has compiled decades worth of Viquesney doughboy research on his Doughboy Searcher website. “A lot of towns that couldn’t afford a monument could afford one from Viquesney.”

Viquesney’s doughboy is no Michelangelo’s David. For a work that’s supposed to portray a soldier stepping into the hellfire of No Man’s Land, his visage is more like that of a man about to walk the dog. His pose is rigid, a grenade held aloft in an unnaturally stiff right arm.

“If you view the statue from the side and you view the Statue of Liberty from the side, the pose is exactly the same,” says Kopel. “I’m not sure he got his idea from that, but that’s my idea anyway.”

For all the doughboy’s lack of realism though, like his name, he radiates a sense of calm in the face of adversity. The art establishment panned Viquesney, but people didn’t seem to care. There are still 140 of Viquesney’s Doughboys around the country, not including copies.

The only one in South Dakota is in the tiny town of Bullhead, on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

Wilma Tiger was born and raised in Bullhead and says the town’s annual Doughboy pow wow has long held an important place on the local cultural calendar. “It started with a pow wow by one lady that had it every year, Agnes Long Elk,” Tiger says. “She kept it going and of course I had grandmothers that were also on that. Now, it stopped for a while but then it was picked back up. And it’s been happening ever since.”

Among the names of Word War I veterans listed on the base of the memorial are Tiger’s grandfathers.

“A lot of the veterans in this community started way back in World War I,” says local American Legion post commander Joe Montana. “A lot them volunteered to go. It kind of went down the line from then, from families. Like my father was in Korea, and I kind of wanted to serve too because he served.”

Why such a strong tradition of service in Bullhead?

“I think it’s because a lot of them consider themselves warriors and braves,” says Montana. “They want to defend the country and they know they’re defending their people. Their people also live in this country. This country was established way back, way back before anybody came here. There was Native Americans, millions and millions of Native Americans that used to live here and everything else. So, just to defend the country and keep that mentality of being a warrior or brave that carried down from generation to generation.”

Though Bullhead was smaller, perhaps poorer, than most of the towns in the market for a doughboy, Montana says people pooled their money to get one. “They were like five hundred dollars short for the doughboy,” he says, “so a [rancher] out of McIntosh donated the last five hundred.”

As the Legion post commander, Montana is the doughboy’s caretaker. He recently painted the memorial to match the colors of uniforms in old photos.

Though the real doughboys of Bullhead are all long gone, the annual pow wow is still a draw. “We do turnip soup,” Montana says, “papa soup, tripe soup buffalo, beef, fry bread. A lot of the people living in Standing Rock too, they kind of know when the Doughboy is going to happen, because they start calling right away, start calling the district office here and asking about the pow wow.”

Veteran’s Day of 2018 marked 100 years since the armistice that ended the “war to end all wars.” But war is still with us. Maybe it always will be. After World War I, people wondered what it all was for. Now as then, people still remember their doughboys. Or at least they do in Bullhead.

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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Hutchinson County’s Holstein War

By Kim Wilcox

Hutchinson County “cowboys,” dignitaries and ship’s crew posed for this picture aboard the West Arrow before beginning the journey.

People in Hutchinson County still talk now and then about the Battle of the Cows that was waged over a herd of 700 milk cows bound for Germany in 1921.

The shipment of cows came about when South Dakotans of German descent became greatly concerned by reports of hardships suffered by the German people after World War I. A milk shortage was caused by the disruption of the German economy that followed defeat in the war.

On December 19, 1920, news stories from Berlin reported on the disastrous results of the loss of the 800,000 milk cows that the Germans were forced to deliver to the Allies under terms of the Versailles Treaty.

Even though anti-German sentiments remained high both in South Dakota and across the nation, many German-Americans could see no reason why they should not help their friends and relatives still living in Germany. They received permission needed from federal authorities to ship dairy cattle to Germany.

But controversy raged over whether or not Americans should be helping the Germans.

Thus, when South Dakota’s German communities announced plans to help feed the beaten Germans, some Americans questioned the patriotism of the plan. Despite threats, the German-Americans, with support of many members of surrounding communities, kept their promise of sending milk cows back to Germany.

In all, three shiploads of milk cows were sent to Germany from various parts of the U.S. According to the Freeman Courier of Sept. 15, 1976, “It is not clear exactly where the first shipment originated. The second consignment of cows, totaling 732, was apparently gathered as donations from German-American farmers in Kansas, Texas and Indiana. The third and final shipment came primarily from Hutchinson County in South Dakota.”

