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European Settlement andEthnicity Patterns on theAgricultural Frontiers of

South Dakota

ROBERT C. OSTERGREN

The settlement of European immigrants on the agriculturalfrontiers of South Dakota largely took place in the years betweenthe end of the Civil War and the turn of the century. According tothe 1900 United States census, 401,570 people occupied SouthDakota at the close of that settlement era. Of that number, theforeign-born and their children (foreign stock) accounted for244,523, or over sixty percent of the total. This figure repre-sented the highest proportion recorded in any census of the state,and by the standards of most states at that time, it was a veryhigh proportion. Only a few states, mostly midwestern, couldclaim comparable foreign contributions to their populations. Amajor factor in the settlement of South Dakota was clearly theimmigration of agricultural settlers of northwest Europeanorigins. In a large sense, the culture of the state owes much totheir presence.

The aim of this study is to provide background information onthe temporal and spatial patterns of ethnic settlement in South

Copyright © 1983 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved.

50 South Dakota History

Dakota and on the role played by ethnic groups in molding thestate's distinctive agrarian society. For organizational purposes,the body of the essay is divided into three sections. The first dis-cusses the general processes that brought all of South Dakota in-to the settled ecumene of the Upper Midwest, for the settlementpatterns of South Dakota, or any other state, cannot be treated inisolation. The external forces that brought various groups to dif-ferent parts of the state must be seen in the context of develop-ments on midwestern frontiers in general. The second sectiondescribes the ethnic pattern that developed over time, focusingon the formation of communities and regional consciousnesswithin the boundaries of the state. The last section deals withethnic culture and its relationship to the agrarian society thatemerged in South Dakota by the early part of the twentieth cen-tury.

The Settlement Process

To be properly understood, the settlement of South Dakotamust be seen in the context of the settlement of the larger regionof which it is a part —the Upper Midwest. The states that makeup this region (Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and theDakotas) stand together in that they shared a common settlementexperience. All of them were opened to white settlement througha succession of related Indian treaties. Much of their land wasmade available to potential settlers through federal land policiesthat sought to foster a certain type of agricultural settlement. Allof them actively pursued recruitment strategies designed to lurenorthwestern Europeans to their agricultural frontiers. And, allof them ultimately fell under the economic control of the financialinterests (banking, milling, railroads) of the regional emporia atChicago, Milwaukee, and the Twin Cities, a situation that didmuch to shape their politics. Most importantly, the agriculturalcommunities of the region were often linked to one anotherthrough a complex pattern of migration.

The advance of settlement in the Upper Midwest was in no waysteady or relentless. On the contrary, it varied considerably in itsefficiency and direction over time. Temporally, it responded tothe boom and bust cycle of American economic conditions and,especially on the plains, to the cyclical pattern of climatic condi-tions. The frontier was known to retreat as well as advance. Spa-tially, the advance of settlement was influenced by a myriad of


European Settlement 51

factors —environmental preference, Indian relations, the courseof rivers and waterways, the colonization efforts of railroads andspeculators, and so forth. A map of the settlement frontier at anypoint in time is a map of salients and backwaters, rarely a distinctline.

In spite of these complexities, one can generalize about the con-figuration of the frontier for the region as a whole, and to do sofor 1860 —the approximate time when the midwestern frontierfirst impinged on the present-day boundaries of South Dakota-produces the following. Starting in Nebraska» the frontier fol-lowed the course of the Missouri River with the exception of awestward penetrating salient along the Platte River Valley. Far-ther north, the Missouri valley frontier took on a salient shapebased on Sioux City, Iowa, and penetrated northwestward intoDakota Territory to a point just beyond Yankton. From the baseof that salient, the frontier line swung sharply back into centralIowa, from where it swung gently northward to meet the Iowa-Minnesota border at roughly its midpoint. This rather abruptretreat left all of northwestern Iowa and southwestern Minne-sota well outside the settled ecumene. Farther north in Minne-sota, the line formed another westward pointing salient, basedthis time on New Ulm and extending up the Minnesota valleytoward Dakota Territory. A second Minnesota salient waslocated farther north. It followed the ecotone between the prairieand forest that extends in a broad arc from east-central Minne-sota to the Red River Valley of the North. From the base of thatsalient, the frontier meandered in a easterly direction across Min-nesota and Wisconsin to the shore of Green Bay on LakeMichigan,'

The configuration of the 1860 frontier has several implicationsfor the settlement of South Dakota. In the first place, it marks atemporary lull in the frontier process in the Upper Midwest. Thefrontier was destined to hold this position or, in some cases, evenretreat over the next half-dozen years as the nation fought theCivil War and as grasshoppers and marauding Indians buffetedthe frontier zone. This lull in migration meant that the initial set-tlements (1850s) in the Missouri valley and the lower Big Siouxvalley of Dakota Territory were more or less stillborn. Like all

1. See the Advance of Settlement maps in Robert C. Ostergren, "GeographicPerspectives on the History of Settlement in the Upper Middle West," Upper Mid-west History 1 (1981): 30-31.



midwestern frontiers during this period, they were cut off byevents from the life-giving commitment of capital and new set-tlers. Secondly, the tremendous lag in settlement advancement innorthwestern Iowa and southwestern Minnesota, which was areflection of the slow acceptance of open-prairie settlement in thepreceding decades, meant that the bulk of what was to becomeeastern South Dakota was about as far from the advancing fron-tier as it could be, a distance that would not be covered until thebeginning of the 1880s. Therefore, the early phases of settlementin Dakota Territory favored the Missouri valley and its tribu-taries on the one hand and the Red River Valley of the North, towhich one of the Minnesota salients pointed, on the other. Muchof eastern South Dakota was not destined to experience the in-itial settlement of the renewed waves of European immigrantsthat descended on the Midwest in the decade following the CivilWar. It would instead experience the later waves of immigrantsthat arrived in the 1880s and the 1890s or the children of theearlier waves, who at that time began to move westward from thematuring communities on the older frontiers of Iowa, Minnesota,and Wisconsin.

