USA > South Dakota > A brief history of South Dakota > Part 9
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THE FIGHT FOR STATEHOOD
school land in South Dakota or North Dakota should ever be sold for less than the sum of ten dollars. A new con- stitutional convention met at Sioux Falls on July 4 of that year, with power only to amend and resubmit the consti- tution of 1885. The constitution was submitted to the people at an election on the first day of October. They approved it, and on the second day of November, 1889, President Harrison issued his proclamation, admitting South Dakota as a state in the Union. North Dakota was admitted as another state by the same proclamation.
Statehood was welcomed by the people with real rejoic- ing. As a territory the people had no part in the election of a President, nor in the legislation by Congress, and all of the conditions of territorial life tended to make a people dependent rather than self-reliant. The chief concern of the people of Dakota, however, during the ten years' fight for statehood, had been for the division of the territory into two states. In this they were moved by motives of the highest patriotism. The leaders of that period believed that it would be a crime for them to sit idly by and permit the great territory to become one state, with but two members of the United States Senate, thus entailing to posterity forever a sort of political vassalage to the small states of the eastern seaboard. Besides this there was at that period an inherent difference between the people of South Dakota and those of the North. South Dakota was chiefly occupied by homesteaders, who brought with them the conservative notions of small farmers, about public and private economy, morality, and education. On the other hand North Dakota was in the
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beginning chiefly settled by bonanza farmers, captains of industry, who came with large means, buying great areas of land and farming upon extensive lines. They and their camp followers were adventurous men whose traditions were entirely at variance with those of the homesteaders of the South, and the result was constant friction between the two elements. The progress of time, and new immigration to the western portion of North Dakota, has materially modified conditions there.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE MESSIAH WAR
SOUTH DAKOTA became a state of the Union during the period of reaction from the great Dakota boom. That boom brought to us not only many adventurers and pro- moters, but also a large class of honest but inexperienced persons, -mercantile clerks, factory hands, and me- chanics,-who were attracted by the free government lands and who came to make farm homes, but who had no experience as farmers. Even those who knew how to farm in the eastern states found that eastern conditions did not apply to Dakota conditions and Dakota soil. The successful method of working our soil had to be learned by sore experience. It is no wonder, then, that thousands who came with high hopes of building homes and accumu- lating riches were sorely disappointed. Many of them, in utter discouragement, gave up their homesteads and returned to the East, where the impression became deep- rooted that Dakota was a failure. Following closely upon this reaction came a period of really bad crop years. A great drought in 1889 and 1890 made the crops in many counties a total failure.
Just at this time, also, a great religious excitement overwhelmed the Teton Sioux Indians, causing great
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174
Copyright, 1898, by Detroit Photo. Co.
HARVESTING IN SOUTH DAKOTA (NEAR BROOKINGS)
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THE MESSIAH WAR
uneasiness and even terror to the pioneers upon the frontier. The Indians meant no harm and it is prob- able that the excitement would have soon died away had they been left to themselves; but the military, fearing that the excitement would result in outbreak and hos- tilities, undertook to suppress the religious fervor, and this movement resulted in what is known as the Messiah War.
This religious movement among the Indians originated with a Paiute Indian named Wovoka, who lived near Pyramid Lake, Nevada. He spoke English fairly well and had some education. He claimed to have had a vision on January 1, 1889, in which he was taken up to heaven. He found it a pleasant land and full of game. He was instructed to go back to earth and preach goodness and peace and industry to his people, who, if they followed his instructions, would be reunited with their friends in the other world, where there would be no more death or sick- ness or old age. He was then instructed in the dance which he was commanded to bring back to his people, and which was one of the strong articles of the new faith. Wovoka had simply mingled the pagan superstitions, in which he had been reared, with the Christian religion which he had been taught.
