Jack Sully: West Rivers one and only, Robin Hood, and cattle rustler.

Jack Sully: West Rivers one and only, Robin Hood, and cattle rustler.

For those of you who've read my book, , West River you'll find that Jack Soli casts a long shadow across all of the Midwest.

We first encounter him as a friend of young Jakob Harman in the late 1860s and 70s in western Nebraska southwestern South Dakota and Colorado when a young Jack Soli was stealing horses from the Utes and work for that early pioneer rancher in Southwest South Dakota and Eastern Wyoming, E. W. Whitcomb.

Thereafter we find mention of Jack Sully and his partner Jack Kincaid as cowboys who trailed beef North to the Rosebud reservation and a news article Bee wherein it is described how those cowboys could trail I heard and across the wide Missouri with them.

Before the turn-of-the-century we find Jack Selle and Jack Kincaid and Charles makes County were Jack Selle has taken and white wife and been elected Sheriff.

Jack Kincaid dies and Jack Selle marries his widow and raises Kincaid's family together with his own and is found as a woodcutter and supplier of words for steamboats plying the Missouri River at his headquarters on an island in the river just north of the mouth of the Whetstone in Gregory County South Dakota.

From there we traced Sully rustling enterprises up and down the Missouri River from Nebraska to Fargo to St. Paul and Canada.

Since the publication of that book, West River I have found to articles that best flesh out in more detail just kind what kind of a man was. These articles shed the life on his friends, travels and his death when shot and killed in Gregory County South Dakota.

Since the articles are so explicit I have taken the liberty of quoting directly from them only to say that Jack Selle must have been a Robin Hood to have treated young Thomas Lyons as he did on their train ride from St. Paul to Chicago when Thomas Lyons was 16 and a soon-to-be student at the University of Notre Dame.

The second article gives a vivid account of the last ride Sully. In the light of this article one wonders why the posses that was made up of cattlemen shot Jack Soli from ambush firing 40 rounds when he was only 100 yards away.

In researching Jack Selle and other stories of West River I came to the conclusion that most of these men all boldly rolled a vast area from Kansas and Nebraska Texas north to Canada and from Colorado to Chicago new each other very well.

In visiting with Dick Casey who was then president of this South Dakota State Bar he described that unique South Dakota fact as Dakota Timothy.

So it is that I have used is definition throughout this article. Here is how he and his friend Rich Gary described this historical phenomena:

Dakotativity

Hi John!  You have a really good memory to even recall the conversation!  Your email was forwarded to me from my office as I am currently on sabbatical until July.

The term is above and was actually coined by my old college roommate, Rich Garry.  Then Rich & I collaborated on the definition of the theory, which is:  "everyone from South Dakota knows everyone else, at least collaterally."

I am flattered that you are using that theory in your history!  I hope you are doing well!

Dick Casey

If you look long enough in Dakota you will find a kindred thread that binds events and your story together into a related event or person, or both.

Dakotativity foretells that nearly every early trespasser on the Sioux Nation’s domain that remained to statehood would have had past associations and troubles that would portend future problems and violent events.

Permit me to illustrate how Dakota today spans not only people but events times places and yes even centuries.

My aunt Geraldine Simpson was married to John Maloney both lived in Madison South Dakota the home County of the Lyons family.

John gave me a book of essays after I had given him a copy of my book West River. The book of essays was written by one of his ancestors in the Lyons family namely Thomas the Lyons. It was a book of essays about the Lyons family settling in northeastern Lake County South Dakota and add Redstone now Carthage South Dakota.

Imagine my surprise when I read about young 16-year-old Thomas D Lyons being admitted to go to college at Notre Dame in Indiana and is travels to get their including being put in the personal care of Jack Sully from the train ride to St. Paul to Chicago.

It not only proves the theory of Dakota Tiffany it also shows that Jack Selle was indeed also a Robin Hood area

But let the essay itself tell its story:

“After saying the home farewells at Redstone, I went with my father to the big place and hits up the Bronx to the book board. As I stepped into the book board my father remarked that he supposed that I knew that times were hard and handed me an envelope which was found to contain 10 one dollar bills. Three nights after that at 10 PM uncle will came into the caboose of the stock strain on the Chicago Pewaukee and St. Paul to say goodbye. He deposited a big pasteboard box which contained about 5 pounds of magnificent Dakota Rose Tam and two loaves of bread. The other stockman in the caboose making the trip to Chicago were all acquaintances of this, and one short, wiry man with a thick gray mustache seemed to be a particular friend. This gentleman was the famed Jack Selle from for rental and uncle will place the under his special protection. When uncle will shook hands saying goodbye a piece of paper stuck to my hand and turned out to be a $10 bill.

But my farewells were not quite finished Mr. Kuhn Kotzpaughkm spell that K bowl TZP a and this was presented to may on the theory that I made it to keep warm in the book which sick caboose deluxe provided. As I prepared to stretch out on the book one of the stockman said that he never laid down for fear of crawlers. But Mr. Sully told beta go-ahead that the speakers true reason for not lying down was an intense preoccupation with cards and whiskey. I woke up feeling fine and rested at six o'clock the next morning crossing Minnesota and a one o'clock in the afternoon our train stopped at the cross with scouts and with the announcement from the conductor that we all had time to eat the famous turkey dinner at the great lacrosse railroad dining room. I sat down next to Mr. Sully and we had just barely started on the turkey cranberries and dressing when the brakeman came into the dining room swearing his ladder and shouting for all the cattle buyers to turn out at once as orders were changed in our train was pulling out of the station. Mr. Sully's coolness did not desert him even if I was a bit excited. He sees up to sections of the Sunday paper which I had bought and made to generous bundles of that turkey dressing and cranberries giving me want to carry. When he got out onto the platform are freight train was moving at a slow pace of the station yards. Mr. Sully and once advised may that the train would be moving too fast for us to board the caboose and that we must run over the tops of the cars. I have then they hesitated for Mr. Selle said all it's nothing at all here and he at once unlocked his beautiful worked leather and silver belt. Climb out walk ahead of you hang onto my belt I won't let go. Don't look down and look straight add at me

Mr. Sully was a man who spontaneously exuded confidence. Under his generalship we reach the caboose safely and entered through the cupola. Even when running across the top train I had involuntarily admired Mr. Seles beautiful belt. When the United States marshals pussy shot Mr. Sully dad at his home near for Randall three months before my graduation at Notre Dame a rifle bought one through that beautiful belt. The federal parties claim the Jack Selle had gone into the enterprise of international cattle rustling a violation of federal statute. Uncle will always stoutly defended his friends reputation and claimed the checks was the victim of a conspiracy on the part of rival cattle interests who had political pull sufficient to cause the issuance of a warrant for his arrest

We reach Chicago on Monday morning at eight o'clock and that afternoon I entered Notre Dame post Lonesome boy East of the Mississippi River. “

Notwithstanding all the made-up stories concerning Jack Soli his hideouts Tamils and mountain areas perhaps the following article from the Norfork Nebraska newspaper might best recount the life and death Sully.

The Norfolk Weekly New Journal May 27, 1904

Story told by five-year-old son ( Claude Sully) who saw it all.

Was shot down like a rabbit .

Tithe veteran cattle rustler was told by Ben diamond to flee mounting his faithful horse, he rode away only to be shot down.

The tragic killing of the veteran cattle rustler , Jack Sully, which it occurred at his home on the Rosebud reservation was even more tragic than  was shown in the telegraphic reports which came from Chamberlain South Dakota.

D.H.. Thomas, editor of the new Northwest, was in Norfolk yesterday from Naper, Nebraska., and sent to the news the story of the final act in that theater of frontier  life as taken by old Jack.

The white-haired pioneer of the plains  was shot down in the full site of his little children while they stood watching in the doorway and waiting for a wave of their father’s hand as he disappeared down the ravine , a  wave to tell them goodbye. That wave never came for as they stood watching their father gallop away, there suddenly came a crackling of rifles from the hidden second ravine that ran alongside, and their father, old Jack, sank back in his saddle, reeled in  the saddle a little later  and  fell to the ground, to die.

Trick in catching Sully.

Although Jack Sully was a recognized rustler of cattle are on the plains , he was nevertheless an honorable man in his way and was above all never  small and or cowardly.

Despite this fact, however, he was tricked by the Stockman of the County when they killed him trapped by a game which gave him no chance and  was given no chance even to surrender.

The story which was told by Mr. Thomas was given him by a five-year-old son, a key level fellow who knew nothing but the truth to relate the real story of the manner in which his father was shot. He was without deliberate prejudice and his tale of tragedy is touching to a degree.

The men after Sully were Stockman deputized by United States Marshal Petrie,  the warrant issued for the arrest  of the old rustler came from the United States office at Chamberlain .

 At the Ben diamond Ranch the crowd stopped on Sunday. Riding  onto the Sully home Ben diamond accompanied them.

A number of the men concealed themselves in the ravine just east of the house, including Harry Hamm, Dave Deputy Sheriff Irish and others.

Then Diamond rode up to the house and spoke to Sully, “Petrie’s coming,” said he “and you better run.” Believing that the neighbor  spoke in good faith Sully jumped on his fine  saddle horse and started out down the ravine directly past the spot which hid his slayers.

Not a challenge.

As he is passed  the spot ( where Hamm and others were hidden)  there was not a noise nor a rustle  nor a sign of the men.

The children stood in the doorway watching every leap of faithful steed as

 he carried their father to his death.

Suddenly there was a sharp report of a rifle ,then another, and then a rapid fire followed. Petrie was north of the house, watching the gate.  It was not more than 100 yards to the house (from where the shots  rang  out). The old rider was struck with a bullet through his back. He made no attempt to pull a gun. Falling over to one side, his heel caught the saddle.

The posse kept on firing,  two shots struck the horse. The horse, frightened and wounded started up the hill with his master hanging at the side. Another bullet whizzed  through the air and landed in the horse’s side. The animal staggered, hesitated and gave a jerk. The movement dropped old Sully to the ground

“Throw up your hands.”

 There he was his prostrate form filled with lead and lying on the ground, to the posse of men came out from their concealment and covered old Jack with their rifles.

“Throw up your hands” they shouted, he tried to throw them up but was too weak to move. He asked for a drink of water, and they offered him brandy, which he refused. His children ran down toward their father but were ordered back by the officers. Petrie, the firing done, rode in from the north. Old Jack raised a little and shook hands  with the Marshall and asked to see his children.  Petrie sent for them but by the time they reached the place the wounded man was dead.

 They stayed over the next day and during the night  there was much drinking in the crowd.  40 shells were picked up from the ground.

 Petrie the children said, after the killing lay down beside the corpse, it was intimated by the children that he had partaken of the little liquid and went to sleep

The others were evidently in excellent condition to waste so large a percentage of their firing (forty rounds)as if they were shooting rabbits.

Suddenly Sully’s children now at his  side and recited the captains payer

His first photograph.

Note. A descendant of Jack Sully, Melvin Hausman of Mobridge has sent me a copy of photos of Jack and his widow that were apparently taken for family purposes, and never revealed to the public.

After Sully stiff old body had been laid in the casket the first’s photograph of old Sully was made  as in life he always refused to have a likeness made. Dead and helpless, the camera recorded an impression of his features, “no camera was in possession  of the posse. The  camera was in the possession of a Chicago man at Bone steel who went to the scene of the killing.

Secret c Coroners  Jury.

The work of the corners jury was quick , but not  until after the men had had a secret session and after  several hours considered the case did they finally say that the death had been  at the hands of the officers while resisting arrest .

Location of the house.

The house does not stand, as has been reported, out upon (a tall hill which has a view in all directions).. True one can see for 20 miles from it in one direction but it had been built so that others might easily slip up to the place without detection no choicer  spot on the earth could be found for such a home with the ravine running down from both sides of the house it offered a convenient ambush place for those creeping up this is demonstrated by the fact that the marksman who shot him were no more than 100 yards from his door.

Early Life

Jack Sully came to Minnesota from New York and many years ago formed a partnership with a fellow named( Jack Kincaid who is the forefather of the Sonny Waln family on the Rosebud). They established a  wood station at Blackbird Island, on the Missouri River. After the boats stopped moving on the Missouri River Sully moved back 10 miles and built his home.

“Did I say stolen?”

No more than three weeks ago, in Naper Nebraska  I was talking over his career with Mr. Thomas and Mr. Hensel of that  city. He spoke of one-time when he  took a bunch of hundred and 52 stolen cattle to Fargo for market “did I say stolen,” says he, “well they were stolen, boys.”

 Three years ago we shipped a bunch from Verdigree and was later caught and jailed at Mitchell where  he broke away the night the jailer died and escaped to Canada.

Returning he was shot at Minneapolis, as reported in the news, and he died with one of those wounds s still gaping open.

His last rustling.

His last rustling was a bunch of cattle recently brought down to Nebraska him . He  sold them to several men from Naper. One man paid in cash and the other paid in paper which was later stopped.

The warrant for arrests was for those cattle and in the serving of those warrants without so much as calling a halt the stock had been shot down and killed Jack Sully.

The horse is still alive. Though it has bullets in its side, it will probably recover and  a fine animal it is.

Mr. Thomas was given the family side of the story because old Jack at one-time had known Mr. Thomas’s father, Capt. Jack, when he was on a boat that plied the waters of the Missouri.

 Mr. Thomas and some other men were all that were admitted to Sully’s home.

‘s home.

The 5 year old (Claude Sully) then took Thomas to the  spot where Jack was shot.

Claude  Sully had a ranch in Todd County just to the west of the Trip- Todd County line. I knew him well. And in the fall I hunte3d  grouse and dear at his ranch.

His son  was  arrested 9 on some minor charge  and placed in the Trip County jail. I was state’s attorney at the time and old Claude Sully, the five-year-old boy who had witnessed his father’s death, came to my office concerned about his son Claude Junior.

He told me that his son had asked that he talk to me to see if his son could be released.

He told me not to release his son that he needed to learn a lesson, and that if anyone should ever ask me I was to tell them that his father had begged and pleaded for me to release him but it was me who said no.

So it would be that the theory of Dakotativity would await some 65 years until it came full circle from the time that old Claude Sully then a five-year-old boy would watch his father Jack shot from ambush and relate the tale to the Norfork reporter and await my election as Tripp County states attorney those 65 years later and make the circle of Dakotativity today come full circle.

And that my aunt would marry the descendent of an ancestor of young Thomas Lyons who was escorted on that train ride from St. Paul to Chicago and then sent to Notre Dame by none other than that Robin Hood, Jack Sully.