In the 1890s, the broad pattern of settlement advance in theUpper Midwest would again directly affect the South Dakota ex-perience. This time period witnessed another substantial slowingof the settlement process. The frontier, in fact, stalled roughlyalong the line of the Missouri River in the Dakotas and on theeastern margins of the Sand Hills in Nebraska. The only substan-tial settlement west of that line in 1890 was in Nebraska's PlatteHiver Valley and in the Black Hills enclave of extreme westernSouth Dakota. The halt was the result of a combination of factors,including the onset of drier, less hospitable environmental condi-tions on the western plains, the existence of large Indian reserva-tions directly in the path of further settlement advance, and amarked slowdown in the rate of agricultural immigration to theUnited States, which was linked to a period of contraction inAmerican agriculture.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the situationchanged and the advance of settlement resumed, taking the fron-tier across the western Dakotas and well into central Montana.The sources of agricultural pioneers had changed radically in theintervening years, however. Many of the settlers who settled thewest-river counties were of Old-American stock. A considerableproportion entered from the south and were part of an Americanmigration stream that had moved westward from the middle-



Atlantic states through the upper South and the Ohio valley toMissouri, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas. The influx of this ele-ment into the western Dakotas is evidenced today by a markednorthward bend to the linguistic boundary between middle-Atlantic and New England speech types that occurs along theMissouri valley in the Dakotas.^ The halt of settlement along theMissouri and the shift in migration patterns that occurred oncesettlement resumed resulted in a fairly distinct western bound-ary of ethnic settlement in South Dakota. While many exceptionsto the rule may be found, it is generally true that European set-tlement dominates the state east of the river, while a particularbrand of Old-American culture prevails west of the river. This dif-ference is an important factor in the tendency for South Dakotansto speak of "East River" and "West River" as separate regions orplaces.^

The progress of the settlement frontier in South Dakota ismapped in Figure 1, using data from the United States decennialcensuses. The standard two-persons-per-square-mile census defi-nition of settlement is used. The decennial isolines on the map re-flect much of what has been suggested by the regional patternsdiscussed above. By 1870, the counties of Yankton, Clay, Union,and part of Lincoln were the only ones that could be called settledusing the census definition. Much of the population had arrivedduring the years 1868-1873, a relatively prosperous period inAmerican history that saw the reestablishment of the old Sioux-City-based frontier salient along the Missouri and its northwardoffshoot along the lower reaches of the Big Sioux River Valley.*The advance had been abruptly terminated in 1873 when thecountry plunged into a major economic depression. The depres-sion was overtly precipitated by the financial collapse of theNorthern Pacific railroad in 1873. Even before that time, how-ever, a general uncertainty had manifested itself in congressionaldissatisfaction with railroad finances and land management infrontier areas. This situation had a retarding effect on settlement

2. See the general dialect maps in Harold B. Allen, The Linguistic Atlas oftheUpper Middle West (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1973).

3. The east-river/west-river regionalism is based on more than ethnic differ-ences. Significant differences in environment and economy also exist between thetwo halves of the state.

4. The early settlement of the salient, which had begun in 1858 following thetreaty with the Yankton Sioux, had been almost entirely abandoned by 1862 in theface of repeated Indian attacks, grasshopper plagues, and drought. The area was infact restored to the Indians for a short time after the Civil War,



in South Dakota in that it helped to kill a bid to secure a land-grant railroad from Yankton to the north via the James RiverValley. This failure not only deprived South Dakota of a land-grant railroad, it also eliminated the prospect of a rapid north-ward extension of settlement in the 1870s based on Yankton andforestalled railroad construction in general until the late 1870s.̂Also retarding the advance of settlement in the mid-1870s was aperiod of intense drought and grasshopper infestation.

The bulk of the east-river country underwent settlement dur-ing the period 1879-1886, a period of national prosperity that coin-cided with the approach of railroad construction along theeastern boundary of South Dakota and settlement in north-western Iowa and southwestern Minnesota. Known as the "GreatDakota Boom," the period is characterized by a very rapid east towest extension of the frontier, often spearheaded by the rail-roads, several of which were competitively laying a series ofmore or less parallel lines over the eastern half of the state. By1887, the east-river rail network was complete. The towns ofEureka, Bowdle, Gettysburg, Pierre, and Chamberlain markedthe western termini of the railroads and the temporary halt of thefrontier along the Missouri River." The only major areas east ofthe Missouri that were not settled by 1890 were reservations setaside for the Indians.

On the other side of the Missouri, most of the west-river coun-try still belonged to the Indians at the end of the 1880s. All but anarrow strip along the western boundary of the present statewas part of the Great Sioux Reservation. This narrow westernstrip included the Black Hills and the territory served by a num-ber of north-south running railways and trails that had beenestablished in conjunction with the range-cattle industry. Theopening of the west-river country to white settlement began in1889 with the extinguishment of Indian title to nine million acresof land on the Great Sioux Reservation. Relatively little agricul-tural settlement occurred before 1900, however, mainly due tothe lack of railway connections in the west and the continuedavailability of good agricultural lands farther east. Instead, theinitial opportunity went to the cattleman, and the west-rivercountry remained largely his domain until around 1902, whenhomesteading began in earnest.

5. John C. Hudson, "Two Dakota Frontiers." AuTials of the Association ofAmerican Geographers 63 (1973): 444-45.

6. Ibid.. p. 451.



Between roughly 1902 and 1915, a second Dakota boom saw thesystematic settlement of much of the so-called surplus lands ofthe western reservations. The map of settlement advance (Figure1) accordingly shows a substantial movement of the frontier west-ward from the Missouri and eastward from the Black Hills duringthe period 1900-1910. By 1910, the range-cattle industry hadlargely disappeared from the most important zone of new settle-ment that stretched between Pierre and the Black Hills, It re-ceded before the advance of dry-land agriculture and the new up-surge in railroad construction that linked the Black Hills with theold rail termini at Pierre and Chamberlain.

