Perserving the past: Historians worry that S.D. losing its history

By Jomay Steen, Journal Staff Writer | Sunday, April 16, 2006

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Opening a battered leather briefcase, Wilmer “Buz” Young Man Afraid Of His Horses reaches in and pulls out a wealth of South Dakota history yet to be recorded.

An antique U.S. flag represents the legacy of one of the greatest chiefs of the Lakota people, Young Man Afraid Of His Horse. It was presented to the family when the Lakota chief had gone on a half-day hunting trip for antelope near Newcastle, Wyo., where he suffered a fatal heart attack.

A letter to the family informs them of the death, with the military making arrangements to return the chief’s body to the family under full military escort to Rushville, Neb.

The flag in the briefcase was the same one draped over the chief’s coffin when it arrived by train a century ago.

Also in the briefcase were an 1854 letter from President Franklin Pierce to Young Man Afraid of His Horse, an 1878 certificate recognizing Old Man Afraid Of His Horse as chief of the Oglala Sioux, century-old reservation passes signed by Pine Ridge Indian agent Valentine T. McGillicuddy and Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles, and a variety of photographs.

Now, Wilmer Young Man Afraid of His Horses would like to see the flag and the other pieces of family history preserved and shared.

“But it is not entirely up to me,” he said. His siblings will have a say in what happens to the family records and antiquities. But until they decide, the items are at risk of deterioration, fire, storms, infestation and theft.

Despite scores of public libraries, private and public museums and a variety of historical societies throughout South Dakota, some historians and archivists worry that the state is losing an irreplaceable amount of history and heritage.

Experts attributed those losses to the lack of outreach and the lack of general awareness that family records, documents, diaries, journals, letters and maps inherited from family members may be deemed historical and are valuable to a variety of private and public museums and archives.

Others say people cleaning out storage closets, nooks and crannies are tossing out mementos that they later wish they had kept, and many others are selling the mementos on Internet auctions.

Reid Riner, director of the Minnelusa Historical Association and curator of the Minnelusa Pioneer Museum at The Journey Museum, said that the state loses its unique history whenever those historical pieces wind up on the Internet or in the archives of another state. “These items are what make us unique. When they’re gone, that history is lost forever,” he said.

Chelle Somsen, state archivist of the South Dakota State Historical Society, has worked at the South Dakota State Archives for nine years. When asked if the state did enough to conserve or preserve state history, she paused before answering.

“That’s a hard question to answer because there is always more we can do with education and making the public aware that we collect history,” Somsen said.

Mary Kopco, director of the Adams House and Museum in Deadwood, agreed.

“We need our communities to better understand the effort that goes into preservation,” she said.

Kopco said that after historical pieces are bestowed to them, the Adams House and Museum has a legal obligation to protect and conserve objects. “We can all do better,” she said.

Losing history

Authorities are afraid of losing antiquities such as those belonging to descendants of Chief Young Man Afraid Of His Horse on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

After a 1999 tornado that moved the home of Wilmer Young Man Afraid of Horses from its foundation and ripped off half of the roof, he is considering a safer place for the family’s heirlooms.

A direct descendant and great-grandson of Chief Young Man Afraid Of His Horse, who negotiated for peace with the U.S. government at Fort Laramie, Wilmer said he wants a museum to help conserve his family’s fragile records.

“We’ve got some of his documents,” Wilmer said of his great-grandfather. “I’ve been thinking about putting them in a museum so they could be preserved.”

He was unaware that South Dakota State Archives collects and preserves pieces like those of his family’s.

As he displays the papers, Wilmer points out a photograph of Young Man Afraid Of His Horse and Little Wound. “Little Wound’s family lost a lot of their papers in a house fire,” he said.

Some of the papers on Young Man Afraid Of His Horses’ kitchen table show obvious signs of deterioration. The wax seal on the Pierce letter is discolored and melted, some of the letters have disintegrated at the folds, and staples holding other papers have rusted.

Carefully, he returns the items to the briefcase. But Wilmer worries that the paper will continue to disintegrate.

“I’m not sure if anyone has as much of this as we do,” he said of the personal papers of his great-grandfather.

Pieces of a larger history

Chelle Somsen, state archivist of South Dakota State Archives of the South Dakota State Historical Society, said families should talk about what they want to do with their historical treasure, but they should also know that Somsen is willing to examine what they’ve got.