Wovoka's teachings spread rapidly among the Indians of North America, and as they spread they were given new significance. Wovoka was an Indian Messiah, who had come to restore the dead to life, bring back the buffalo and other game to the prairie, drive away the whites, and cause the Indians to live a life of ideal happiness. In a few
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months the Sioux at Pine Ridge agency had learned of this wonderful Messiah, and so interested were they that a great council was held to discuss the matter, in which all the leading men, including Red Cloud, took part. They decided to send a delegation to Pyramid Lake to consult the Messiah and be instructed by him. Three men were sent for this purpose, the leader of whom was Short Bull. They went out in the winter of 1889, return- ing in the spring of 1890. They brought with them a let- ter from Wovoka, which said: -
"When you get home, you must make a dance to con- tinue five days. Dance four nights and the last night keep up the dance until the morning of the fifth day, when all must bathe in the river and then disperse to their homes. You must all do in the same way. I, Wovoka, love you with all my heart and am full of gladness for the gifts which you have brought me. When you get home, I shall give you a good cloud which will make you feel good. I give you a good spirit and give you all good things. I want you to come again in three months; some from each tribe. There will be a good deal of snow this year and some rain. In the fall there will be such a rain as I have never given you before. When your friends die, you must not cry ; you must not hurt anybody or do harm to any one. You must not fight. Do right always. It will give you satisfaction in life. Do not tell the white people about this. Jesus is now upon earth. He appears like a cloud. The dead are all alive again. I do not know when they will be here; maybe this fall or in the spring. When the time comes, there will be no more sickness and every
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one will be young again. Do not refuse to work for the whites and do not make any trouble with them, until you leave them. When the earth shakes at the coming of the new world, do not be afraid; it will not hurt you. I want you to dance every six weeks. Make a feast at the dance and have food that every one may eat, then bathe in the water. That is all. You will receive good words from me sometime. Do not tell lies."
Short Bull announced that he had been made the special representative of the Messiah among the Dakotas; that the Messiah himself would appear among them in two seasons; that is, about the autumn of 1891. He at once began to instruct the Indians in the dance, and was fertile in inventing new ceremonies. One of these was the use of the sweat house, in which the Indians were treated for purification. The excitement rapidly increased among the Sioux, and in a short time the majority of them gave up almost all their time to the dance and other religious ceremonies. It was several months, however, before the matter seriously attracted the attention of the white authorities. While the dancing was chiefly confined to Pine Ridge, there was some dancing at Rosebud and in Big Foot's and Hump's camps on the Cheyenne River, and in Sitting Bull's camp on Grand River.
During the autumn of 1890 the dancing began to attract the attention of the agents and other white authorities, and mistaken stories of its meaning were interpreted to them. The agents thought it wise to break up the dancing, and to do this placed some of the leaders, including Short Bull, under arrest. These leaders were released in a short time,
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THE MESSIAH WAR
but the interference of the whites caused great discontent among the Indians. Short Bull, too, was ambitious and made much of his relations with the Messiah, and finally, shortly after his release from arrest, he boldly announced himself as the Messiah, and declared that while it had been his original purpose to make his advent and the resurrection of the dead two years hence, owing to the interference of the whites he proposed to bring it on immediately. The Indians, at Pine Ridge especially, followed him blindly, and, upon his declaration that the resurrection was to come on immediately, they renewed their religious rites with increased fervor.
To avoid interference from the officers, the ghost dancers, as they were called, assembled in a large camp in the fastnesses of the Bad Lands. The agent at Pine Ridge became greatly alarmed, for many of the Indians about the agency had become very insolent and defied his author- ity. He asked that soldiers be sent to his assistance. The government therefore sent detachments of soldiers to Pine Ridge and Rosebud, and set up a cordon of mili- tary camps along the railroad between the reservation and the Black Hills, and from the vicinity of Buffalo Gap down the Cheyenne River to Fort Sully.