Thus, the agricultural settlement of South Dakota took placeduring three distinct boom periods-1868-1873, 1879-1886, and1902-1915. Because of the differential timing of these periods, thepool of potential settlers was quite different in each of the boomperiods. Each of the three corresponding settlement areas inSouth Dakota received a peculiar mix of immigrants determinedby the location of potential source areas and the direction ofexisting migration streams at the time.

The southeastern corner of the state, which was settled duringthe earliest period, received a heavy proportion of Old-American

Promotional efforts of the early twentiethcentury included post cards and flattering verses.

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stock. As much as one-half of the population in the southeasterncounties during the early 1870s was reportedly "Yankee."' Manywere veterans of the Union Army who had drifted to the frontierin the aftermath of the war. They were a naturally restless lot,and many did not remain in the area long. A smaller, but poten-tially more permanent, element of the population was immigrantand largely Scandinavian. The late 1860s and the early 1870s wasa time of heavy emigration from the poorer agricultural districtsof the Scandinavian countries. Much of it was motivated bydepressingly poor harvests and, in some cases, terrible famine.As a consequence, this emigration predominantly consisted offamily groups —a common characteristic of migration streamsmotivated by stressful circumstances. These immigrants came tothe Midwest with the intention of locating areas where theycould take land and settle permanently. In the southeastern coun-ties of South Dakota, they rather quickly formed large and ratherstable contiguous settlements, often displacing many of theearlier Yankee settlers.

Detailed study of the large Swedish settlement in Clay County,known as Dalesburg, found that most of its settlers were more orless direct immigrants from Europe.^ These people were any-thing but haphazard in the manner in which they made their wayto the Dakota frontier. They knew something of their destinationbefore they left Sweden and, depending on their resources,mapped out a fairly direct route to their ultimate destination. Infact, strong routes of migration were established early. Emi-grants who left provinces that had a long emigration history pro-ceeded to Clay County via settlements in Wisconsin, Minnesota,or Iowa where they knew people who had emigrated in earlieryears. Following some of these routes involved temporary stayswith friends and relatives along the way. Some who proceeded inthis fashion took several years to reach their ultimate destina-tion. Others, who had no friends or relatives in America, accom-plished the journey in a number of months. The important point isthat most of the Scandinavian settlers of this area were recent

7. Douglas Chittick, "A Recipe for Nationality Stew," in Dakota Panorama, ed.J. Leonard Jennewein and Jane Boorman (n.p.: Dakota Territory Centennial Com-mission. 1961), p. 96.

8. Robert C. Ostergren, "Prairie Bound: Migration Patterns to a Swedish Set-tlement on the Dakota Frontier," in Ethnicity on the Great Plains, ed. Frederick C.Luebke (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press for the Center for Great PlainsStudies. 1980). pp. 73-91.



immigrants who had relatively little experience with Americanculture and economy. They made their way to the Dakota frontierquite directly or by way of acquaintances that shared their cul-ture, and they settled down among people who had emigratedfrom the same agricultural regions of the homeland. The poten-tial for cultural maintenance in these settlements was according-ly quite considerable.

In contrast to the counties settled during the 1868-1873 period,the east-river counties that were settled during the Great DakotaBoom of the 1880s drew their populations from more diversesources. As in the southeastern counties, initial settlers were pri-marily Old-Americans, most of them from the old midwesternstates of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa, but alsosome from New York and parts of New England. Indeed, John C.Hudson found in his detailed study of Sanborn County that Iowa,Michigan, and New York State picnics were commonplace eventsduring the county's frontier heyday.' The evidence suggests,however, that the initial preponderance of Old-Americans soongave way to the foreign-born, who seemed to be more disposed topermanent settlement. In fact, Douglas Chittick claims that thesevere drought of 1886-1887 effected a substantial exodus of Old-American stock from the east-river counties that was replaced bythe continued arrival of European immigrants —thereby chang-ing the composition of population in eastern South Dakota in thecourse of just a few years."'

Compared to the southeastern counties, the composition of theforeign-born in the Great Dakota Boom region was not only morediverse, but, in general, this foreign-born population had come tothe Dakota frontier by less direct means. The earlier Scandinavi-ans were soon joined by Germans, Bohemians, Dutch, Swiss,Finns, and German-Russians, as well as many other groups. A sig-nificant proportion of these new immigrants had resided for sometime in the United States prior to their arrival on the Dakotafrontier. Many who settled during this period were children whohad accompanied parents to frontier settlements in Minnesota,Iowa, and Wisconsin twenty to thirty years earlier. As theseolder settlements matured in the 1880s, the pioneers' offspringoften found insufficient opportunity. As this cohort of childrenreached maturity, married, and looked for a means of livelihood.

9. Hudson, "Two Dakota Frontiers," p. 448.10. Chittick, "Recipe for Nationality Stew," p. 96.



they perceived that their best chances lay farther west on theDakota frontier. Although they were foreign-born and were stillinclined to marry and settle among their own kind, this genera-tion also had more experience with American ways and theAmerican agricultural economy than their parents. As a result,the potential for cultural maintenance in the new settlementswas less. This is not to say that the foreign-born population of thisregion of South Dakota was entirely a product of midwestern"stepwise" migration. Many still came directly off the boat, espe-cially among certain groups such as the German-Russians. On thewhole, however, the proportion of long-term American residentswas relatively high among the foreign-born who settled duringthe Great Dakota Boom.

