THE PRINCETON MESSIAH

On Christmas Eve 1890, just nine days after reservation police killed the famous Sioux chief Sitting Bull and five days before the U.S. Army’s Seventh Cavalry massacred 150-300 men, women and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, a man dressed in white robes created a sensation in the nearby camp of Red Cloud.

The man said he was the Messiah promised to the American Indians in the Ghost Dance, a religious practice that had been attracting more and more followers across the Western tribes. Its leader Wovoka, the prophet, promised the dance would bring back the dead and transform the world. They would eliminate the whites, restore the Indians’ lands and culture, and unite all tribes. The Messiah would be reincarnated in 1892, Wovoka said.

The Pine Creek Indian agent, already nervous and fearful of an armed uprising following the death of Sitting Bull, whom the agent mistakenly thought was a leader of the Ghost Dance movement, was told the Messiah in Red Cloud’s camp tried to establish his claims by taking off his clothes and showing them great ugly scars on his feet and side. He also had them feel a soft spot on the top of his head and warned them not to press too hard or wings would spring out and he would fly away, one newspaper reported.

Reservation police were sent to investigate.

The Messiah, they learned, was Albert C. Hopkins, formerly one of the early merchants of Princeton, Wisconsin.

A.C. Hopkins, as he was most often referred to in the Princeton Republic, was born in October 1844 to Albert G. and Lucinda Hopkins in New York. He had two older siblings, Harvey and Ione, and later two younger siblings, Alice and Addison (A.J.).

Albert G. Hopkins brought his young family to Princeton in 1850. The older boys attended classes at the frame schoolhouse on Wisconsin Street.

“He settled in this village in 1850, being one of the few men who at that early day determined to find a home on the bank of Fox River, and who believed Princeton was so situated as to eventually become a thriving village and a pleasant place to live in,” according to the obituary published in the Republic after Hopkins died at home in Princeton in March 1876.

Hopkins served several terms as county supervisor and was county treasurer when he passed. He served as Princeton’s postmaster for about 16 years and was elected president when the Princeton Pioneers Club, later renamed the Old Settlers Club, formed in 1874. For many years he operated a hardware store with his son Harvey in a frame building at 501 West Water Street, which he purchased for $1,000 in April 1865 – two days after Lee surrendered to Grant to end the Civil War.

(Albert G. Hopkins and his wife, Lucinda, were buried in the Princeton City Cemetery.)

Both of Hopkins’ older sons served for over three years in the Union army with several other Princeton men in Company I of the 11^th Wisconsin Infantry.

Harvey enlisted in October 1861 as a private and received his discharge in July 1865 as a lieutenant. He was wounded in the left arm at Bayou Cache, Arkansas, in July 1862.

Albert, just 16, enlisted about the same time. He was shot through both shoulders at the battle of Black River Bridge in May 1863 but was able to walk and was in good spirits, according to a report in the Berlin Courant, but his obituary in 1904 noted “he never fully recovered from the effects and shock of this wound.” He served three years, eight months, and 27 days.

After the war, Harvey joined his father’s hardware business. Albert in September 1867 partnered with longtime businessman Silas Eggleston in the dry goods business – advertised as Eggleston & Hopkins – in a three-story stone building at 535 West Water Street.

Eggleston’s early business ventures in Princeton were recorded in the history of early Princeton published in the Princeton Republic in 1869: “Soon after he purchased a small stock of goods at Portage, and has continued in the dry goods, grocery, crockery and notions trade, doing a remarkably successful business until now. Something over a year ago A.C., son of A.G. Hopkins, Esq., of the hardware firm of Hopkins & Son, of this village, became a partner with Eggleston, the firm name being Eggleston and Hopkins. They now have one of the largest stocks in town and are doing a driving business.”

Harvey Hopkins took over the hardware business as his father battled illness and in 1874 sold out to F.T. Yahr and Gottfried Schaal. A year later he relocated to Nashua, Iowa, a popular destination for several families of early Princeton settlers. Harvey went into the hardware business with another Princeton ex patriot, J.M. Mitchell, and became a prominent Nashua businessman and civic leader before retiring about 1885.

Albert sold his share of the business with Eggleston in the early 1870s and also moved to Nashua, where he worked primarily as a traveling salesman for a Chicago firm. About 1885 he was so sick that he was not expected to survive. “He recovered partially, altho he has never been his true self since that illness,” his obituary noted in 1904.

