Education in Early Dakota Days This information appears in Chapter LXXIX of "History of South Dakota" by Doane Robinson, Vol. I (1904), pages 470-472 and was scanned, OCRed and edited by Joy Fisher, sdgenweb@yahoo.com This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the SDGENWEB Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://www.usgwarchives.net/sd/sdfiles.htm CHAPTER LXXIX EDUCATION REVISED BY HON. GEORGE W. NASH. Zeal for learning has characterized the South Dakotan from the earliest period. The French traders of the old days, if they were men of any standing, all undertook to give their half Indian children some education and some of them were educated highly. Manuel Lisa and the Picottes are examples of this class. Their children were taken down the river for this purpose, usually to St. Louis; and upon their return to the wilderness they imparted the rudiments of education to other members of the family in the home. Audubon relates that when he was coming up the river in 1842, they met Andrew Dripps, Indian agent at Fort George, and William Laidlaw, burgeois at Fort Pierre, down between Vermillion and Elk Point taking Laidlaw's children to St. Louis to be educated. In the first territorial legislature in 1862 a bill was under consideration conferring the right to vote upon the half-breeds, but it was violently opposed, because the half-breeds outnumbered the whites. It was proposed then to limit the bill in its operations to those half-breeds who could read and write, but this, too, was deemed inexpedient, as likely to throw the dominence in territorial affairs into the hands of the half Indians. The first regular school in Dakota was conducted at Fort Randall in the winter of 1857-8 by a relative of Captain Todd's who gave regular instruction to several white children about the fort and several half-breed boys and girls. The reservation was opened July 10, 1859, and the settlement commenced at once. There were no families among the settlers at Yankton at that time, but there were several in the communities planted at Vermillion and at Bon Homme. Dr. Franklin Caulkins settled at Vermillion that fall, coming down the river from Fort Randall. Toward spring he was employed by the settlers to teach a school, which was conducted in a room over McHenry's store at Vermillion, under the hill. A factional fight arose and soon the settlers divided in their allegiance to the Doctor's school, and one faction employed Miss Hoyt (now Mrs. Dr. H. S. Livingstone, of Yankton) to teach another school, which was held in the little Presbyterian church just erected through the efforts of Father Charles D. Martin. That spring of 186o the settlers at Bon Homme, under the leadership of the energetic John H. Shober, built a little schoolhouse of logs, floorless and dirt roofed, and in it, in the month of May, Miss Emma J. Bradford assembled ten children and taught them for three months. This was the first regular schoolhouse in Dakota. The Indian outbreak of August, 1862, put a stop to all school operations and there is no record of any attempt of this kind until the return a company of the Dakota cavalry from the upriver Indian campaigns in the autumn of 1864. When they were encamped at Vermillion Captain Miner proposed that they build a school house and the tireless soldier boys soon had a comfortable log schoolhouse completed, in the ravine at Vermillion, and Amos Shaw, one of the soldiers, conducted a school therein during the winter, and from that date there has been no break in the public school system of Vermillion. A year later the ladies of Yankton undertook to raise means for the construction of a school building and their efforts resulted in the erection of the old Brown schoolhouse on Walnut street, which for years was the pride of the people of Yankton. In 1865 Prof. James S. Foster arrived from New York with his famous colony of sixty families and almost immediately Governor Edmunds appointed him superintendent of public instruction, and, although the compensation of the superintendent was but twenty dollars per annum, he gave himself energetically to the work and in a brief period had a regular system of public schools, supported by taxation, established. They were scattered from Fort Randall to Sioux City, but he visited every one of them and encouraged both teachers and patrons, and induced the organization of districts and schools wherever he deemed it possible to sustain an establishment. He conducted the first teachers' institute held in the territory on November 11, 1867, at Elk Point, which continued in session two weeks. Rev. E. C. Collins, father of the late state superintendent, was one of the instructors in this institute and addresses were delivered by Judge Wilmot W. Brookings and Hon. S. L. Spink, afterwards delegate to congress and at that time secretary of the territory. The legislature has always given much attention to school matters. In addition to the location of the university, the first session in 1862 adopted a complete code of laws for the conduct of common schools, and it may be added very few of its successors have failed to follow its example in this respect. By this first code the schools were only open to white children. As late as 1867 a hard fight was made in the legislature, without avail, to strike the word "white" out of the school law, and it was not until the passage of the civil rights bill by congress that colored children were permitted full rights in our common schools. As a part of the political arrangement by which Yankton procured the location of the territorial capital, the University of Dakota was located at Vermillion in 1862. It may be noted in passing that it obtained its first grant of public money for building and maintenance as an incident of the deal by which the capital was removed from Yankton, in 1883, at that time receiving the sum of thirty thousand dollars for the purpose. The first effort toward a school for higher learning in Dakota was the founding of Yankton Academy in 1871, through the efforts of the renowned