From small beginnings the relief movement grew. Several pastors of the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church were chosen to lead the project. The American Dairy Cattle Company asked Pastor Heinrich Friedrich Wildhelm Gerike, who was in charge of two congregations of the Missouri Synod, his own at Tripp and one at Emanuel’s Creek, to supervise the work.

Another leader was Pastor Richard Tauber of the American Lutheran Church in Tripp. Local banks also assisted with the collection because, in addition to cows, money was collected to cover shipping costs and to support those who would accompany the livestock. Two bankers especially associated with the project were Oscar Brosz of Tripp and Reinhold Dewald of Freeman.

Despite protests from neighbors, German-American farmers sent 700 cows on this ship, the West Arrow. On April 13, 1921, the ship set sail on its 18-day voyage to Germany. It took both men and cattle a few days to adjust to the sea motion.

Since the cows had to be fed and milked, local youth were sent along on the journey. Volunteers from South Dakota were Herbert Bender, Theodore Weidenbach and Herbert Hintz (Scotland), William and Reinhold Dewald, Hugo Haar, Christ and Hans Kauffmann, Joe Wallmann and William Wipf (Freeman), W.E. Friedrichs (Alexandria), Hans Gottsche and Joseph A. Gross (Carpenter), Richard Isaak (Parkston), Albert Koehn (Corsica), William Mundt and Joseph Wipf (Bridgewater), John Sattler and Harold Serr (Tyndall), Jacob Schaefer (Armour), August Schmichel (Marion), William E. Voight (Avon), William Warnicke (Paullina), Henry Wettrock (Canistota), and Daniel Winter (Delmont). Original plans called for one shipment of cows by train from Scotland. At least 300 cows were held over the night of March 23, 1921. The remainder of the 700 cows in the total shipment were detained at Tripp along the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad line.

The Tripp Ledger commented on March 17, ” … shipment from Tripp will be made Wednesday, March 23. Cows should, if possible, be in Tripp the day before … about 300 cows are expected to be shipped from here and about 400 from Scotland. Besides the donation of these cows, $16,000 in money has been collected.”

On Wednesday, March 23, the 386 cows in Scotland and the 270 head in Tripp were being herded when Pastor H.F.W. Gerike was notified that trouble might be expected at Scotland. Some non-Germans had sworn that no cows would be sent to Germany and had recruited a gang. They threatened to march against the cows in order to stampede the herd and make shipment impossible.

In the meantime, F.F. Matenaers of the American Dairy Cattle Company had arrived in Scotland. Pastor Gerike led him to the mayor of Scotland to request that the sheriff send deputies to protect the herd of cows.

The mayor agreed with Pastor Gerike and promised to find deputies due to the threats made against the herd. Unfortunately, the mayor didn’t follow through with his promise and when Thursday came neither he or the sheriff were anywhere to be found.

Wednesday night, some 25 automobiles packed with men, and 30 more men on horseback, arrived at the scene and opened fire on the herd. Only four unarmed, young men were on duty to guard the cattle. Several cows were killed and wounded, mostly from being hit by cars. Most of the herd was scattered.

To round up the herd after Wednesday night’s raid, volunteers were called from the area. By Thursday afternoon, the results were two dead, one lame and 26 missing.

First reports said American Legion members and other ex-servicemen from the Scotland, Tripp and Menno areas were responsible for protesting the shipment and had planned the stampede that had taken place Wednesday night. Later, however, the Legion publicly disclaimed any responsibility, saying that if Legion members took part, they did so on their own. It should be noted that some of the men helping with the transport of the milk cows to Germany were Legion members also.

After arriving in Germany with their cargo, the South Dakota farmers who accompanied the cattle became tourists. These two, Christ Kaufmann, left, and Hans Kaufmann, even dressed the part for a photograph.

After the cows had been returned to the corral in Scotland, it was decided that they should be driven across the county line into Hutchinson County. There they were corralled on a farm one-half mile west of Kaylor. At the time, the farm was owned by August Link, who had rented it to Gustav Freitag. Once the cows arrived within his territory, Karl Schmidt, sheriff of Hutchinson County, assumed responsibility for the safety of the herd.

Schmidt deputized Lieutenant Ewald Gall of Menno and put him in charge of a large posse of farmers to protect the cows from further attack. Conflicting reports claim there were 200 to 300 farmers included in the posse.

