Rapid City Journal from Rapid City, South Dakota • A4

A4 Sunday, OctOber 14, 2018 Rapid City JouRnal 00 1 LOCAL REGION BELLA DALLY-STEELE The Minnesota Daily MORRIS, Minn. On the west side of the University of Min- nesota-Morris campus stands an Anishinaabe grandmother, shrouded in a sacred blanket and embraced by two grandchildren. The sculpture, unveiled late last month by artist Duane Goodwin, is the newest addition to the collection of programs and policies acknowl- edging its origins as a boarding school for Native American youth. One of the earliest policies to address this history was Mor- full tuition waiver for Native American students. The policy, which is still in effect, helps determine Native American student enrollment at the university, which has been slowly rising over the years.

In 2018, around 20 percent of the Morris campus student population identified as American Indian a number that dwarfs other University of Minnesota system campuses, where Native American students make up less than 2.5 percent of the student population at each. The boarding school on the Morris campus first opened in 1887. It was later operated by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs as the Morris Industrial School for American Indians from 1896 to 1909 one of many gov- ernment-supported boarding schools around the country. When the U.S.

Congress trans- ferred the boarding school land to the Minnesota government, it ordered that pupils be admitted free of charge for according to the waiver that solidified this agreement in 1960. Among many of its activities, the school used assimilation to separate young students from their families, communities and cultures. Tuition waiver helps Native American students in Minnesota Rapid City Journal pos- sibly the editor and propri- etor, Joseph B. Gossage wrote on Oct. 17, 1918, that he had lived through every public health scare in Rapid City to that point, including typhoid fever, smallpox, scarlet fever and diphtheria.

But compared to the Spanish flu, former were of in- fant proportions and easily have a hearse stalking about at any time of the day or night, to see mourners driving through the streets, half distracted, and to know that the next one to go may be one you saw in good health only a few days ago, these things make the com- mon troubles of life seem as the article said. The rest of the article listed seven people from Rapid City or the surround- ing area who had died of in- fluenza in just the previous two days, including several adults in their 20s and 30s common ages for fatal Spanish flu victims and two children at the Native American boarding school. A later report from the Division of Vital Statistics listed 60 influ- enza deaths in Pennington County in 1918, among 1,847 flu deaths statewide that year. The flu caused 28 percent of all South Dakota deaths in 1918, when it was the leading killer, ac- cording to the State Histor- ical Society. Nationally, the pandemic killed 675,000 people, and globally it killed 50 million.

The virus is not thought to have originated in Spain, but it appeared that way at the time, only because the lack of censorship during World War I allowed for earlier and fuller media coverage of the pandemic. Nevertheless, the name stuck. There are multiple the- ories about the true global origin of the virus. In this country, some researchers have pegged a soldier with South Dakota and Black Hills connections, Albert Gitchell, as the first re- corded U.S. case of Spanish flu.

A researcher in Canada has reported that Gitchell was born in Chicago and lived in South Dakota com- munities including Ree Heights and Sturgis. He was an Army cook at Fort Riley in Kansas when, on March 4, 1918, he reported having flu symptoms. Heeth Grantham, who re- cently produced a television documentary about the flu pandemic for the Smith- sonian Channel, said that whether or not Gitchell was actually the first victim of the Spanish flu strain, his case was probably the first in the United States to be well documented, thanks to pres- ence at a military installa- tion where detailed records were kept. was in a perfect place to be dubbed Grantham said. Gitchell survived the ill- ness and is believed to have died in 1968 at the State Vet- erans Home in Hot Springs, where a man named Albert Gitchell is buried.

Although he was described as tient by at least one researcher as early as 1961, unclear whether Gitch- ell knew of the research. His obituary in the Rapid City Journal said nothing about his experience with the Spanish flu. Throughout much of 1918, Rapid City newspaper readers may have viewed themselves as insulated from the pandemic while it spread across the world. Some stories in the Journal played down the flu threat, even during the last few days before it assaulted the city. On Oct.

1, 2 and 3, 1918, front-page headlines in the Journal said, on increase though is not se- in city not yet danger and cases of influenza but none Then, suddenly, on Oct. 6, 1918, the tone changed. has reached size of epidemic read a front-page headline in that paper. For the next several weeks, the city was under siege. Churches, theaters, schools, the public library, pool halls, soft-drink par- lors and other businesses and public buildings closed.

