THE CHURCH ON
THE CHANGING FRONTIER

PREFACE

The Committee on Social and Religious Surveys was organized in January, 1921. Its aim is to combine the scientific method with the religious motive. The Committee conducts and publishes studies and surveys, and promotes conferences for their consideration. It coöperates with other social and religious agencies, but is itself an independent organization.

The Committee is composed of: John. R. Mott, Chairman; Ernest D. Burton, Secretary; Raymond B. Fosdick, Treasurer; James L. Barton and W. H. P. Faunce. Galen M. Fisher is Associate Executive Secretary. The offices are at 111 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

In the field of town and country the Committee sought first of all to conserve some of the results of the surveys made by the Interchurch World Movement. In order to verify some of these surveys, it carried on field studies, described later, along regional lines worked out by Dr. Warren H. Wilson[1] and adopted by the Interchurch World Movement. These regions are:

I. Colonial States: All of New England, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

II. The South: All the States south of Mason and Dixon’s line and the Ohio River east of the Mississippi, including Louisiana.

III. The Southern Highlands Section: This section comprises about 250 counties in “The back yards of eight Southern States.”

IV. The Middle West: The States of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and northern Missouri.

V. Northwest: Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and eastern Montana.

VI. Prairie: Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska.

VII. Southwest: Southern Missouri, Arkansas and Texas.

VIII. Range or Mountain: Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada and western Montana.

The Director of the Town and Country Survey Department for the Interchurch World Movement was Edmund deS. Brunner. He is likewise the Director of this Department for the Committee on Social and Religious Surveys.

The original surveys were conducted under the supervision of the following:

Beaverhead County—Rev. Charles T. Greenway, State Survey Supervisor of the Interchurch World Movement for Montana. The County Leader was Rev. Thomas W. Bennett.

Hughes County—Mr. C. O. Bemies, State Survey Supervisor of the Interchurch World Movement for South Dakota. The County Survey Leader was Rev. H. H. Gunderson.

Sheridan County—Mr. A. G. Alderman, State Survey Supervisor of the Interchurch World Movement for Wyoming and Utah. The County Survey Leader was Rev. M. DeWitt Long, D.D.

Union County—Rev. H. R. Mills, State Survey Supervisor of the Interchurch World Movement for New Mexico. The County Survey Leader was Professor A. L. England.

In the spring of 1921 the field worker, Miss Helen Belknap, of the Committee on Social and Religious Surveys, visited these counties, verified the results of the survey work previously done, and secured additional information not included in the original study.

Special acknowledgment should be made to the ministers, county officers and others in these counties for their helpful coöperation and assistance in the successful completion of the survey.

The statistical and graphical editor of this volume was Mr. A. H. Richardson of the Chief Statistician’s Division of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, formerly connected with the Russell Sage Foundation.

The technical advisor was Mr. H. N. Morse of the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, who was also associate director of the Town and Country Survey in the Interchurch World Movement.

Valuable help was given by the Home Missions Council; by the Council of Women for Home Missions through their sub-Committee on Town and Country, and by a Committee appointed jointly by the Home Missions Council and the Federal Council of Churches for the purpose of coöperating with the Committee on Social and Religious Surveys in endeavoring to translate the results of the survey into action. The members of this Joint Committee on Utilizing Surveys are:

Representing the Federal Council of Churches

Representing the Home Missions Council and the Council of Women for Home Missions

INTRODUCTION

THE POINT OF VIEW

This book is a study of the work of Protestant city, town and country churches in four counties on the Range. It discusses the effect on the Church of the changing conditions in the Rocky Mountain States, and the task of the Church in ministering to the situation which exists to-day. This survey, therefore, does not attempt to deal directly with the spiritual effect of any church upon the life of individuals or groups. Such results are not measurable by the foot rule of statistics or by survey methods. It is possible, however, to weigh the concrete accomplishments of churches. These actual achievements are their fruits and “by their fruits ye shall know them.”