Joseph Ward. A good building was erected for this academy upon the site of the present central school building in Yankton and the academy was successfully conducted by Prof. Nathan Ford and a corps of assistants until February, 1875, when an act of the legislature having organized tile independent school district of Yankton and provided a board of education therefor, the Yankton high school was established and purchased the academy property and began the work which has built up the excellent school system of the Mother City. From the planting of the schoolhouse in the ravine at Vermillion the development of the South Dakota school system has kept pace, if it has not actually led, the demand of the constantly increasing population. A general territorial or state and county supervision has been the constant policy. The legislatures were exceedingly erratic in the method of the appointment or election of these officers. They were alternately appointed by the governor and elected by the people, the method changing with the adoption of each new school code, and this was a matter of annual procedure in the early days, which was only modified in the progress of time by the action of congress in abolishing annual sessions of the Dakota legislature, so that it became impossible to change the plan oftener than biennially. The efficient work of James S. Foster for the establishment of the school system was efficiently supplemented by other territorial superintendents, the office being filled by such men as General W. H. H. Beadle, J. J. McIntyre, Eugene A. Dye and A. Sheridan Jones. The work of General Beadle in this office, made a deep impress both for the efficiency of the schools at the period and for the cause of education through all of the subsequent years. He was the first to grasp the propositions of the value and possibilities of South Dakota's great inheritance of school lands and to him more than to any other is due the wise safeguards which protect it from waste and speculation as well as the minimum price at which it can be sold. The earliest attempt to establish an institution giving a collegiate course was undertaken by the general association of Congregational churches which met at Canton in June, 1881 and resolved to establish a college at Yankton. This, as was true of very many of the enterprises for the good of the community of that day, was due to the initiative and the self-sacrifice of Dr. Joseph Ward, and under his direction the college was established and received its first classes in September of that year. This same year the people of Vermillion, spurred to it by the foundation of the college at Yankton, and fearing that unless some positive action was taken they would be deprived of the fruit of the foresight of the pioneers in securing the location of the territorial university, set about to place the institution upon its feet and an organization was effected in the voting of ten thousand dollars of bonds by Clay county, the proceeds of which was used to construct a biilding which was ready for occupancy in the fall of 1882 and in it was instituted the University, which the ensuing legislature was prevailed upon to endow. That same legislature of 1883 located the Agricultural College at Brookings, the Normal at Madison and at Spearfish, and appropriated funds to the Agricultural College and the Madison Normal, which were opened the succeeding year. The next legislature endowed the Spearfish Normal and in 1887 the School of Mines at Rapid City was set up. The legislature of 1883 also located a normal school at Springfield, conditional upon the village providing a quantity of land as a site, and the condition was complied with. It was not until 1900, however, that an endowment of public money was provided for it, but in 1895 the people of Springfield, at their own expense, erected a suitable building and turned it over to the regents of education who established a normal school there, as the were required to do under the law, the means of its support being provided by the people of Springfield. The legislature of 1899 located the Northern Normal and Industrial School at Aberdeen and the legislature of 1901 gave it an endowment so that the main building was erected and the school openeg in the autumn of 1902. In 1883 the Methodists located Dakota University at Mitchell and the same year Pierre University was established by the Presbyterians. This establishment has since been removed to Huron where it is continued as Huron College. In 1884 the Congregationalists established an additional college at Redfield and the Episcopalians undertook All Saints' School at Sioux Falls. In 1892 Sioux Falls College was undertaken by the Baptists and the Scandinavian Lutherans began the Normal School there in 1889. Augustana College was established by the Scandinavian Lutherans at Canton in 1889. The Catholics have academies at Aberdeen, Elkton, Jefferson, Clarion, Milbank, Sturgis, Tabor, Vermillion, Yankton and Zell. The Congregationalists maintain an academy at Academy, in Charles Mix county, and the Free Methodists have a flourishing institution at Wessington Springs. The Mennonites have an academy at Freeman. All of these institutions of higher learning, both state and sectarian, are thoroughly equipped with buildings and apparatus, are modern and progressive and are doing magnificent work, having a combined registration of three thousand students. The state constitution adopted in 1889 was particularly solicitous for the school system and safeguarded it in every possible way. The state supervision has been under the direction, successively, of Profs. Pinkham, Cortez Salmon, Frank Crane, Edward E. Collins, and at present, George W. Nash. From the latest official returns there are at present 132,000 school children in South Dakota; teachers, 4,800; schools, 4,100, maintained at an annual cost of $1,750,000. The annual apportionment of the income from the school moneys amounts to $2.74 per capita. The present investment in schoolhouses and school property amounts to $2,500,000.