Dakotativity at its best.

RICK JOHNSON EULOGY

George Johnson and Dudley Herman epitomized the ability to recognize weakness and turn it into strength. George was able to do this with at most consistentsy but often found some failure in the fact that his tactics were just a little too overbearing. Dudley could do the same and they both could turn a sow's ear into a silk purse but Dudley unlike George was maybe just a little too slippery.

Rick Johnson on the other hand could turn weakness into strength, make a silk purse out of sow's ear and do it with just a little touch of magic.

The following was a eulogy given by Judge Wilson had Rick Johnson's funeral in Gregory South Dakota.

RICK JOHNSON EULOGY

Clarence Darrow, the great trial lawyer of the first half of the last century, once said: 'Of the great flood of human life that is spawned across the face of the earth, rarely is there ever born a man.' I believe that this scarcity does not exist in this 'West River' area of South Dakota.  Be that as it may, Rick Johnson was a man and a half!

I count it one of the luckiest days of my life when, thirty years ago, I became acquainted with the Johnson/Driscoll clan here in Gregory County, South Dakota.  Over the years they have become close friends.  To borrow words from John Adams, "They seized upon my heart.' I'm presumptuous enough to consider myself a part of their family, and they are gracious enough to allow me to make this claim.

Francie, as you know better than anyone else, your husband adored, loved and admired you.  He was extremely proud of your accomplishments, and he liked to brag about them, but being the sort of fellow he was, he could not come to bring himself to do it directly; but he did it indirectly and in full measure.  Rick reminded me of the German Lutheran they talk about down in Arkansas.  He was crazy about his wife.  He loved her so very much that he almost told her one time.

Rick Johnson demonstrated his love and friendship, but he was not one to say it directly.

Let me say a word or two about Francie Driscoll Johnson.  When you go home tonight break out your Holy Writ, King James Version, or whichever.  Open it to Proverbs and the other Books which speak of the worth and value of a good woman, a good wife and a good mother.  When you read those words you will think that the Almighty had Francie Johnson in mind when they were written.

Francie, your husband was a character.  I mean a CARE-ACT-TOR.  Let me give you an example.  Several years ago I was in the chambers of Judge Eisele down in Little Rock -- many of you will know Judge Eisele who has been up here to hunt -- we were getting ready to go our and make up a jury after he had heard some pretrial motions.  The door to Judge Eisele's chambers swung open and his secretary said, "Mr.  Wilson has an urgent call." I nearly fainted.  I went to the phone and answered it.  On the other end I heard Rick Johnson say, "Wilson, I just remembered the punch line to that joke I tried to tell you last fall." He laughed his deep belly laugh as I used some nonSunday School language on him and hung up.

What other lawyer -- nay, what other person -- do you know who would pull a stunt like this?

Diogenes, the ancient philosopher, lived in a one room hut by the sea.  A friend of his,

who was an advisor to one of the princes, visited Diogenes one day at noon.  Diogenes was preparing lentils for lunch.  The friend said, 'Diogenes, if you would learn to get along with the princes you wouldn't have to learn to eat lentils.' Diogenes replied, "My friend, if you would learn to eat lentils you wouldn't have to get along with the princes." That was Rick Johnson.  He did not laugh unless he was tickled.

He marched to the beat of his own drummer.  I never hear the song "My Way" that I don't think of Rick Johnson.

Much has been said and written, and much will be said and written, about Rick's skill as a trial lawyer so I won't dwell on this subject.

Rick Johnson was the quintessential South Dakota man.  There is something special about South Dakota and the people of South Dakota.  I don't know what it is.  I can't put my finger on it.  A few years back Lisa Buche told me, "Don't you know -- it's a spiritual thing.' Perhaps this is true.  I don't know.  I'll leave this up to the preachers and poets.  This much, however, I know full well.  There is something very special and wonderful about South Dakota and its people, and I am honored to be here among you as we honor the memory of this great fellow.

Rick was, by any account, a first rate scholar of the law.  He was an accomplished artist -- proof positive of this can be seen out at the lodge where we will gather this afternoon.  His paintings and wood carvings are superb.  He was widely and deeply read on a multitude of subjects.  He had a burning curiosity about the natural world.  Again, take a look at his exotic garden out by the lodge, particularly the multitude of

pepper plants.  And he was one of the country's foremost authorities on pheasant preservation.

In all, it is entirely fair to say that Rick Johnson was an academy unto himself.

Francie, I know that you and your family know what the poet was talking about when he wrote about 'the darkest hour of the soul." I know that you know what Tennyson meant when he wrote about a departed friend:

But oh for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

Let me close, however, with two lines from the beautiful eulogy Robert Ingersoll, delivered at the graveside of his beloved brother:

In the night of death, hope sees a star

And listening love can hear the rustle of wings.

Early Lawyers, the Rosebud's racial legacy and townsite and courthouse fights.

Early Lawyers, the Rosebud's racial legacy and townsite and courthouse fights.

Note: contains some repetitious matter which may appear elsewhere but is included subject to future editing

“Mud-town” the Indians descriptive name  or Winner,began as the Jackson brothers answer to the Indian towns of Colome and Lamro. Throughout its existence it would become the bane of the Indian residents of the Rosebud. Early on one of the States attorneys of Tripp County would weekly climb the steps to the third floor County jail and assemble all the Indian occupants and announce “it’s court day all of those who want to plead guilty raise your hand”, the rest of you go to your bunks and wait until you change your minds.”

An early Sheriff would often times abuse, mistreat Indians in the Winner city jail by washing down the assembled Indian occupants of the city and County jail with a fire hose, until George Johnson of Gregory representing Joe Ballou successfully sued that Sheriff.

As a matter of fact sexual abuse for Indian women prisoners would continue in the “mud town” city jail well into the 1960s.

It was not until Bill Janklow at the legal aid service in Mission brought a federal lawsuit claiming discrimination in “Mudntown” that the city of Winner came to its senses and successfully defended that lawsuit by recognizing and correcting any charge of discrimination before the case was brought to trial.

Unfortunately the Winner school district when sued by local Indian parents by the ACLU nearly 50 years later,did not possess the same foresight as Mayor Paul Blomstrom when the city was sued for discrimination. By not correcting the abuses that were alleged against the school district the taxpayers of the school district were subjected to almost astronomical  high legal fees and corrective measures.

End note # 1 Fire v City of Winner.

Tripp County homesteaders were the beneficiary of Roscoe Knodell’s foresight and fortitude in circulating  a petition requesting that their be a moratorium on land payments to the U.S. because of droughth and  a harsh winter in 1909.

I am endeavorsin to get a copy of the original petition  which will have the names of the signers and circulator.

The following committee report mentions the petition:

Roscoe Knodel

 a lawyer and also editor of the Lamro newspaper. Roscoe’s mind was similar to W.J. Hooper but vastly different otherwise. Whereas Hooper was free spirit, Roscoe was the original dyed-in-the-woo Republicanl tub thumping Methodist teetotaler. I was a Catholic beer-drinking Democrat.

Roscoe showed me a letter from W.J. Hooper that he highly prized. Hooper had written to Roscoe asking him if he could remember a particular Supreme Court Case involving some arcane rule of law. Roscoe had replied with the correct citation and the reply letter from Hooper was his thank-you note praising Roscoe for his legal memory.

Hooper was hired to try and argue cases from Burke to Martin and Kennebec to Kadoka across the whole wide expanse of the old 11^th circuit. It was often told that W.J. never had to rent a hotel room in all of his forays outside of Gregory because he had a dear friend of the opposite sex in every county seat town in the circuit.  In fact he also had such an arrangement in his home town of Gregory and some old timers would tell you that “Nepper” street had a special meaning for W.J.

          Roscoe Knodell, on the other hand, was a male counterpart to Carrie Nation. He regularly led anti-drinking and anti-gambling endeavors in Winner, South Dakota. He was outraged by the Winner apparent lack of a Methodist’s idea of morality.

          He was so anti Catholic that during the John F. Kennedy campaign of 1960, Al Welk and other Knights of Columbus Catholics paid him a visit and convinced him to stop peddling anti-Catholic material.

          Roscoe was the most personally and politically conservative gentleman I have ever met. Unlike some who have followed however, he was never mean or vindictive and would never bend the law either right or left to fit his personal philosophy. I never knew him to own a car. He always walked to work; cane in hand and never cheated a single soul. He was one of the most honest men I had ever met.

           Roscoe had attended Northwestern University, commenced practicing law in Illinois, where he was a candidate for office on the “dry ticket” and was one of those adventurous souls who first started law practice in Fairfax, Gregory County, South Dakota.  He came to Dallas, South Dakota just prior to the homestead drawing, thence to Lamro, South Dakota where he published the Tripp County Journal, became the moving force in the Lamro Commercial Club, continued to practice law, and owned two sections of land in Todd County just north of Highway 18.  The Little White River flowed from bottom to top.  He fought a bitter fight against the Jackson Brothers and Winner and finally gave in , The paper he started in Lamro fell into the hands of the Jackson   brothers and then practiced law for over fifty years in Winner before he took me in tow on November 23^rd. 1963..

 (The Dallas Daily News at the timer of the homestead drawing noted :  “ Roscoe Knodell of Fairfax planned to stay in Dallas for the drawing.”)

 

          He and M.Q. Sharpe’s protégé, John Larson, always used lead pencils and kept them in a pencil box using them to write with until they were too short to hold, they were in fact real “nubbins”. I was reminded of my days at St Thomas grade school in Madison, South Dakota when “Sister Dynamite’s” 1937 first grade class kept their pencils in their own little pencil box.

Roscoe carried it even further. He never used good “store bought paper” to take notes; instead he would carefully open the envelopes of the mail he received and turn them inside out for note taking.

          Republican to the core  and a believer in all the WCTU advocated, it was ironic that the two lawyers he helped the most were Bill Day and me (a Catholic) both Democrats who both loved to have a good time in the local barrooms.

          He welcomed me to Winner and let me use a spare room in that sparse office for free. Now that office, 138 East Third Street had been moved from Lamro in 1910 where Roscoe had been a lawyer and editor of the Lamro paper. The office had no plumbing, no central heating, just a large free-standing oil stove, a table, a safe and a manual typewriter and Roscoe with his box of pencils and inside-out envelopes for serious note taking.

          In cold weather he would open the office, tear  a yesterday daily calendar sheet from the Farmers State Bank calendar, use it to light the oil stove and then retreat across the street to the Tripp County Courthouse where he would  “read law" in the law library until the office warmed. That heat was always turned off before the day was done and the same procedure was followed every winter day for over fifty years in Winner.

          He was still lighting that stove every morning when he let me stay, rent free, in an empty room. As a gesture to me he had installed plumbing and “running water” and electric heat. Roscoe had a corner on estate practice and he shared several with me to give me a start.

          Roscoe the Republican also introduced me to all of his old clients and thought they should vote for me in the upcoming state’s attorney’s race--even though I was a Catholic Democrat. He showed me how to take a township map and keep track of people I had met listing their names and addresses by township.

          Roscoe would remain  true to all of his principle to  the very  end. He had a pleasurable moment when Richard Nixon defeated Hubert Humphrtey  for President.

          On the day following the election he paid ne a courtesy visit, and without gloating set a large law book on my desk. You’re going to need this now, John, he said and wheeled out of my office, making just a little more noise with his old cane hitting the floor.

          I picked up the legal volume. It was a compendium of Supreme Court opinions all decided prior to the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

          W.J. Hooper and Roscoe Knodell, together with Claude Maule, Windsor Doherty, C.E. Talbot would be main characters in the Colome-Lamro-Winner courthouse fight in 1911 and they will later appear again.  A Clearfield area citizen, while visiting an unmarried female neighbor’s homestead observed “a man’s overalls draped over the back of a bedroom chair” and that led to a legal morality play which went all the way to the South Dakota Supreme Court. But more of that later- first the “Bought, but not paid for”, courthouse war.

.

         

Overture to a court house fight.

In the election of June 1, 1909 in a contest between Colome and Lamro, the voters decided that Lamro would be the temporary county seat of Tripp County by a vote of 260 votes for Lamro and 187 for Colome. Winner was still a faraway dream.

 A young Roscoe Knodell as publisher of the Lamro-based Tripp County Journal scoffed at the idea that some town other than Lanro would be the County seat of Tripp County. Always trusting of the motives of others, Roscoe wrote:

Friday July 30, 1909

TRIPP CO JOURNAL

SOME MORE HOT AIR

Jackson Brothers contemplate three more old Dallas

NORTHWESTERN TO BE A PARTNER

 

Agree to take in C.N.W R.R, railroad as limited partner to control all towns in Tripp County

The most recent article in the Norfolk daily news paid for by the Jackson brothers and friends is told of an article recently shown to have been published by Fred Buckman in the Gregory County news several years ago it was headed quote” (How Iowa boys) built a town in old Dallas.” The article which appeared in the Norfolk paper conveyed the understanding that the Jackson brothers had agreed to take in the Northwestern Railroad in a limited partnership to control the towns the county seat and the homesteaders of trip County. The plan was for the Jackson brothers to grant, by hot air deed, a right away 3 miles each side of the Jackson villages to the railroad and each homesteader was to receive a lot large enough for family living with … .  Such hot air will not influence any homesteaders. Lamro is  the county seat of Trip County and the quote Royal Union” has an office here there.

 (It should be noted that the Royal union was a Royal union insurance company which financed nearly all of the opening of the Rosebud reservation and was owned by the Jackson brothers and their father from Des Moines Iowa.)

Any attorney who has  ever examined an abstract of Gregory or Tripp County land will run into a vast array of legal documents that were filed to correct and market title after the Royal union and the Jackson Brothers 'went belly up in the 30s.

Roscoe was an avid prairie chicken hunter and would often walk many miles from Winner to shoot the native bird. One  wonders what he thought when he walked past the abandoned Town site of Lamro.

THE COURTHOUSE FIGHT

Three things would make Lamro and Colome lose and Winner win the fight for the Tripp County Courthouse and county seat and make Roscoe Knodell put his frame office on skids and move it from Lamro to Winner.

Remember that Gregory County, the eastern most portion of the Rosebud Reservation, was opened for homestead settlement prior to the opening of Tripp County.

As such, towns like Fairfax, Bonesteel, St Charles, Herrick, Burke and Gregory were laid out, profits made, before the arrival of two of the elements that would weigh heavily in favor of Winner winning the courthouse contest. As the Railroad moved west so did many of the houses that had been built in the eastern Gregory County towns of Fairfax, Bonesteel, St Charles and Herrick. Many of them ended up being moved to Gregory. Dallas however would serve as a dress rehearsal of what was to come.

