The Old-fashioned Fourth of July · Small-town Celebrations prior to 1930 text by JOHN Ë. MILLER From earliest recorded history, celebrations and holidays have punctuated people's

118 South Dakota History

The Old-fashionedFourth of July:A Photographic Essay; onSmall-town Celebrations

prior to 1930

text by JOHN Ë. MILLER

From earliest recorded history, celebrations and holidayshave punctuated people's work routines and highlightedtheir calendars. Every civilization has taken time from itsround of daily work for communal rest and relaxation.Although a central function of holidays has been to providerelief from toil, their origins have often been more compli-cated, deriving from religious requirements and impulses.In the United States, Christmas and Easter emerged as thetwo most important religious holidays. Since the 1800s, thecelebration of our nation's founding —Independence Day —has been the greatest secular holiday.

Like Memorial Day and some other holidays, July Fourthpresents many religious trappings that make it hard to dis-tinguish between the sacred and the secular. Similarities toreligion can be seen in the centrality of the day's symbolism(flag and American eagle), in the glorification of its patronsaints (Washington and Lincoln), in its special emphasis onthe word (the Declaration of Independence), in its mission-ary fervor (United States as redeemer of the world), and inits power to weld people together in community. As the hon-orable Edward Frawley told a large crowd in Central City,South Dakota, on the Fourth of July in 1904: "Well may thebells of church and state pick up the notes of the liberty belland mingle their mellow chimes in one grand anthem of joy.

JEJi- Days like this are the educational days of patriotism" iDecui-wood Daily Pioneer Times, 6 July 1904).

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Copyright © 1987 by the South Dakota State Historical Society. All Rights Reserved.

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False-fronted atore buildings dominated Main Street in eariy day Presho. Arrowspoint to Pete Clausen and Ole Seversort, winners of riding contests at the 1906Fourth of July celebration. Cowboy hats arid horses reflected the old cow cultureof the area, while suits and ties represented a more formal civilization importedfrom the East

By the time the frontier reached Dakota Territory in the1860s, Independence Day had become well entrenched backEast. The practice of commemorating the Fourth had slowlytaken hold during the years after 1776, spreading widelyafter the adoption of the Constitution and becoming com-mon after the War of 1812. (Not until 1941 did an act of Con-gress formally establish it as a national holiday.) From theearliest days of settlement in Dakota Territory, peoplemade a big event of the Fourth of July. It had been a high-light of the year where the pioneers came from, and to cele-brate it in Dakota reminded them of their former friendsand neighbors and helped establish an aura of familiarityamidst their new surroundings. The festive day tied Dako-tans to their pasts as well as to the national culture, helpingthem to feel comfortable in places that were not conduciveto comfort during the early years.

The frontier observance of the Fourth of July createdsomething of a paradox. Â celebration whose origins lay in aradical departure from previous traditions and whose prin-cipal value was liberty and freedom became standardized in



While most people still depended on horse-drawn transportation in 1910,more than a dozen bedecked automobiles enlivened the Fourth of Julyparade in Estelline. Andrew Halseth, portraying Uncle Sam. led the pa-rade up Main Street, fallowed by the Toronto band and a number offloats and autos.

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a form that reinforced stability and regularity, order andpredictability. By 1910, when the little town of Estelline ineast-central South Dakota celebrated the Fourth, one couldeasily have predicted what the day would be like. Whileeach town gave its festivities a personal touch, invariablythe program included a parade, a speech (often accompaniedby the reading of the Declaration), lunch, a baseball game orgames, street sports, fireworks, and a dance. Seldom wereany of these elements omitted. Often, horse racing, fire-brigade contests, band music, acrobatic and high-wire dem-onstrations, and other types of entertainment were also in-cluded.

The day combined high patriotic pageantry with fun andgames. It was hard to tell where one ended and the otherbegan, but over the years the entertainment functions clear-ly took on more and more importance. On 1 July 1910, theEstelline Tribune advertised the forthcoming big day as"one continual round of pleasure." People began gatheringfrom a thirty- or forty-mile radius almost as soon as the suncame up. Trains from both directions brought people fromBrookings, Bruce, Aurora, Elkton, Castlewood, Watertown,Henry, Clark, Redfield, and other towns and rural areas. Byten o'clock on the Fourth, downtown Estelline was crowdedwith people, and the parade (reportedly almost half a mile inlength) wended its way up Main Street from the south end oftown to the north end. Floats representing various storesand more than a dozen automobiles decked out in buntingand flags followed Andrew Halseth, who was dressed up asUncle Sam, and the Toronto band.