Grocery deliveries were suspended. Hospital admit- tance was limited to only the most urgent cases, because so many nurses were sick. A central kitchen was opened at the high school, where food was cooked for distribution to homes where all the family members were sick. By order of the mayor, all funerals were ordered to be conducted in the open air, to the gath- ering of even a few people in a small, insufficiently venti- lated On Oct. 24, 1918, Mayor W.E.

Robinson lished an effective quaran- to be enforced by po- lice, the Journal reported. Residences affected by the flu were to be and people with the flu were ordered to remain in their homes until receiving a permit, which could only be earned by passing five days without a fever. Even healthy people were prohibited from loitering on the streets in groups of more than two or three, and any- one caught doing so was expected to have a permit if they hoped to avoid trouble. At the train depot, police allowed only one customer to be at the ticket counter at any given time. During the last few days of October, at least two people were cited for vio- lating a city ordinance that forbade spitting on side- walks.

The ordinance was apparently adopted during an earlier nationwide effort to eradicate tuberculosis, but was rarely enforced until the 1918 flu ep- idemic, when the ordinance received renewed attention as one more way to fight the spread of the flu. The ordi- nance was apparently for- gotten after the epidemic, and a search of Rapid code reveals that the an- ti-spitting ordinance is still in effect to this day. Statistics published in the Journal during the flu epidemic were not com- prehensive, but they gave indications of the alarming scale of the ordeal. On Oct. 3, 1918, the Jour- nal reported that all but 18 of the 130 men at an Army training camp on the South Dakota School of Mines Technology campus were sick with the flu.

On Oct. 6, the Journal published an estimate that 250 Rapid City residents were sick. By Oct. 10, that number had risen to 500 and was de- scribed as a conservative estimate. The total population at the time, judging from the census counts of 1910 and 1920, was probably around 5,000.

Newspaper coverage of the impact at the Na- tive American boarding school was less robust, but one headline proclaimed conditions there to be the any where in the The virus moved quickly, sometimes killing people within a few days of their first symptoms. The virus also ran its course through the city quickly; by the beginning of November 1918, the community kitchen stopped distribut- ing meals, businesses and schools reopened, and life began returning to normal. The public health crisis occurred while World War I was winding down, but lists of the latest South Dakota war casualties still routinely appeared in the Journal alongside the latest reports about flu victims. A local draft call was sus- pended during the flu epidemic for lack of healthy men to respond. In the midst of the epi- demic, a writer in the Jour- nal reflected on its historic nature.

will take some time before Rapid City people can forget the recent ex- perience, if indeed they ever can, but human na- ture is naturally buoyant and ever ready to make the best of things, so the re- construction period will be swift and the article said. one will forget, however, the good deeds done, the self sacrificing spirit of hundreds of our people as they helped care for hundreds of others of their neighbors, friends or contact Seth tupper at seth. Flu From A1 Support your immune system this year with our FREE Educational Series! OCTOBER 8 HERBS, VITAMINS MINERALS OCTOBER 15 HERBAL TEAS OCTOBER 22 FOODS OCTOBER 29 HOMEOPATHY ESSENTIAL OILS Instructor Herbal Inclinations, Jodi Niggemann, Registered Herbalist (AHG), MS Nutrition herbal therapeutics with wholistic your immune system this year with our FREE Educational Series! OCTOBER 8 HERBS, VITAMINS MINERALS OCTOBER 15 HERBAL TEAS OCTOBER 22 FOODS OCTOBER 29 HOMEOPATHY ESSENTIAL OILS Instructor Herbal Inclinations, Jodi Niggemann, Registered Herbalist (AHG), MS Nutrition 605.341.9099 333 Omaha St. Ste. 2 Rapid City, SD 57701 immune system this year with our FREE Educational Series! OCTOBER 8 HERBS, VITAMINS MINERALS OCTOBER 15 HERBAL TEAS OCTOBER 22 FOODS OCTOBER 29 HOMEOPATHY ESSENTIAL OILS Instructor Herbal Inclinations, Jodi Niggemann, Registered Herbalist (AHG), MS Nutrition herbal therapeutics with wholistic JOIN US FOR 30 MINUTE CLASSES HELD MONDAYS AT 12:30 5:30 PM Instructor Herbal Inclinations, Jodi Niggemann, Registered Herbalist (AHG), MS Nutrition herbal therapeutics with wholistic JOIN US FOR 30 MINUTE CLASSES HELD MONDAYS AT 12:30 5:30 PM 605.341.9099 333 Omaha St.

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