The Black Hills union and western stock review. [volume] (Rapid City, S.D.) 1904-19??, 1910-08-12
Harvest Days in Dakotaland

The Indians, so far as we are
able to know with a degree of
certainty, were the first Dacotah crop
makers. But as written history on
the subject is more or less traditional
even as it concerns the redmen, de-
tails are lacking and chronicles unre-
liable. Possibly during u%nrecorded
ages, these prairies, which we SO
lately called virgin, We're cleaved,
year following year, by vanished peo-
pies, throughout long epochs of
patton. Still, if such was the case,
times obliterating buried, or
crumbled into dust, all evidences of
prehistoric farming, leaving the soil,
as it were, fresh and unspoiled for the
conquest of the Anglo-Saxon-scant
Indian tillage having done little or
nothing to deplete and unfit it for
the vigorous treatment which befalls
it at the present day.
The Rec Indians appear to have
been quite industrious in the growing
of patches of a coarse type of maize
or corn, which, later, became the
wamnaheza Of the Dakota tongue.
1t is discovered that their fields were
usually in the vicinity of the larger
camps or villages of the tribes or
cults, and proximity to extensive
streams being a common attribute Of
location for the same. The cultivated
areas were not laid out with much
regularity, the more easily stirred
sandy soil being selected by the
squaws who were the real aboriginal
husbandmen. While corn was the i'm
portant crop Of the Rees and Dakotas
they also planted vines, such as pump
kins and squashes and very likely the
first melon-raisers along the upper Mis-
souri,, although WE do know whether
the vines of the dusky feminine tillers
were scandalously used for ~garlands
and the fruit despoiled by frisky red
youths-as is the a S in the more
highly civilized times of the whites.
AT best, the story Of agriculture in
Dakotaland ere the Christian farmer
came, can be related only in para
graphs of merest outline, particulars
and genesis having been lost, because
these concerned a people whose pic
t%uregraphs and feeble traditions-un-
certain and unreliable as they we're
have been waited away like a mist or
crushed by the truth Of time.
The sod awaited the white mans
blow to feel the restless purpose for
which God intended it. But the
Yankee and Americanized foreigner.
who braved western conditions which
often demanded sc much of fortitude
and patience, was not, and still is not
always a wise c%ultiyator. Vast areas
of land invite extensive but neglect
full tillage and SO it's known that our
fathers who settled in Dakota terri
tory. in the COS and 7O's and early sos
reverently dedicating these valleys
and uplands to Ceres and auxiliary
deities of pome and grain. set exam
pies of waste and unfrugality for
which penance is being besought
in congresses of conservation. 1t
would be useless as well as improper
to write these words in harsh criticism
but it should ever be precept Of pride
in a son to profit by the mistakes and
errors Of his sire, and not to do so be-
speakes his own lack of progressness.
To particularize, the pioneer Dako-
tan got rid of his numbering straw
} piles by the simple and magical ap-
p~lication of a match. To-day hespreads
the straw back on the fields from
which it was garnered that his farm
. may be enriched thereby. Likewise