"To me every trip to a library or archive is like a small detective story. There are always little moments on such trips when the past flares to life, like a match in the darkness". Larson, Erik. The devil in the white city: murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed America. New York: Crown Publishers, 2003, 395-396.

The image is from the Digital Library of South Dakota. Library of Congress sponsors #ArchivesHashtagParty once a month, and August’s topic is #ArchivesAthletes. LOC invites archives to submit tweets about athletes who broke records and barriers, famous sites for training and competition, patents for sport equipment, or historic moments that still give you goosebumps.

The South Dakota Oral History Center (SDOHC) contains thousands of recordings and transcripts of individuals who settled in South Dakota in the late part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century. This blog concerns a transcript of an interview with Mrs. Raymond Patterson (Dema Rose Patterson) by Ralph Searles, Dan Bassill, and Tom Dunnavin in Gregory, South Dakota on January 10, 1968. As part of my work for the SDOHC, I am re-formatting text after converting a PDF scan of the original transcript in a word document, tasked with staying as true as possible to the original transcript. Selected excerpts of Ms. Patterson’s words from the twenty-two-page transcribed interview are presented in quotations. As a convention in transcripts of oral history interviews, I made no grammatical or spelling corrections. A space designated by a line (_____) indicates that the transcriber was unsure of what was said. Ralph Searles, an interviewer, first read a narrative that Ms. Patterson and her sister Lois Zimmer wrote about their mother, Dema M. Rose, and father, Charles M. Rose, both early pioneers in Dallas, South Dakota. The Roses moved from Eskridge, Kansas to Gregory County in 1904. They homesteaded near Herrick. Both were teachers. According to the narrative and his obituary, Charles Rose was also mayor of Dallas, a newspaper man, rancher, real estate dealer, and writer (Winner Advocate, Winner, South Dakota, March 27, 1952). He called himself the “Rose of Rosebud”. During the interview, Ms. Patterson mentioned that in 1908, when she was four years old, she and another child were chosen to draw numbers for the Rosebud Indian Land Lottery for claims in newly formed Tripp County. Aside from Dallas, other cities, including Gregory and Chamberlain, participated in the lottery. Ms. Patterson recalled, “There were 17 barrels and each of them held over a thousand letters.” She continues, “we had picked up to 500 numbers, and somebody decided we were getting kind of tired.” Subsequently, some boys continued drawing numbers. A picture of the two girls, Dema Rose, the mayor’s daughter, and Virginia Wagner, niece of a town founder, is shown below. (From: Dallas, South Dakota: The End of the Line. Dallas Historical Society, 1977, page 144.) Dema Rose and Virginia Wagner ready to pick land lottery numbers. Growing up on the ranch, Ms. Patterson mentioned that her duties included milking cows and herding cattle. She started doing these chores at 12 years of age. Ms. Patterson recalled, “Oh yes, I milked a slew of cows every morning and night and would herd cattle all day long.” While herding cattle, she would encounter prairie chickens. As she recalls, “And I made friends with prairie chickens when I herded cattle. I used to share my lunch with them. And I would take out cans of water out of my supplies. So, then they didn't have to travel so far to get water for their broods.” Dema Rose Patterson remarked that she also broke many horses to ride as part of her ranching tasks. She explained, “Well, I always did what I called the humane way. I would teach them to get used to a saddle and bridle by wearing them in the corral and I'd tie things on their saddle to flip flop and they'd get used to this. Before I ever got on them.” The only problem that she described as a result of this process was, “I didn't weigh a hundred pounds in those days, and I had several horses that I broke quite successfully for me and yet when they got out and they 'got a man to ride them, why they were wild because they couldn't take that added weight.” A large part of the second part of the interview deals with Ms. Patterson’s career as a teacher in the 1920s. Her first teaching job was in a probation school in Mission, South Dakota. She described experiences with two students. One student had difficulties with mathematics and later brought a loaded pistol to school. To deal with the first situation Ms. Patterson stated, “He hadn't gotten arithmetic and he wasn't going to get it.” Later the conversation continued, “He wanted to have a new pair or chaps made and he'd furnish the sheep skin, how much it would cost him for sheepskin chaps. Well, then I figured out the percentages for him and then about the second time with a proposition and I said, "You know, if you'd look on page so and so in your arithmetic book, it shows you Just how to work that problem and you could figure it out for yourself.” And I said, “I suggest you get the book and you can check it out for an hour. You can figure it out for yourself." Although the lad learned arithmetic from several practical examples, one day he brought a loaded pistol to school. Ms. Patterson recalled, “on a very hot Saturday morning and he had a gun belt and a .38 gun in this gun belt and I told him, ’Now, listen Adolph, we can’t have any guns in school.” And I said, "You put the gun up on my desk’ and I says ‘at recess time we'll go out and shoot out what bullets you have to see who’s the best shot, you or I. ’ Ms. Patterson continued, “I says, ‘We'll see who can shoot those cans off the post out there.’ “Well okay”, he says, “If you think you can outshoot me, well try it.” I says, “Well if the Lord is with me, I think I can outshoot you maybe.” And I says, “We can try, try at least.” We did and luckily, I made a pretty fair show and got more cans off the posts than he did and so he went home with an empty gun anyway.” After this interaction, Ms. Patterson stated that Adolph never brought a gun to school again. A final story concerned a white seven-year-old student, George, who never had had a bath and was barefoot. Ms. Patterson, with the help of townspeople, was able to bathe the boy, cut his hair, take lice out of his hair, and get him new clothing. Subsequently, she stated, “ Every week he got a Saturday night bath and a change of clothes.” However, the boy’s father was furious about what was done to his son. Ms. Patterson mentioned regarding the father, “He come to town to kill me. And them men had suggested to me that I stay scarce. Because if he takes a shot at you first_______he'll probably take a shot at you and you won't have a chance. They said you pay no attention to him and we'll watch for them and we'll try not to let him near the school or any place where you’re going.” Luckily the two never met. This interview presents first-hand accounts of a young woman growing up during a time of changing relationships between settlers and Indians in Rosebud County, populating and developing land in newly formed Tripp and Gregory counties, working on a ranch, being influenced by remarkable parents, and teaching in rural schools. It adds to the rich history of life in South Dakota during the first quarter of the twentieth century.