“We only accept paper records,” she said.

With 11,000 cubic feet of space, the historical society library holds books about South Dakota, along with maps, ledgers, records, diaries, journals, postcards, digital images and 100,000 photographs.

Six staff members work with documents dating to Dakota Territory and before, Somsen said. The archives also are the state repository for government records and contain the political papers of governors including the late George S. Mickelson and William Janklow.

On average, the 2,600 researchers visit the archives each year and work on academic, genealogy and education projects. Archive staff members field another 3,700 requests for research.

“Whatever is a historical record, we have it,” Somsen said.

In her nine years on the job, Somsen has worked to make the public aware that the library can accept more items for its collections. It has easily obtained the papers of the “movers and shakers” within the state, but the personal histories are diminishing.

“We’re doing OK, but there’s room for more,” Somsen said. “The public needs to know we need them to bring to us their business, club and personal histories, too.”

Many families aren’t interested in the old photographs, maps, school papers, letters, post cards or diaries that have been saved by their ancestors, often discarding them in the scrap heap.

“It’s amazing how many people kick themselves because they got rid of them,” Somsen said. “We need to let people know we’re here so they don’t throw these things out.”

Kopco of the Adams House and Museum in Deadwood said it is important that the public becomes better educated about the time, cost and support required to preserve historical documents.

Support includes people volunteering their time to help with the museum or contributing money and their objects and documents, Kopco said.

Tours bring 78,000 people through the Deadwood museum at 54 Sherman St. and 13,000 to 15,000 people through the Adams House at 22 Van Buren St. each year.

Each exhibit is a testament to the work by the 12 staff members who do the research, cataloging, conservation and preservation work on the museum’s objects and papers, Kopco said.

“People are hungry to learn about the past,” she said.

Kopco said the museum receives daily submissions of antiques and records. Its collection committee meets every month to review what has been submitted. The accepted items must be specific to Deadwood, Lead and the Northern Hills.

The museum recently acquired the Homestake Gold Mine Collection, which has nearly quadrupled its holdings. The acquisition prompted the Adams to buy the F.L. Thorpe Building in downtown Deadwood. Organizers plan to convert it into a research center to catalog, analyze and care for its collections.

“It’s pretty remarkable. We’re no longer called an attic,” Kopco said.

Riner said it would benefit families to contact museums and historical societies and ask about their mission statement — an easy way to determine what types of items they collect.

“Some museums are very specific to what they will accept, and others will accept a variety of items,” he said.

Minnelusa’s collections, which include the papers of George Mansfield, an 1880s Rapid City Realtor and developer, and those of Valentine T. McGillicuddy, an Indian agent and frontier doctor, are used for research.

“It is not a lending library,” Riner said. “These primary documents have been used to create a lot of works.”

Riner said the value of these historical papers is often overlooked because society must provide nutritional programs for children, good schools and roads. But history has its place and is important, he said.

“The value is esoteric, but it’s there,” Riner said.

He said history gives a sense of place — a concept that some people have trouble embracing. But it means that people within the community share a sense of connectedness with the goals and origins of the city, town or state.

“This is missing in bigger cities that have grown so fast and have thrown away a lot of their history,” he said.

What to do

Riner said people should consider finding a good home for their historical treasures in a museum. He recommends that people take a good inventory of their pieces. It will give them an idea of how to organize what they have and can be used when meeting with museum officials.

Although they may seem insignificant to the family, these items may be of irreplaceable value to scholars and historians.

“It’s a way to share what you have with the community while providing safety and security to the object,” Riner said.

Somsen said that, beyond the publications and research scholars already do, the state needs to use and develop what is collected in its archives.

“I would really like to see an introduction of primary records into school classrooms,” she said.

It would help show students the lives that were led in the distant and recent past. It also would be better than reading something out of a textbook, Somsen said.

“We need to begin to think in future terms of South Dakota history,” Somsen said.

Young Man Afraid of His Horses would like to preserve a place in history for an Oglala chief who happened to be a relative.

“I’d like to see these preserved so that they can be saved for future generations to study and research,” he said of the flag, the 1851 letter and the century-old reservation passes.

“I’d like to put this where it will be safe.”

Contact Jomay Steen at 394-8418 or jomay.steen@rapidcityjournal.com