The two most important elements were Frank, Ernest and Graydon Jackson, the famous Jackson brothers, sons of a former Governor of Iowa and President of the Royal Union Life Insurance Company, a legendary lender on the Rosebud.

The third, but most important element that caused Winner to win was the Jackson Brothers “clairvoyance” in knowing just where the Chicago and Northwestern was going to lay its tracks in its “Go west, young man, go west” manifest destiny through the opened portions of the Rosebud reservation.

Indeed the courthouse games would have a “stacked Early

la

 deck” long before Russ Read the creator of Winners gambling parlors would ever spin a roulette wheel or hire a croupier to handle the dice.

Consider, if you will, that the Indians had first choice on the homesteads in Tripp County and many an early white adventurer in the old west had taken Indian wives and families and they were the ones who exercised those first homestead choice rights.

Chris Colombe had leveraged his family’s Indian blood in to a money maker . Together with his white investors which he fronted for, he had secured his Indian Homestead rights to the present location of Colome, S.D. and he and his white investors, Wickham H. Tackett, H.A. Slaughter, and W.A. Mesreve recorded their town site company on June 2, 1908 , prior to the legal entry time of the opening of Tripp County to all.

Oliver Lamoureaux with the backing of many of the same investors would secure his Indian choice and incorporated Lamro, guessing where the Northwestern tracks would be laid 12 miles west of Colome, before opening settlement to everyone lucky enough to win at the homestead drawing.

The use of “Indian fronts” to secure large grazing leases would continue even to the advent of Al Kary, Wilson and Tim Murray, and young Bill Janklow and yours truly with similar results as was told of the murder of Ed Yoak and “Bubb Bartoe” disease by Thomas Lyons in the Oklahoma territory.

Prelude to the court house fight- the Grand Opening of the Rosebud

A young Dennis Lyons, born in Lake County, South Dakota (my home county)and relative of Thomas Lyons who had met Jack Sully on his way to Notre Dame would write of his experience in his adventure to register for a Tripp County homestead at Dallas S.D.

He wrote:

“1908 I went to Chamberlain S. D. on an excursion train from Chicago, to register for the drawing of lots for choice. In this arrangement of lottery the names of all who had registered were placed in a container and two little girls drew the first names. The first 3000 choices were to cost $6 per acre, the next $4.50 and the rest $2.50. They had to use their choice in rotation beginning at number one. The first choice was filed by a lady named Mae Keiser, at the land office in Gregory S. D. on the morning of April 1st, 1909. The filing continued until Oct. 1st at midnight, when all land not filed on by choice was thrown open to Squatters Rights. During the period of filing a new industry developed, known as Locating. This was done by men who were experienced in traveling over prairie country and locating different quarter sections of land. They generally drove over the country and made a book showing the choice land. Then, when they took a prospective settler out to the land and showed it to him if he filed on it the one locating him got a fee.

At that time I was just 21 years old and was only one of the many inexperienced on that train who little realized the significance of pioneering a new country.

Finally the lots were drawn and the papers published the list. There were few if any newspapers in the United States that were not read that day as people from every state in the Union had registered. But my name was not among those drawn. In the spring of 1909 the filings began. Many who had drawn numbers had no intention of remaining and developing a homestead so a profitable business of dealing in relinquishments sprang up. The system of handling these relinquishments was as follows: - First the holder of a number selected a quarter section and filed on it. He then had six months to establish his residence on the land. In this time he would have some dealer, known as a Real Estate man bargain with some prospective settler for the sale of his relinquishment. The money usually was left in some bank, subject to the filing of the relinquishment. When the settler's turn came to file after October 1st, the real estate man went to the land office (office of entry). The filing of the relinquishment cleared the land of any former entry. So the settlers’ office of entry was accepted. Then the bank released the money to the real estate man. The reason for all this formality was the fact that it was unlawful for anyone to directly sell his homestead right.

I was still more restless than ever to acquire a homestead, so I came to Dallas S.D. in September 1909, Dallas being 5 miles west of Gregory and on the boundary of the Reservation. On the 20th of Sept. I bargained for a relinquishment at $1600, besides the $6 to the Government for the Indians. On the 18th of Oct. I entered filing on the land. On this land a house and some fence was already built, and some hay was stacked. The original filing choice was #1196.

So at last I had taken the first important step in my life and the next one was to follow soon. It seemed to have a homestead with a house on it Implied that I should also have a wife. Having this matter under consideration for sometime before, the question was finally settled on April 5, 1910, and we got ready to start for the new home. This place was and still is 37 miles from the nearest town. My new wife had never been out of town over night in her life. “

Pearson Magazine , a national publicartion sent Bailey Millard to report on the Rosebud Land Rush. He filed the following story of the event.

Pearson's magazine, Volume 21, Issue 1

Pearson Magazine , a national publicartion sent Bailey Millard to repooirt oin the Rosebud Land Rush. He filed the following story of the event.

Pearson's magazine, Volume 21, Issue 1

.

pleased to call the peasantry was here represented to its fullest. Big, red-apple-cheeked Nebraska boys, with the land-lust in their bright eyes, elbowed each other aboard the trains and good-naturedly contested with each other for seats. Young Swedes were there from Minnesota, burly young fellows from the Iowa prairies, stalwart, sinewy sons of Kansas and Oklahoma, all full of the land-lust, all eager to " take a chance " in the great drawing for homes that a generous government was soon to hold in the new South Dakota town of Dallas, three hundred miles to the northeast of Omaha. Among them were many women, for the most part daughters of the prairies, full of the spirit and sparkle that the wind of the plains gives to the girls whose hair is tossed by it and whose faces are tanned by

The charming system by which our good Uncle Samuel virtually gives away millions of acres of public land was adopted after the cession of the claims of the thirteen original States to all the territory north of Georgia and east of the Mississippi, and it meant simply that the government was anxious to encourage settlement, The annexation of the lands west of the Mississippi by right of conquest, discovery, and purchase, added enormously to the public domain, and these lands were settled by persons who paid the nominal sum of $ 1.2s an acre and secured as much land as they pleased.

Of late years oniy 160 acres have been allotted to any one person and the government has raised the price to $6 an acre, payable in six annual instalments, and $22 fees, which is still maklng it a virtual gift to the people, as for example, the Dakota lands recently entered upon are valued at $25 to $35 an acre. The quarter-section entered upon must be taken as a homestead oniy. The homesteader must reside upon and cultivate it for five years, uniess he pay all the purchase price and fees by the end of the first six months, when no further residence is required.

During the past two land openings there has been such a rush of persons to secure quarter-sections that the government has preferred to let them draw by lot rather than to engage in a wild and perhaps bloody scramble.

it—the future mothers of as hardy and intelligent a race as one shall find upon the earth.

"Ladies this way!" yelled the gatemen. "Chair cars for the ladies this way." And the women all made their way there, for west of the Mississippi every woman is a lady and every lady is given of the best.

Crushed between two burly Swedes, I made my way along the aisle, looking for a slim man as a seat-mate. I found him in

the person of a pale Kansas City drug clerk with whom I was soon chatting in the Western way, as though we had known each other from boyhood. Other pale faces were there—men of the cities following the call from the plains that was to redeem them for humanity—and more than ever did I realize that in three generations of city life the race runs itself out and must go back to the soil for renewal.

"Yes; the drugstore life has nearly worn out my nerves and my strength, and I'm going to settle down upon a farm if I can win one," said my seat-mate. "It will be good for the wife and babies, too. We shall live out of doors as much as we can. If I'm not lucky at the drawing, I'm going to see if I can't buy a little cheap land up there."

L. R. Walston, a bright-eyed young dentist from Crossett, Arkansas, leaned back in his seat and said: "Me, too! I want to escape from office work and live a freer life."

Walston's seat partner was C. A. Blair, an Indianapolis young man who had been down to Panama, but couldn't stand the climate. He had been in Dakota and thought it was a great country. He said he would live there all his life if he drew a quarter-section.

It was a long time before the train pulled

A TEMPORARY HOME

out and people kept crowding through the aisles, searching for seats. Three smoky, fiarey lamps were lit, the bell rang and we slid out through the streets of Omaha and were soon gliding over the prairie. There were over five hundred persons on the train, and another train with as many more was closely following us. They had been running ten to fifteen trains a day to Dallas, O'Neill and the other registration points, and the end was not yet. Over one hundred thousand men and women had joined in the scramble for land and many more were to come. There were men in this land rush who had fought each other for quarter-sections- in Oklahoma and were ready to fight again and win where they had failed before. They crowded the passageways, many of them unable to find seats— jostling, pushing, pawing each other, talking loudly but good-naturedly, joking each other as "suckers," all swaying along with the train and eager to get to Dallas and file their applications for land.

It was good to rub shoulders with these honest men, to see their eager faces and the eyes lit with the land-hunger. Here one caught the infantry tramp, the epic note of the nation. Here one got his ear close to the great heart of humanity and noted the beat ofAN APPLICATION BOOTH

it and the red fluid that it sent surging through the veins of these sons of the soil to whom the city and the whole country must look for its blood, and may not find it elsewhere.

The train retarded with grinding brakes, there was a glow of electric lights, and we knew we were at Fremont.

"Suckers! Suckers! Suckers!" rose the cry from the massed platform of the station. But other suckers were there ready to join us, and we yelled back "Suckers!" as they got aboard.

We started again and passed a long train on a siding. Many heads appeared from many windows.

"Suckers! Suckers!" they yelled, and there was a long droning bass of "Suckers!" as we slid by. These were folk who had been up to Dallas to register and were now returning, having handed in their applications.

Train after clattering train we passed and "Suckers!" was the greeting from each of them. For be it known there were only six thousand chances in one hundred and fifteen thousand—about one in twenty—for each applicant, and only about one in forty chances that he would get a piece of really good land. And yet, so willing is the average American to "take a chance," that a goodly percentage of the young men of the surrounding States went to register.

Beyond Fremont the sky was aglow with

prairie fires, and it looked as though the promised land were girt in by flames. But the hardy ones took no omen of evil from this, and it was only the tenderfoots who were awed.

At Norfolk there were more electric lights, more sidetracked trains, more crowds upon the platforms, more yells of "Suckers!" and more prairie men crowded into our car. The Westerner always has a hold-over supply of oxygen in his system and scorns ventilation, so that, with the steam-pipes piping merrily and the windows all down, we were soon in a blissful state of anaesthesia out of which we were occasionally aroused by the banging of a cardoor or the yell of some stalwart who could be boisterous without air. There was little alcoholic hilarity aboard the train, but there were a few good-natured fellows who had embraced the flagon and were determined that nobody should sleep. One of these was a man from temperate Ioway, who, having consumed a bottle of Bourbon, got off at a waystation and bought two bottles of a liquid purporting to be beer. When he tasted it he roused us all up with a yell of "Rainwater! Nothin' but rainwater!" Then he read the label, "Near Beer. Guaranteed under the pure food law. Less than one-half of one per cent. alcohol." "Stung!" he shouted contemptuously, and gave his unopened bottle away to a man from a local option county in Nebraska.

The pranks that were played were of a "rough-house" order, but no one resented them. One sleeper's face was blackened with smut from a lamp chimney, a tin cup and sixshooter were tied to his breast and a whisky bottle was placed in his hand. Then the good folk from all the other cars were summoned to see the show, which struck everybody as so irresistibly piquant that wild laughter rang the whole length of the train.

There was so much clatter and clamcr that most of us passed a sleepless night and were glad when, in the dawn of a peculiarly depressing, mist-muddled morning, we heard the brakeman yell "Dallas!"

The crowd leaped from the train and made its way to the registration booths—men and women, girls and boys, all eager to make out their applications and thrust them into the big iron cylinders at the government house.

Dallas! That tent-and-shack city, with its wildly rushing population, presented a spectacle that broke through language and escaped; and yet it may be that I can give a faint impression of it. Only eighteen months old, as a mere depot-and-water tank, the town had sprung into cityhood in a week. Wooden buildings with fake facades had been thrown up, canvas houses and tents, large and small, had been erected along the main street and all about the flanking thoroughfares. One heard everywhere the raucous note of the raw West, the carpenter's hammer, the grate of the saw, the megaphone clamorings of the barkers, hoarsely calling the crowds to the restaurants, the vaudeville shows and the hurdy-gurdy performances, the auction sales and the lodg

ing tents; there was a wild honking of automobiles, a cracking of rifles in the shooting galleries, and a blaring brass band, even at that early hour was parading in advance of a string of mounted cowboys and Indians invit-' ing the mob to the Rosebud Agency Wild West Show. A pleasaunce called "The Pike" invited particular attention through its barkers, who varied their noisy demonstrations by occasionally grating the big end of their megaphones along the sidewalk, making a noise that could hardly be called musical.

"Yes, sir!" was one spieler's call. "The Family Theater is going on, going on, going on! Only ten cents! A good place to sit down!"

This made a strong appeal to the crowd, many of whom were weary from much walking up and down the streets.

"Boys!" boomed another barker, dressed in a big fur coat. "It's all ready, boys! A two-bit meal, boys! Sirloin steak cr pork chops, fried potatoes and cup of coffee! Yes, sir—a good square. I guarantee it!"

And yet with all the racket, and clamor, the place was surprisingly orderly. This was almost entirely due to the efforts of one man, Ernest A. Jackson, who without any warrant of law cr any authority bossed the town andwas truly a benevolent despot. Jackson, who with his brothers owned the original town site, was exceedingly jealous of the fair name of Dallas.

"I knew," he told me, "that thousands of people, many times our local population, would pile in here for the drawing, and I wanted, as far as possible, to keep out the toughs and sports, which I think has been done."

Jackson limited the number of saloons to five, and although over three hundred gambiers came to town not many gained a footing there. Not a "flat joint" nor sure-thing game was permitted—no spindles, odd or even, or wheel-of-fortune—nothing but stud poker, draw, faro and roulette, and these latter were confined to the back rooms of the five saloons.

I visited some of the games and found them running at full blast. Some of them were taking in a good bit of money, particularly that in Thompson's place, where from the stories of victims I inferred that the games were all "crooked," despite the benevolent boss's efforts to keep them straight.