The notion that midwestern migration to the frontier pro-ceeded in a stepwise fashion from settlement to settlement is anold one. Studies have consistently demonstrated that each fron-tier gave up its youth to a new western frontier roughly one gen-eration after its own settlement had been completed. In SouthDakota's major east-river land boom, therefore, the major re-cruiting areas were found in southeastern Minnesota, westernWisconsin, and east-central Iowa —regions that were densely set-tled by German and Scandinavian immigrants in the decadesbefore the Civil War. In fact, these areas were especially tar-geted for propaganda. Immigration officials, town agents, andrailroad agents commonly gave speeches, distributed pamphletsprinted in several languages, and set up exhibits at the agricul-tural fairs of these targeted regions throughout the late 1870sand the 1880s. Most territories competed in this way for settlers.The Dakotas were especially aggressive in this endeavor becausethey had to overcome a generally negative image of climatic ex-tremes, grasshoppers, and Indians.^'

In the case of the last Dakota boom (1902-1915), the migrationfields were again quite different. This time, settlers were re-cruited from the southern plains states, to some extent from theolder settlements in the east-river area, and, finally, from eastern

11. See John R. Milton, South Dakota: A Bicentennial History Wew York: W. W.Norton & Co,, 1977), pp. 82-85; Hudson. "Two Dakota Frontiers," p, 447; William H.Russell, "Promoters and Promotion Literature of Dakota Territory," South DakotaHistorical Collections 26 (1952): 434-55; Herbert S. Schell, "Official Immigration Ac-tivities of Dakota Territory," North Dakota Historical Quarterly 7 (Oct. 1932): 5-24;and Kenneth M. Hammer. "Come to God's Country: Promotional Efforts in DakotaTerritory, 1861-1889," South Dakota History 10 (Fall 1980): 291-309.



cities.'* Much of this last surge was motivated by the propagandaof the so-called dry-farming movement, which promoted the ideathat the semiarid western plains could be conquered agricultural-ly through the use of new dry-farming techniques such as deepplowing, cultivated fallow, and drought-resistant plant varieties.Many who came to the west-river area were disciples of the move-ment, but not experienced farmers. Recruitment was heavyamong ranchers, tenants, and agricultural laborers on the south-ern plains and among urban dwellers in the East who were at-tracted to the possibility of possessing a farm on one of America'slast frontiers. Many found dry-farming to be far more difficultand uncertain than they had anticipated and eventually left. Thehardy ones that persisted became the core of the west-river agri-cultural population.^' This population contained some foreign-born elements, but it was essentially very different from the pop-ulation east of the Missouri River.

When considering the migrations that brought settlers toSouth Dakota's agricultural frontiers, it is important to keep inmind that timing and information flow were the two crucial fac-tors that determined events. Timing meant that certain sourceareas, both in America and overseas, were "ripe" for migration tonew frontiers at certain times. The flow of information was im-portant in that people seldom left their homes for a new life in anunsettled land without first acquiring what they considered to bereasonably reliable information about their prospective destina-tion. Pioneers did not wander blindly into the unknown grass-lands. They apparently followed well-used information networksspecific to their ethnic group. These networks linked widely scat-tered settlements and enclaves in Europe and the Midwest andserved as an effective means of spreading information abouteconomic opportunity wherever it arose. Once a few members ofany group went to and settled in a new place, their success wasreported in the older American settlements or in Europe and un-certainty was reduced. The flow of emigrants to the new frontierthen proceeded with relative confidence because the information

12. For a recent discussion of the participation of the east-river settlements inthe last Dakota boom, see Herbert S. Schell, "Widening Horizons at the Turn of theCentury: The Last Dakota Land Boom," South Dakota History 12 (Summer/Fall1982): 93-117.

13. The best treatment of the dry farming movement and of the kind of settler at-tracted to it is found in Mary W. M. Hargreaves. Dry Farming in the NorthernGreat Plains, 1900-1925 (Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957).



feedbacks were private (letters and word of mouth) or, at worst,semipublic (foreign language newspapers) and were thereforetrustworthy. While "Dakota Fever" may have been widespread,the information and migration flows that led to the frontier werediscrete —as were the population subgroups that followed themand eventually occupied different parts of South Dakota.^*

The Ethnic Pattern

Accompanying this article is a series of maps (Figures 2-7) thatdepict the 1910 geographic distribution of the six most numerical-ly significant ethnic groups in the state. The maps are based ondata from the 1910 United States census, the timing of which islate enough to show both east and west-river distributions. Eachmap imparts two pieces of information. The first is the number ofpeople (circle size) residing in a county that belonged to a particu-lar ethnic group or "stock." Inclusion requires that the individualeither was born in the particular mother country or was theAmerican-born child of someone born in that country. The secondpiece of information is that group's proportion of the total foreignstock residing in the county (shading). In other words, both theraw numbers and the relative importance of groups can be seenat the same time.^''

A quick perusal of the maps will show that, even at the rela-tively gross scale of county data, a striking degree of localizationor segregation of groups exists. To a large extent, ethnic groupstended to colonize particular areas of the state. This tendency isespecially apparent in the eastern half of the state (one must bearin mind that the west-river patterns are difficult to interpretbecause the total foreign stock is usually a very small portion ofthe county population in the first place).'* Further, when ethnicgroups are mapped at the scale of the individual farm, the segre-gation is even more pronounced. With the aid of platbooks, ethnic

14. For an excellent treatment of the kind of information flows that brought set-tlers to the various Dakota frontiers, see John C. Hudson, "Migration to an Ameri-can Frontier," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 66 (1976):242-65. Swedish migration flows to Clay County are specifically treated in Oster-

, "Prairie Bound: Migration Patterns to a Swedish Settlement."15. Similar maps are published for the entire Upper Midwest in Ostergren, "Geo-

graphic Perspectives on the History of Settlement," pp. 32-34.16. In 1910. the foreign stock in South Dakota numbered 318,119 persons, or 54.4

percent of the total population of 583,888.


South Dakota History



land-ownership maps can be constructed with some labor (thenames of land owners must be cross-checked with names in themanuscript census in order to determine ethnicity) for any east-river county, and the result will be a "patchwork-quilt" pattern ofethnic clustering." Thus, a basic geographic fact of ethnic settle-ment is the residential segregation that resulted from the naturaldesire to seek out one's own kind and from the ever-present influ-ence of the information networks.