After the parade, the crowd gathered at the bowery for aprogram of band and choir music, the reading of the Declara-tion of Independence, and an address by Reverend A. L.Curtis. Afterwards, the Estelline Tribune reported on 8July, the crowd dispersed to eat lunch in the town's hoteland restaurants or from picnic baskets under shady trees.At one o'clock, the ball game between Toronto and Castle-wood began over by the grandstand. Nearby, the pacers andtrotters attracted a large audience, with local horses goingup against those from as far away as North Dakota. Later,everyone walked or rode back to Main Street to participatein and watch "the real fun" of the street sports, includingfoot races, potato races, and a tug-of-war. A bologna-eatingcontest also entertained the crowd. At a bowery dance that


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Fourth of July 123

Main street was usually the center of action on Independence Day in SouthDakota. Above left, cars and people jammed Winner's main thoroughfare in1916. In Strandburg in 1912 (abovel. the La Bolt Comet Band led the paradeand furnished the music for the day. Baseball and Iitdependence Day werealso inextricably linked in South Dakota In 1912. a large crowd attendedthe Fourth of July game at Eagle Butte (below). Sometimes, large purseswere offered for the winners of such holiday games.



evening, Lester's Orchestra of Watertown furnished themusic.

Festivals like the one described above bound the commu-nity together. Collective rituals reinforced traditional socialvalues while simultaneously promoting patriotism and civicenthusiasm. What originated as a celebration of Americannationalism emerged over the years as a vehicle for localpride and boosterism. Each town tried to outdo its neigh-bors in putting on a memorable show. Sometimes city gov-ernment helped finance the program, but more often it wasthe main-street businessmen who pitched in to invite enter-tainers, bands, fire companies, baseball teams, and otherattractions to make it the most "go-lor-ious" Fourth everheld anywhere.

Sometimes the festivities were spread out over severaldays. Winner businessmen organized a "Grand MidsummerCarnival of Fun" from July third through the sixth in 1916,promising that it would "absolutely eclipse anything hither-to attempted in this line" {Winner Advocate, 15 June 1916).Four days of vaudeville acts, comedy acrobatics, tumbling,aerial shows, ball games, band concerts, foot and horse rac-ing, old-time sports, a "Grand Floral Automobile Parade,"rough-riding contests, roping contests, and a wild weststampede preceded a "Grand Indian Encampment and PowWow," which itself included Indian sports of all kinds, shambattles, Indian dances, a parade, and "a genuine Indian bar-becue." The local paper approvingly noted that despite asmany as five thousand people on hand for some of theevents, the crowds behaved in an orderly manner, for whichthe police chief and his force deserved much credit (WinnerAdvocate, 15 June-13 July 1916).

Maintaining order and decorum during festivities thatnaturally invited exuberant displays of emotion was notalways an easy task. Boisterous races and competitions,hard-fought baseball games, excessive consumption of alco-hol, and enthusiastic release of pent-up emotions wereamong a variety of things that threatened tranquility.Always, the real danger of injury existed from the seeming-ly ubiquitous firecrackers. Fireworks caused so manyinjuries and deaths by the early 1900s that a concertednational drive emerged for a "safe and sane" holiday. Edito-rializers constantly pounded the theme, warning of "thefearful slaughter" that had marked every Fourth of July for


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1At this wheelbarrow race down the main street of Belvidere in 1909, hatsappear to have been obligatory. Races and athletic competitions of all kindswere an important part of the early Fourth of July celebrations.

a generation {Sioux Falls Daily Argus-Leader, 3 June 1910).As time went on, persuasion gave way to coercion or othermethods of prevention. By proclamation, the mayor ofBrookings prohibited the sale of fireworks in 1917, and dur-ing the First World War, the South Dakota Council of De-fense banned them {Brookings Register, 24 May 1917, 27June 1918). During the twenties, the State Insurance De-partment pointed out the large number of deaths andinjuries from fireworks, while the Aberdeen Teachers'Association moved to prohibit their sale locally [MillerPress, 2 June 1921, 8 March 1923).