Albert moved to Canton, South Dakota, where he became a prominent gadfly and “crackpot,” according to some of the local newspapers.

There is no doubt Albert suffered through bouts of mental illness. He was unable to work for several years, spent a brief short time in jail, was judged insane and was confined to an old soldiers’ home prior to his death in 1904. But he was also a well-read, prolific writer and orator respected for his intellect and persuasiveness. Despite his mental health issues, he led a successful campaign in 1903 to designate the pansy (pasque) as South Dakota’s state flower!

I have found no indication of Albert’s mental health issues prior to his arrival at Red Cloud’s encampment of Lakota Sioux in 1890 with claims that he was the Messiah awaited by Ghost Dancers. He had arrived earlier than prophesized, Hopkins said, because the Indians had misunderstood his message of love and harmony.

The Ghost Dance worried U.S. officials because the paradise it envisioned included removing all the white people from the promised land. A chief later claimed warriors could wear special ghost shirts that would repel bullets. The cult had spread from tribe to tribe and attracted followers at the Indian boarding schools.

A former Indian agent, Valentine McGillycuddy, was among those who told the Indian agencies that the dance was not a threat despite its popularity. Still, the Army sent hundreds of additional troops to the reservation to ensure there were no hostilities, along with new rapid-fire light artillery guns.

“The coming of the troops has frightened the Indians,” Mcgillycuddy wrote. “If the Seventh Day Adventists prepare the ascension robes for the Second Coming of the Savior, the United States Army is not put in motion to prevent them. Why should not the Indians have the same privilege? If the troops remain, trouble is sure to come.”

On December 15, 1890, Sitting Bull was arrested for failing to stop his people from practicing the Ghost Dance. Officials suspected he was among the religion’s leaders. He was not. During the arrest, Sitting Bull was shot and killed.

The Messiah arrived days later.

Sioux Falls Argus-Leader, Dec. 24, 1890 – “Pine River Agency – The police have arrested the Messiah down in Red Cloud’s camp. When they pulled the white blanket off, they found an intelligent, but harmless, crank, A.C. Hopkins by name, from Nashua, Ia. He claimed he was in the interest of peace, and that he had come because the Indians misinterpreted his message. He wanted to go to the Bad Lands, but Indian Agent Royer changed the address to Chadron, starting him under an escort of police. Some of the Indians were indignant over his arrest while others laughed and said he was a crazy fool. None of the chiefs take any stock in him, and Red Cloud walked up to him and said: ‘You go home. You are no Son of God.’ The Messiah claims that he will go to the Bad Lands.”

Red Cloud never believed the Ghost Dance prophesy but understood its appeal. “We were faint with hunger and maddened by despair,” he said, noting that the Indian agency had cut the tribes’ food rations.

Although the initial report dismissed Hopkins as a harmless crank, a reporter two days later painted a darker but inaccurate picture while worrying about Hopkins’ effect upon the “superstitious devils.”

Sioux Falls Argus-Leader, Dec. 26, 1890 – “Pine River Agency – Frank Grouard, chief of government scouts, who has been the principal directing power behind General Brooke’s chair ever since the general’s arrival, came into the latter’s presence last night greatly agitated. In effect he reported that the brief visit of the pretended Christ to the agency yesterday had created great excitement among the Indians, and the old scout was right. The big camps of five or six thousand reds were one buzz of excited talk regarding the so-called Christ. Those who had seen him allowed their tongues to run riot with description. The fact that he had been chased off the reservation by the authorities so soon as his presence had become known, seemed to the semi-savage mind ample cause for the assertion that I heard reported more than a score of times, ‘They know he really was the Christ, were afraid he would do what he promised, kill all the white people and bring back the buffalo and bear, and that’s why they sent him away so quick.’ There was a recalling and rehearsing of every scrap of facts and fiction that had come to them for months past regarding the subject – fact and fiction that has floated down to them from the far north during the past three months or more. Hastily called councils were held in every part of the camp, and the subject was hot until far into the night. An odd coincidence – at least it seems nothing more than a coincidence now – that added force to the importance of the alleged Christ’s presence in the minds of the Indians was that he came in exactly the new moon that was foretold several months ago the new Christ would come. So thoroughly convinced were very many of the spiritualistic reds as to the genuineness of the imposter’s claim that after various consultations they are said to have sent couriers out over the country in various directions to inform their friends. Everything possible is being done to keep down the excitement. To this end the authorities are even considering the feasibility of having the self-styled Christ, A.C. Hopkins, arrested and brought back here, then gathering in the Indians and showing him up as a rank impostor and a serious mischief maker. … It seems that he arrived here Sunday instead of Monday but succeeded in keeping his claim from the ears of the little public here until yesterday noon. He stayed at Red Cloud’s house Sunday night and sat up until nearly morning, filling the old chief up with his lying and sorcery. Red Cloud claims to Agent Royer that he took no stock in the stuff, but it is reliably learned from other sources that the pretender made a great impression on him. When the excitement will end no one can tell.”