"I was let in by a capper whom I called my 'drunken friend,'" said one victim who lost his " roll" in Ijiis place. "It was mighty neat, the way he worked me. He pretended to be very drunk, and going upon the principle that a man who is soaked generally tells the truth, I believed his story of having won in the stud poker game, especially as he flashed a wad that would have choked a cow. The funny part of my experience was that they didn't let

me win a single hand. Of course that made me believe at once that the game was square, for they generally lead on a sucker in a crooked joint by letting him win once or twice, at least. No, sir, I didn't take a dollar off that board, and they got to me for $160, plus my watch and lodge pin. But when I reported it to Jackson, he was so cut up about the thing having happened in his town that he loaned me money enough to get home with. A mighty square man is Jackson. The boys all swear by him."

Other victims' stories I heard, but none so pitiful as that of a young fellow from Mankato, Minnesota, who had driven in"a team of beautiful black horses, hitched to a farm wagon. The Mankato man had come to register for land and had picked up some passengers along the way, enough to pay the expenses of the trip and something besides. He got into a poker game within an hour after he had registered and filed his application, and soon his money was gone and also the team and wagon. When I saw him he was standing before a tent where some friends of his were camping, bewailing his losses.

"I wouldn't have cared so much," he said in a half-sobbing way, "only the horses didn't belong to me. They were my father's. I don't know whether I dast show up at home again. Father had set his heart on my getting a quarter-section out here, but my luck has been so bad of course I won't."

He took me over to a rough stable and showed me the horses, looking at them wistfully now and again and slapping his hand upon their great black flanks with many a sigh.

"Them horses was the best friends I ever had," he said dismally. "Why, many a time I've slept with 'em. Yes, sir—slept right down between 'em, so's not to git cold when Iwas out on the prairie. If you don't believe it, look-a here," and he produced a battered silver watch. "That's what old Bill done one night when I was sleepin' with 'em. Got his forefoot onto it somehow and bent the case. Lucky for me it was bent, too; for them crooks wouldn't 'low me nothin' on it when they was skinnin' me. Yes, sir; they're a bunch o' skins—that gamblin' crowd, an' you want to look out for 'em. I don't know whether I dast go home to father or not. He'll raise blue hell about it, an' I don't blame him."

But while the five gambling places were allowed to fleece tenderfoots unmolested, other crooks were driven out of town. There were very few serious offences against the law —no shooting, and only one gun pulled during all the days of registration, and that was a shotgun in the hands of a negro who was driving off an imaginary burglar from his tent.

When one considers the fact that as many as 10,077 persons came in a single day to register for land and the town was overflowing with people all the time, it is greatly to the credit of Despot Jackson and the slim little force of nineteen policemen that were on duty in the place that it was necessary to make only thirty-two arrests, and these chiefly of a petty nature. Bad men were there, plenty of them, and ready to demonstrate their badness; but when they went up.against the Jackson system of running a frontier town—the system of eternal vigilance and plenty of it—they concluded that it was best to exercise a modest restraint.

This is what made the great Rosebud Reservation opening at Dallas such a safe and

BERT MORPHY DEPOSITING THE LAST APPLICATION

pleasant one for the tenderfoot and for the women who came there in surprisingly large numbers to register for land and take a chance in the drawing.

"It is the most orderly lot of people I ever saw at a land opening," said Superintendent J. W. Witten to me, "and I have conducted several. The Oklahoma affair was no great credit to the Government, I assure you. Such a scramble nobody ever saw. I felt it was a shame that the Government should be called

upon to decide horse-races, and so I devised this system of registering and drawing— a lottery, some call it, though it is no lottery—and it seems to work to the satisfaction of everybody concerned. In Oklahoma the battle was to the strong and the prize was to the hardy. Here the merest cripple stands as good a chance as the toughest gunlighter.

"Yes, I have had all kinds of people here to see me, many of them coming long distances to witness the drawing, though they had no rights as entrymen. One interesting old chap was Hollow Horn Bear, Chief of the Council of Sioux, who wanted to borrow five dollars. When I handed him the bill he pointed to the Indian's head upon it and then to his own face. The resemblance was surprising. 'It's Hollow Horn, all right,'-said Interpreter Allison. 'That picture was made from a photograph.' So I had the novel experience of talking with the only living person whose portrait appears upon our national currency, and of lending him his own picture."

It was in the concrete land-office building that I talked with Superintendent Witten—a building to which the people of Dallas had

A back east perspective of the Dallas homestead drawing was written by a reporter for the American Magazine in the November 1909 issue.

The Winners and Their Excitement

Of the drawing, of Judge Witten's patience and tact, of the two tiny girls, Dema Rose (the real Rose of the Rosebud) and Virginia Wagner, who kicked up the 114,000 sealed applications with their feet and picked out the first winners, and the two small boys, Wesley Teuth and David Haley, who relieved them for the last two days, the daily newspapers have told. But some of us, who stayed over to see what Dallas would be like when the drawings were finished, saw the best things of all, and the saddest.

one who had drawn along in the 80's who appeared first. He came in on an almost empty train. He was big and red cheeked and he wore his trousers inside his boot legs. He had brought his wife with him from away east in Iowa somewhere. She was plump and red cheeked and broadly smiling, too. Every ten paces or so he set her up against a doorway and rushed at somebody on one or the other side of the broad street.

"Hey!" he shouted, "my name is Anderson! I won Number Eighty-blank. You come up on the same train with me. I think you give me luck. I want to shake hands." Then he charged back at his wife and led her ten steps more, until he had exchanged felicitations with the notary who had sworn him in, with the restaurant waiter who had sold him his first Dallas sandwich, with the newsboy who sold him his first paper, with Alice-Where-Art-Thou, the chambermaid at the hotel, and with everybody else who looked like somebody he had seen before and with lots of people who didn't. He couldn't tell you why he had come back—for the farms are not to be allotted until spring— except that he "wanted the old woman to see that it was all true!"

The Losers—and How They Kept On Moping

There were a lot of these. And there were the others—the losers. They were cheerful enough by day, as you met them around town; cheerful even as you and I. But long after midnight, there was a constant lighting of matches, or the bobbing light-point of a lantern out by the shed where the typewritten announcements of the results of the drawing were posted. This lasted for three days after the last name was drawn; betokening one after another of the bitterly disappointed, going out secretly to look the whole list over again to make sure that there had not been some overlooked name—it was so easy to miss one name in six thousand. (They drew a thousand extra names to provide for forfeitures.)

These forlornly hopeful people made a cluster about the shed all day long, too—all the more pitiful because every one in Dallas who had won a chance knew of it, within ten minutes after the name was announced. The news traveled like a light flash.

It was all good, the bitter and the sweet together. We may be better than our fathers were, some of us. The best that Was in the fathers, though, is with us yet. It is a mighty United States—and healthy.

Along between Cleveland and Buffalo on the way back to New York there came a time in the lounging car of the Limited when it seemed as though the man sitting opposite was as lonely and as unoccupied as I was myself. And so I went over and sat beside him and began telling him some things about Dallas and the Dallas people, what the big Swede told about Eckstrom, and the rest. He was polite. But when I paused for breath, he said, " Really, how singular" and he picked up a newspaper and turned so that the light would fall on it properly and— so that his back would be toward me.

There was really nothing to be angry about. After two weeks in the Rosebud country, I had forgotten my east-of-the-Missouri manners That was all.speaking about West River- say “ Really, how singular” and turn away.

A back east perspective of the Dallas homestead drawing was written by a reporter for the American Magazine in the November 1909 issue.

The Winners and Their Excitement

Of the drawing, of Judge Witten's patience and tact, of the two tiny girls, Dema Rose (the real Rose of the Rosebud) and Virginia Wagner, who kicked up the 114,000 sealed applications with their feet and picked out the first winners, and the two small boys, Wesley Teuth and David Haley, who relieved them for the last two days, the daily newspapers have told. But some of us, who stayed over to see what Dallas would be like when the drawings were finished, saw the best things of all, and the saddest.

one who had drawn along in the 80's who appeared first. He came in on an almost empty train. He was big and red cheeked and he wore his trousers inside his boot legs. He had brought his wife with him from away east in Iowa somewhere. She was plump and red cheeked and broadly smiling, too. Every ten paces or so he set her up against a doorway and rushed at somebody on one or the other side of the broad street.

"Hey!" he shouted, "my name is Anderson! I won Number Eighty-blank. You come up on the same train with me. I think you give me luck. I want to shake hands." Then he charged back at his wife and led her ten steps more, until he had exchanged felicitations with the notary who had sworn him in, with the restaurant waiter who had sold him his first Dallas sandwich, with the newsboy who sold him his first paper, with Alice-Where-Art-Thou, the chambermaid at the hotel, and with everybody else who looked like somebody he had seen before and with lots of people who didn't. He couldn't tell you why he had come back—for the farms are not to be allotted until spring— except that he "wanted the old woman to see that it was all true!"

The Losers—and How They Kept On Moping

There were a lot of these. And there were the others—the losers. They were cheerful enough by day, as you met them around town; cheerful even as you and I. But long after midnight, there was a constant lighting of matches, or the bobbing light-point of a lantern out by the shed where the typewritten announcements of the results of the drawing were posted. This lasted for three days after the last name was drawn; betokening one after another of the bitterly disappointed, going out secretly to look the whole list over again to make sure that there had not been some overlooked name—it was so easy to miss one name in six thousand. (They drew a thousand extra names to provide for forfeitures.)

These forlornly hopeful people made a cluster about the shed all day long, too—all the more pitiful because every one in Dallas who had won a chance knew of it, within ten minutes after the name was announced. The news traveled like a light flash.

It was all good, the bitter and the sweet together. We may be better than our fathers were, some of us. The best that Was in the fathers, though, is with us yet. It is a mighty United States—and healthy.

Along between Cleveland and Buffalo on the way back to New York there came a time in the lounging car of the Limited when it seemed as though the man sitting opposite was as lonely and as unoccupied as I was myself. And so I went over and sat beside him and began telling him some things about Dallas and the Dallas people, what the big Swede told about Eckstrom, and the rest. He was polite. But when I paused for breath, he said, " Really, how singular" and he picked up a newspaper and turned so that the light would fall on it properly and— so that his back would be toward me.

There was really nothing to be angry about. After two weeks in the Rosebud country, I had forgotten my east-of-the-Missouri manners That was all.speaking about West River- say “ Really, how singular” and turn away.

Harry S. Truman tries his luck

A Missouri farm boy who took the lottery trip to Gregory in l911 came to the same conclusion, that the trip in itself should be something to enjoy. He wrote a book of letters to his beloved from l910 til his death in 1959.

This one, dated October 22, l9ll, describes his trip to the great Gregory, South Dakota Homestead drawing:

“Would you like to hear what we did going and coming from notorious Gregory? I am going to tell you anyway because it is on my mind and I shall have to unburden it.”

“To begin with, it was just like riding a crowded street car for a day and a night. We took a sleeper to Omaha going and coming. From Omaha up, trains were running every hour or so all day Tuesday, Wednesday, and until Thursday noon. You see, the R. R. companies from one end of the country to the other give special rates on first and third Tuesdays of each month. We got to Omaha Wednesday morning at a quarter to eight and left at eight. They had to call special police to handle the crowds at Union Station. We managed to get seats in the last coach. There were 687 people on the train and nearly all were nice looking Americans. I only saw about a dozen bohuncks all the way there and back. I never got so tired at looking at yellow cars in my life. The Chicago and Northwestern uses all yellow coaches. We played pitch and seven-up all day, taking turn about at each eating station because we didn’t dare leave our seats all at once. Murray Colgan’s wife fixed us the finest lunch a person could want anyway, so we didn’t go hungry.”

“At nearly every station, we met trains coming back. People on them would yell Sucker! Sucker! at us and men on our train would to the same. One fellow hollered for us to go right on through to a very hot place. It sounded like a good place to be up there, it was so cold.”

“We got to Gregory at about l0:30 p.m. Then began a chase for a place to sleep. The hotel man finally agreed to give us a cot a piece in the waiting room, which was some luxury, I tell you. There were people who sat up all night.

After we’d cinched our rooms we went and registered at the Cow Palace, a wooden shack. It takes about one minute to so it. There were about 20 notaries inside a hollow square. I bet there was more swearing going on there than there will be in one place again. I really don’t know what a Quaker would have done. They didn’t ask you to swear. but just filled out papers-and you were sworn before you knew what was happening. I registered for a soldier friend so that I have a chance to get l60 and half another. There about four hundred claims that are worth from $8,000 to $12,000 each. Of course, I’ll draw one of them. There are several thousand worth from $40 to $4000 depending of course on location.”

“There is an old Sioux Indian on the reservation who is 123 years old. She looks like Gagool in Rider Haggards, King Solomon’s Mines. I didn’t see her but I have her picture.

I saw all of Gregory I cared to in about an hour and a half. It is strictly modern town of about 1500 . . . ..

I am glad I went. I have a good chance to win as anyone. Even if I don’t I had fun enough to pay for the going.”

Most sincerely.

Harry 9 

A Homestead Homicide

President Truman lost his bid for a homestead claim in Gregory County, South Dakota in l9ll, but he had seen the west and he knew that the trip itself should be something to enjoy. Who would have guessed that this young farm boy from Missouri, who had participated in the great land lottery would be President of the United States.

In  light of what happened to Albert Wood, who did secure a filing on a homestead, Harry S. Truman was a lucky man indeed.

Albert and Addie Wood and their five children ages 2 to ll years came to Gregory and Tripp County, South Dakota from Fort Dodge or Boone, Iowa on May 23, l909 to participate in the great land drawings. Albert Alfred Wood was 34 years of age. He had been a sewing machine agent in Iowa when he decided to try his luck at the homestead drawing.

Imagine the joy in the Wood family when they discovered that out of 100,000 registrants that their name had been drawn as one of the 4000 lucky winners. At last a chance to build a home of their own, no more working for others, a dream come true. They were now a part of the great American west where a man must take care of himself and be free. In the prime of their lives and with a young family they were America’s manifest destiny.

The family of seven arrived on their claim, south of Roseland, (renamed Hamill) South Dakota, on October lst 1909. Within two short weeks the violence of the west would dash their dreams into a bitter and deadly harvest.

I can look out the window of my farm home, not far from where the Woods homesteaded and can imagine that in 1909 there were no roads, no electricity, just prairie, wind and sky. The only trees to be found were along small streams and would soon be harvested for fuel. Even the ancient Indian camps are found only where wood and water were in abundance. Here, these young city folks were facing a Dakota winter, alone, and unprovided for. No Indian in his right mind would spend the winter, in the open, on that vast wind swept, snow swirling plain no matter what shack had been built to protect him from the howling, freezing, sneering Dakota winter blizzard. Dakota nature is sweet and sour. In the spring the clear blue skies, the fresh and fragrant west wind, the small prairie pockets of wild flowers and the rolling hills belong only to those who can see them. But death and nature’s disaster leavens all.

