Just below the South Dakota border in northern Nebraska on the Sunday before Memorial Day in the 1890s, a most unusual situation was created by the older children that took their parents several weeks to resolve.

Weeks — and months — of total isolation, incredible loneliness, backbreaking work, physical discomfort, and struggling “to keep body and soul together” wore down many an early homesteader.  It quite literally drove some to the brink of insanity.

Sometime in the late afternoon while outside on the homestead, you looked across the plains and began to see buggies, carriages, spring wagons, just plain wagons, and horse-back riders all headed to one particular soddy.  It would be the largest sod house in the area and it featured a hard smooth earthen floor.  They were all headed to a square dance!

Of all the social diversions open to the early pioneers, dancing was far and away the most popular.  It was the universal indoor amusement which was held on almost every holiday and other occasions during the year.  It provided the entire family an opportunity to get together, socialize, and make new friends.

The earliest sod homes were just one large room.  One or perhaps two kerosene lamps from one end of the house would cast a shadowy pale glow over the interior of the home.  At the other end of the large room were the beds.

The girls and women wore long dresses with wide skirts and tight waists.  Some had long, thick braids that hung to their waists and were tied with colored ribbons.  The men, old and young wore every kind of dress, from tight fitting pants and high collars to just plain bib-overalls.

Before the dancing started, they would divide the room with blankets which were hung on a wire.  With the beds at one end of the room behind the blankets, they had a place to put the children as they would fell asleep.  The children would be placed on either the bed or floor.

When the dance began the children were left outside to participate in their own games and activities.  As the night wore on and the younger children became tired or fell asleep, they would be brought into the house and placed on the bed or floor at the far end of the room.

Since the parents were going to dance all night, the older children who were playing outside had plenty of time to devise a mischievous prank that their friends and neighbors would be talking about for months.  The plan they developed was creative and harmless; however, it did take a lot of time and effort on the part of their parents to unravel.

As the hours passed and the smaller children became sleepy, they were taken by older children and placed on the bed behind the curtain of blankets.  After the children were asleep, they would remove  the clothes from one boy and exchange with another boy.  They would do the same with the girls.  By daybreak no child had on their own clothes.

The older boys also remounted the wheels on the vehicles.  If it had large wheels on the back and small ones in front, they switched them and put the big ones in front and the small wheels at the rear.  In some cases, they crisscrossed them or placed the largest wheels on the same side.  Either way, the driver always had a difficult time negotiating the way home!

After a full night of dancing, and in some cases too much drink, everyone was ready to go home and have breakfast.  As the parents got ready to leave, they grabbed the child who was still sleeping and wearing the clothes that belonged to their child.  It was not until they got home that they realized that the child they brought home belonged to a neighbor who was wearing the clothing of their son or daughter.

After the parents realized their dilemma, they knew that they needed to take the child home.  Often when they drove over to a  home to return the child, they discovered that those living on the homestead had taken their buggy or wagon and the child they brought home to another residence.  Finding that home vacant, they were unable to leave the child alone so they looked elsewhere.

Some of these families spent more than a week playing “cat and mouse” before they finally got all the children matched up with their parents.  This was a new and provocative experience for everyone.

The parents  were especially not happy.  To control their frustrations, they sang a song.  One which more than any other expressed their true feelings and the conditions in which they found themselves.  It was called “Dakota Land.”

It went like this:

“We’ve reached the land of desert sweet, Where nothing grows for man to eat, The wind does blow with blist’ring heat, O’er the plains so hard to beat, Dakota Land, Dakota Land, As on thy desert soil I stand.  And look away across the plains, I wonder why it never rains.”

Feel free to substitute “Nebraska Land” for “Dakota Land.”

 

Author Author Clarence Shoemaker, originally published in the Gregory Times-Advocate on July 9, 2025