Hopkins is described in “American Carnage: Wounded Knee 1890” (Jerome A. Greene) as “a medium sized, well dressed, quite good looking man about forty years old, with evidently considerable education” but “quite broke and possibly a little daft.”

On December 29, the Seventh Cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers led by chief Big Foot near Wounded Knee Creek and ordered them to surrender their weapons. When a deaf man misunderstood or hesitated, a shot was fired, the soldiers opened fire – including the rapid-fire artillery – and a massacre ensued.  At least 150 Indians were killed – some say the number was closer to 300 – over half of them women and children, some of them run down by cavalry out on the plains as they fled. The cavalry lost 25 men (according to some reports, mostly to friendly fire of the machine guns) and later awarded Medals of Honor to 20 soldiers.

Hopkins would forever be remembered in South Dakota as the man who would be Messiah.

The Mitchell (S.D.) Capital, May 8, 1891 – “Albert F. Hopkins, who proclaims himself the Indian Messiah, was in the city Sunday between trains, on his way east. He was given courteous guidance off the reservation by order of the Indian agents.”

By this point he had created a flag,”The Pansy Banner of Peace,” to spread his message and lobbied officials in Washington, D.C., as late as March 1893 for permission to return to the reservation. He told one federal official “with the help of the pansy and its motto and manifest teaching, ‘Union, Culture and Peace,'” he could help bring peace to the area, author James Mooney relates in “The Ghost-Dance Religion and Wounded Knee.”

Hopkins’ requests, one of which he signed The Indian Messiah, were denied. I do not believe Hopkins returned to the Sioux, but he continued his efforts on behalf of the pansy for the remainder of his life.

Dakota Farmers’ Leader (Canton, S.D.) May 26, 1893 – “Albert C. Hopkins, the Pansy Flag champion of America, is making grand preparations for a flag display on Decoration Day. Mr. Hopkins is an enthusiastic lover of the pansy and no one will dispute the beauty of his choice.”

Dakota Farmers’ Leader, August 3, 1894 – “Albert C. Hopkins will address the Lincoln County Normal Institute upon the subject of floral emblems and the National Flower of the United States on Monday, 3:30 p.m., August 6th.”

Hopkins next proposed a new calendar and tied it to his pansy preoccupation. The Sioux Falls newspaper labeled him “that pansy crank.”

Sioux Falls Argus-Leader, Jan. 21, 1895 – “A.C. Hopkins, of Canton, S.D., the original pansy crank, the man who induced Congressman Walt Butler to introduce a bill in Congress for making the pansy the national flower, decorating the flag with a pansy, putting a pansy cap on the goddess of liberty, etc. is still pursuing his fad. His latest production is a pansy calendar in which he makes a new division of the years, though what connection the reckoning of time has with johnny-jumps-ups is not evident. Mr. Hopkins would divide the year into thirteen months with twenty-eight days each, except the last, which would be twenty-nine, with an added day for leap year. The thirteenth month he would call Christopher, as Christmas falls in that month. There will be fifty-two weeks of seven days each, except one week which will be longer and of variable length. The extra day in the last month he would call Panday and the second extra day in leap years would be called Syrnia. Mr. Hopkins says this arrangement of the months and weeks would put the Sabbath in true order and harmony. The only advantage we note at present is that it would bring the Fourth of July a good deal earlier in the year and Thanksgiving Day would come later.” (Sioux City Journal)

“It is likely to meet with some opposition from strict Sabbatarians In that it interferes with the unvarying succession of the Sabbath,” Hopkins told the Sioux City newspaper, “but it really puts the Sabbath in true order and harmony with the months and years for the first time, and makes the calendar as simple as the alphabet; and it may be profitably remembered by all Christians that Jesus said, with true point and full meaning, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.’”

