A Town Called Black

Highway three seventy-seven just went off toward Interior. That town used to be called Black, and it used to be somewhere else. It stood about two miles off until the railroad came through in nineteen oh seven. The name had changed in the eighteen nineties, though the sources differ on the year. Black was a place both peoples used. Lakota families from the Wanblee and Potato Creek country shopped there and got their mail. The White River was the line. The grass was better on the reservation side, so settlers' cattle kept crossing it, and strays drifted in from as far away as Montana. In nineteen oh two the reservation held a roundup, and every unbranded animal went to a volunteer Lakota crew. Then the Lakota fenced the reservation line themselves, and hired Lakota riders to keep it up. Their herds quadrupled between eighteen eighty-five and nineteen twelve. That's a rare story on this road, one that ends their way. Interior started its Frontier Days in nineteen nineteen. Native people took part in the same fair that helped sell reservation land. The nineteen twenty program advertised Indian Lands, with cars and men ready to take buyers out. The Second World War reached town later, when six-inch shells from the bombing range went through the roof of a church, and through the building that's now the post office. But I'd rather leave you in nineteen twenty-eight. That year Pine Ridge men formed their own rodeo association, to raise money and Lakota pride. By the next year they were fixing up a hall to hold the crowds.