The Church on the Changing Frontier Part 2

HITTING THE TRAIL 108

THE FAMILY MANSION 110

A REAL COMMUNITY HOUSE 114

A CHURCH THAT SERVES THE COMMUNITY 115

MAPS

MONTANA AND WYOMING 20

SOUTH DAKOTA AND NEW MEXICO 22

CHURCH AND COMMUNITY MAP OF HUGHES COUNTY, SOUTH DAKOTA 54-55

COMMUNITY MAP OF SHERIDAN COUNTY, WYOMING 59

MAP SHOWING CHURCHES AND PARISH BOUNDARIES OF SHERIDAN COUNTY 59

CHURCH AND COMMUNITY MAP OF BEAVERHEAD COUNTY 60

MAP SHOWING CHURCHES AND PARISH BOUNDARIES OF UNION COUNTY, NEW MEXICO 61

COMMUNITY MAP OF UNION COUNTY, NEW MEXICO 62

ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCHES AND PARISHES, UNION COUNTY, NEW MEXICO 99

CHARTS

I a.n.a.lYSIS OF PROTESTANT CHURCH MEMBERS 66

II CHURCHES GAINING IN MEMBERSHIP 67

III ACTIVE CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 69

IV CHURCHES WITH LESS THAN 50 MEMBERS 69

V RELATION OF SIZE OF CHURCH MEMBERSHIP TO GAIN 70

VI THE CHURCH DOLLAR 72

VII FREQUENCY OF CHURCH SERVICES 79

VIII NUMBER OF PASTORS DURING PAST TEN YEARS 91

IX RESIDENCE OF THE MINISTERS 93

THE CHURCH ON THE CHANGING FRONTIER

CHAPTER I

The Range Country

A vast expanse of endlessly stretching plains, dun-colored table-lands, mysterious b.u.t.tes against a far horizon, and "always the tremendous, almost incredible distances"--this is the typical Range country. There are a sweep to it and a breadth, and such heavens over the earth! In the East, unless some crimson sunset attracts indifferent eyes, the sky makes less of the picture than the earth. But this is sky country.

Roughly, the Range area comprises the states between the Middle West and the Far West, and includes a wide variety of landscape. Contained in this picturesque area are eight states with parts of others, a million square miles over which are spread four million people about a third less than are crowded into New York City. The four counties here studied, each in a different state, provide fair samples of a great deal of the country.

Beaverhead County, in Montana, and Sheridan County, in Wyoming, are not far distant one from the other. Both are partly mountainous, rugged in contour, with wide valleys rimmed by mountains, and miles of undulating range land and low-lying hills traced by rivers. This is the country where "the smoke goes straight up and the latch-string still hangs on the outside of the old-timer's cabin," where still the "sage-hen clucks to her young at the water-hole in the coulee ... with lazy grace, the eagle swings to his nest in the lofty pinnacle and the prairie dog stands at his door and chatters."

Beaverhead is in the extreme southwestern corner of Montana, slightly northwest of Yellowstone Park and straight south from b.u.t.te. It is bounded by Rocky Mountain ranges on the west, south and northwest. On the south and west it faces the State of Idaho. The county is well drained and watered by the two princ.i.p.al rivers, the Big Hole and Beaverhead, and by their tributaries, and here, too, the Missouri River has its source.

Beaverhead County embraces 5,657 square miles or 3,620,480 acres. Of this area, 1,365,000 acres are included in the Beaverhead National Forest Reserve scattered over the north, west and southern parts of the county. A small part of the Madison National Forest also extends into the county on the west. The alt.i.tude at Monida, in the southern part of the county, is about 6,500 feet above sea level.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MONTANA AND WYOMING

Locating Beaverhead and Sheridan Counties.]

The Wyoming county, Sheridan, lies in the extreme north central section of the state, about 110 miles east of Yellowstone Park, Montana forming its northern boundary. Sheridan is about 100 miles long and thirty miles wide, the total area being 2,574 square miles, or 1,647,360 acres, less than half the area of the Montana county, Beaverhead. The Big Horn Forest Reserve covers 383,493 acres of Sheridan County. Rivers and creeks are numerous, the chief ones being Tongue River, Powder River and Big Goose, Prairie Dog and Clear Creeks. The city of Sheridan, the county seat, has an alt.i.tude of 3,737 feet above sea level.