The four counties studied in this book are Beaverhead in Montana, Sheridan in Wyoming, Union in New Mexico and Hughes in South Dakota. Many considerations entered into their choice. For one thing, it must be borne in mind that this book, while complete in itself, is also part of a larger whole. From among the one thousand county surveys completed or nearly completed by the Interchurch World Movement, twenty-six of those made in the nine most representative rural regions of America were selected for intensive study. In this way it was hoped to obtain a bird’s-eye view of the religious situation as it exists in the more rural areas of the United States. All the counties selected were chosen with the idea that they were fair specimens of what was to be found throughout the area of which they are a part.

In selecting the counties an effort was made to discover those which were typical, not merely from a statistical viewpoint, but also from the social and religious problems they represented. For example, the four counties described in this pamphlet were chosen because they are representative of large sections throughout the Range area.

It is recognized that there are reasons why exception may be taken to the choice of counties. No area is completely typical of every situation. A careful study of these counties, however, leads to the conclusion that they are fair specimens of the region they are intended to represent.

All these studies have been made from the point of view of the Church, recognizing, however, that social and economic conditions affect its life. For instance, it is evident that various racial groups influence church life differently. Germans and Swedes usually favor liturgical denominations; the Scotch incline to the non-liturgical. Again, if there is economic pressure and heavy debt, the Church faces spiritual handicaps, and needs a peculiar type of ministry. Because of the importance of social and economic factors in the life of the Church the opening chapters of this book are occupied with a description of these factors. At first glance some of these facts may appear irrelevant, but upon closer observation they will be found to have a bearing upon the main theme—the problem of the Church.

Naturally the greatest amount of time and study has been devoted to the churches themselves; their history, equipment and finances; their members, services and church organizations; their Sunday schools, young people’s societies and community programs, have all been carefully investigated and evaluated.

Intensive investigation has been limited to the distinctly rural areas and to those centers of population which have less than five thousand inhabitants. In the case of towns larger than this an effort has been made to measure the service of such towns to the surrounding countryside, but not to study each church and community in detail.

The material in this book presents a composite picture of the religious conditions within these four counties. Certain major problems, which were found with more or less frequency in all four counties, are discussed, and all available information from any of the counties has been utilized. The opening pages of the book, however, summarize the conditions within each county. While this method has obvious drawbacks it is felt that the advantages outweigh them, and that this treatment is the best suited to bring out the peculiar conditions existing throughout this area. The appendices present the methodology of the survey and the definitions employed. They also include in tabular form the major facts of each county as revealed by the investigation. These appendices are intended especially to meet the needs of church executives and students of sociology who desire to carry investigation further than is possible in the type of presentation used for the main portion of the book.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS AND CHARTS

THE CHURCH ON THE CHANGING FRONTIER

CHAPTER I

Beaverhead is in the extreme southwestern corner of Montana, slightly northwest of Yellowstone Park and straight south from Butte. It is bounded by Rocky Mountain ranges on the west, south and northwest. On the south and west it faces the State of Idaho. The county is well drained and watered by the two principal rivers, the Big Hole and Beaverhead, and by their tributaries, and here, too, the Missouri River has its source. Beaverhead County embraces 5,657 square miles or 3,620,480 acres. Of this area, 1,365,000 acres are included in the Beaverhead National Forest Reserve scattered over the north, west and southern parts of the county. A small part of the Madison National Forest also extends into the county on the west. The altitude at Monida, in the southern part of the county, is about 6,500 feet above sea level.

MONTANA AND WYOMING

Locating Beaverhead and Sheridan Counties.

The Wyoming county, Sheridan, lies in the extreme north central section of the state, about 110 miles east of Yellowstone Park, Montana forming its northern boundary. Sheridan is about 100 miles long and thirty miles wide, the total area being 2,574 square miles, or 1,647,360 acres, less than half the area of the Montana county, Beaverhead. The Big Horn Forest Reserve covers 383,493 acres of Sheridan County. Rivers and creeks are numerous, the chief ones being Tongue River, Powder River and Big Goose, Prairie Dog and Clear Creeks. The city of Sheridan, the county seat, has an altitude of 3,737 feet above sea level.

