So I was on the lookout for stories about men and women and their kids who homesteaded on ground in and around the South Dakota Badlands. Not all ground covered in the Homestead Act was created equal, and lots of naïve European immigrant families were so taken with the idea of freedom in this new country that they took what they could get--and what they could get was sometimes lousy ground, so lousy the only nearby towns belonged to prairie dogs.
I found the memoir of the guy in this picture, who grabbed a parcel of Homestead land that must have been, as I imagine it, right about there at the entry to the Badlands National Park--if you come straight south from Wall, close enough to see the real Badlands but on the stretch of the prairies that border the park, real bad land, let me tell you, land not cut out for farming.
It's just a little book, and it's titled Homesteading in the South Dakota Badlands, 1912, "The Last Best West," memories penned by a man named Ernest G. Bormann. It's his story.
Two things about his story are really memorable. One of them is his description of his mother, Anne Rubin Boermann. She is literally statuesque, the Pioneer woman quintessentially. His description makes her sound like someone straight out of Giants in the Earth, with one huge difference. Unlike Beret, Per Hansa's doleful wife in Rolvaag's novel, a woman who finds life on the open prairie difficult (to say the least), Anne Rubin Boermann reigns a queen on her homestead, a "most extraordinary woman," her son says, a flat understatement.
Listen to this:
She did all the and dish-washing, the cleaning, the laundry, and all that housewives do--all of this without any modern conveniences [he's writing this as an old man in 1971, by the way]. The water for drinking, cooking, laundry, and bathing had to be carried into the house and all of the waste carried out. Fuel for the cookstove and heating had to brought in and ashes carried out. The smoke from coal and lamps created soot and dust the modern housewife does not content with.
And that's not all.
In addition to these chores, she always had a large garden and canned food for the rest of the year from it. She also took care of the chickens. She and the younger boys also milked the cows, separated the milk, and then she made cheeses. Many people bought her dairy products. Moreover, she helped with the butchering and made sausages.
He adds this:
I cannot remember ever having a pair of bought gloves or socks. My mother carded and spun wood and then knitted these items for the whole family.
And there was farm work:
She often helped round off the stacks of grain. We put the bundles into stacks before threshing.
For the record, Mr. Borman's father was 38 years old when his parents were married, his mother only 16. Try to imagine that without wincing. She was just a kid when he brought her out to Yankton County, South Dakota, where they established their first homestead. Through the years, the two of them had 10 children. His older brother was born in the granary because they were in a place where a house hadn't yet been built. His father was 62 years old when the last of the children--twin girls--were born in 1898. He was a German immigrant, who came to America with nothing but the shirt on his back, his son says. His parents were married in Illinois. She was also of German extraction, but they spoke differing dialects.
Ernest Bormann worships his mother: Looking back on it, I can't believe how much she did every day of her life. And she was always healthy and cheerful. I can't remember her ever saying she had a headache or had to lie down and rest.
Takes your breath away. Her life, as her son tells it, feels Herculean, beyond belief, mythic, and today almost lost. She wasn't alone on the Great Plains either. She may well have been alone on the ground her husband worked, but hers wasn't the only difficult life on the prairie.
But there's more to Mr. Borman's story, another side. That'll come on Monday.
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