One of the first foreign groups to settle South Dakota in largenumbers was the Swedes. The bulk of the Swedish settlementwas in the eastern counties of the east-river area, with thestrongest concentrations in the extreme southeastern and north-eastern corners of the state. During the 1860s, the first settle-ments were established in Union, Clay, and Minnehaha counties.A substantial portion of these settlers were direct immigrantsfrom areas of agricultural distress in Sweden. Others came fromearlier established settlements in central Iowa and northern Illi-nois. During the Great Dakota Boom, the heaviest Swedish con-centrations developed in Grant, Roberts, Marshall, Day, andBrown counties. Many of these settlers were second-generationmigrants out of the large Swedish settlements of east-centralMinnesota and extreme western Wisconsin. The evidence alsosuggests some westward movement from east-river settlementsto selected west-river counties after the turn of the century.

The Norwegians, second only to the Germans, were one of thelargest ethnic groups in South Dakota in 1910 (Figure B). The Nor-wegian concentrations formed a more or less continuous band inthe "row counties" —the easternmost tiers of counties along theborder with Minnesota." The general geographical configurationof Norwegian settlement in the Upper Midwest is that of a sweep-ing arc stretching from south-central Wisconsin through centralMinnesota to the Red River Valley of the North. The clusteringalong South Dakota's eastern border is the westernmost exten-sion of the central segment of this Norwegian "arc of settlement."The first Norwegian settlements were located in the south-

17. See, for example, D. R. Salonen, "Taking Hold: A Study of Land Acquisition,Land Ownership and Community Development in Northeast Brookings County,1870-1916" (M.S. thesis. South Dakota State University, 1977). For an examplefrom Minnesota, see John G. Rice, Patterns of Ethnicity in a Minnesota County,1880-1905, University of Umea, Geographical Reports, no. 4 lUmea, Sweden, 1973).

18. Chittick, "Recipe for Nationality Stew," p. 135, uses the term "row counties"to describe the location of the heaviest Norwegian concentrations.



eastern counties of Union, Clay, and Yankton. As with theSwedes, these settlements received direct infusions of settlersfrom Norway, but linkages with older settlements in Iowa andWisconsin were also important. In the Great Dakota Boom, Nor-wegian settlement spread along the Big Sioux and James valleys.In the majority of the row counties, the Norwegian share of theforeign stock exceeded fifty percent. In Lincoln County, it ex-ceeded seventy-five percent. Many who settled these easterncounties came by way of the old Norwegian settlements in south-eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin, where considerablerecruitment efforts were undertaken by the Dakota TerritoryBureau of Immigration.''

The other Scandinavian group —the Danes —came via migra-tion paths similar to those of the Norwegians. Their SouthDakota settlements were essentially daughter settlements ofolder midwestern communities. The largest Danish settlementwas in the vicinity of Viborg in Turner County, where the Danishstock accounted for nearly half of the foreign stock in 1910(Figure 4). Major settlements were also established in Yankton,Clay, and Kingsbury counties. When the Danish distribution isadded to the Swedish and Norwegian, the extent of the Scandina-vian dominance all along the extreme eastern part of the state isapparent.

The Germans were the largest ethnic group, accounting forroughly one-fifth of the total foreign stock (Figure 5). If otherGerman-speaking groups are included, such as the German-Russians, the Swiss, and the Austrians, the German element inthe state probably exceeded one hundred thousand in number orone-third of the total. More so than any other group, the Germansdeveloped settlements nearly everywhere in the state, includingthe west-river counties. The Germans were also less inclined tocome in groups, migrating often as single families or individualsinstead. They arrived in the state in a more or less continuousstream that spanned all settlement booms. Both Wisconsin and Il-linois were important staging areas. Because of the great lengthof time that Germans had been arriving in the United States,many Dakota settlers were third generation. Many also camefrom blue-collar, nonfarm backgrounds in or around the industrialcenters of Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Saint Louis, Milwaukee,and Chicago. One researcher has suggested that of all groups, the

19. See Schell, "Official Immigration Activities," p. 19.



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Germans, when taken as a whole, were the least likely to havehad prior agricultural experience in America.^"

One of the major and most cohesive ethnic groups was theGerman-Russians. The German-Russians were Russian-born,German-speaking people who emigrated from the large Germanagricultural colonies established in the south of Russia byCatherine II and Alexander I during the late eighteenth andearly nineteenth centuries. The German colonies in Russia wereconcentrated in two areas —the Volga region and the regionnorth of the Black Sea. These colonies had been settled by indus-trious peasants from various parts of Germany, Switzerland, andthe low countries. Throughout the nineteenth century these colo-nies remained exceptionally close-knit. They preserved their Ger-man culture as well as their religious predilections. Most colonieswere wholly Catholic or Protestant. Many belonged to rather ex-clusive Protestant movements, such as the Hutterites and theMennonites.

The German-Russians arrived in South Dakota in considerablenumbers during the late 1870s and developed an especially strongimmigrant flow in the late 1880s. The geographic distribution ofGerman-Russian stock {Figure 6) is a strongly segregated one,with two major east-river concentrations —one in the southerncounties of Yankton, Bon Homme, Turner and Hutchinson; theother in the northern counties of Campbell, McPherson, Wal-worth, and Edmunds. Both concentrations have later extensionslocated in the west-river counties immediately to their west. TheGerman-Russians made their way to South Dakota via extremelyeffective and discrete migration routes. They were lured to theregion in part by railroad agents and immigration officials whoprized the German-Russians for their exceptional reputation asagriculturalists. But they were also rather careful in the selectionof settlement sites, commonly sending small groups ahead tolocate and secure land before larger numbers arrived.^' Thus, theGerman-Russians moved almost exclusively within a network ofcolonies established by their own kind and virtually closed to out-siders." According to John C. Hudson, it was not uncommon in

20. Hudson, "Migration to an American Frontier." p, 248.21. For a description of this practice, see G. August Bischoff, "A 1909 Report on

Russian-German Settlements in Southern Dakota," trans. Anton H. Richter,South Dakota History 11 (Summer 1981); 186-89.