The government officials were exceedingly suspicious of the conduct of Sitting Bull, who always had been of a mean disposition, and defiant of the government's author- ity. When information came that his people were dan- cing, it was the judgment of the officers that he should be arrested and removed from the reservation. Major Mclaughlin, for many years agent of Sitting Bull, be-
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lieved that he could control the Indians on his reservation without resorting to harsh measures, but toward the end of December, when he learned that Sitting Bull was preparing to leave the reservation without authority, he too believed that the time had come when the old medi- cine man should be arrested. Order is preserved upon the Indian reservations through a system of Indian police, and Major McLaughlin had detailed a large number of
FORT SULLY
his policemen to watch Sitting Bull and report upon his conduct. To these policemen was given the task of arresting Sitting Bull and bringing him into the agency. In this they were to be assisted by Captain Fetchet and a company of soldiers from Fort Yates. The arrest was to be made at daybreak on Monday morning, December 15.
Sitting Bull's home was on Grand River, in northern South Dakota, where he lived in two substantial log cabins, a few rods apart. Forty-three policemen, under command of Lieutenant Bull Head, who was a very cool and reliable man, surrounded Sitting Bull's house. Ten
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THE MESSIAH WAR
men went into the larger house, where they found Sitting Bull asleep on the floor. He was awakened and told that he was a prisoner and must go to the agency. He said,
SITTING BULL
"All right, I will dress and go with you." He sent his wives out to the other house to fetch some clothing and to saddle his favorite horse. While dressing, he began abusing the police for disturbing him in his rest.
While this was going on, about one hundred and fifty
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of Sitting Bull's followers gathered about the house, en- tirely surrounding the police and crowding them up against the wall. When the police brought Sitting Bull out of the house, where he could see the friends that had rallied to his assistance, he became greatly excited and refused to go on, and called on his friends to rescue him. Lieu- tenant Bull Head and Lieutenant Shave Head were stand- ing on either side of him, with Sergeant Red Tomahawk guarding behind, while the rest of the police were trying to clear the way in front.
Catch the Bear, a friend of Sitting Bull's, fired and shot Bull Head in the side. Bull Head at once turned and sent a bullet into the body of Sitting Bull, who was also shot through the head at the same moment by Red Tomahawk. Shave Head was shot by another of the crowd and Catch the Bear was killed by A Lone Man, one of the police. Instantly there was a desperate hand- to-hand fight of less than forty-three men against more than a hundred.
The fight lasted only a few minutes. Six policemen were killed, including the officers Bull Head and Shave Head. The hostiles lost eight killed, including Sitting Bull and his son Crow Foot, seventeen years of age. The trained police soon drove their assailants into the timber near by, and then returned and carried their dead and wounded into the house, which they held for more than two hours, until the arrival of Captain Fetchet, with his troops, at seven o'clock. On the approach of the soldiers, Sitting Bull's warriors fled up Grand River a short distance, and then turned south across the prairie
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THE MESSIAH WAR
toward Cherry Creek and Cheyenne River. Major Mclaughlin says: "The details of the battle show that the Indian police behaved nobly, and exhibited the best of knowledge and bravery. It is hardly possible to praise their conduct too highly."
Thus ended the life of Sitting Bull, the man who was most feared by the whites, and who probably had most influence in keeping the Indians in a state of hostility. One other man, however, was also giving the govern- ment much anxiety. This was Hump, chief of the Minneconjou Sioux, a grandson of Black Buffalo, whom Lewis and Clark met at Fort Pierre. He lived near the mouth of Cherry Creek. The fear of Hump, however, was quite groundless, for upon being requested to do so, he at once came into Fort Sully and enlisted as a scout . in the government service.