The family built a small shelter to protect them from the fiercely fickle Dakota winter. They must also put up hay before the ground became covered with snow.

On October 9, 1909, a neighbor, Chris Pringle ate his meal with them and helped Albert Wood mow hay. On the same day two men came on the Pringle claim and Albert Wood ordered them off the land. Later that same day Wood and Pringle rode to the Gregory Land Office to file on the claim that Wood had run the two strangers off. They were shocked to learn that the claim had already been taken. They then went to attorney McDonald’s office in Gregory where they met John Langan.

John Langan was a former Scout for the United States Calvary in the Indian wars. Langan accosted Wood and stated: “Are you the one who chased my boy off?” Wood admitted he was and Langan replied, “Well, I am coming up there to build a house and you won’t chase me off.”

Pringle and Wood then went to the office of attorney A.J. Wilson and employed him. The following Monday Pringle left and did not return.

Mr. and Mrs. Wood mowed the “south forty” the following week and while mowing she stated that they saw some one taking hay from one of their stacks. She stated that her husband got his gun and fired over that way to scare them off.

On Saturday the 16th of October her husband saw some men near his hayrack. Albert took his gun, and left. Mrs. Wood said she heard one shot and one shot only.

After waiting for him to come to breakfast she got uneasy and started to look for him. She found three men on the Butte east of her claim, but could not find her husband.

After waiting a time she went to look again and her husband waved to her from the foot of the Butte. He asked her for water and told her he was “shot through the heart”. Mrs. Wood stated that her husband told her that “he had fired at them, but was just trying to scare them”. He also told her that all three of the men fired at him. Albert Wood died in her arms at the foot of the Butte, just east of Snow Dam. Mrs. Wood then waved to the three men, she talked to them and they sent Wood’s wagon to Mr. Miller and Mr. Moss for help.

Mr. Ross, Mr. and Mrs. Kloke, a neighbor just to the south, took the widow to the Moss homestead.

Mrs. Wood indicated that her husband had an Army Springfield rifle that used 45/70 cartridges.

In a conversation with Mr. John Langan he told Mrs. Wood that he had shot her husband. Mr. Langan told her he held up his gun and asked to talk to her husband, Langan told her that her husband would not talk but shot at him. Langan told her that after her husband shot at him he killed her husband.

A William F. Kloke of Spencer, Nebraska testified that he was erecting a residence on his daughters claim on Section 15, 101-74 and had known Albert Wood prior to his death.

While shingling the roof he heard several shots and thought the shots were a “bluff game”.

Later one of the Langans came and asked him to help Mrs. Wood take her husband into his home.

He found Albert Wood dead about 80 rods from his house. He saw a 45-70 single shot rifle in Woods house and several 45-70 shells in Woods pocket.

He testified that by “bluff game”, that on the week previous Frank Langan and Leo Hannan had gone to Margaret Langans claim to get hay for their horses and while there Wood had shot at them 4 times and that he saw Wood shoot.

On the following day he had heard the decedent tell Frank Langan to “stay off that place unless you want trouble”. Kloke testified that at the time of both shootings the Langans were at Margaret Langans place.

Windsor Doherty was the prosecuting attorney and he charged John Langan, Frank Langan and Leo Hannan with murder.

Oliver Lamereaux and Don A. Sinclair were the bondsmen for John Langan, who was released on $1,000.00 bond by County Judge L. B. Callender.

John Langan took the stand and testified in his own defense that he had shot in self-defense. P.J. Donohue a pioneer lawyer of Bonesteel (father of former Attorney General Parnell J. Donohue) testified as to John Langan’s good character and reputation for truth. Langan was found not guilty by the all male jury. 10

Chapter Thirteen End Notes

1.  Kingsbury, George W., History of Dakota Territory, S.J. Clark Publishing Co Chicago, 1915, Volume III, p. 505.

2.  Ibid. p. 505.

3.  Ibid. p. 506.

4.  Ibid. p. 506.

5.  Ibid. p. 506.

6.  Ibid. p. 504.

7.  D.C. Poole. Among the Sioux of Dakota: Eighteen Months’ Experience As An Indian Agent. New York D. Van Nostrand, 1881.

8.  History of Dakota Territory, p. 506.

9.  Dear Bess, The letters form Harry to Bess Truman 1910-1959, Edited by Robert H. Ferrell,      W.W. Norton Co., N.Y. and London, pp. 53-54.

10.     State v. Langan et al, Tripp county clerks of courts file.

      Times really haven’t changed- To East River residents West River is just “Really how singular” and Hoh Hum.  To demonstrate the difference between east river and west river, fellow attorney Bill Day and I were traveling together for a hearing in Sioux Falls.  As a break in the trip we stopped in Parker for a roll and coffee. The waitress brought the rolls and coffee and Bill said "put it on one bill and give it to me” Bewildered the waitress retreated a few steps and then returned saying “ are you sure you don’t want separate bills?.”  Bill looked at me and we both chuckled knowing we were east river for sure

Lets send those starving Dakota  Sioux to Nicaragua

While these Indian entrepreneurs Colombe and Lamoureaux were leveraging their Indian rights to play the white man’s games, the back-east “lacey sleeved” set with their heart in the right place and their head “you know where” had other solutions to the “Indian problem”.

They would transport 8,000 South Dakota Sioux to South America, “lock stock and barrel" thus ending Tripp counties Indian problem forever.

Now dear reader have you ever heard of the “League of Political Educators”, F.S. Dellenbaugh, head of the American Geographical Society and “Little Bison” and his (1909 ) , 8,000 “ “starving and impoverished”, soon to be driven to extinction, South Dakota Sioux Indians? (Well, thanks to Royce McDowell of Winner and local history buff, you will)

The Tripp County Journal of December 3, 1909 reported the following:

Boston, Mass., Nov. 17

To save the remnant of the Sioux Tribe of Indians from extinction by consumption and other diseases a colony of Indians will be established in Nicaragua ,early this year.

Chief Little Bison, a full blooded Sioux sailed from Boston on the steamer Esparia today for Nicaragua where he will receive deeds to 16,000 acres of land granted by the Nicaraguan government for the establishment of the colony.

The project is supported by F.S. Dellenbaugh, head of the American Geographical Society and several wealthy New York People The immigration of the Indians is expected to begin in January.”

“Little Bison” would be invited to speak at the League of Political Education at the Hotel Astor in New York City. They were all ears .

The New York Times reported that his speech was received with “ great applause”.

He told the “lacy-sleeved set” that he had 16,000 acres in South America on which he would settle 8,000 starving and soon to be extinct South Dakota Sioux Indians.

He told them, “ (I) only want money to take them there, where they can care for themselves”

Indeed every lawyer who ever practiced at or near the reservation has been asked for a loan of “gas money” just to get back to the res for grandma’s funeral

Little Bison and his white wife set sail again for Nicaragua and were told they were not welcome. . The New York Times of February 7, 1910 reported: “Little Bison said he reached Costa Rica when the Nicaraguan revolution was at its most critical stage, the election of Dr. Madriz taking place about that time. The new President was suspicious of the Indian’s chief’s intentions, and appealed to the Costa Rican Government to prevent his entry into Nicaragua.. . . . (He) left tonight for New York where he will confer with F.S. Dellenbaugh, President of the American Geographical society, and then return to his people”

“Little Bison” was never heard from again and if he returned to “his people” to my knowledge he was never heard or seen again on the res.

It’s my guess that “Little Bison” was the original “wannabe.”

 He who pays trhe Piper calls the tune.

Chris Colombe and Oliver Lamoureaux were both the real thing. Both were honest-to- goodness enrolled members of the Rosebud Sioux tribe descended from early French trappers.  Colombe beat the Jackson brothers to the punch in making the town of Colome a rival for the county seat of Tripp County.

Oliver Lamroureax would also make a play with his Lamro town site and of course the Jackson brothers with their “ clairvoyance” in knowing just where the tracks were to be laid weren’t going to be outsmarted by a pair of “breed Indians”.

Oliver Lamroureax and his white friends, including H.F. Slaughter from Gregory had formed the Lamro townsite company in 1907 some three years before the Northwestern Railroad would extends its lines into western Tripp County.
An article in the Norfolk paper in 1907 described the early settlement of Lamro prior to the opening of Tripp county for settlement.

The Norfolk weekly news-journal (Norfolk, Neb.) 1900-19??, June 07, 1907,

LAMOUREAUX, IN TRIPP COUNTY,

SOON WILL BOOM.

A BRISK -LOT SALE WAS HELD

A Stage Line Will Start From Gregory to Lamoureaux Next Week a score of Business Enterprises will be launched at Once.

if

Gregory , S. D , , May 31. Special to the News :

The new town of Lamouraux In Trlpp county was launched in

practical and substantial manner ,A. number of business men who desired locations were driven out to the new town and allowed to select their lots at private sale.

Forty-six lots were sold in this manner at a reasonable figures to get the town under way.

A. stage line will start from Gregory to Lamonreaux , a distance of about twcnty-five miles , next week.

All the principal branches of business will be represented on the start. Work on the foundation for a bank building will begin next week. A lumber yard , hotel , restaurant , livery barns , generalmerchandise stores , post office, newspaper , drug store , meat market , blacksmith shop and other business will start up at once. The Rosebud Telephone - company will begin the erection of a line to Lamoureaux at once.

Among those who purchased lots last Monday and who will put In initial businesses may be mentioned : Joy M. Hackler , .1. J. Bonekemper , F. M. Hulbert , Paponsek Co. , Ford Peters , Hall Bros. , A. A. Txignn , Dan Hall. .1. H. Kimball , G. P. Burpee , Geo.Lamoureaux , John Weaver , Win. Miller , Jos Selgmund , Ole FInstad , Chris ,John and Win. Colombo , Ole Dahl.W.D. Wilson , Rathmnn & Keller , I. P.Bnttelyoun , F. A. Phlnney , O. J.Haugh , W. H. Tackott. Dan Smith , J.W. Ellenton , Ed Adklns , G. O. Van Meter and many others.

Lamoureaux hopes to be designated as the county seat and Isis iIn the very heart of the great fertile Trlpp county to be opened

to homestead settlement and entry soon.

The money realized on the sale will be put back Into the town In the way of public improvements.

Herrlck. S. D. , May 31. Special to

The News :

A quiet lot sale occurred on section 31 , In the exact center of

Tripp county whichiIs soon to be opened for settlement by the government.t

Fifty lots were sold for $100 each , spot cashjJust as rapidly as the

contracts could be signed. H. R.Slaughter , the promoter , took first

choice and will erect a bank , real estate office' and post office at once.

Attorney Van Meter of Herrick took second end , and will at once erect a 24-room hotel and a law office ; Otis Vaughn of Gregory , third , will establish a newspaper plant. A company tookfourth and will erect a 2lxOG general merchandise store ; others sold quietly and quickly , and every lot was paid for spot cash , or bankable note.

Over twenty businesses will start within sixty days , a petition has been signed by 150 residents , and will be presented to the governor soon , ready for the opening and organization. Lamoureaux hopes to bo designated the county seat , and perhaps will never be-moved as It is the center , and is surrounded by level land , and easy access. Contractor Troadway says the railroad can build easier across Trlpp county than across Gregory , nnd reach the new town with very light cuts and one heavy bridge. The price of lots already purchased in favorite locations rose above par rabidly , and some refused fancy prices.

The Tripp County Journal of November 6, 1908 (published in Lamro) in an article enticing settlers to Lamro and its surrounding Tripp County land explained the early settlement of the area.

The paper related that the area began to be settled 20 years ago ( 1888).

First settlers were Oliver Lamoureaux and his brother who wintered at Dog Ear Lake.

He and his brothers, George, Paul and Will were the first permanent settlers.

Their father and grandfather were white men making the brother s quarter breed Indians.

They had come from the reservation near Butte Nebraska, long before the area opened settlement.

The Lamoureaux pastures would cover over over twenty miles of fenced in territory most of which was leased from the tribe.

Oliver Lamoureaux had just leased his pasture to a Mr. Frost who would winter 1,000 head of cattle.

( This practice continued well into the 1960's with Al Kary, Wilson Murray and a lawsuit involving a young legal aid attorney, Bill Janklow and yours truly.)

Al Kary snookered Bill Janklow. Aftwer Kary had lost a learge Indian lease while g fronting for Nebraska Banking interests,Kary and Wiulson Murray, an enrolled Indian ranher. Feigned a fight right outside of Janklow’s legal aid office. Somewhat battered and bleeding Wilson “escaped” into Janklow’s office.  Telling Janklow that he was fed up with fronting for Kary he asked Legal Aid to help him get the lease back from any  white ranchers and put in his name only.

Janklow, who hated Al Kary, fell for Al’s fake fight “hook lione and sinker”.No sooner had Janklow got the lease for Wilson it was noted that Al Kary and Wilson were walking hand in glove whistling “Happy Days are here again”. 

In the same issue of the paper it was noted that David Colombe had bought the Chris Colombe ranch and the Chris was moving to Winona (Colome) " where he had an interest in that town"

Notwithstanding the advantage of having a full year’s head start, Chris Colombe and Oliver Lamoureaux must have looked over their shoulders and muttered “ who are those guys”.

Those guys were the Jackson Brothers and their friends. And they were “clairvoyant”.nd had money- lots of money.

George Washington Kingsbury in his History of Dakota Territory, Volume 5 described Graydon Jackson and his brothers influence on the Rosebud:

“When he arrived on the present site of Dallas there was nothing but a tract of wild land, no collection of buildings giving evidence of a growing town. In fact, there were only a few buildings in Gregory county. His brothers soon afterward came and all filed on homesteads five miles south of Gregory. The town of Dallas was then located southeast of the present site of Dallas on Ponca creek, but when the railroad was built the town was left to one side and on the 1st of January, 1907, all of the buildings were removed from the old to the present town site of Dallas, drawn by teams. Jackson Brothers had purchased the town site in 1906 and from that moment have been most active in the development of the town. It was a bitterly cold winter when they moved the buildings. The snow was deep, rendering the task a difficult one, but they placed the buildings on steel cables and thus drew them over the frozen snow. Throughout the intervening period to the present the company has dealt extensively in farm lands and made many loans. They owned forty thousand acres in Gregory, Tripp and Mellette counties and are the owners of several town sites, including Dallas, Winner, and .Jordan, Carter, Chilton, Berkley and White River.. Jackson Brothers have carefully systematized their work and are following out carefully defined plans and methods in developing the towns in which they are interested, looking ever beyond the exigencies of the moment to the possibilities and opportunities of the future. In addition to his other interests Graydon B. Jackson is the vice president of the Bank of Dallas. ‘

Ernest Jackson

The same history described his brother, Ernest Jackson .as a graduate of Iowa law School was President Western Townsite Co., Western Telephone Co., Western Abstract Co., Bank of Dallas; vice-president Carter State Bank, Roseland State Bank, Augusta State Bank, Bank of Winner; member of co-partnership, Jackson Brothers. United States Commissioner 1905-06 for the District of South Dakota. Republican; Episcopalian. Member Beta Theta Pi fraternity’.