22. See the mapped migration routes of German-Russians in Hudson, "Migrationto an American Frontier." p, 246. See also the discussion and maps of settlementpatterns in Anton H. Richter, " "Gebt ihr den Vorzug': The German-Lanuage Pressof North and South Dakota," South Dakota History 10 (Summer 1980): 189 92.



Wagonloads of sackedgrain await shipmentfrom Eureka, a German-Russian community inMcPherson County and animportant shipping pointfor wheat in the 1890s.

the early part of this century to find individuals in the German-Russian settlements who had lived at one time or another in all ofthe established Dakota settlements. Nearly everyone had rela-tives in each settlement area."

23. Hudson, "Migration to an American Frontier," p. 247.

The main streetof Eureka featured

many German-namedbusinesses such

. , , as this earlydrugstore.



In South Dakota, most German-Russians came from the BlackSea colonies. The Volga group was more commonly found in theplains states located farther west and along the Pacific coast.Only a few of the Volga group settled in the state, primarily in thewest-river counties of Perkins and Harding. The first German-Russian settlements were located near Yankton. Separate colo-nies were founded northwest of Yankton by Protestant and Cath-olic groups that arrived in the mid-1870s. Subsequent settlementswere founded later in that decade around Tyndall, Menno, andFreeman. These clusters served as a staging area for later expan-sions during the 1880s to places farther west and into the coun-ties along both sides of the border with North Dakota. Includedamong the German-Russians were colonies of Mennonites andHutterites —highly cohesive Anabaptist groups, the latter ofwhich organized its settlements on a communal model.

More than any other group, the German-Russians successfullytransplanted the culture, social organization, and agriculturalpractices they had known in the homeland. While the Americanland-survey system discouraged the compact agricultural vil-lages that they were accustomed to in Europe, they still foundednumerous small agricultural hamlets that effectively served asfocal points in their settlements. As in Russia, these hamletswere closely identified with certain regional and religious back-grounds. The economic life of the German-Russian settlements,however, was not completely closed. They are credited withbringing new forms of wheat culture to the semiarid grasslands.Their settlements became important centers for the diffusion ofthis culture and important shipping points for the early bountifulharvests of the new wheat varieties.

The other sizeable non-English-speaking group to settle inSouth Dakota was the Bohemians. Although listed in the 1910United States census as Austrians, the Bohemians were the ma-jor representative of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to settle inthe state (Figure 7). Theirs was a highly organized settlementprocess. The earliest contingents were organized in Chicago andproceeded westward to Knox County, Nebraska, and Bon HommeCounty in South Dakota. These early settlements were estab-lished in the late 1860s and early 1870s and were fairly direct mi-grations from the old world to the new. A large and compact set-tlement eventually developed around Tabor in Bon Homme Coun-ty. Subsequent migration in the 1880s resulted in additional set-tlements in Charles Mix, Gregory, and Brule counties, with many



of the settlers coming from older settlements in Wisconsin andIowa. The Bohemians were somewhat of an exception to thelargely Protestant mix in South Dakota in that they were pre-dominantly Roman Catholic.

One other major ethnic group with more than ten thousandstock in 1910 was represented in South Dakota —the Irish(11,422). It is difficult, however, to say anything remarkable aboutthe distribution of this distinctive, but easily assimilated,English-speaking group. They were not known as agriculturalistsin the Upper Midwest, and they seldom established close-knithomogeneous enclaves as other groups did. Rather, their distri-bution was ubiquitous (they represent roughly one to two percentof the foreign stock in virtually every county, both east and westriver) and frequently oriented to local requirements for day laborand nonagricultural work in the towns.

Other groups of some size include the Dutch (5,285), who large-ly arrived as second-generation migrants from Dutch settlementsin Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. The first Dutch settlement wasin Bon Homme County in 1873. Sizeable Dutch settlements werelater established in Douglas and Charles Mix counties. DouglasCounty eventually contained the major concentration with theDutch accounting for 19.2 percent of the foreign stock in thatcounty in 1910. Also of local significance were the Finns (1,381).Finnish settlements of some size in the east-river counties werelocated at Lake Norden in Hamlin County and in Savo Townshipof Brown County. Like most Finnish agricultural communities inthe Midwest, they were populated by Finns who had spent timein the industrial mining communities of Michigan, Wisconsin, andMinnesota. A third group of Finns took up residence in the north-ern Black Hills. Other small ethnic groups of less than one thou-sand persons occasionally supported a compact settlement ortwo, such as the Poles who had a settlement in the northern partof Day County, which was a daughter settlement of earlier com-munities in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The ethnic pattern in South Dakota was a pattern of enclaves— a patchwork quilt —produced by the patterns of informationflow and migration that brought settlers to the state." The in-triguing thing about the pattern is the realization that each of

24. For an idea of the pattern of ethnic enclaves, see the maps in Chittick,"Recipe for Nationality Stew," pp. 104-6, and in Richter, " "Gebt ihr den Vorzug,' "p. 190. I



These Finnish immigrants settled in Savo Township in Brown County.

these enclaves was a cultural and social entity, held together bythe ties of kinship, culture, church, and linkage with other places.The nature of the environment, American social institutions, andthe American economic system determined that the character ofthese immigrant agricultural communities would change overtime. The general trend of that change and the difference be-tween places in effecting that change is the essence of the impactof South Dakota's ethnic groups on its culture and economy.

Ethnicity and Rural Life

The patchwork-quilt pattern of ethnic settlement in SouthDakota was quickly institutionalized by the immigrant church. In-deed, one of the first undertakings in most immigrant settle-ments, beyond that of insuring survival, was the founding of achurch. Organizational meetings commonly took place in a set-tler's home and were conducted by laymen because of the short-age of clefgy in pioneer settlements. Usually, the new congrega-tion's membership grew rapidly. A permanent building was soonerected and a call sent out for a permanent minister of the faith.



In a short time, most immigrant settlements supported at leastone organized religious establishment,^^ Doctrinal differencesand schism often fostered the establishment of more than one (es-pecially among the Norwegians who seem to have been greatlyinclined toward schismatic activity).