The newspaper was impressed: “The calendar is certainly unique and possesses more merit than most schemers for the reformation of the calendar and transforming it from the pagan riddle it now is to a calendar a child could understand.”

The Argus-Leader in 1895 offered a half column of space per day for six days for Hopkins to debate a well-known local prohibitionist. When the foe declined, the newspaper accused him of “rank cowardice.”

Hopkins said, “I should like to say through the Argus-Leader that if there was ever a larger exhibition of physical, moral and intellectual cowardice than has been shown by the Lincoln County prohibitionists and their advocate, Col. Holt, upon this question, I have every reason to be thankful that I haven’t been permitted to see it.”

Hopkins suffered from severe rheumatism and in 1896 left his home in Canton, South Dakota, for the soldier’s home in Hot Springs. The Argus-Leader said it was expecting plenty of letters, “and there are few better penmen in the state.”

Princeton Republic, June 3, 1897 – “The following clipping, taken from the Chicago Times Herald, will be of interest to Princeton people: ‘Washington, May 25 – Albert C. Hopkins, of Hot Springs, S.D., has sent to the pension office a draft for $82.10, which he claims was paid him as part of his pension without authority of law. Private Hopkins served in the Union army in Company 1, 2nd Wisconsin volunteer infantry. His letter to the commissioner of patents follows: ‘Since very man naturally and justly assumes to be the chief justice of the supreme court for himself, and since in a general way this judgment must usually be affirmed when it is against himself. I assume the privilege and duty of interpreting the pension laws in my own case thus: I am entitled to full pension of $12 per month under the law of 1890? From my first application in August 1890, for one year thereafter, while I was on crutches and disabled for manual labor. This amounts to $96. Also, to $6 per month thereafter to March 1895, among to $86; total $182. Amount received from pension, $264.40. Draft enclosed to balance, less expenses of returning same, $82.40.’ So far as commissioner Evans knows, this is the first instance in which a petition has disputed the interpretation of the pension law by the bureau, when the interpretation gave him more money than he thought the law allowed him. The case will be referred back to an examiner to see whether Hopkins’ interpretation of the law is correct and if he is really entitled to the full among granted him by the bureau his draft will be returned to him. If not, it will be turned over to the conscience fund of the treasury department.”

Hopkins stirred up more trouble at the soldier’s home when in 1898 he and N.C. Nash, editor of the Sioux Valley News, challenged a local official’s favorable inspection report. Their comments, the local G.A.R. post said, questioned the official’s truthfulness and veracity and inferred his statements “were bought by favors granted him by the commandant of the home.”

The post censured Nash. Hopkins was a member of the Nashua post.

Hopkins visited the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition, also known as the Omaha World’s Fair, in Omaha, Nebraska, in July 1898. The exposition celebrated the development of the West.

Darker days returned for Hopkins a few months later.

Argus-Leader, Dec. 16, 1898 – “Albert C. Hopkins, who in 1890 traveled among the Sioux Indians in Montana and South Dakota, representing himself as the Messiah and wrought them up to the point of ghost dances, which finally developed in a general uprising and the now historic battle of Wounded Knee, is now in the government’s hands, before United States Commissioner Conway. It seems that Hopkins has been too long idle, so lately originated another fad. He is charged with sending through the United States mails circular letters, the specific one on which he is arraigned being sent to Mr. and Mrs. C.E. Judd at Canton on October 21, 1898. It is also claimed he sent this circular to President and Mrs. McKinley and about fifty families and young ladies of our states. The circular dwells on ‘Millennial marriage, the solution of the sexual problem; millennial love and marriage; and making the most and best of the sexual impulse.’ All circulars were signed ‘most truly our friend X.’ The supplements attached to some of the letters were even worse than the original. Deputy United States Marshal Ludlow left for Canton this morning and returned on the 3 o’clock Milwaukee with his prisoner. He was immediately taken before Commissioner Conway, where Deputy United States Attorney W.G. Porter appeared for the government. After the reading of the charge, Hopkins plead not guilty, stating he was without an attorney or means to provide one. After being informed by the commissioner that the government could not provide him an attorney, he proceeded to plead in his own behalf. The government witnesses in this case are C.E. Judd, the principal witness, and James Lewis, postmaster, who came up on the same train as the prisoner.”