The Jackson Brothers owned nearly every bank and lending company on the Rosebud. They were estimated to own between 40 ,000 acres and Oscar Micheaux estimated 126,000 acres which included the famous Mule Head Ranch in Gregory County.

The Jackson brothers knew that at least a $100,000. --profit in 1910 dollars was the stakes in this high stakes game for the county seat of Tripp county.

The Jackson brothers had experience in knowing how to move a town to fit the Railroad, after all they had first hand experience when they came to Dallas and moved the town from Ponca Creek to their digs.

Colome had the ready advantage. Lamro was already a thriving town with only the expectation of being a “depot” town . Although Lamro had won the temporary seat of county government and the courthouse that would not hinder the Jackson brothers if they could find a way to eliminate the division of votes between their town site , Winner, and the adjacent town of Lamro.

Money can solve a lot of problems and the promise of money was better than the real thing especially if the promise to pay was never kept.

It appears that before the actual vote the “fix was in” and worked. But more than the fact that it was successful in stopping the real challenge of Colome, after the votes were cast the Winner supporters refused to pay those big shots from Lamro who had participated in the fix.

As noted earlier Lamro had been the thriving town ( 750 residents) and the temporary county seat of Tripp County.

The Western Town site, (in fact the Jackson Brothers) was intimate with the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad.

development. Is it any wonder, when the RR was extending into western Tripp County that the Jackson Bros would find a way to cash in on its location of a town site? The terminus at the time was in Colome. Due to the sloppy design of American built steam locomotives they had to be resupplied with water often and locations were also determined by a wagon days one day travel and return , which meant that stations were planned every twelve miles.

Lamro was at the required distance, had water supply and soon boomed to over 750 inhabitants.

Notwithstanding the existence of the town of Lamro or more likely in spite of its existence the RR course was set to just miss Lamro, some twelve miles west of Colome and the RR’s friends, the Jackson brothers established a town site (now Winner) just two miles from Lamro.

If Lamro was a contender Winner and Lamro would split the vote and Colome would win

Now if you thought present day politicians and lawyers were constructively and destructively creative all at the same time just listen to what the Jackson Bros and the Western Town site company conjured up to win this election.

If you should think that Railroad companies were free enterprise benevolent entrepreneurs who would let anybody but themselves and their cohorts profit from the location of their depots- Let me tell you about Blue Springs, Nebraska , a thriving early  coty of 750,located in the southeast corner of that state.

The Omaha Dailly Bee of August 2nd 1881 reported that the railroad after layin tracks through the thriving city of Blue Springs failed to establish a depot in the town, notwithstanding the offers that were made by the townspeople to build the depot at no expense to the railroad.

Instead the attorneys and officers of the railroad formed their own townsite company and located the depot at their own newly formed townsite, just one and 1/2 miles from Blue Springs.

The Jackson boys entered into the following contract to ensure that their townsite, Winner would win:

"This contract, entered into this 7th day of May, 1910, by and between the Lamro Town Site Co., Incorporated, party of the first part, and A. E. Kull, of Burke, S. D.( The Jackson’s Bros paid agent) party of the second part, wherein the party of the first part agrees to sell to party of the second part the following described property: The southwest quarter of section nineteen (19) in township ninety-nine (99) north, of range seventy-six (76) west, of the 5th P. M., for a consideration of ten thousand dollars ($10,000), to be paid for as per conditions hereinafter set forth: Party of the second part to deposit a certified check for two thousand dollars ($2,000.00) with the Lamro State Bank, said amount to be paid to the party of the first part on the first day of July, 1910. Provided, however, that ‘at least six of the following business institutions of Lamro, S. D., shall have moved to the town of Winner, S. D., or shall have in course of construction substantial business buildings in said town of Winner, S. D., to be occupied by them: Lamro State Bank; C. Kissling; Sas and Ketchmark; Smith and McGrivey; Hall & Greives; S. N. Opdahl, or Jay Weaver. Party of the second part further agrees to pay party of the first part two thousand dollars ($2,000.00) on the 15th day day of July, 191 o, for which amount a certified check has been de~ posited with the Lamro State Bank, provided that at least twelve of the business institutions now located on the Main street of Lamro, S. D., shall have moved to the town of Winner, S. D. Be it also provided that party of the second part shall deposit with the Lamro State Bank a certified check for $4,000.00 to be paid to the party of the first part on July 20, 1910; provided, however, that at least eighty per cent, of all the buildings now located in the town of Lamro, S. D., shall have been moved to the town of Winner, S. D. Party of the second part further agrees to assume a mortgage of $2,000.00 now on said land. The party of the first part to deposit with the Lamro State Bank a warranty deed conveying above described land to A. E. Kull, together with abstract showing clear title with all interest and taxes paid up to date, and free from all incumbrances except the mortgage above provided for, said deed to be delivered to A. E. Kull when the above payments shall have been made as provided for. Be it provided, that in case the party of the first part shall fail to move, or cause to be removed, the various buildings and business institutions as provided for, then in that case all checks and moneys having been deposited by the party of the second part as provided for in this contract shall be returned to said party of the second part, and this contract shall be made null and void.

The Lamro Town Site Co., Incorporated. By , President. By ,

Secretary. (Signed) A. E. Kull, Second Party."

The trial records indicate that the Lamro powers that be kept their word and most if not all of the businesses were moved.

The Jackson Brothers reneged after they had won the election and their cashier refused to honor the checks.

The Jackson Brothers hired an attorney to bring an action in equity to enjoin the cashing of the checks. This action went all the way to the South Dakota Supreme Court which ruled against the Jackson Brothers.

The Jackson Brothers then against refused to honor their agreement and Lamro sued in an action at law. A jury found in favor of Lamro, but the Jackson brothers again appealed to the South Dakota Supreme court.

So after two lawsuits and two appeals to the South Dakota Supreme Court the Jackson Brothers finally had to pay.

Those two lawsuits were in fact the only real fight between Lamro and Winner. Colome  lost. Lamro had sold out and the Jackson Brothers bought the election.

Oh yes- the attorney for the Jackson Brothers at trial and appeal of both cases- W.J. Hooper of Gregory, S.D.

See: Western Townsite Co. v Lamro Townsite Co. 31 SD 54, 139 NW 777. Lamro Townsite Co. v Dallas Bank 151 NW 282)

Touring car used to transport homesteraders from Gregory west before  rail line was laid.

Will find my notes foir further explanation

Foillowing  is an exchange with a descendant of Senator  McClintock , Democrat, Hamill, SD)

--- On Wed, 4/20/11, John J. Simpson <jsimpson@gwtc.net> wrote:

From: John J. Simpson <jsimpson@gwtc.net>
Subject: FW: West River
To: "'r m'" <rlm_mcv@yahoo.com>
Date: Wednesday, April 20, 2011, 10:28 AM

Royce,
I need to flesh out Chris Colombe and Oliver Lamereaux.
Can you help me Pictures, etc.
Attached for your fyi
John

-----Original Message-----
From: Marti McClintock [mailto:martimccl@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 9:22 AM
To: John J. Simpson
Subject: Re: West River

Dear Mr. Simpson,

Thank you so very much for your email. You have brightened my morning, and
I have dropped a check in the mail to you already. I will look forward to
the book!

As to your questions.....I will start with Oliver. We know very little
about Oliver and his family. Here is what I know off the top of my head....
He married into my family, by marrying Alma, daughter of Mary Louise
Bordeaux (maiden name) and Clement Lamoureaux. Mary Louise is a daughter of
James Bordeaux (well-known fur trader) and his Sioux Indian wife, Marie or
Huntkawtawin. So Oliver married in and is my Great-Uncle (by marriage).
One of his sisters in-law was Lillian Lamoureaux. She married William
Morris McClintock.....and that's my direct line into all of this. I think
Oliver might be buried on the Rosebud reservation cemetery, I'm going to
look into this more.


The furthest back I know, so far, about William McClintock is that he came
to South Dakota from Whiskey Creek, NE. I know this because that is where
one of his sons (my grandfather) was born. He came up to SD in 1908-1909,
and was deeded a homestead, I think from Pres. Taft (?). He farmed his land
there (off of now Rte 49) for the rest of his life, which ended in 1919. I
think he came in 1908 and then built the home, and then sent for his family
in the following year. I will check on that more. He was a state senator
from approximately 1916-1919. He also was the owner of McClintock Lumber
which was located in Hamill "proper" as they say. I think I have pictures
of McClintock Lumber somewhere around here. I also have pictures of his
original farm. So the McClintocks are came from William M. who married into
my larger lineage. Hopefully that makes sense. We don't have a ton of
information on him, from his life before entering into the family, but he
was Scottish-Irish, and married my French/Indian Great Grandmother.

If you have questions, I will surely try to answer any of them. I really
want my family's roots to be counted in Hamill, as that is where our family
really grew from. I will also look to see if we have any further info on
Mr. Oliver.

I hope to get out to SD later this year, and will treat you to coffee, or
whatever your drinking pleasure happens to be!

Warm regards,
Marti

"I was just so tired of giving in to a system so unjust" --Rosa Parks



----- Original Message ----
From: John J. Simpson <jsimpson@gwtc.net>
To: Marti McClintock <martimccl@yahoo.com>
Sent: Wed, April 20, 2011 4:54:30 AM
Subject: RE: West River

Marti.
Thanks for the e-mail.
Can you help me fill in on the Oliver L family?
Not much has been writen locally about Oliver Lamereaux.
Also when and where did the McClintocks come from?

The book is $18.00 inclydes S&H and sales tax

My address is:
John J Simpson
322551 271st Street
Hamill.SD 57534

I live on the ranch site of Robert Collins ranch 7 miles south of Hamill-
on the north side of Rattlesnake Butte.
Thanks for the order .

John


-----Original Message-----
From: Marti McClintock [mailto:martimccl@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 9:43 PM
To: AUTHOR @; jsimpson@gwtc.net
Cc: martimccl@yahoo.com
Subject: West River

Good day,

Mr. Simpson, I came across your website, Dakota Yesterdays, the other day
while I was just searching the internet for SD family information. My
father was born in Hamill in 1931 and grew up in Winner. My
great-grandmother was the sister of Oliver Lamereaux, who you mention on
your site. In addition, she lived in Hamill, with my great-grandfather on
the farm that is right off of Hwy 49, with the run down home and farm
buildings.....perhaps you have seen it? Anyway, I have a deep deep love of
Tripp County, most notably of Hamill. I would love to read your book and
perhaps even shake your hand during my next trip your way.

I look forward to purchasing your book, and will follow any purchase
instructions you send. I will of course be happy to provide for shipping
and handling. I am just so anxious to read your accounts. I thank you in
advance for your writings and correspondence. I hope this finds all well
over your way

Accompanying th e-mail was the following:

chris colombe/s.d. historical

terracehills1  (View posts)

Posted: 10 Nov 2000 8:25AM GMT

Classification:

Surnames:

chris colombe was a familiar inhabitant of tripp co. an rosebud. the first colombe family to america was jean baptiste colombe. he ws born in alsac lorraine.he went westward working for the hudson bay co, an finally became us marshal at denver. he met an married pretty josette dorion, a girl who was part french/sioux. the dorion name was highly respected in the missouri valley, pierre dorion being the oldest fur trader in this region. they built their home on an island called colombe isl. near whetstone creek and became parents of a large family. their children were; JOHN.CHRIS,DAVE,WILLIAM,MINNIE(hicks),KENNY(mullen)JOSETTE(brandon) AN EMILY (tradeLL) the name jean baptiste was americanized to john baptiste colombe, easier for the neighbors to accept.this family had the traits of their alsatian forbears, tempered by the sioux blood of their grandmother, and had strong family ties.many people today have ties to the family in s.d.as the children grew up they also became active in affairs of the rosebud and intermarriage witht he people of this new country.john married lizzie reeves: their children were louise mary (KOCH) , john w, jennie9AISNLEE) an two boys who died in infancy.he also raised an adopted son, chris patterson, known as buck colombe. chris, perhaps the best known-founded the town of colombe, was a good friend of the jackson brothers, and has been described in tripp county golden anniversary book about early homesteaders. his children were,ted,birdie,(MC MURRAY) an grace(RITTS).Eds chidren were, joe,ed,chris,carl,sally,josephine an tommie.
dave married alice moran an later her sister amy.by his first wife he had 4 girls, minnie,susie,lilly an mabel.by his wife amy he had dave,velma, ruby,leona,fred,lester,eileen.
william married annie courtis, dau of a well known english rancher. his children were,margaret,marvyn,hilda,an william.
minnie married wm hicks of akron ohio.their family conisted of one son.wm an four girls,ruth ,josette,jennie,viola.jennie lso called mr mullen had six children, three died in infancy.others were, john,amy, norah.
josephine,also called josette married bill brandon a scotsman who lived at brandon springs until their home burned down. chidren; HOWARD,HARRY,ALVINA( houston) ROY,JOHN, ELMER AN ETHYL,ALEC.
EMILY MARRIED LEVI TRUDELL. CHIDREN: mabel,alice,hattie, emily,christina,levi,david an wallace an twowho died in infancy.

http://boards.ancestry.com/surnames.colombe/30/mb.ashx

Tripp County homesteaders were the beneficiary of Roscoe Knodell’s foresight and fortitude in circulating  a petition requesting that their be a moratorium on land payments to the U.S. because of droughth and  a harsh winter in 1909.

I am endeavorsin to get a copy of the original petition  which will have the names of the signers and circulator.

The following committee report mentions the petition:

Recollections of 11^th Circuit #4

Early Lawyers and Mob Rule

Only 8 years after the opening for settlement of the Great Sioux Reservation the Nation and the Rosebud would be rocked by the Declaration of War against Germany in April; of 1917 which would end with the Armistice which was reached on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month of 1918.