"Year by year the old-fashioned Fourth of July with spit-ting cannon and sizzling rocket against a blue-biack sky isbecoming more and more of a memory," Aubrey Sherwoodeditorialized in the De Smet News on 20 June 1930. "TheFourth of July which small boys and girls awaited as eager-


126 South Dako ta His tory

Parade ßoats, like this one at Lemmon in 1908. were colorfully deco-rated in red, white, and blue. Here. Mabel Bigham as the "Goddess ofLiberty" portrayed the American ideal of freedom.

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Patriotism and commer-cialism often blended inuneasy fusion on theFourth of July. AtSalem in 190i. the Tyler

Hallas float (frontright and belowl adver-tised the Majestic range,a standard at the time,with all the ceremonialtrappings of the day. Asthe float traveled downthe street, the woman inthe chef's hat made hotbiscuits and passedthem out to the crowd.



ly as Christmas itself, a day of toy torpedo» of celluloid-collared orators, and ice cream socials, has been trans-formed into an Independence Day of quiet and dignity."Sherwood worried that some of the meaning was going outof the day as it increasingly became more and more a day ofquiet relaxation and rest.

The meaning of the old-fashioned Fourth of July remainedvivid in the memory of Laura Ingalls Wilder, however, whomoved from De Smet to Mansfield, Missouri, in the yearAubrey Sherwood was born and who would write during the1930s about her experience in Dakota Territory. In LittleTown on the Prairie (New York: Harper & Row, 1953), shedevoted an entire chapter to the 1881 Fourth of July cele-bration in De Smet, which she attended with her father.

In lQOJf, Central City held its first Fourth of July celebration in twentyyears, pulling out all the stops. Old-timers could be seen gathered in lit-tle circles, possibly comparing the day's festivities with those they re-membered back in the early 1880s.


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Charles Ingalls, and her sister Carrie. After the oration ofthe day and the ritual reading of the Declaration, CharlesIngalls led the audience in a spontaneous rendition of "MyCountry 'Tis of Thee." Wilder experienced an epiphany ofunderstanding when she realized the meaning of the words"Great God, our King" in the song. Americans, she re-marked, did not need to obey any king on earth because theywere free. That meant they had to obey their own con-sciences. As she grew older, her parents would stop tellingher what to do, and there would be no one who had a right togive her orders. "I will have to make myself be good," shethought to herself. "Her whole mind seemed to be lighted upby that thought. This is what it means to be free. It means,you have to be good" (Wilder, Little Town on the Prairie, p.76). Freedom, therefore, did not mean license. It logically im-plied the necessity for self-control. Thus, freedom and con-trol coexisted in uneasy tension.

Beneath the patriotic symbols proudly displayed on theFourth of July lay a number of similar tensions —continuityversus change, individual versus community, affirmationversus criticism, and nationalism versus localism. Civic ri-valry also coexisted with civic obligation, and boastfulboosterism shone through the patriotic addresses of theday. At Central City in 1904, the Honorable Edward Fraw-ley observed: "Central City commands a prominent andexemplary place in the history of the Black Hills. It is theparent town of the Hills —Deadwood and Lead with theirnow metropolitan and progressive airs composed of thrifty,patriotic people were simply in their swaddling clotheswhen Central was a city of commanding proportions andemptying into the trade of the world from the lap andrecesses of mother earth a continuous stream of the yellowmetal" (Deadwood Daily Pioneer Times, 6 July 1904). Fraw-ley's speech also gives us a dose of the flowery style typicalof the oratory of the day. If each town boasted its superior-ity to its nearest rivals, it also welcomed its neighbors tojoin in the festivities, and we sometimes get the feeling thatthe city fathers tossed out their most outrageous claimswith tongue in cheek.

Frawley's speech typified the affirmative tone of Inde-pendence Day rhetoric —the pride in America and the pridein Dakota that inspired the celebrants. "Our country today,"he said, "is broad and beautiful, affording all the produce of

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many climes. Upon the clear expanse of our lakes commercesteams its way; our rivers are burdened with traffic; ourmountains stretch their majestic length, like fortressesacross the land; the buzz of industry is never still and thefactory wheel sings its ceaseless song of toil. Our timberwaves its branches over millions of acres and the hum of thesaw tells of the homes and churches and schools that arespringing up throughout the land; our mines issue forth allthe minerals that mother earth conceives. Game abounds inour forests and our scenery ravishes the muse and awes theartist 's brush; our farmers ride their crops into a fertile soiland ride them out again a hundred fold; our mechanics toolsare never rusty and the labor of our land is our pride. Overand above all, our churches raise their spires teaching theyouth as the eagle teaches its young, to soar ever higher andhigher above ambition, above the mastery of wealth, abovethe slavery of passion, higher ever higher until the yearn-ings and longings of our hearts find res t at the throne ofGod."