There was a band of Hump's people, under Big Foot, who were HUMP dancing on the Cheyenne, and the government deter- mined to put this band under arrest. When the troops approached to arrest Big Foot and his people, the In- dians were greatly alarmed, and though they agreed to accompany the soldiers to the fort, they escaped in the night time, and set off to join the dancers in the Bad Lands. Soldiers were at once sent in pursuit, and on the evening of December 28 Big Foot's band was over-
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taken on Wounded Knee Creek, about sixteen miles from Pine Ridge agency, where they were encamped, await- ing the return of scouts they had sent out to locate the camp of the ghost dancers. Big Foot himself was lying in his tepee, sick with pneumonia. Colonel Forsyth was in command of the soldiers, and he had with him four hun- dred and seventy men against one hundred and six war- riors present in Big Foot's band. The night was passed comfortably, and the next morning the Indians were to be taken in to Pine Ridge agency.
Before starting it was deemed wise to disarm them, though they were miserably armed with old rifles of very little value. When this action was undertaken, the Indians became very much excited. Yellow Bird, a medicine man, harangued the Indians and urged them to resist, telling them that the soldiers had become weak and powerless and that the bullets would not injure Indians dressed as they were in the ghost shirts. As Yellow Bird spoke in the Sioux language the officers did not at once realize the dangerous drift of his talk.
One of the searchers began to examine the blankets of the Indians to see if they had arms concealed under them, whereupon Black Fox drew a rifle from under his blanket and fired at the soldiers, who instantly replied with a volley directly into the crowd of warriors, so close that their guns were almost touching. Nearly half of the warriors were killed with this first volley. The survivors sprang to their feet, throwing their blankets from their shoulders as they rose, and for a few minutes there was a terrible hand-to- hand struggle, in which every man fought to kill.
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THE MESSIAH WAR
Back where they commanded the Indian camp, a battery of Hotchkiss guns had been planted, and at the first volley these guns opened fire and sent a storm of shells and bullets among the women and children who had gathered in front of the tepees. The guns poured in two-pound explosive shells at the rate of nearly fifty a minute, mowing down everything alive. In a few minutes two hundred Indian men and women and children, with sixty soldiers, were lying dead and wounded on the ground. The tepees had been torn down by the shells and some of them were burning above the helpless wounded, and the surviving handful of Indians were flying in wild panic, pursued by hundreds of maddened soldiers. The pursuit was simply a massacre, in which fleeing women, with infants in their arms, were shot down after resistance had ceased and when almost every warrior was stretched dead or dying on the ground. The bodies of the women and children were scattered along a distance of two or three miles from the scene of the encounter. The butchery was the work of new and untrained recruits, who were infuriated by the shooting down of their comrades without warning.
Thus was fought the engagement known as the battle of Wounded Knee. The next day the Indians attacked some soldiers midway between Wounded Knee and the agency, but were repulsed.
These engagements comprised all the actual fighting of the war. Within a day or two, General Miles came out and took charge of affairs, and, establishing communication with the Indian leaders, soon brought about an under-
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standing which ended the trouble. It is known now that no hostilities were intended by the Indians in the first instance, nor would there have been any had the Indians not been goaded on by the bad conduct of the officers.
-- - -
CHAPTER XXX
THE WAR WITH SPAIN AND IN THE PHILIPPINES
WHEN the war with Spain began in the spring of 1898, South Dakota promptly responded with much more than her quota of men. Under the President's call for troops South Dakota's quota was nine hundred and twenty-five men, but she furnished in all twelve hundred and fifty, having a larger percentage of volunteers to population than any other state. A regiment of the National Guard had been in existence here since the territorial days, re- ceiving more or less state aid, and in anticipation of a declaration of war, after the destruction of the battleship Maine, in Havana Harbor, this regiment was recruited to its full allowance of men, one thousand and eight in all.
The regiment was ordered to mobilize at Sioux Falls, on April 30, and there the men were subjected to the most rigid examination by the medical officers, who re- jected every person who was not in all respects fit. Lieu- tenant Alfred Frost, an officer of the regular army who had for a long time been upon detail as military instructor at the State Agricultural College at Brookings, was ap- pointed colonel; Lee Stover of Watertown, lieutenant- colonel; Charles A. Howard of Aberdeen, and William F. Allison of Brookings, majors; Dr. R. C. Warne of
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Mitchell, chief surgeon; Jonas Lien of Sioux Falls, adjutant; and Rev. Charles M. Daley, chaplain.