On the night of March 24, farmers stood guard around the 330 cows, which had been corralled in a bowl-like pasture south of the Kaylor-Tripp road. Some men hid in the cemetery across the street, using the tombstones for barricades. As anticipated, about 10:30 p.m., approximately 30 cars approached, coming north from Scotland. Earlier in the evening, an unidentified call had reportedly been made to a local undertaker. The caller advised him to send an ambulance to the scene because there “soon would be a number of dead.”

When the cars reached the Freitag farm, they were unexpectedly met by Sheriff Schmidt and Lieutenant Gall, who warned them that the first man to cross the fences would be fired upon by at least 200 farmers.

According to the Scotland Journal of March 31, 1921, the attackers were again members of the American Legion. “A large number of Legionnaires from the various posts near Scotland started for Kaylor … On arriving at what was to be fighting ground, the Legionnaires found that they were outnumbered four to one in both men and guns and decided to call off the action.”

Since more trouble was anticipated the following night, when the cows were to be driven to Tripp for loading on the train, the guard was again used.

But that night, guards only had to deal with some curiosity seekers and catcalling protestors who had gathered. No one was injured. A few people from Bon Homme County were arrested and spent the night in the Tripp calaboose.

Reports on the nature of the arrests conflicted. Some even say that poison was taken from the arrested men. There is an agreement that 14 men were arrested and that all of them were implicated in the stampeding of the 300 head of cattle occurring in Scotland on Wednesday. After being taken into custody in Tripp, the 14 were searched. Four men were charged with carrying concealed weapons and were fined $5 and costs. All of the men were released.

On Saturday, approximately 700 cows were loaded aboard 26 rail cars en route to Sioux City. Attempting to stop the train, Legionnaires once again entered the picture, admittedly taking all measures to intercept the shipment.

They first tried to make an appeal to Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace, but it was denied because the Internal Revenue Service had already issued an authorization for the export.

The next attempt was to obtain a court injunction to prevent the cattle from leaving Sioux City. When this failed the Legion men said they would appeal directly to President Harding.

The shipment continued on to Chicago, and finally Baltimore. The train passed, at double speed, through places where threats had been made. The train crew and the boys in charge of the cows were prepared for any situation.

The train made it with success to Baltimore. Upon its arrival, the American Legion made one last formal protest while the cows were loaded on board the West Arrow and headed for Germany.

The cattle were put in stalls with their tail end against the outside walls. The milkers had to crawl through the mess the cows left in order to get to the teats. Sometimes they couldn’t distinguish the milker from the milked for all the filth that covered them.

Reinhold Dewald later expressed his feelings about the trip to Europe. “As you know, the cattle were finally loaded. Practically all of us had pistols in our pockets to hold the howling wolves of Scotland bay. We were glad when the train finally got under way, even if we were threatened with reprisal if this should happen. On the freight train things did not go smoothly, especially with the meals. The noon meal often wasn’t served until 3 o’clock and supper in the morning.

“In Baltimore we, together with the cattle, were locked into the stockyards. The place actually thought of itself as a hotel … Yes, it even had ‘HOTEL’ printed across the top in large letters, but it still resembled a barn more than anything else. And the chickens … They certainly weren’t fried according to mother’s recipe … only one got sick and two departed for the dear hereafter.

“It has been stated that when you’re on the ocean, everything goes well as long as your stomach functions properly. Some of the men experienced this malfunction the first day of their voyage on the West Arrow. The ship was a freighter, not designed to accommodate either man or beast.

“On April 13, the ship finally set sail … after laying around Baltimore for nine days, we were glad to be on the move again. The beds had been very hard, otherwise we might have been content to lay around there till now.

“The weather was beautiful except for those who couldn’t hold up their heads anymore … Then one day and one night there blew a mighty storm. Waves washed over the ship and shook it so hard that some of the boys were thrown from their bunks.

“Before evening, winds and waves abated … Joy turned to despair when a heavy fog embraced the ship and everything else in the vicinity. The steamer’s horn shrieked so boisterously … that even the most dedicated church sleeper was kept awake and alert the whole night through.

“After 18 days we finally arrived in Germany. In Bremenhafen we had to wait till the tide rose and then we slowly proceeded up the Wesser River through locks where Germans on both sides greeted us. We greeted them with milk, of which we had a goodly supply on hand.”

No doubt, some of Germany’s dairy herd today has the bloodlines of the Holstein cows that came from Hutchinson County in 1921.