The Rosebud would become the center of super patriots and “Home Guards”.

The early lawyers of the Rosebud played an all too important part.

The residents of this area, who had arrived for settlement only 9-10 years earlier, were dramatically affected by that war.

The homesteaders came from a vast array of places, countries and ethnic backgrounds. They lacked the cultural interaction that many areas of the nation had enjoyed excepting the newly transplanted Bohemians and a large part of German farmers in Gregory County who would be questioned about their patriotism by the 100 percent America firsters.

They were different, but they had a great driving force to show that they were not. In dealing with this dilemma many adopted an attitude of “America First” and if you didn’t follow the America first philosophy you were a traitor.

Many of those “firsters” became Home Guards and super patriots. An attitude which even to this day results in the blind following of our government leaders under the slogan,” my country right or wrong”.

My heritage entertains a different philosophy.

My great grandfather, George Riley Knapp, was a commissary sergeant endearingly called a” bummer” who fought with Sherman to the sea in the civil war. His commanding officer was General Kilpatrick, not so lovingly called “Kilcavarly” by his troopers.

Sherman of course scorched the earth of the south, marched his army of 90,000 men over 600 miles to Savannah thence north to Appomattox, a campaign in which he lost only 600 men. In the war over all in which 620, 000. soldiers were killed.

In my home town of Madison SD a group of “Home guard super patriots had captured a conscientious objector and were in the process of tar and feathering him when he was rescued by the old cavalry civil war veteran who taking charge of him promised to shoot any sob who interfered That was my great grandfather at 88 years of age

My mother’s father was all German. Like most German farmers he was successful. During WW1 the local Hutchinson county draft board headed by a young Irish attorney drafted every hired man he hired. The local attorney’s office was painted yellow by grandfather’s son. Needless to say the son was sent on the next train to Camp Funston and the local attorney, being a super patriot, continued to draft those who showed German sympathy

Now that you know where my sympathies lie let me tell you my story of Rosebud lawyers during the Great War.

Much of Dakota, including the Rosebud, was settled by German farmers.

How could they be loyal Americans if they spoke German?

Governor Norbeck had a problem on his hands. It was two fold.

Not only were these farmers hard working and successful they were German and they had become a segment of the population that was ripe for membership in the Non Partisan League.

What to do.

Dealing with the German language problem was easy.

Norbeck had appointed a “South Dakota Council of Defense” and that body had appointed councils of defense in every county. There was no statutory authorization giving the Governor such power. That didn’t bother not least of the entire attorney’s of the Rosebud.

The State council of Defense on June 1, 1918 passed an order: Prohibiting the use of the German language in public or quasi public meetings also in all educational institutions. They also passed a resolution  “which prohibits the use of the German language to assemblages of three or more persons upon any public street , in depots, upon trains, in public places of business except in cases of extreme emergency, such as death, severe illness , fire, or call for police.”

A question of permits to allow the speaking of German was left to the local County councils of defense.

Unchecked, the local cities such as Bone steel, Herrick, Burke, and Gregory with the queen city of the Rosebud, Dallas leading the way established their own Home Guards.

Here is how Gregory County Council dealt with the German language problem.

Gregory County News- Dallas SD August 22, 1918

‘Wm Haight, proprietor of what has been termed the pro German store in Gregory, was next on the carpet. It was shown that customers were allowed to talk all the German they pleased in the store and a consequence the loyal citizens of Gregory were becoming incensed over this flagrant abuse of the Council of Defense order.

It was shown that the property was in danger of destruction and that the personal safety of Haight demanded some kind of action by the council of defense. It was finally decided, Haight agreeing, that the store be closed, and the stock and the store is now in charge of Deputy Sheriff Huston”

Not to be outdone, Fairfax convened a meeting the Council of Defense as reported by the Dallas Gregory County News on Sept 5, 1918.

At such meeting numerous persons were brought before and examined relative to speaking German in public.

The following persons were given an opportunity to donate $25 to the Red Cross and chip in to defray the cost of the proceeding after promising not to speak German again.

Fred Witmus, Jacob Forman,Alberet Kreuger, Mike Diez,Fred Benz,Geo Ellwanger,Dan Schlacht and Jacob Kosh.

The local Lutheran pastor was called before the board and accused of holding holiday services in German.  Silent night (Stille Nacht) had even been sung in its original German A charge which he admitted together with admitting that he had kept a picture of the Kaiser in his study until his son destroyed it.

Mrs. Peter Stelle was charged with exploiting her German sympathy A cherished likeness of the Kaiser and his sons was presented to the council and turned over to the Fairfax Home guards for appropriate action.

The problem of foreign language and parochial education did not disappear with the end of the war.

None of our erstwhile Rosebud lawyers question the right to limit free speech. For that matter the South Dakota lawyers, with few exceptions, made any objection.

In 1922 five states including South Dakota closed any loopholes in previous laws forbidding teaching in public or private schools in any language other than English.

The Missouri synod of the Lutheran Church and a Polish Catholic parish of South Omaha appealed to the Supreme Court of Nebraska where they were rejected and thereafter appealed to the US Supreme Court in the case of Nebraska v Meyer

On June 4 1923 the US Supreme Court ruled that such foreign language prohibition in schools was unconstitutional

Of significance was a further ruling by the US Supreme Court in 1925 declaring an Oregon law passed at the instigation of the KKK and Masonic bodies unconstitutional? The law required that all children between the age of 8 and 16 receive a public education

Thus the Supreme Court brought to an end the movement to impose legal restrictions on the use of foreign languages

The imposition of such language restrictions had been championed by “super patriots, xenophobes, champion of public school education, and later such organizations as the American Legion and Masonic Orders”

In fact the students of Yankton high school were highly praised when they threw all the German language books in the Missouri River as they sang the Star Spangled Banner.

Thus did the Supreme Court clarify and enlarge American freedom.

Now these local Home Guards took their work very seriously. In August of 1918 “Major” A.T. Ware of the Dallas home guards printed this Notice “

I have received Orders from General Crowder to make immediate report on the home guard organization under my command. It is now compulsory duty for every man of draft age (18 to 65) to drill a certain number of hours in each week. In pursuant to that order I hereby command all men draft age to be present at the Armory in Dallas, Friday evening August 30”

If you think that these fellas didn’t exercise their authority over the general public consider this:

In the Dallas paper of October 10, 1918 they printed the following notice:

Whereas, it has been called to the attention of the Executive Committee of the Gregory County Council of Defense that various and in some instances exorbitant prices are being asked by cornhuskers, and

Whereas after investigation of the prices being for such labor in other areas of this state as well as adjoining portions of  Nebraska , it  is

ORDERED

That a price of not to exceed 10cents per bu be paid for corn husking where the yield per acre exceeds 35 bu and where it exceed 25bu the price shall not exceed 9c per bu

HS Jarvis

J.F Frame Secretary

J.F. Frame was a local Burke attorney would later be appointed a Circuit Judge of the 11^th circuit.

Non Partisan League and Home Guards

Independent party affiliation was not new to South Dakota.

In its first statehood election Republicans had 34,497 votes, Democrats 18,484 and Independent s 24,591. As shown by the race for Governor

In fact the  Independent  vote was far more than the  Democrat  vote  until a Fusion Candidate, Andrew E Lee,  was elected in 1898  The Independent Party was disbanded and Republicans  returned to power  with a  two to one vote over Democrats s in 1902

This continued until the uprising by voters which resulted in the formation of the Non Partisan League. Don’t forget that women could not vote until 1920 nor were Indians allowed to vote.

In 1916 the right of Women to vote in SD was denied 58,000 to 53,000

Peter Norbeck elected in 1916, setting the stage for his “Home Guard” extra judicial appointments.

In the 1918 election

Norbeck        51,175

Dem               17,858

Ind                  26,380

Constitutional amendments passed which were parts of the NPL agenda

Granted suffrage to women

Permitting State to mine and sell coal

Authorized state to engage in works of internal improvement

Contract for state indebtedness for internal improvement

Empowered state to engage in hydro-electric development

Allow State to manufacture and sell cement

Allow State to engage and sell hail insurance

Allow State to own and operate elevators, warehouses, flour mills and packing plants.

Enactment of Richards’s primary law

The Reps and Dem were scared stiff of the NPL.

In 1920 NPL out polled Deems and in 1922 the combined vote of Deems and NPL was 20,000 votes more than the elected Rep Governor.

By 1922 NPL became known as the farmer Labor party and by 1926 with the election of Democrat lawyer Bill Bulow the NPL was dead.

Bulow, a graduate of Michigan law school, started proactive with Joe Kirby in Sioux Falls and later moved to Bereford South Dakota

 Bulow would later serve two terms as United States Senator, and Tom Berry .a West River cowboy. (Father of Baxter Berry, who you will hear about later when Georg e and a young Rick Johnson with help from Sam Masten defended him in a notorious murder trial) succeeded Bulow as governor.

Bulow was known as a cracker-box humorist and a bull's-eye tobacco spitter, drawling, beaked Bulow won the moniker of "Silent Bill" by speaking on the Senate floor only six times in two terms.

List of characters Home Guard

County Council in Gregory in Gregory county led by J.R. Cash with P.J. Donahue and J.F. Frame as members. Prominent lawyers all J.R. Cash would later be appointed Circuit Judge by Norbeck. P.J.  Donohue was a noted orator and father of Parnell and J/F. Frame would also become a Circuit Judge.

Cash became a notorious sentence. Arlo Horst, proprietor of Arlo’s bar in Mission was sentenced to 10 years for statutory rape. This at a time when the SD Federal judge considered statutory rape on the reservation “as a mere social indiscretion”

Rosebud Bar legend has it that when Judge Cash asked Arlo if he had anything to say, Arlo looked up and said “You are awfully free with my fucking time.”

Opie Chambers of Dallas was the most prominent and outspoken member of the Dallas Home guards. along with Jury, McLain and OM Sinclair, SE Lindley,

Protest against the Non Partisan League erupted in Gregory County in the Spring of 1918

Considering the NPL’s entire platform was passed by the enactment of the Constitution provisions Norbeck and his Democrat adversaries knew they were in serious trouble with the electorate.

They immediately embarked on a program of tying the SD NPL to be the arm of German sympathizers and were not 150% true Americans.

(Sound familiar?)

No place did it become more apparent than right here on the opened portion of the Rosebud.

Notwithstanding he had no statutory authorization to do so .Norbeck established a State Council of Defense which appointed County wide Councils and in turn each city on the Rosebud had its own Council of Defense.

The Rosebud became the focal point of the fight between the powers that be   against the intrusion of the NPL into their political bailiwick

In early March of 1918 an altercation between the Home guards and the organizers of the NPL occurred in Gregory.

The NPL men were attacked, their luggage sacked and rummaged and they were forced out of town to Burke where they were jailed overnight and placed on the train the following morning to Sioux City and told not to get off until they were out of South Dakota.

While there are different versions to the events perhaps the statement given by Opie Chambers in the Gregory paper of March 21st makes the point of mob rule most effectively.

He stated that they confiscated the papers of the NPL organizers and what they found proves how unpatriotic they really were.

All who examined the NPL pamphlet found it to be seditious

Quoting from the pamphlet Opie Chambers related:

“We therefore urge before proceeding further in support of our European allies, insist that they, in common with it, make immediate public declaration of terms of peace , without annexation of territory, indemnification, contributions or interference with the right of any nation to live and manage its own affairs, thus being in harmony with and supporting the new democracy in Russia in her declaration of these fundamental principle”

“To conscript men and exempt the blood stained wealth coined from the suffrage of humanity is repugnant to the spirit of America and contrary to the ideals of democracy”

“We declare freedom of speech to be the bulwark of human liberty, and we decry all attempts to muzzle the public press or individuals upon any pretext whatsoever. A declaration of War does not repeal the Constitution of the US, and the unwarranted interference of the military and other authorities with the rights of individuals must cease.”

“While engaged in righteous war against German imperialism why should the United States aid England (help) any other country in their imperialist designs?”

“Let us drag these questions out before the whole world and settle them before the bar of public opinion. If the German people and government are now willing to settle this war on the basis of the demands of our government, we should no longer continue to war.”

“We cannot know that we are not sending our young, strong capable men to die in the trenches not for democracy, but for imperialism, unless the things for which they fight be explicitly specified.”

Shall we deny to the patriotic young men, the flower of our nation, who go to suffer and die in foreign lands the reason for which they die?”

A free press and freedom of speech are the bulwarks of human liberty. Rights surrendered may never be regained; Therefore no attempt to muzzle the public pres or individual upon any pretext whatsoever should be permitted. A declaration of war does not repeal the constitution of the US and the unwarranted interference of the military and other authorities with the right of individuals must cease. It is the duty of those remaining to defend these rights, not for themselves only, but also in the interest of the patriotic youth battling in foreign lands, in order that they shall not have fought in vain”

Here’s what the chairman of the Gregory Council of Defense stated”

“After such positive proof of disloyalty on the part of the organizers and sedition on the part of the founders and controllers of such organization, it is feared that any attempt to hold meetings to further the work of the organization in Gregory County will result in riot and bloodshed, and acting in the interest of America and for law and order I, Opie Chambers, Chairman of the Council of Defense for Gregory County , South Dakota, do hereby order that no more public meeting of said National Non Partisan league be permitted in said county  and that no organizers for said NNPL be permitted to solicit subscriptions in said county , and I further direct each local or precinct chairman of said Council of Defense to see to it that no meetings of said league be held and no solicitors of said league operate in Gregory County, and I charge and direct the officers and members of the home guard in the said county of Gregory  to see that any person or persons attempting to hold public meetings under the name of the Nonpartisan League or any of its known branches, be arrested and the I or whoever may be acting for me at my office in Dallas, be notified, and  that said party or parties be held until appropriate action may be taken.

Signed Opie Chamber County Chairman of Council of Defense.

March 16, 1918.

GOVERNOR NORBECK CAMES TO GREGORY COUNTY ROARING LIKE A GALLOWAY BULL

Norbeck deposed Chambers the following May and appointed H.H. Jarvis a Herrick Lawyer, as Defense chairman.

In late March Chambers has issued announcement that if the NPL persisted in organizing and holding meetings in Gregory County he would not be responsible for riots and that there would be killings.

He Proclaimed:

“I have issued an order that no more: public meetings of The NPL will be held in Gregory County”

Dated March 15, 1918.

Notwithstanding his firing by Norbeck Chambers continued to speak at meetings around the county promising that he would break the law and lead mobs to break up NPL meeting not matter what.

The NPL and Gregory county had reached national attention.