Gilbert C. Fite, Ph.D., a noted historian and USD alumnus, passed away on July 13, 2010. Dr. Fite, in 2002, arranged for the donation of his professional papers to the Archives and Special Collections. His son, James Fite, completed the donation in early 2011. The papers of Dr. Fite are a trove of correspondence, research files, and writings from his distinguished career as a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Georgia. The collection also reflects his service to the profession of history as president of the Western Historical Association, the Agricultural Historical Association, and the Southern Historical Association. The Farmers’ Frontier, 1865-1900 and Peter Norbeck, Prairie Statesman stand among his scholarly works that earned him high regard in the field of history. The Archives and Special Collections is honored to serve as the home for his papers. In 1975, USD conferred an Honorary Doctor of Literature upon Fite. .

Help us transcribe our collections! https://fromthepage.com/usdarchives FromThePage is a software designed for transcribing documents. The platform enables users to view an image of a page and transcribe the corresponding text. More information https://libguides.usd.edu/fromthepage Questions? Email us at library@usd.edu Recently our work in FromThePage was featured on KTIV news. https://www.ktiv.com/2026/01/13/becoming-digital-archivist-vermillion-libraries-seek-volunteers-help-with-historical-documents/ The Cuthbert DuCharme’s Trading Post Ledger: 1869-1872 is one of the many collections we have available in FromThePage https://fromthepage.com/usdarchives/chilson-collection/ledger-dakota-territory-1869-1872

Our first issue of FromthePage Newsletter is now available. See what we are doing with transcription projects. https://libguides.usd.edu/fromthepage/newsletter

“As soon as we were across the [Missouri] river, we started up the river on our long westward journey. Late in the evening we camped at a farm house some six miles from Covington. The road we traveled is very smooth and level. The Missouri bottom here is some 18 or 15 miles wide and, for between one to three miles in width, is covered with a heavy growth of cottonwood timber. Back of Covington, for several miles, the country is not settled and cultivated as it should be, for, to all appearances, a more beautiful locality could not more easily be found. The soil is deep and rich and covered with an abundance of grass, with water and timber within convenient distance.” This description of the Sioux City, Iowa area in 1865 is from the Edward Edwards’ journal. (I will use diary and journal interchangeably in this post.) Other towns mentioned in the next couple of pages of the diary are Decotah, Franklin, St. John, Ponka, St. James, and Niobrara. Some of these towns still exist and can be visited by driving west of Sioux City. A portion of the Edward H. Edwards journal is in the Archives and Special Collections. The diary’s writer Edward Edwards was from Sioux City, and he was 24 years old when he joined the Sawyers expedition as teamster. The expedition’s goal was to construct a wagon road from the Missouri River at Niobrara City, Nebraska to the gold mines of Virginia City, Montana (Drago and Mott). There are many different types of diaries. Some give an account of day-to-day life. Edward’s journal is not that type. It doesn’t have daily entries, and it doesn’t tell us much about constructing a road or what it was like living in a camp. It does contain detailed descriptions of the land, plants, weather, and major events like meeting Natives or finding fossils. It reads like a travelogue. When reading a diary for historical research, it is useful to ask yourself questions similar to the following: What was the diary’s context? What was the writer’s intent? Was it promotional? If so, what was the goal? Was it written while the events were occurring or later? Are there phrases borrowed from other contemporary literature? Clichés may indicate that the writer is repeating common knowledge rather than writing personal observation. Drago and Mott tell us that Edwards wrote to his family during the same trip. I wonder how the observations in this journal compare with observations in those letters. Some of the diaries from the Archives and Special Collections are on the Digital Library of South Dakota. Diaries by Austin Horace and an unnamed Civil War soldier are available there for viewing. If you are looking for a fun volunteer activity, consider transcribing handwritten diaries for an archive. One of our diaries is in shorthand. If you know how to read shorthand, you could tell us what a young man in Sioux Falls in the 1870s-1880s was journaling. Source: Harry Sinclair Drago and Phyllis Mott. “The Edwards Letters and the Wagon Road to Virginia City.” In The Westerners, New York Posse Brand Book, Volume 9, Number 1, 1962.