(Editor’s note: Hopkins did not inspire the Ghost Dance.)

Hopkins went to trial in April 1899. The jury deliberated five minutes before convicting him of sending obscene matter through the mail. He was sentenced to one year and one day in the state prison.

Hopkins was adjudged insane in August 1899 and transferred to the old soldier’s asylum in Washington. He was back in Canton and campaigning for pansies by 1903.

The Nashua Reporter, Jan. 22, 1903 – “We notice that Mr. A.C. Hopkins, who is at Canton, S.D., is agitating the question of that state adopting a state floral emblem. The Anemone or Pasque flower is the proposed one. He has succeeded in getting it unanimously endorsed by the State Teachers Association and is expecting that it will be adopted by the state Legislature.”

It was adopted by the Legislature in 1903, but Hopkins did not get the credit!

According to information from the South Dakota State Historical Society, Lawrence Riggs, a teacher at Peoria School in Hughes County, asked the state Legislature that the pasque flower and the motto “I Lead” be adopted as the state floral emblem. In his letter dated Feb. 4, 1903, he also requested that the lesson “Be first in Love and Peace and Faith in Immortality” be added, and that the flower and motto be given an honored place in the state seal and flag.

Hopkins passed in October 1904 in Canton, South Dakota, of pneumonia and paralysis. His sister, Ione Russell, was with him, but his older brother Harvey could not get there from Colorado because he too was ill.

The Nashua Reporter, Oct. 20, 1904 – “The sad intelligence reaches Nashua that Albert C. Hopkins died at Canton, S.D., on Oct. 11. Mr. Hopkins has many warm friends here who will regret to learn of his death. Deceased came to this place from Wisconsin about 1875 and made his home here with his mother and brothers for many years. He was of a literary turn and wrote and spoke with excellent taste and fine diction. He was traveling salesman for Burley & Tyrell of Chicago for several years. He was a gentleman of genial character and manly bearing, and a successful and efficient businessman. He was at one time a candidate for treasurer of this county but was not successful. For many years he has been suffering from some mental disease, which unfitted him for business; nevertheless, his faculties seemed, to a great extent, to remain unimpaired, and his courteous nature remained unchanged.”

On Nov. 10, 1904, the Princeton Republic published Hopkins’ obituary from the Sioux Falls Daily newspaper: “Mr. Hopkins was always a reformer, and following the illness mentioned, he devoted his time and energies to reforms which he deemed necessary in the political and social life of the country, and while he was often misjudged, and in our opinion persecuted, yet he remained steadfast to these reforms which he deemed of vital interest, and thru good and evil repute was ready to take whatever might come in the interest of the causes which he advocated. The writer had always felt a personal interest in Mr. Hopkins, because we always believed in his honesty, and because whatever else might be said of him, he was a true gentleman, always, and one who we were pleased to call our friend. He had always chosen to live alone in his rooms, and some two weeks ago he was taken ill, and was in a bad condition before any of his friends discovered that he needed care, and hence medical assistance came too late.”

Thus ends the story of The Princeton Messiah.

Albert’s brother Harvey, meanwhile, had moved from Nashua to Colorado Springs in 1898 for health reasons, but his heart remained in Nashua. He made that clear when he wrote a letter to a friend, William Perrin, in February 1906 expressing his desire to be buried by the Nashua G.A.R. post.

The Nashua Reporter, Feb. 22, 1906 – “Dear Comrade Perrin: As you well remember I left Nashua rather unexpectedly on short notice and came here on account of physical disabilities in the hope that a change of climate might prove a benefit and ultimately a cure. That was more than six years ago. While I have been much better at times, it has been a constant fight and still the contest continues. … About Dec. 20 I began to get worse again and have continued to get in worse condition each day since until now I am nearly helpless. … While lying awake the other night and thinking of the situation, the desire came to me that when the end had come and I had cast aside this worn-out body of mine, I would greatly prefer to have my body lie at rest in Oak Hill, where the Cedar River flows past on its way to the sea … I would rather have the Geo. W.S. Dodge Post escort and deposit for rest my remains than any other organization on earth. We have a large, active post here, but they are not like the old comrades of Post 132. I wish to be buried as a member of Geo. W.S. Dodge post, in good standing, and not as an ex-member.”

