It’s a Small World, After All

Organizing articles into specific issues of South Dakota History is a matter of timing, workload, word counts, and other factors. Always amazing to me is how frequently the pool of accepted manuscripts, and therefore the articles in a given issue, are connected in some way.

Often, articles on related topics—politics or American Indian subjects, for example—can be tied together in themed issues. In the Fall 2012 issue just off the press, however, the connections are more personal. The lead article, “‘Awake to all the needs of our day’: Early Women Lawyers in South Dakota” by Lisa R. Lindell, introduces readers to the lives and careers of nineteen women who pioneered in the legal profession in the state. Among them was Katie Rochford, who began her legal career in the 1890s by working in the law office of her uncle, Joe Kirby, in Sioux Falls. Kirby himself is the subject of the issue’s second article, “The Case of the German Socialist Farmers: Joe Kirby Challenges the Espionage Act of 1917,” written by one of his great-grandsons, Joe P. Kirby. Among other episodes in Kirby’s eventful legal career was his defense of thirty German Americans from Hutchinson County who were convicted of obstructing the war effort by circulating a petition against the draft during World War I. Kirby appealed their case to the United States Supreme Court and, in so doing, became the first lawyer in the country to challenge the Espionage Act on the basis of the First Amendment. The article also gives a glimpse into Kirby’s personal life, noting that he was a devout Catholic who donated his legal services to each bishop of the Sioux Falls Diocese, including Martin Marty, the subject of the issue’s third article. “The Catholic ‘Apostle of the Sioux’: Martin Marty and the Beginnings of the Church in Dakota Territory” is authored by Matthew Alan Gaumer, a native of North Dakota who studied history and theology at the University of Leuven in Belgium, which, by Northern Great Plains standards, at least, is practically a stone’s throw from Marty’s home monastery of Saint Einsiedeln in Switzerland.

Enjoy the Fall issue of South Dakota History. Who knows what other connections remain to be discovered.

JKO

A Small Sample from Sitting Bull, Prisoner of War

Just thought you might like a few paragraphs from the new book from the South Dakota State Historical Society Press, Sitting Bull, Prisoner of War, to whet your appetite for the whole thing!

“Rudolf Cronau left Fort Randall in mid-November 1881, but he was still there when an important visitor arrived to see Sitting Bull—the Vicar Apostolic of Dakota Territory, Bishop Martin Marty. At the end of May 1877, when he was still Abbot Marty, the bishop had visited Sitting Bull in Canada in an unsuccessful attempt to encourage the hostiles to surrender. Marty had become bishop on 1 February 1880 and undertook a tour of his diocese in the fall of 1881, visiting Indian agencies and white settlements. Because he was based at nearby Yankton, one of the first places he visited was Sitting Bull’s camp at Fort Randall. Apart from a brief mention in the Yankton Daily Press and Dakotaian, few details of this encounter are known. The newspaper reported that the bishop found the chief satisfied with treatment at the fort and ready to take up farming and teach his people this new way of life. Religion would naturally have come into the two men’s conversation, but the article does not indicate whether Sitting Bull wanted his people to be Christianized or not. Although the chief himself had no intention of converting, he might have agreed to the possibility in order to get the bishop on his side. Sitting Bull needed all the influential friends he could get.”

Of course, there’s plenty more where that came from, but we don’t want to give the whole thing away!