In 1869 there were no school houses or churches at Whetstone, neither teachers nor ministers. Poole’s predecessor did ask him to receipt for a school house when receiving the government property on his arrival. Upon inspection Poole found that it existed only in an individual’s imagination.
There was a few rough hewn logs collected at a designated spot which was considered an eligible site for the school house, but the structure had not been assembled, except on paper. The trees were still standing from which the church was to be built.
The natives only spoke of the school and church incidentally as having been promised them. They were told that the Department would furnish a teacher when the school house was completed.
So far as the church and minister were concerned, they were not anxious for them. They were already provided with a religion of their own, under whose tenets they constantly preached and practiced. The medicine man was their minister with the blue sky and high bluffs their church office. Their religion was one naturally suited to their wants. It corresponded to their ideas of morality and justice. It satisfied their longings for immortality and expressed their views of happiness in the hereafter.
Several days before the total eclipse of the sun on August 7, 1869, the doctor at the agency decided to try his skill as a magician. He wanted to impress the Indians with his magic art, inseparably connected in their minds with the healing art.
He announced of the coming event, telling them of the precise time (taken from the 1869 almanac) when the sun would be obscured and darkness would follow, until he saw fit to have it pass away. When the day arrived, he had his large audience in readiness, duly armed with smoked glass.
Being within the line where it would be a total eclipse, having a cloudless sky and a clear and delightful atmosphere on the Dakota prairie, the phenomenon was observed under the most favorable circumstances. There was no mistake as to time; the moon gradually crossed the disc of the sun, a black, spherical mass, surely putting out its light.
The Indians were emotionless on lookers, until, as the eclipse reached its culmination, leaving only a narrow, bright rim around the outer edge of the sun, the deepening steel-gray shadows attracted their attention, as well as that of all the animals. Then, concluding that the exhibition had gone far enough, and that they must drive away the evil spirits, they commenced discharging their rifles into the air.
The light of the sun gradually returned, they were thoroughly convinced that it was the result of their efforts, and that the Indians medicine was better than the white man’s. The doctor could predict the eclipse, but they could drive it away and prevent any evil consequences arising from it. From their point of view, the doctor had failed in fully establishing himself as a big medicine man!
From time immemorial man has been strangely impressed by the phenomenon of a total eclipse of the sun, which is the most sublime and awe-inspiring sight that nature affords. Among the early tribes and races of men the feeling excited by the gradual blotting out of the sun was one of abject terror. To many it was a sign of the wrath of the gods and all haste was made to appease them. To others it was a portent of misfortune in battle or the death of a ruler.
In the middle ages (500 – 1500AD) the fear of the eclipses seemed in no degree abated for we read of men hiding in cellars during totality, of women screaming and fainting and of the death by fright of the Emperor of Bavaria following a total eclipse of the sun in the year A.D. 840. It lasted for more than five minutes.
Even today, when the cause of eclipses is so generally understood and keen scientific enthusiasm has displaced the terror of past ages, a hush of expectancy and a feeling of uneasiness settles over observers as the slender crescent of the disappearing sun vanishes.
Man is then, more than at any other time, brought into touch for a few fleeting moments with forces over which he can have no control and the thought awes him and brings with it an unconscious feeling of humility. To witness a total eclipse of the sun is a privilege that comes to only a few people. Many live and die without ever appreciating one. Once seen, however, it is a phenomenon never to be forgotten.
Midwest newspapers in the last half of July, 1869, reported that
“the great solar eclipse of the sun will occur, as we have stated, on the 7th of August. This eclipse will be visible throughout the whole American continent as a partial eclipse. The places where it is to be total are confined to a narrow belt less than 150 miles wide, extending in a south-easterly direction across the continent.”
Locations and when the eclipse would begin and end were also reported in many of the papers. Omaha was the closest site to the Whetstone Agency listed. There, it was reported that the eclipse would begin at 3:31 and end at 5:38 — 2 hours and 7 minutes.
The eclipse of August 7, 1869, crossed America diagonally from Alaska to North Carolina, and fortunately clear skies greeted the observing parties.
Author Author Clarence Shoemaker, originally published in the Gregory Times-Advocate on October 9, 2024