Harvey H. Hopkins passed on March 9, 1906, at his home in Colorado Springs at age 65. “In accordance with the dying wishes of the deceased, the services were under the auspices of the G.A.R. and remains laid to rest in Oak Hill Cemetery,” The Nashua Reporter reported. “Mr. Hopkins was the first of the fourteen past commanders of the G.W.S. Dodge Post to be called, and a flag which belonged to him and had been used by the post for over thirty years was buried with him, as requested.”

With hard work and good fortune, Harvey’s sons Bert (Albert) and Berne – the Muppets generation might chuckle about Bert and Berne – became millionaires in the oil industry. They and their partners largely developed the Salt Creek and Casper, Wyoming, oil fields.

Bert committed suicide in August 1923.

Los Angeles Daily Times, Aug. 25, 1923 – “Albert H. Hopkins, 49 years of age, who came to Santa Monica five months ago from the East suffering from a nervous breakdown, shot himself with a revolver in the bedroom of his home at 225 Montana Avenue today. … In a nearby typewriter was left this note: “Berne, old pal, I can’t fight this idea of suicide any longer. It’s got me. Poor mother, poor Dora, poor you, and poor me. … Forgive me if you can. Bert.”

Berne at the time was a mostly retired oil magnate with offices in the Pacific Mutual Building in downtown Los Angeles. He owned a yacht to fish for marlin swordfish, had built an eight-story “skyscraper” in Colorado Springs, and dined and stayed at all the finest places. He also had made news in Los Angeles that year.

Los Angeles Daily Times, April 7, 1923 – “Mrs. Isabel Hopkins was granted a divorce yesterday by Judge Walton J. Wood from B.H. Hopkins, millionaire retired oil man. The charge involved a young woman, referred to as Jane Doe. It was revealed yesterday that a property settlement of $600,000 had been made with Mrs. Hopkins by her husband, immediately after her suit for divorce was filed. The property given Mrs. Hopkins consisted of Liberty Bonds, Standard Oil stock, Mutual Oil stock, and corporation bonds. … The Hopkins home is at 684 South Benton Way.”

Berne Hopkins told a newspaper that he had followed Horace Greeley’s advice to go West, and had made his fortune, but he was now ready to return to his Iowa roots.

The Nashua Reporter, April 26, 1923 – “A half-million-dollar enterprise, a plant almost palatial in its appointments, is being established six miles south of Council Bluffs – to raise hogs – pork for the market. The ranch includes an establishment for the owner, Berne H. Hopkins, oil magnate, and his associates and employees, probably unequalled in the middle west. The location is what is known as the Ben Marks farm. … It comprises a tract of 1,200 acres. Marks, at the close of the Omaha Exposition, bought the Michigan state building, said to have cost $60,000 and was constructed of Michigan fire logs. To walk around it one travels one-eighth of a mile.”

(Modern historians note that Marks did not buy the Michigan exhibit. Other reports indicating it was the Minnesota exhibit also are incorrect. The country home he built with eight bedrooms and five baths was a reproduction of the Minnesota building. It still stands today.)

Berne married “Jane Doe” and later returned to Colorado. He passed in July 1956 at his farm home east of Berthoud, Colorado.

***

“In Memoriam. A Straggler of ’63.”

Along the line of march of ’63,

I find a lonely, sunken grave, unmarked;

Yet well I know the soldier sleeping here;

A comrade brave as any hero dead

Or living – ‘ootsore, wearly, fallen out

With leave; at rest so well he hears no breath

Of lulling summer winds, nor fiercest shriek

Of the November blast.

No glory of

A bloody field is round about him, but

The grass grows green, and graceful trees still woo

The breeze to music whose sweet words are “Rest,

Brave comrade; sleep and rest.” And still above

The drifting snows, the winter winds shout “Victory!”

His monument is highest in all hearts.

His form is bright with laurel for all time.

– By Albert C. Hopkins, published May 29, 1896, in The Deadwood Daily Pioneer, Deadwood, S.D.

***

Here is a link to a very interesting story about the Ghost Dance creator and the “War of the Messiah.” (I have problems embedding pdfs on my site. If the link below does not work, you can copy and paste the url into the search field.)

https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=GRD19141228-01.2.26&e=——-en-20–1–img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA——–0——

Thank you for caring and reading about local history.