that dakota winter
An interesting way to research conditions in De Smet during the Hard Winter of 1880-1881 is to read newspaper accounts, written both during the winter itself and years or decades later. As more time passed between experiences and the telling of them, the more desperate and even fanciful the accounts became. Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter is one woman's story.

This article from De Smet was published in May 1881.

On the 6th of May the first passenger train and the first freight train on the Dakota Central Railway reached us from the East since about January 18th. The first mail by cars came May 1st. On February 16th some letters were brought, but no papers, by six men who were sent out with a hand-sled from Tracy to Pierre - about 250 miles. They had a hard trip. The next mail came to De Smet March 4th, and was brought by team and sled. Papers and letters came then. March 6th was the pleasantest day we had had in three months. It thawed a little. March 15th I found snow over the top of my barn on two sides, and the horses snowed in, with seven feet of snow against the stable door. Notwithstanding the weather, hens then commenced laying. We have gritty chickens out here. Mail arrived again by horse and sled at this date, and continued to arrive in the same way about once in two weeks till May 1st. No mail was taken out from January 18th until March 10th. Why our letters were not allowed to go out by the same teams which went East for the mail nobody knows. There was a reason for it, probably, but we can only surmise.

In my diary of April 12th (and it is correct), is the memorandum: "Took, as it has twice a week for three months, till noon to feed and water two horses. Drifts this morning at barn above top of door; snow still flying some." On April 15th wild geese appeared in large flocks. April 16th I had my last sleigh-ride of seven miles; snow very soft and deep. From that date it thawed fast, and in a week the snow was all gone, except here and there a drift, and our dry lakes which abound in Kingsbury, and adjoining counties were suddenly filled with water, and every time the wind blows the whitecaps roll to the shore on the waves where last July we were all running mowers and cutting from two to six tons to the acre of the choicest round-stem hay, which, with no grain, has kept horses and cattle fat, all through the dreary winter. We shall have to cut blue-joint and fine hay on the higher land this year, and cannot get in such an overflowing abundance either, but shall probably have enough.

On April 25th, prairie fires were to be seen all about us. Ten days before the snow was twenty inches deep, or nearly that, on a level. The rapid change to dry prairie grass and fires seemed marvelous. We are now (May 6th) in the middle of sowing wheat, oats and planting potatoes.

The supply of flour on this road was exhausted about February 18th, and from that time till today everybody, nearly, has had to grind wheat in coffee mills for bread. Meat and sugar were long ago exhausted, except fresh beef, which disappeared only two weeks since. Soft coal had been $20 a ton, the last flour was $5 a hundred, and potatoes 75 cents a bushel and very scarce.

Until March the snow was so soft as to be impassible for horses, and the only way any one could go any where to any distance was to follow the railroad grade, which cold generally be found, and on which one could not get lost even where the road could not be recognized, for the telegraph poles were a guide to the general location of the track.

On April 18th the writer found a man who had a little yellow sugar, which he would not sell for money. He was shown eighteen fresh-laid eggs, and told that money would not buy them, but that three pounds of that sugar could. We traded. From the middle of March to the middle of April we drove horses and loaded sleighs on the crust of the snow. We had the best of roads over drifts from six to ten feet deep. Prior to that time we could hardly go anywhere.

The timber claim wheat has stood between us and starvation the past winter. The Timber Culture law provides that five acres of each timber claim (one claim every square mile) must be broken the first year and cultivated the next, and many of the settlers who came in a year ago -- and nearly all of us did -- were glad to put in a little wheat on these five acre patches. They sowed better than they knew. The price of wheat has been almost uniformly $1 a bushel.

The weather is delightful - 88 in the shade to-day - but the ever-present southwest winds cool one off so pleasantly, that he is surprised to learn that it is in fact a hot day.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:50 PM