While the regiment was recruiting, fitting, and training, news of the great naval victory in Manila Bay was received, and it was soon determined by the federal authorities to send the South Dakotans to the Philip- pines ; but Manila was captured and the war with Spain was over before the arrival of the South Dakotans' transports.
Colonel Frost proved himself an able and U.S firm disciplinarian; and he landed his men at Manila, on the 25th of August, in good health, thoroughly trained sol- diers. Upon general LIEUTENANT COLONEL LEE STOVER inspection of all the troops in the island, Major-General Otis selected the South Dakotans as best fitted to take the field, and at the first crisis, on September 10, they were placed under march- ing orders and so held until the crisis had passed. As a mark of special distinction the regiment was selected to furnish guards for Generals Otis, McArthur, and Hale.
The first shot fired by an American soldier in the hos- tilities which ensued was fired by Private Smith of Com- pany E on the night of January 10, 1899, three days after
.
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WAR WITH SPAIN AND IN THE PHILIPPINES
Aguinaldo issued his manifesto declaring himself com- mandant of the Philippines and asserting that General Otis was a usurper. On that night Smith was on sen- tinel duty near Block House No. 4 when he was approached by two Filipino soldiers. Just as they were passing one of them made a vi- cious slash at him with a bolo. Smith dodged so as to es- cape the full weight of the blow, but re- ceived a bad wound in the face. In- stantly he brought his rifle into position and shot the nearest Filipino dead, and with another shot seriously wounded the other.
For the next three weeks the situation COLONEL A. S. FROST was strained and nerve-trying. The Soutlı Dakotans were on outpost duty and under orders to sleep in their clothes. Finally on February 4 came the clash of open war. The battle began almost in front of the South Dakota outpost, and our men were instantly under fire and continued in the hottest of the fight for eighteen hours, during which Pri- vates McCracken of Company H and Lowes and Green
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of Company I were killed and five others wounded. During the battle the South Dakotans showed perfect discipline and courage, and their work was most effective.
From that time forward, until the end of the campaign, the South Dakotans were constantly upon the firing line, sleeping in their clothes and patiently enduring all the discomforts of forced marches through the swamps and jungles of a tropical climate, where the heat was oppres- sive, the rain almost incessant, and the food frequently insufficient and of inferior quality; but in all things they met the full expectations of their superiors and they received the warm commendation of the government. The regiment took active part in the affairs at La Loma church on February 6, at Malolos on March 25, and at Palo and Meyacanyan on March 26.
At Meyaeanyan, John Holman, then a corporal of Com- pany C, was promoted to a lieutenancy for exceptional bravery in action. As the regiment approached the bridge spanning the Meyacanyan it was discovered that the enemy had intrenched on the opposite shore, having first set the nearest end of the bridge afire. From their intrenchments the enemy commanded the bridge and were pouring a heavy musket fire across the river in the direction of the regiment. The fire at the further end had not made great progress, but the bridge was endangered unless the fire was at once extinguished. With the hostile bullets sing- ing about his ears, Holman dashed across the bridge and extinguished the blaze, and then, undaunted, stood upon the approach and opened fire upon the intrenched enemy but a few yards away.
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WAR WITH SPAIN AND IN THE PHILIPPINES
The next day, March 27, the South Dakotans bore the brunt of the battle at Marilao, one of the hardest-fought and bloodiest engagements of the war. All of the regiment was engaged and fought with valor. Nine men were killed, including Adjutant Lien and Lieutenants Adams and Morrison. Twenty-five others were wounded, one of them - Sergeant Preacher - mortally.
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