The ritual and oratory of the day reaffirmed commonvalues and reinforced community solidarity. It sought todownplay social divisions and enhance unity. "We are aunited people," Frawiey intoned at Central City. There areno sections, "no longer a north and a south," but an Ameri-can nation —"one flag, one land, one heart, one hand, one na-tion evermore." And, he concluded, we are one race. No blueblood of aristocracy here, no plebeian blood, but "good, rich,red American blood thrills and courses through our veins."Such rhetoric denied what was obvious to anybody withopen eyes: blacks, Chinese, and American Indians were ex-cluded from this group identity. The promise of Americanequality remained unfulfilled.

Jus t a couple of miles from Central City, at Deadwood, aChinese subculture occupied a prominent place in the com-munity, but it was always on the outskirts or beyond thepale. The status of the Chinese can be seen in their role inthe 1888 celebration at Deadwood. The committee on amuse-ments let out all the stops to stage a memorable celebration,importing hook-and-ladder teams from Omaha and CouncilBluffs (both claimed to hold the world's record for speed) tocompete with local teams for large purses. That the Chinesepopulation played an important role in the community andhad the respect of many cannot be doubted, but the commit-

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tee's invitation to two impromptu Chinese companies tocompete in a hub-to-hub race reflects how general was thetendency to see them as ridiculous and unintelligent, per-haps even subhuman. On 29 June 1888, the Black Hills DailyTimes jokingly noted how the Chinese teams ran "likescared wolves" in practice and predicted that theirs wouldbe an amusing contest. The people apparently got what they

Nestled in the Black Hills of western South Dakota, Central City cele-brated both its own good fortune and the great bounty and beauty of theUnited States as a whole in its 190Jt Independence Day festivities.

expected. "A more grotesque lot of beings never appearedin public," the Times reported after the race on 6 July.

Interestingly, American Indians were invited to partici-pate in many Independence Day celebrations and often did.Frequently, especially in the west river region, they wouldcome and set up camp, don their native costumes, dance inthe streets, act out mock battles, and display their tradition-



At the 1888 celebration in Deadwood, people considered two local Chinesehook-and-ladder teams an amusing spectacle. For such street contests, strandsof wire were set up along the sidewalk to restrain the crowds, while those in

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the middle of the street were designed to separate the teams during the hub-to-hub races. The inset shows the winning team.


1S4 South Dakota History

The Fourth of July was a great day of patriotism and flag-waxñng.American Indians often joined in the festivities, as here at PineRidge in Î90S or 1904.

al culture to curious whites. On the Rosebud Indian Reser-vation in 1906, just as settlers were beginning to streaminto the west river region ahead of the railroad, the Indiansthemselves held a seven-day celebration from 2 to 8 July. On14 June 1906, the Lyman County Republican urged peopleto attend this great attraction to learn about the ways of thecowboys and Indians. Spectators, the paper continued,would be able to view sham battles fought with bows andarrows, "as they were fought in the early days." Dancing In-dians, wearing paint and regalia, were another attractionrepresenting life as it had been during territorial days.While the truth is obviously more complex, the unfortunateimpression one gets from the participation of American In-dians in Fourth of July celebrations is the suspicion that


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their culture was on display as a curiosity from the past —something akin to a museum piece —and was much like thehigh-wire specialists and acrobats the town fathers alsobrought in for people's amusement.

Fourth of July celebrations in South Dakota, like civicrituals of other times and places, provided commentaries onidentity and ideology. They helped define what the commu-nity was and clarify what it believed. On this occasion, per-haps more than at any other time, a broad consensus onsocial values was articulated. The day combined both highseriousness and animated frivolity. It was a time to remem-ber the past and to peer into the future. It was a time to playand a time to reaffirm that hard work was necessary tomaintain a community's freedom and opportunity. While il-luminating civic realities. Fourth of July celebrations alsoprojected an ideal vision of human relationships. The cere-monial occasion may have reaffirmed traditional values andsupported ruling interests, but it also restated principlesthat could call those values and interests into question.