President Wilson and Secretary of War Baker issued a proclamation denouncing the mob violence.

Norbeck attended a meeting where A.L. Putnam, a NPL candidate for Lt Gov attempted to question him. About the proclamation

One paper reported:

“Putnam did not have a chance put the question to the governor. No Galloway Bull ever bellowed more lustily than Governor Norbeck. He bounced up and down and pawed the air”

Where were the supporters of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights when all of this was happening? Where were the lawyers who are trusted with protecting our basic rights?

 Where was J.R. Cash P.J. Donohue >JF Frame?

In May of 1918 Milo Sonner a farmer living a few miles south of St Charles

was hauled before a Bonesteel Council of Defense kangaroo court presided over by J.R. Cash, local attorney, and faced charges involving his solicitation of membership in the NPL.

P.J. Donahue a democrat lawyer was placed in charge of Sonner’s prosecution.

Cash’s secretary, soon to be his wife, was made the court reporter.

Needless to say Sonner was found guilty of something or other and ordered to use the money he had collected for membership in the NPL to buy War saving stamps.

Affidavits were afterwards filed which stated:

On March 12^th, 1918 Sonner and a Mr. Nellermoe were holding a NPL rally at a hall in Herrick.

The hall was entered by a Mr. A Zorba and a mob of 20 persons (including Tom Hoy, ancestor of Tex Hoy, who would give warning to Sonner) who ordered and then threw Sonner and Nellermoe out of the hall and busted up the meeting.

Mrs.Sonner was also at the meeting and in attempting to help her husband stated that she was more patriotic than Zorba since she had a brother in the trenches in France.

Zorba wheeled, grabbed her by the arm and told her; “that if she had a brother in the US Army he was there as a German spy.”

Thus two of the leading lawyers in town found Sonner Guilty, made him buy Liberty Stamps and never bothered to do anything to the mob which had forcibly broken up the meeting.

Oh yes- J.R Cash would become Circuit Judge and his wife Claudia, would become his court reporter.

P.J. Donahue would raise a son, Parnell, who would become Attorney General of SD.

The clashes continued;-lawsuits were filed in federal court-suing Chambers and   his cohorts.

Finally Norbeck acted (One month before WW! Armistice)

Four seven months mob violence had reigned on the Rosebud.

On Wednesday afternoon on October 9^th, 1918 Governor Norbeck made a special trip to Bonesteel to guarantee law and order for a meeting to be addressed by candidates that had been endorsed by the NPL

The Governor first went to the Sheriff and told him he wanted him to uphold law and order and that the governor meant what he said.

The Governor then went to the Bonesteel Home guards and told them that the NPL League meeting would be held and there would not be another mob outrage in Gregory County.

And there wasn’t

Six husky Sanborn county farmers had escorted the NPL candidate for governor to Bonesteel where they were met by Gregory county farmer supporters

They had 100 farmer protectors and they drove on to Bonesteel. where they found the hall too small and went to the fairground and used the grandstand for their meeting.

Norbeck went even further he told the Sheriff and 8 deputized Home Guard to accompany the NPL candidates at another meeting in Dixon.

At the meeting a crowd of the Opie Chambers people gathered outside the hall. The Sheriff then rose and deputized everyone in the hall as his deputy-strode outside and told the mob what he had done The mob silently crept away

At the meeting in Winner, the Tripp county Sheriff told the gathered mob they could go straight to hell.  Instead they sat in the audience an acted like good citizens and listened to the speaker.

Thus did the mob rule come to a whimpering end- and the end of the war itself would soon follow.

In the peace process that would follow America would find out that its European allies weren’t much interested in making the world safe for democracy.          

End notes

#1

Searching over 5,500,000 cases.

JOHN FIRE v. CITY OF WINNER

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF SOUTH DAKOTA

Official citation and/or docket number and footnotes (if any) for this case available with purchase.

December 18, 1972

John FIRE, etc.
v.
CITY OF WINNER, etc., et al.
Bogue, District Judge.
The opinion of the court was delivered by: BOGUE
MEMORANDUM DECISION
BOGUE, District Judge.
On April 21, 1971, Plaintiff, John Fire, brought this action on behalf of himself and all persons similarly situated, for injunctive relief and damages against the City of Winner, South Dakota, and the various officers of the city, claiming invidious discrimination on the part of the defendants in failing and refusing to construct and maintain adequate streets, sidewalks, street lights, gutters and drainage systems, and sewerage, water and fire-hydrant facilities in that portion of the city commonly referred to as "Indian Town".
By an amended complaint filed on September 13, 1971, the class action was dropped and the class withdrew all claims of discrimination. A trial was held on August 9, 1972, at the conclusion of which the Court reserved its ruling and asked for post-trial briefs.
To be considered at the outset is defendants' contention that the Court lacks jurisdiction over the City of Winner and its officers for the reason that the city is not a "person" within the meaning of 42 U.S.C.A. ? 1983. While it is true that a municipality is not subject to legal liability under ? 1983, Monroe v. Pape,
365 U.S. 167, 81 S. Ct. 473, 5 L. Ed. 2d 492 (1961); Davis v. United States, 439 F.2d 1118 (8th Cir. 1971), a municipality is a "person" under ? 1983 for purposes of injunctive relief. Harkless v. Sweeny, 427 F.2d 319 (5th Cir. 1970), cert. denied, 400 U.S. 991, 91 S. Ct. 451, 27 L. Ed. 2d 439 (1971); Hawkins v. Town of Shaw, 437 F.2d 1286 (5th Cir. 1971); Garren v. City of Winston-Salem, 439 F.2d 140 (4th Cir. 1971); Dailey v. City of Lawton, 425 F.2d 1037 (10th Cir. 1970). Since Plaintiff's original and amended complaints include a prayer for injunctive relief, this Court retains jurisdiction.
The evidence reflects that "Indian Town" is a part of the Wilson Park Addition to the City of Winner, South Dakota, bounded by a line extending east from the intersection of First and Liberty Streets along First Street to East Park Street, north on East Park Street to the railroad tracks, then west along the railroad tracks to North County Road, then south to Dakota Street, east along Dakota Street to Liberty Street, and finally south along Liberty Street to First Street and the point of origin. Of the 138 residents of "Indian Town", approximately 98 are Indians, two of whom own their own homes. One of the two Indian homeowners is Plaintiff's wife.
There being storm sewers located along one street only, the primary drainage for the City of Winner consists of a "natural" drainage system. For the western one-half of the town, this "natural" drainage is generally to the north and west. Indian Town, being on the northern part of the city, is the recipient of most of the drainage from the western half of the city; especially from Park Addition. Because the land is extremely flat, the drainage from Indian Town to Dog Ear Creek is rather slow after a spring thaw or heavy rainstorm, with the result that water collects in the ditches and low areas. Plaintiff claims that this problem has been primarily caused by the city's failure to (1) provide adequate culverts and (2) clean existing culverts and ditches.
Plaintiff further asserts that there has been a general lack of equality in providing municipal services to the Indian residents of Winner, not only with respect to drainage but also with street improvements, sewerage facilities, fire hydrants, street lights and sidewalks.
Much of the testimony concerning the drainage problem centered around a water leak in the service line running from Plaintiff's house to the water main. Although the testimony is unclear as to exactly when the leak occurred, the water had filled the ditch on the south side of Iowa Street and had remained there for some time prior to February 14, 1972. On that date, notwithstanding the fact that the repair of such a service line is normally the duty of the property owner, the General Superintendent of the city agreed to remove the water (which at that time had frozen), and replace the culvert under the Plaintiff's driveway if Mrs. Fire would hire a plumber to repair the service line. The plan was consummated and an 18 inch new culvert was installed in place of the original 15 inch culvert. The evidence further shows that all of the culverts in this portion of the city were changed from 15 inches to 18 inches, and that the ditches are periodically "shaped up", i.e. cleaned and dug out to facilitate flow.
As to the installation and maintenance of street lights, the evidence reflects that the City of Winner in general has one street light per city block, whereas some blocks in Indian Town have three street lights. The evidence further shows that fire hydrants have been installed where necessary and are comparable in number to those placed elsewhere in the city; garbage is collected once a week by the city; the children have a lighted playground; and a housing and redevelopment commission was formed to secure new housing for the residents of "Indian Town".
The remaining areas to which Plaintiff attributes discrimination -- street paving, sidewalks and sewerage facilities -- although somewhat inferior to other areas of Winner, are improvements associated with property ownership. Any difference, therefore, in the quality of such improvements stems primarily from the difference in the respective landowner's willingness to pay for the property improvements.
The evidence shows that, although repairs to existing hard-surfaced streets are borne by the city's general fund, the property owners pay by special assessment for the initial surfacing and curb and gutter. These facts notwithstanding, the City of Winner has, at its own expense, hard surfaced East Park Street and Iowa Street, oil matted First Street, and has made plans to hard surface Dakota Street.
As to sewerage facilities, the evidence shows that property owners ordinarily
absorb the cost of connection lines to the city trunk line. Nevertheless, the city has made application with Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to provide sewer lines to "Indian Town" residents from the trunk line.
The Court recognizes that many of the aforementioned improvements were instituted subsequent to the commencement of this lawsuit. However, that does not alter the fact that they have been done. In short, while there may have been some neglect on the part of the City of Winner with respect to those improvements normally financed by the city's general fund, namely, adequate culverts and drainage ditches, street lights and fire hydrants, the deficiencies were corrected prior to the trial of this matter and any claim of discrimination based thereon is now moot. Those remaining improvements to which Plaintiff attaches discrimination -- street paving, sidewalks and sewerage facilities -- are reasonable attributes of property ownership for which the owner must be specially assessed. Nevertheless, the evidence shows that the city has taken it upon itself to remedy many of the deficiencies which the property owners have neglected. As mentioned previously, of all the inhabitants of this portion of Winner, more than 98% rent their homes. Thus, while the Court recognizes that some inferior conditions still persist in these areas, relief exists in another court and may involve the owners of the property and lack of diligence on the part of landlords to comply with the building code.
The Court also recognizes that the drainage in "Indian Town" is not the best due to the terrain. It will never be perfect. Notwithstanding the lack of perfection, there are state laws that deal specifically with the rights and obligations of adjacent landowners and the problem of water drainage. But with respect to the present defendants, there simply is insufficient evidence, in light of circumstances that have transpired subsequent to the inception of this action, to show a concerted effort, to even show carelessness or indifference, on the part of the City of Winner or its officers to deprive Plaintiff of his civil rights because of his race or property.
While it is true, as Plaintiff argues in his brief, that a classification by race is proscribed absent a compelling state interest, Loving v. Virginia,
388 U.S. 1, 87 S. Ct. 1817, 18 L. Ed. 2d 1010 (1967), and that actual intent or motive need not be proved directly, Hawkins v. Town of Shaw, 437 F.2d 1286, 1291-1292 (5th Cir. 1971), when a city recognizes a disparity in providing services to its residents and makes a good faith effort to correct such disparity, as was done in this case, then the municipality has met its constitutional responsibility. The equal protection clause was never intended to be a constitutional command forcing municipalities to assume the responsibilities of landowners for the development of their lands.
One final claim remains. Plaintiff, in his brief, asserts a tort claim for damages in the sum of $12,000.00 plus costs for mental suffering and anguish and for special damages of $8.00 for the loss of Plaintiff's floor rug. However, Plaintiff's amended complaint is deplete of any tort allegations and the damages were not specifically pleaded. As such, they cannot be made a basis for recovery.
But even if Plaintiff had set forth sufficient allegations to substantiate a claim for relief in tort, such claim is derivative of state law. As such, the power of this Court to grant any such requested tort relief necessarily is based upon its pendent jurisdiction, which for the considerations of convenience and fairness to the parties, this Court, as a matter of discretion, would not exercise. See United Mine Workers of America v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 86 S. Ct. 1130, 16 L. Ed. 2d 218 (1966).
The foregoing constitutes the Court's findings of fact and conclusions of law as required by Rule 52. Defendant shall prepare the necessary orders and judgment.
19721218
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End note #2

Knodel Petition to Congress for moratorium

End note #4

End note #4

chris colombe/s.d. historical

terracehills1  (View posts)

Posted: 10 Nov 2000 8:25AM GMT

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Surnames:

chris colombe was a familiar inhabitant of tripp co. an rosebud. the first colombe family to america was jean baptiste colombe. he ws born in alsac lorraine.he went westward working for the hudson bay co, an finally became us marshal at denver. he met an married pretty josette dorion, a girl who was part french/sioux. the dorion name was highly respected in the missouri valley, pierre dorion being the oldest fur trader in this region. they built their home on an island called colombe isl. near whetstone creek and became parents of a large family. their children were; JOHN.CHRIS,DAVE,WILLIAM,MINNIE(hicks),KENNY(mullen)JOSETTE(brandon) AN EMILY (tradeLL) the name jean baptiste was americanized to john baptiste colombe, easier for the neighbors to accept.this family had the traits of their alsatian forbears, tempered by the sioux blood of their grandmother, and had strong family ties.many people today have ties to the family in s.d.as the children grew up they also became active in affairs of the rosebud and intermarriage witht he people of this new country.john married lizzie reeves: their children were louise mary (KOCH) , john w, jennie9AISNLEE) an two boys who died in infancy.he also raised an adopted son, chris patterson, known as buck colombe. chris, perhaps the best known-founded the town of colombe, was a good friend of the jackson brothers, and has been described in tripp county golden anniversary book about early homesteaders. his children were,ted,birdie,(MC MURRAY) an grace(RITTS).Eds chidren were, joe,ed,chris,carl,sally,josephine an tommie.
dave married alice moran an later her sister amy.by his first wife he had 4 girls, minnie,susie,lilly an mabel.by his wife amy he had dave,velma, ruby,leona,fred,lester,eileen.
william married annie courtis, dau of a well known english rancher. his children were,margaret,marvyn,hilda,an william.
minnie married wm hicks of akron ohio.their family conisted of one son.wm an four girls,ruth ,josette,jennie,viola.jennie lso called mr mullen had six children, three died in infancy.others were, john,amy, norah.
josephine,also called josette married bill brandon a scotsman who lived at brandon springs until their home burned down. chidren; HOWARD,HARRY,ALVINA( houston) ROY,JOHN, ELMER AN ETHYL,ALEC.
EMILY MARRIED LEVI TRUDELL. CHIDREN: mabel,alice,hattie, emily,christina,levi,david an wallace an twowho died in infancy.

http://boards.ancestry.com/surnames.colombe/30/mb.ashx

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