The other two counties, Union in New Mexico and Hughes in South Dakota, consist largely of plain lands. Union lies in the northeastern corner of the state of New Mexico, with three states, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas, to the north and east of her. Union included 5,370 square miles, or 3,436,800 acres, at the time this survey was made. About one-sixth of the southwestern part of Union County has, however, been added to part of Mora County, to the southwest, to form a new county named Harding which was formally inaugurated on June 14th, 1921. The land consists mainly of dry, level plains and mesas, although there are some mountains and isolated hills or buttes. Aside from the mountainous area, which is wooded, there are scarcely any trees with the exception of a few along the larger creeks and those cultivated around ranch houses. The northwestern corner of the county is the most mountainous. The county is drained chiefly by Ute Creek, flowing southeast through the western and southwestern sections into the Canadian River, and in the northern part by the beautiful Cimarron. There are a number of small streams, but many are dry during a large part of the year. Union has exhilarating, bracing air and radiant sunshine.

SOUTH DAKOTA AND NEW MEXICO

Locating Hughes and Union Counties.

Hughes is a small county almost exactly in the center of the State of South Dakota. It has the shape of a right-angled triangle with the Missouri River forming its hypothenuse from the northwest to the southeast corner. It covers 485,760 acres of high and rolling prairie, with river and creek bluffs and bottom lands. Several creeks and small rivers flow directly through Hughes, and it is on the whole one of the best-watered counties in South Dakota. Pierre, the county seat, is the capital of the state.

Early Days on the Frontier

The story of these counties is bound up with the discovery and subsequent history of the West. It is, as Viola Paradise says, “the story of Indians and early explorers; of hunters and fur traders in the days not so very long ago when the bison ranged the prairies; then of a few ranchmen, scattered at great distances; of great herds of cattle and sheep, succeeding the wild buffaloes; and of the famous cowboy; then of the coming of the dry farmer with his hated fences; and of the crowding out of the open range cattlemen and the substitution of the homesteader.”

THE TOWN LOCK-UP

This primitive jail at Bannock, once chosen as the capital of Montana, has held some rough characters in its time, but is now abandoned.

It was at Two Forks, in Beaverhead County, near what is now the village of Armstead, that Lewis and Clark, at a critical point in their expedition, were met and befriended by the Shoshones, the tribe of their Indian girl guide, Sacajawea.[2] This was on August 17, 1805. White fur traders soon followed in the track of this famous expedition, and after them came Jason and Sidney Lee, in 1834, the first missionaries to reach Montana.

The next landmark in the county’s history is the “gold strike” on Grasshopper Creek, in 1862. News of the find spread like wild-fire. Miners rushed to the creek and set up their tents, shacks and log cabins. Unlike Rome, this first town of Montana, called Bannock, was built in a single night. Soon after the gold seekers had settled down to work in earnest, the road agents, a well-organized gang of “roughs” from all over the West, began to rob the stage-coaches travelling between Bannock and Virginia City. “Innocent” was their pass-word; mustaches, beards and neckties tied with a sailor’s knot, their sign of membership. After a succession of miners, homeward bound with their gold-dust, had dropped from sight, never to be heard of again, those who remained decided to elect a sheriff. Their choice fell upon a certain Henry Plummer, who was also sheriff of Virginia City. Plummer, however, never seemed to arrest the right man, a circumstance which was explained later when it was discovered that he was the chief of the gang of road agents. The funeral of a miner who had died of mountain fever, the first man for some time to die from a natural cause, gave the community the opportunity to organize secretly the “Vigilantes,” and finally to round up the road agents, either hanging them or giving them warning to leave the country.