Editorís Note: This story is revised from the July/August 1992 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Native Patriots

Our May/June issue includes a story on our Native American residents’ rich history of military service. Bernie Hunhoff visited the Standing Rock Reservation to visit with its veterans and their descendants. He took several photos on his trip — too many to print. Here are some of his extras.

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Our Blue Water Navy

By Roger Holtzmann

Two United States naval vessels have carried the name South Dakota across the oceans. A third USS South Dakota will launch in 2018, and it should prove a worthy successor. The Virginia-class vessel is a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, 377 feet long, and will carry a crew of 130 in comfortable, if slightly cramped style.

Lt. Gov. Matt Michels toured General Dynamics’ Electric Boat shipyard in Connecticut, where South Dakota is under construction, in October. While there he met with yard officials and the sub’s future commanding officer, and was able to tour the recently completed USS Illinois, her sister ship.

Virginia-class boats are built to carry torpedoes and Tomahawk cruise missiles, and can also disembark and support Navy SEAL teams for covert operations. They are high tech in everything from their navigation systems to the heads (bathrooms), but their most distinguishing feature is what they don’t have: a propeller. They use a water jet propulsion system that makes them significantly quieter than their predecessors.

The first USS South Dakota was an armored cruiser, launched in 1908 from the Union Iron Works in San Francisco. It served with the Pacific Fleet, patrolling off the west coast and as part of the navy’s Asiatic Squadron, until the outbreak of World War I. During the war it escorted troop ships across the Atlantic, and when peace returned it carried some of those same soldiers back home.

The second USS South Dakota, built by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation, was the lead ship of a class of fast, powerful battleships that were revolutionary designs for the day. It was commissioned in early 1942, just in time to join the war in the Pacific against Japan. She and her crew served with distinction in numerous battles, though not always with credit: because of security concerns, the ship was identified as Battleship X in newspaper reports.

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A World War I Primer

By John Andrews

All of the men and women who served in World War I are gone, and the only people today who can tell their stories are the friends and family members who had the foresight to interview veterans of the Great War before it was too late. World War I was the focus of last month’s Dakota Conference at Augustana College in Sioux Falls. Presenters told fascinating tales of South Dakotans who were on the front lines.

Marian Cramer is a Hamlin County historian known for her work at the Laura Ingalls Wilder homestead in De Smet. But in the 1970s, she interviewed a handful of World War I veterans from Bryant, De Smet and Willow Lake. One of her subjects was Fred Huizenga, whom Cramer found living in a car as an old man in Willow Lake. Huizenga was only 16 when the United States entered the war in 1917, so he was turned away when he tried to enlist. He spent time as a wrestler with a traveling carnival, but the next year he made his way into the Army. He became a military policeman, and after the war, as he escorted former prisoners back to Germany, he happened upon a man with a tiny black mustache speaking on a street corner. Adolf Hitler was then a leader in the National Socialist German Workers Party. “He seemed so dangerous,” Huizenga remembered.

After Cramer’s interview with Huizenga, the town of Willow Lake decided to take better care of their veteran. Leaders installed a bed and television inside the American Legion hall, where he lived during summers on furlough from the State Veterans Home in Hot Springs.

Albin Bergstrom was a farmer from De Smet. He trained as an infantryman at Camp Pike and served at Chateau Thierry. Bergstrom served on burial detail. He told Cramer that sometimes they fell behind, so they simply covered dead bodies with a light dusting of dirt and left one boot exposed so a follow-up detail would know they hadn’t been properly buried yet.

Alvin Kangas of Lake Norden talked about his great uncle, Pfc. Arvid Tormanen, who served in France with the 30th Division, 118 Machine Gun Company. Tormanen was gassed at La Haie in October 1918, and his company was the first to attack the Hindenburg rail line. Before one particularly dangerous mission, Tormanen’s platoon leader said,”I’ll meet you in heaven, hell or Hoboken.” Only five soldiers, including Tormanen, survived. He lived west of Lake Norden for the rest of his life.

Fred Christopherson was city editor of the Sioux Falls Press when he enlisted in February 1918. He trained as a bomber pilot, but the armistice was signed before he saw action. He saw great victory parades in London and overheard English women with two different perspectives on American involvement.”These Americans will be insufferable now,” one said.”They’ll think they won the war.” A second woman seemed more appreciative.”Thank God for you Americans,” she said.”You won the war.”

Surely there are other stories like these that can be gleaned from letters and artifacts, probably tucked away inside trunks in an attic or basement. Since their authors are long gone, it’s up to us to find them.