Plucky Dakota women recorded her-story     

Modern young wives and mothers, with dishwashers, bread-making machines and disposable diapers, can hardly imagine the daily life of their 19^th century grandmothers who braved the hardships of life on the Dakota frontier.

The Territory of Dakota, established March 2, 1861, originally covered 350,000 square miles, encompassing all of the present states of North and South Dakota plus portions of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. (By 1873, the parts of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming had been cut off, reducing Dakota Territory to less than half its original size.)

A rapid growth of westward emigration began after 1865 when Congress appropriated $85,000 for opening wagon roads through the territory toward Rocky Mountain gold fields. With the Homestead Act of 1862 making 160 acres of government land available to citizens for less than $10 in filing fees, an estimated 200,000 settlers were attracted to Dakota Territory in the 1800s.

Hundreds of miners flocked into the Black Hills with the gold rush of 1875-76, but not all newcomers were prospectors. Farmers and cattlemen settled in the rich valleys and fertile plains surrounding the Hills  

Dakota history was mainly recorded as his-story -- the exploits of male soldiers, miners, businessmen, farmers and cattlemen who sought new opportunities in the undeveloped territory.

Sarah “Aunt Sally” Campbell, the black cook who accompanied Custer into the Black Hills in 1874, Annie Tallent, first white woman in the Hills, and the notorious Calamity Jane were among the few females mentioned in print.

Until the middle of the 20^th century little was written about the intrepid wives who established homes and raised children in the raw new land. In journals, diaries and letters they recorded their feelings, thoughts, pleasures and pain of daily life in the uncivilized west—a rich source for researchers of today.

            Furniture and family heirlooms were sold or given away as those gallant women packed only what necessities would fit into a prairie schooner, ten feet long and four feet wide, and left comfortable homes “back east” to join the westward emigration. “Necessities” often included a Bible, schoolbooks and toys for the children, perhaps a treasured hand-painted plate.   

            Most traveled with husbands or parents, but some stouthearted women came alone. There was no sex discrimination in the Homestead Act. Women could file on their own 160 acres and had a better track record than men—42 percent of the women proved up on their claims versus 37 percent of the men.

            In the early 1800s rail service extended only as far as Yankton, the capital of Dakota Territory. Settlers could travel by steamboat up the Missouri River to Chamberlain or Fort Pierre before heading west in wagons pulled by oxen or mules. It was slow going—perhaps 25 miles on an exceptionally good day, but as few as five miles when rain turned the trail into sticky gumbo that clogged wagon wheels.

One woman said her youngsters thought the trip west was just one long picnic, but traveling in a covered wagon was no picnic for women handling normal household chores under trying circumstances. Hampered by long skirts, the prescribed feminine attire of the day, they gathered buffalo chips, or “prairie muffins” for fuel, hoisted heavy iron kettles to cook over open campfires.

“By the time one has squatted around the fire and cooked bread and bacon, and made several dozen trips to and from the wagon, washed the dishes and gotten things ready for an early breakfast…it is time to go to bed,” wrote one pioneer woman.

            Living conditions at the end of the trail weren’t much better. While men worked mining claims or plowed fields, wives set up housekeeping in tents, sod shanties, crude cabins or flimsy mining shacks with dirt floors.

Keeping children fed, clothed, warm and dry, entertained and educated was an everyday challenge in such primitive homes. Roofs leaked when it rained, snow blew through cracks in the walls in the winter, inside temperatures climbed into the nineties in the heat of the summer.

Yet with ingenuity and resilience, those hardy pioneer women set about improving their new homes--stretching canvas on the dirt floors, tacking muslin on ceilings to keep fallout from dirt roofs out of food, wallpapering with newspapers or rolls of building paper.

Furnishings were rudimentary and mostly handmade. A bassinet for a new baby might be fashioned from a wooden canned goods box with a feather pillow for a mattress.

Providing clean diapers for that new baby, clean clothing for older children was backbreaking work. Water had to be hauled from the nearest spring or creek, heated on wood stoves or outdoor fires. Scrubbing clothing on a washboard with handmade lye soap turned their skin raw. One pioneer woman recalled how thrilled she was with a gift from her brother-in-law--a hand-cranked wringer to fasten on the side of the rinse tub.

Water was too precious to be wasted. A single tubful sufficed to bathe all the family members before it was used to wash floors or water the garden.

There was no lack of traditional “woman’s work” to fill her day, but the frontier woman’s place wasn’t always in the home. She helped with outdoor chores--plowing fields, planting and harvesting crops, building fences, caring for livestock, milking cows. After an endless day of drudgery she finally sat down after washing the supper dishes to sew or mend clothing by lantern or candlelight.

Tombstones in Black Hills cemeteries tell of the difficulty of raising children so far from doctors or hospitals. Epidemics of typhoid, whooping cough, smallpox, pneumonia, diphtheria, influenza, dysentery and cholera sometimes claimed the lives of several children in one family.

In 1901 the Gauchron family buried a three-year-old daughter and two sons, aged seven and ten, in the Bell Park Cemetery near Rochford. Children account for 53 of the 200 burials at the Old Post Cemetery at Fort Meade.

Some of those early settlers, defeated by dry years and ferocious winters, relinquished their claims and headed home. One disgusted homesteader carved a message on the door of his deserted claim shack:

 30 miles to water, 20 miles to wood  
             10 miles to hell and I’ve gone there for good.

  Despite the vicissitudes of life on the western frontier, life wasn’t all tragedy and travail. The pioneer woman learned to appreciate the beauty in her surroundings—wild roses and fields of sunflowers, glorious sunrises and sunsets, the lilting song of the meadowlark, languorous Indian summer days. And there were fun times too—picnics and berry-picking in the summer, sleigh rides and skating in winter.

Life became easier for those hardy pioneer women as railroads pushed westward. Dakota Territory was divided into the states of North and South Dakota in 1889. Towns, churches and schools were established. Eventually water was piped into kitchens, indoor plumbing replaced chamber pots, gas-powered wash machines ended the backbreaking work of laundry day.

Remembering those early days, those Dakota pioneers never learned to take modern conveniences for granted. Every time she pulled a disposable towel from the roller one elderly woman gratefully remarked, “God bless the man who invented paper towels.”

Unsung heroines of the westward movement, Dakota pioneer women endured through blizzards and bank failures, crop failures and catastrophic storms, droughts and disasters to leave  a legacy of strength and pride for their descendents.