These churches and the spatial distribution of their member-ship, which normally coincided with the bounds of the ethnic set-tlement, defined a functional region with the church as the nodalpoint. At this time, no other institution on the frontier couldserve this essential purpose of solidifying the ethnic settlementinto a focused community. Townships, arbitrarily defined by theland survey, lacked the necessary social relevance. Towns inSouth Dakota were more often than not sited by the railroads andwere intended to facilitate commerce, not social consciousness.Granges, cooperatives, and farmer's associations came much tolate to provide social cohesiveness. Thus, depending on the cul-tural homogeneity of the local population, the membership field

25, For a good description of this process as it applied to German-Russian com-munities in southeastern South Dakota, see Bischoff. "1909 Report on Russian-German Settlements." pp. 193-98.

A large Swedish settlement supported the BloomingdaleSwedish Baptist Church near Centerville, South Dakota.


The German Reformchurch in Chancellor,South Dakota, is oneof many similarsti^ctures that dottedthe plains. Below,the interior of aScandinavian churchin the Black Hillsfeatured an altarP'linting in an elab-orately carvedwooden frame.



of the rural church congregation often took on an exclusive char-acter. Its well defined boundaries were a reflection of the ties ofkinship, culture, and linkage with other places that identified thegroup that settled there.

In addition to this tendency to define "place" and "community,"the church upheld values and preserved continuity with the cul-tural past. Services in rural immigrant churches were commonlyheld in ethnic languages well into the early part of the twentiethcentury. Church schools instructed the young in the old language,and congregations postponed for as long as possible the inevita-ble need to begin keeping official records in English. Immigrantchurches observed the old holidays and preserved the traditionalmusic and customs. Women's organizations provided the opportu-nity to carry on folk crafts. From the pulpit, the clergy remon-strated against the use of alcohol, loose morals, and casual associ-ation with outsiders. While the outside world could not beavoided forever, the church functioned as the first, and in someways the only, defense against rapid change.^''

As it performed these functions that were so basic to culturalmaintenance, the church also became a symbolic place and struc-ture on the landscape. In South Dakota's open plains, the churchbuilding was the dominant structure on the landscape, with thepossible exception of the grain elevator. With its white clapboardsiding and gleaming spire, it was visible for miles, as any travelerof the backroads of the state can attest. Although most countrychurches in South Dakota were quite similar in architecturalstyle, because building styles in the United States had becomemore or less standardized by the latter half of the nineteenth cen-tury, there were considerable efforts on the part of immigant set-tlers to add symbolic pieces of ornamentation to the outside.These usually took the form of special kinds of crosses or carv-ings on the tower (much of which disappeared in a rush of remod-eling that took place after World War II, but can still be seen inold photographs or found discarded in church basements). Moreso than the exteriors, the interiors of country churches were dec-orated to resemble the cultural past. Carvings and decorativewoodwork modeled after some parish church in Europe, altarpaintings brought from the old country, and foreign-language in-scriptions on ceilings and walls were commonplace features. In a

26. Robert C. Ostergren, "The Immigrant Church as a Symbol of Community andPlace in the Upper Midwest," Great Plains Quarterly 1 (Fall 1981): 228.



sense, one might even say that the contrast between the exteri-ors and the interiors of the immigrant churches symbolized whatwas happening to the immigrants themselves —they were becom-ing outwardly American and inwardly ethnic."

In any case, the central role of the church as a conservativeforce that defended cultural continuity with the past cannot beoverestimated. It was the key to cultural maintenance and localidentity in all immigrant communities. Its relative strength wasan important factor in determining the rate of cultural change. Ameasure of its local importance is the great number of countrychurches erected. By the turn of the century, many Americanchurch leaders lamented the fact that the American Midwest wassimply "overchurched."^^ In recent decades, as people have leftthe countryside in increasing numbers and communities havebeen forced to merge, the abandonment of country churches is astark reminder of the different social order that once existed."

Without doubt, a strong ethnic, social, and cultural life, builtaround church and kinship, persisted well into this century inmany parts of South Dakota. There was, of course, variation inthe degree of persistence from group to group and from place toplace, which is difficult to generalize about without an exhaustivestudy of the many communities. As suggested earlier, the vari-ance was related to the background and migratory experience ofeach settlement in question. Cohesive groups that traveled exclu-sive paths to the Dakota frontier, such as the German-Russians,can be expected to have maintained their ethnic distinctivenesslonger. At the other extreme, there were many German settle-ments, for example, in which the inhabitants had rather scatteredorigins and a lengthy experience with America. Another signifi-cant factor seems to be proximity to urban centers. The largercities cast a shadow, so to speak, over the ability of a communityto look inwardly on itself. On the other hand, this writer has no-

27. For a discussion of architectural style in rural church construction in theUpper Midwest, see ibid., pp. 229-30.

28. Ibid., p. 225.29. South Dakota had 2,180 church organizations in 1916 with 199,017 members.

Church membership in that year amounted to 28.5 percent of the total state popu-lation. It is generally thought that any "churched population" figure that ap-proaches 30 percent is extremely high since most congregations report only adultcommunicant membership. For a complete statistical treatment of South Dakotareligious bodies in 1890, 1906.1916. and 1936. see Donald D. Parker, Denomination-al Histories of South Dakota ([Brookings]: South Dakota State University, [1964]),pp. 261-78.



ticed that although ethnic identity may fade in these old settle-ments, attachment to place and community persists. If one asksrural South Dakotans who they are, they will most likely give youthe name of a place, not a group, and will express some affinity tothat place. In many ways, the change that has occurred in thiscentury has been a transferral of identity from ethnicity to place,which is really only a change of labels. The rediscovery of ethnic-ity today, which is so evident almost everywhere, is really quiteplastic —it is a fashionably nostalgic label for localism.

