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A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOUTH DAKOTA
CHAPTER I
THE STORY TOLD BY THE ROCKS
It is very easy to read the story of the rocks in South Dakota, for here more than anywhere else the several formations are exposed to view: and we can readily see what must have happened in that time very long ago, before men, or even animals, inhabited the Dakota land. The rock formations can be seen more or less all over the state, but their story is clearly shown especially in that section near the head waters of the White River at the foot of the Black Hills, known as the Bad Lands.
We learn there that in an ancient time a great ocean rolled over South Dakota; that some great convulsion must have occurred deep in the earth which threw up the Black Hills and other western mountains; that the ocean swept over these hills, grinding them up and washing them down across its floor toward the eastern part of the state, thus laying down a formation or stratum now compressed into hard rock which is the lowest of the many formations studied by the geologist. We learn that again and again the rocks and hills were raised up, each time to be washed down by the ocean, each washing making a new stratum, until finally there came a time when the ocean could not overcome the hills and the latter became high and solid earth somewhat as we now know them. In this time the earliest evidences of life appeared, in the form of snails and other low orders of creatures.
Then the ocean seems to have come back and swept down another stratum of soil from the mountain bases, and after it had again subsided came a race of monstrous reptiles, the remains of which are found quite generally over the state wherever the formation of that period is exposed. It is quite certain that at this time South Dakota was in the main a vast steaming swamp, for the climate was tropical, and out of the swamp grew tropical verdure.
For how long the reptiles reigned no one can ever know, but their period was followed by another, in which great animals, much larger than anything now in existence, roamed throughout the land. They have been given hard names by scientific men who study their remains; as titanotheres, brontotheres, and eleotheres. The titanotheres and brontotheres were evidently of the elephant or rhinoceros family, and the eleotheres were giant pigs. While remains of these animals are most common in the Bad Lands, they are found in many other localities, showing that they roamed generally throughout the state. At this time we can be very sure, from the signs which are left, that South Dakota was a great swampy, tropical plain which sloped gently down from the Black Hills on the west to the great central river flowing through the present James River valley, and from this river sloped up to the top of the coteau at the east line of the state.
By this time several agencies were at work which resulted in a great change in the climate of the region. The uplifting of the Black Hills and the Rocky Mountains had cut off the warm breezes from the Pacific Ocean, and in the far north vast heaps of ice were being piled up by the almost continual freezing of the frigid climate. These heaps of ice had become so deep that they could not support their own weight, and so began to run or spread out as you may have seen a large lump of dough spread when turned from the kneading pan to the table. When we examine a piece of ice, it seems to be so hard and brittle that it does not seem possible for ice to spread in this way; nevertheless, scientific men have shown beyond doubt that ice does spread when placed under a great weight.
The spreading of this ice sent it down from the north-east until it had run far down into the South Dakota country. It was so thick and heavy that it completely dammed up the valley of the great river, so that its waters became a great lake, lying north of the ice and extending far back into the Rocky Mountains. The ice pushed along until its western edge had traveled as far as the line now occupied by the Missouri River, when it began to melt away. The waters which were dammed up in the upper part of the great valley began to seep about the western edge of the ice, until they ran entirely around it and reached the old bed of the stream below Yankton.
Thus the ice quite changed the surface of South Dakota. Before it came the Grand River extended east from its
A Pass in the Badlands (Washington County)
present course until it reached the great river near where Aberdeen now is. The Cheyenne ran down to Redfield, the Teton or Bad River to Huron, and the White to Mitchell. The great animals, the titanotheres, mastodons, and eleotheres, were destroyed by the ice, and when it had melted away, it left new conditions in climate, soil, and river courses, not greatly different from what exist to-day.
Of the Bad Lands from which much of this story is learned Professor Charles E. Holmes, a poet whom all South Dakotans delight to honor, has written the following verses:—
The Bad Lands
A stillness sleeps on the broken plain,
And the sun beats down, with a fiery rain,
On the crust that covers the sand that is rife
With the bleaching bones of the old world life.
'Tis a sea of sand, and over the waves
Are the wind-blown tops of the Cyclops' caves;
And the mountain-sheep and the antelopes
Graze cautiously over the sun-burnt slopes.
And here in the sport of the wild wind's play
A thousand years are as yesterday,
And a million more in these barren lands
Have run themselves in the shifting sands.
Oh, the struggle and strife and the passion and pain
Since the bones lay bleached on the sandy plain,
And a stillness fell on the shifting sea,
And a silence that tells of eternity!