As part of the South Dakota Oral History Project, individuals from all South Dakota counties were interviewed in the 1960s through the 1970s. These oral histories present a window into the life of South Dakotans during the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. This blog concerns Carl M. Cornell, a long-tern resident of Harding County, South Dakota. Professor Stephan Ward interviewed Cornell on August 4,1970. Selected excerpts of Cornell’s words from the thirty-five-page transcribed interview are presented in quotations. As a convention in transcripts of oral history interviews, I made no grammatical or spelling corrections. According to the interview, Carl M. Cornell’s family moved to Dickinson, Dakota Territory in 1889 from Coldwater, Michigan and then settled in Harding County on a ranch twelve miles NE of what became the city of Buffalo, South Dakota. With just a fifth-grade education, as a young man Cornell was able to become a foreman building sod houses for homesteaders. He mentioned that a person could also make a living picking up bones from cattle who had succumbed to the preceding harsh winter. “They'd bring those bones in and, uh, yet as I remember they'd said a cent a pound for 'em. Bones in those days were in plenty places that use plastic now, use them for buttons and combs.” Cornell also discussed that prior to the advent of settlers; ranchers grazed their branded cattle in the open range without fences. At that time Intermingling cattle on the same land was no problem. “The settlers came in there so thick that, that, uh, I had to give up the idea there was no free range anymore. They had to..now be careful, boy, be careful. There had been free range up there when I started in but the settlers came in.” Moreover, Cornell mentioned the existence of ancient inhabitants’ petroglyphs (relief carvings in stone) in Ludlow Cave north of Buffalo. He noted that people, including Custer’s men, defaced the cave with graffiti. Referring to the petroglyphs, He stated “They cut 'em out. There's places where they, where they got this, where you couldn't put your hand on the wall, on the rock that would have been plain before you couldn't put your hand on the rock there. A lot of areas of that covering up somebody's initials.” Cornell was a highway superintendent from 1919-1933 and then worked for Tobin Construction Company. Through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), he built the first highways in Harding County. During the Great Depression, Cornell oversaw Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps and discussed the pros and cons of the program. He stated: “You know, giving a fellow a living that he doesn't have to work for, uh, is about the worst thing they can do to you.” Thus, while the program provided money for many people, it also stripped them of their dignity. Later in his life, Cornell was a surveyor and engineer, and worked on water storage projects including dugouts, reservoirs, and irrigation projects. In World War II he was a clerk for the Selective Services Board for three years. Toward the end of the interview, Cornell discussed his family and friends’ recollections and involvement in the Messiah War (Ghost Dance War) from 1890-1891. He also befriended John Kirkwood, a veteran of the 1876 Battle of Slim Buttes. Cornell recounted that lying on a stretcher; the gravely wounded Kirkwood survived the trek from Slim Buttes to Deadwood. “And they carried him down and he rode a hundred miles in that and they were going pretty slow because the horses were played out and a lot of the cavalry, most of the cavalry had to walk. It was, I think, it was five days or something like that that they were on the road. No, no, uh, anesthetics or sedatives at all, you know or whiskey and tobacco.” Kirkwood lived for another fifty years after the battle. Cornell helped with the erection of the Slim Buttes Battle Monument that stands today. In 1978, the South Dakota Hall of Fame inducted Cornell (1881-1975) posthumously. The nomination cited that Cornell was a pioneer road builder, water rights advocate, conservationist, historian, and poetry and short story writer. In addition, the nomination noted Cornell’s life long and extensive work experiences as well as his appreciation of South Dakota western history and Indigenous culture. Moreover, “Cornell was a member of the Harding County Chamber of Commerce; Montana and South Dakota Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors; the Archaeological Society of South Dakota and life member of the South Dakota State Historical Society.” From: (https://www.sdexcellence.org/Carl_Cornell_1978). Below is a photograph of Carl Cornell from this website. A 1971 map of Harding County, South Dakota. The insert indicates the location of the county bounded north by North Dakota and west by Montana. * https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/33659/pg33659-images.html *The map is from: KENNETH W. ANDERSEN and J. KNOX JONES, JR., Mammals of Northwestern South Dakota. University of Kansas Publications, Museum of Natural History, Vol. 19, No. 5, pp. 361-393, January 18, 1971.

Charles Burney’s and John Hawkins’s multi-volume histories were both published in London in the late 1700s (around 1776.) How are they different, and how are they similar? Why did the authors say negative comments about the other’s history?

The Archives and Special Collections has many Vermillion newspapers, but we don’t have the Dakota Republicans before 1923. You can find this 1869 ad in the Digital Archives at the Vermillion Public Library.