The other two counties, Union in New Mexico and Hughes in South Dakota, consist largely of plain lands. Union lies in the northeastern corner of the state of New Mexico, with three states, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas, to the north and east of her. Union included 5,370 square miles, or 3,436,800 acres, at the time this survey was made. About one-sixth of the southwestern part of Union County has, however, been added to part of Mora County, to the southwest, to form a new county named Harding which was formally inaugurated on June 14th, 1921. The land consists mainly of dry, level plains and mesas, although there are some mountains and isolated hills or b.u.t.tes. Aside from the mountainous area, which is wooded, there are scarcely any trees with the exception of a few along the larger creeks and those cultivated around ranch houses. The northwestern corner of the county is the most mountainous. The county is drained chiefly by Ute Creek, flowing southeast through the western and southwestern sections into the Canadian River, and in the northern part by the beautiful Cimarron. There are a number of small streams, but many are dry during a large part of the year. Union has exhilarating, bracing air and radiant sunshine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SOUTH DAKOTA AND NEW MEXICO

Locating Hughes and Union Counties.]

Hughes is a small county almost exactly in the center of the State of South Dakota. It has the shape of a right-angled triangle with the Missouri River forming its hypothenuse from the northwest to the southeast corner. It covers 485,760 acres of high and rolling prairie, with river and creek bluffs and bottom lands. Several creeks and small rivers flow directly through Hughes, and it is on the whole one of the best-watered counties in South Dakota. Pierre, the county seat, is the capital of the state.

Early Days on the Frontier

The story of these counties is bound up with the discovery and subsequent history of the West. It is, as Viola Paradise says, "the story of Indians and early explorers; of hunters and fur traders in the days not so very long ago when the bison ranged the prairies; then of a few ranchmen, scattered at great distances; of great herds of cattle and sheep, succeeding the wild buffaloes; and of the famous cowboy; then of the coming of the dry farmer with his hated fences; and of the crowding out of the open range cattlemen and the subst.i.tution of the homesteader."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TOWN LOCK-UP

This primitive jail at Bannock, once chosen as the capital of Montana, has held some rough characters in its time, but is now abandoned.]

It was at Two Forks, in Beaverhead County, near what is now the village of Armstead, that Lewis and Clark, at a critical point in their expedition, were met and befriended by the Shoshones, the tribe of their Indian girl guide, Sacajawea.[2] This was on August 17, 1805. White fur traders soon followed in the track of this famous expedition, and after them came Jason and Sidney Lee, in 1834, the first missionaries to reach Montana.

The next landmark in the county's history is the "gold strike" on Gra.s.shopper Creek, in 1862. News of the find spread like wild-fire. Miners rushed to the creek and set up their tents, shacks and log cabins. Unlike Rome, this first town of Montana, called Bannock, was built in a single night. Soon after the gold seekers had settled down to work in earnest, the road agents, a well-organized gang of "roughs" from all over the West, began to rob the stage-coaches travelling between Bannock and Virginia City. "Innocent" was their pa.s.s-word; mustaches, beards and neckties tied with a sailor's knot, their sign of membership. After a succession of miners, homeward bound with their gold-dust, had dropped from sight, never to be heard of again, those who remained decided to elect a sheriff. Their choice fell upon a certain Henry Plummer, who was also sheriff of Virginia City. Plummer, however, never seemed to arrest the right man, a circ.u.mstance which was explained later when it was discovered that he was the chief of the gang of road agents. The funeral of a miner who had died of mountain fever, the first man for some time to die from a natural cause, gave the community the opportunity to organize secretly the "Vigilantes," and finally to round up the road agents, either hanging them or giving them warning to leave the country.

Montana was established as a territory in 1864, Bannock becoming the first capital, and in the sane year the first county seat of Beaverhead County.