Everett
(Shorty) Hinman
Written by Everett Hinman; submitted by Jo
Drake
I was born N. of Ft. Pierre, at Fort Sully in 1886. Our home there was
a dugout. we went down into it like a cellar. There was a blanket for
a door. we had a rag carpet on the floor. It was held down with 20 pen
ny spikes. The ladies saved rags and made the carpets on large looms.
So me were made of hemp.
This story will
be mostly what was told to me by my folks. I was too small to remember
most of these things myself.
My father drove the stage from Ft. Pierre to Ft. Sully. He used 4 horses.
They went across the ice in winter. When the ice was thin they hitch ed
the reins in such a way that the horses could be released if the stage
went through the ice. It never did go through but many times water came
in the end gate.
In 1884 the Gov't issue station was at Ft. Pierre. The ranchers had a contract to furnish the beef for the issue. The soldiers didn't ca re and so some of the ranchers got away with driving their cattle around and getting them counted twice and of course were paid for twice the cattle that they had delivered. At that time about 10,000 Indians had gathered there. The Revenue men had stolen the issue, the Indians were mad. So me of the ranchers close by brought in beef and their wives cooked all nig ht for the Indians to keep them peaceful.
My folks took
me to Rapid City on horseback when I was a year and a ha lf old. My mother
was a good rider and an excellent shot. She shot prairie dogs and other
animals from a running horse.
We hauled water 7 miles on a stone boat in barrels, pulled by an old w
hite mule.
The Indians came and asked for things. They did not knock and it was r ather frightening to have one suddenly standing in your room. They never did any harm to us. One buck came and asked Mother for a little can of molasses. He handed her the can and said "heap it up, 7 papooses".
We left and went to Iowa. I came back to the Stamford area in 1932. There is an earthen brick house on the Fred Vollmer place which is I think still standing. The sod was mixed with water leaving the grass in and dried in the sun. They shaped the mud into bricks, with hinged, wooden forms.
My wife came out here in 1913.
In 1934 I got some cattle on a Gov't loan and put in some barley. Gras shoppers took the barley. I didn't have any rope so I stacked thistles with barbed wire, then could not get the wire out of the thistles.
Shorty died Sept. 1965.