Polemics aside, it is quite reasonable to describe most of SouthDakota's early twentieth century rural immigrant society as so-cially and culturally ethnic, but economically American. At thattime, most rural neighborhoods were still quite parochial andinward-looking socially. Interaction with other groups was gener-ally difficult, mainly because of cultural values and prejudices.Most studies of ethnic intermarriage, for instance, find that itgenerally did not occur in rural areas until school consolidation inthe twentieth century brought larger numbers of young peoplefrom different ethnic groups into contact with one another. An-other inhibiting factor was that the church controlled the mar-riage process, and most immigrant churches had rather exclusiveideas about the whole subject of marriage outside the commu-nity. In his study of intermarriage among ethnic groups in NorthDakota, John C. Hudson found that endogamy was the rule for allgroups. In comparing groups, he found that the German-Russianswere the most endogamous, followed by the Norwegians. TheOld-Americans were the least endogamous.^'' While social contactacross community and ethnic boundaries may not have been awidespread practice, social contact among the migration linkagesbetween communities in various parts of the Midwest was com-mon. Thus, marriages between young men who homesteaded inthe Dakotas and young girls in older settlements in Minnesota,Wisconsin, or Iowa was an established pattern, as was the prac-tice of taking a spouse in the old parish back in Europe. The majorarea of social contact between ethnic groups in South Dakota wasthe market town, which was basically a Yankee place and there-fore neutral ground. This situation did not change until mass re-tirement among the settler generation caused large numbers ofcountry folk to take up residence in town.

While a certain cultural identity and social aloofness was read-ily maintained, most immigrant farmers became Americanized

30. Hudson. "Migration to an American Frontier." pp, 256-58.



rapidly when it came to economic life. In part, it was the encoun-ter with an alien environment that caused them to abandon theagricultural techniques and tools they had always known. Withthe exception of the German-Russians, few Dakota settlers hadmuch experience with the open prairie or the semiarid plains.Nearly all dealt with the task of drawing a living from the new en-vironment by engaging in experimentation and by borrowingideas from others, especially the Americans. The prairie simplycould not be conquered by equipment and agricultural practicesknown to people who had essentially farmed a woodland environ-ment. A case in point, cited by Hudson, is the bill of lading for an"emigrant car" (box car) hired by a Norwegian farmer namedElkens when he moved his family to the Dakota frontier nearFargo in 1888. Elkens took two cows, two calves, a barrel of saltpork, a cook stove, 250 fence posts, a mower, a corn planter, a cul-tivator, a breaking plow, and miscellaneous items.^' He obviouslyintended to experiment, as did most settlers. In fact, the firstcrops recorded all across the Dakotas exhibit no significant varia-tion from national trends or between ethnic groups. Most studieshave found that complete adaptation was the rule. The only evi-dence for ethnic preference comes in the form of what Terry G.Jordon calls "cultural rebound."^^ The idea here is that once eco-nomic stability was assured by successfully mastering the stand-ard American crops and techniques, the immigrant was some-times disposed to dabble in older practices and crops as a second-ary endeavor, but never as his main effort to keep his familyalive.

Economic adaptation was also encouraged by the fact that theimmigrant farmer ultimately had to deal with the Americans ineconomic matters. The seed dealer, the implement dealer, thegeneral merchant, the banker, the elevator operator, and, at leastin the early days, even the elected officials in the trade town wereall Americans. Business was conducted in town on Americanterms. Thus, we must take care not to go too far in our impres-sions of ethnic pluralism. The landscape may have been a patch-work quilt of tiny communities whose inhabitants spoke only toone another, but they all belonged to a larger economic commu-nity, which was the trade area of the local town. In this largercommunity, other considerations took precedence.

31. Ibid., p. 251.32. Terry G. Jordan, German Seed in Texas SoiL- Immigrant Farmers in

Nineteenth-Century Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966), pp. 199-201.



One could say that the immigrant farmer lived simultaneouslyin two worlds —a social-cultural world based on kinship, religion,and continuity with the past and an economic world that wasmodern and alien, but absolutely essential. It was along the inter-face between these two worlds that change took place. Any activ-ity that occupied the boundary zone between these worlds couldbe stressful to the first. A good example is land inheritancebecause land could be looked upon in two ways. It could beviewed entrepreneurially as a source of speculation or quick prof-it. In this sense, material advantage might outweigh communaland noneconomic goals. In another sense, land could be viewed asthe giver of life —a symbol of familial accomplishment and iden-tity in the community. Here, the ultimate goal would be its order-ly inheritance in the interest of maintaining family and commu-

CZECH

The street signs inTabor, South Dakota,

illustrate a modemblend of cultures in

an area heavilysettled by Bohemians

(Czechs/.

HOMC COOnCO FOODP0LL5



nity continuity. Issues such as this were crucial to what happenedin ethnic communities across the state, and studies have shownthat the response could be highly

ConclusionEuropean immigrants played a significant role in the agricul-

tural settlement of South Dakota and in the shaping of its ruralculture. A major aim of this article, however, has been to pointout that the role they played was as highly varied as their origins,the timing of their arrival, and the homogeneity of their settle-ments. To generalize too much about the propensity of any na-tional group to maintain its culture in this new environment is anuncertain endeavor because every settlement was the product ofdiscrete migration and information flows that linked it to otherplaces in the Midwest and in Europe. Accordingly, its populationhad a particular past association with American culture and envi-ronments, with European culture and environments, and with theexperience of migration under the conditions existing at a certaintime. It is the great variety of these factors in South Dakota set-tlement history that makes its rural communities so distinctiveand fascinating.

33. For a full discussion of land inheritance practice as a determinant of culturalmaintenance in immigrant rural communities, see Robert C. Ostergren, "Land andFamily in Rural Immigrant Communities," AnTials of the Association of AmericanGeographers 71 (1981): 400-411.


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All illustrations in this issue are property of the South Dakota State Historical Society except those on the following pages: cover, from James Pollock, Pierre; pp. 15, 16, 17, 19, from Lynn Marie Alex, Fort Meade; pp. 118, 153, from South Dakota Cooperative Extension Service, Brookings; p. 143, from Farm, Stock, and Home, 15 Nov. 1920.

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