South Dakota: A History

by John R. Milton

Gold sparked the major migration of white settlers to the Dakota Territory a century ago, but for South Dakota, grass proved to be the real bonanza. Today more and more Americans are coming to understand the almost mystical appeal of the horizon and the primitive pull of the earth that make South Dakota one of the few remaining places where the individual can enjoy real isolation and a sense of standing apart from the crowd. If you imagine South Dakota as a dry and dusty plains state, you are partly right, says author John Milton in this gracefully written history. But the image of flat, barren prairies fails to convey other qualities that have lured people there―the cool fragrance of the pine-covered Black Hills, the grand sweep of sky and earth on the prairie.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

Reviews

[Ayesha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great take on the history of the area

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Timeless work. Hard to believe it was written almost fifty years ago. The excerpts and anecdotes pulled from Kathleen Norris and Tom Brokaw in Chapter 9 were exceptional. Easily the most unexpected and moving part of the book. This Kathleen Norris quote in particular was beautiful.

“I love South Dakota too, although I don’t yet know it well. Gertrude Stein wrote that ‘In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes America what it is.’ … It is still the frontier and in part because of that it bears a troubled relationship to the rest of the country. I am still a New Yorker, becoming a Dakotan, moving East and West”

-Kathleen Norris (p.166)

I found the epilogue more of an encore than anything else, with this thought as relevant now as it was in 1977 when it was originally written:

“Because we plains people live in a large and open country, with both earth and sky spread out before us, we are closer in a physical sense to the earth and the sky than anyone else. In a spiritual sense we may even be unique. Never before in history has man stood with one foot in his primitive origins and the other poised on the moon…Whole new concepts have opened out before us, some of them staggering the imagination, and we haven't had time yet to become accustomed to our simple and immediate past. At the very least, it is disquieting to examine especially through the arts-our past, in an effort to discover who we are and to make our short tradition usable, while simultaneously facing space travel, the dangers of atomic warfare, and problems of hunger and employment in a world which, beyond our own little world, is over-populated. One way of training the imagination to comprehend past and future in an intellectual and emotional fusion is to study those regional writers who have attempted to understand who and what we are in terms of our origins and our landscape …so that in a generation or two our two worlds may come together in a particularly important insight.“

(p.182)

Eager to grab a copy of a few other books from the “state and nation” series.

[Frodo · Rating 4 out of 5]

We are planing for a family reunion this summer and I wanted to read some books about South Dakota. This was a very fine first read about the territory/state. I feel more eager to learn more about the people and history of this state as a result.

[Cameron Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

A pleasant read, as far as state histories go. Milton first published in ‘77. I’d be curious to read a history of S.D. over the last 50 years. I sense several of Milton’s cultural predictions have (happily) come true.