The circumstances surrounding the reading of the Declaration of In-dependence at the Rosebud Indian Agency in 1897 were probably along way from what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he wrote,"All men are created equal "

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Regardless of the sizeof a community, itsmain street was the fo-cal point on the Fourthof July. Sometimes afew flags and a "Weircome to Our City"signhad to suffice for deco-rations, as in EagleButte in 1912 (below).A few flags and somepageantry, however,could transform or-dinary people intosymbols of democracy.At Owanka (left), theday was used to intro-duce children to thetraditions of AmericannatioTialism.

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The Fourth of July was a civic ceremony carried on withinthe context of civic time and space. Coming once a year, be-tween planting season and harvest, the midsummer celebra-tion constituted an important event in tbe seasonal rhythmsthat imparted continuity and meaning to people's lives.Each year, it marked a confirmation of the strength andsolidity of the republic —another year with the ship of stateintact, another bit of evidence for the superiority ofrepublican institutions. The Fourth of July occupied as im-portant a spot on the calendar as any, with the possible ex-ception of Christmas.

Occupying a central place in time, the day also occurred ina central location in space. It is no coincidence that most ofour pictures of July Fourth celebrations were taken on mainstreets (especially in the era before towns began to buildparks, to which some of the celebrations would be moved inlater years). Main street was the center of activity and theheartbeat of the town. There, people did business and inter-acted with their neighbors. There, town and country met,and the meaning of the town emerged. On July Fourth, theparade marched down main street, the Indians danced, andthe street sports took place. If the town had no opera house,main street was probably where the Declaration was readand the oration of the day delivered.

By the 1930s, when automobiles were available to mostpeople, main-street celebrations increasingly gave way toexcursions, with groves and lakes outside of town as desti-nations. While most towns had not celebrated the Fourthevery year (taking turns in putting on the celebration), thefrequency now declined. The focus increasingly shifted fromceremony to play. The picnic, tbe games, and the dances,which had always been part of tbe day, began to dominatethe event. People tired of long-winded orators. They hadlost the patience to listen to the reading of the Declarationof Independence. No one seemed to memorize it any more.People were not necessarily less patriotic, but society hadchanged. As patriotism found different outlets, the old folksbegan to get nostalgic about tbe "old-fashioned Fourth."Something about the modern holiday was different —it washard to put a finger on Just what had changed, but those whoremembered those old Fourths did not doubt that some-thing had.




Fourth of July 139

A crowd gathered on Howard's Main Street on S July 1909 to view the tradi-tional Independence Day parade. When July Fourth fell on a Sunday, festivi-ties were held on the third or the fifth. The hometown baseball team joined theparade before meeting its rival in the aftemoon athletic contests. Horse-drawnfloats, farm machinery, and business placards added a dose of commercialboosterism to the ceremonial nature of the occasion.

To read further about Independence Day celebrations in the UnitedStates, see Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience(New York: Random House, 1965), pp. 373-90; Dictionary of Am.ericanHistory, rev. ed., s.v. "Fourth of July" (Edmund C. Burnett); Maymie R.Krythe, All about American Holidays (New York: Harper & Row, 1962);Robert J. Myers, Celebrations: The Complete Book of American Holi-days (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1972). pp. 188-205; CharlesWarren, "Fourth of July Myths," William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser.,vol. 2 (July 1945): 237-72.

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Typewritten Text

All illustrations in this issue are property of the South Dakota State Historical Society except for those on the following pages: pp. 94, 102, 105, 107, from Ole H. V. Stalheim, Ames, Iowa; p. 97, from John Cary, West Liberty, Iowa, and the Iowa Veterinary Medical Association; pp. 101, 112, from S. W. Allen, Jr., Watertown, S.Dak.; p. 115, from National Animal Disease Center Archives, Ames, Iowa; pp. 148, 151, 156, 167, from Richard L. Waltz, Sioux Falls, S.Dak.; p. 180, from E. F. (“Clem”) Clement, Boca Raton, Fla.

Documents

The Old-fashioned Fourth of July · Small-town Celebrations prior to 1930 text by JOHN Ë. MILLER From earliest recorded history, celebrations and holidays have punctuated people's