Montana was established as a territory in 1864, Bannock becoming the first capital, and in the sane year the first county seat of Beaverhead County. The capital was removed to Virginia City in 1865, but not until 1882 did Dillon become the county seat. The boundaries of Beaverhead changed very little until 1911, when 938 square miles of Madison County, 600,320 acres in all, were annexed. Men began settling on the land west of Bannock as early as 1862; stock men mainly with herds. A few farmers also began to take up choice bits of land along the rivers. The railroad, then the Utah Northern, entered from the south in 1879. As it was being built, tent towns were established every fifty miles. One of these towns was never moved and grew into the present town of Dillon.

The first attempt to open up to the white man the land along the Powder and Lower Tongue Rivers, in what is now Sheridan County, was made by General Patrick E. Conner on August 29, 1865, and was eminently successful. He attacked the Arapahoe Indians with a force of 250 regular soldiers and successfully routed seven hundred warriors. The next effort ended, however, in disaster. On the twenty-first day of December, 1866, at a point on Sheridan’s southern boundary now known as Massacre Hill, eighty-two officers and men sacrificed their lives to the hostile Sioux and Cheyennes in attempting to open a road across the country from Fort Laramie to Montana.

LONELINESS IN UNION COUNTY

The black spot in the center of this not very attractive picture is a squatter’s hut.

AFTER SOME YEARS

In contrast with the top picture is this one of an attractive farmhouse which shows what can be done on the plains of New Mexico.

The first claim ever taken up in this region was in 1878, on Little Goose Creek, near Big Horn, and the first irrigation ditch was constructed the next year. Big Horn was laid out in 1880, and the first store opened. The first newspaper in the county was the Big Horn Sentinel, and the first agricultural fair was held in Big Horn in 1885. The first cabin was built on the present site of Sheridan City in 1878. Sheridan was laid out in 1882 and incorporated as a city in 1884. Until 1881, the territory contained in Johnson and Sheridan Counties was unorganized and had no county government, but lay within the jurisdiction of Carbon County courts. It became Johnson County in 1881. In 1887 it was divided by popular vote, the northern portion being named Sheridan County in memory of the gallant General Phil Sheridan, whose army, in the 1881 expedition, camped on the site of Sheridan City.

Union County, in centuries past the camping grounds of vanished tribes, is now white man’s country, but it did not become so until the Santa Fé trail opened the great Southwest. With the Rabbit Ear Mountains to guide settlers the old trail came across Union County, untravelled until 1822, and finally, two years later, the first wagons crept slowly westward, facing in that pioneer mood now become historic the hardships of climate and the perils of hostile redskins. In Union County the story survives of a massacre by Indians, which accounts for the tardy white settlements in this region.

In 1870, there were about a dozen homes of white settlers in the whole area. The railroad, in 1887-88, encouraged development which began with Clayton a year later. In February, 1893, the Territorial Legislature incorporated into Union County parts of Colfax, Mora and San Miguel. The original boundaries of Union County were not changed until 1903, when 265 square miles were added to Quay County. Beginning in the northern part of the county and gradually working southwards, stockmen took up claims close to water and used public land for grazing. Up to about 1900, most of the territory remained open range land in which cattle were raised on a large scale, but since that time, it has gradually been homesteaded.

TWO COMMUNITY CENTERS

The local store and the school of De Grey community, Hughes County, S. D., the only meeting places for widely scattered “neighbors.”

The section around Pierre, in Hughes County, was the oldest settlement in the State of South Dakota. Fort Pierre, across the river from Pierre, was established in 1817, and there was continuous settlement after that. At the conclusion of the Red Cloud War of 1866-68, the Laramie Treaty with the Sioux Indians established a great Sioux reservation embracing all the land west of Missouri, from the Niobrara River on the south to the Cannon Ball River on the north and northwest, to the Yellowstone. This reservation lay unbroken until 1876, the year when the Indians surrendered the Black Hills. When the gold rush to the Black Hills began, Fort Pierre was the nearest settled point and the traffic center. Because the railroad had no right of way through the reservation, the line could not be extended to the Black Hills.

The first permanent American settlement in Hughes County was made in 1873, when Thomas L. Riggs established the Congregational Indian Mission at Oahe, where he still continues a church. When the railway reached Pierre in 1881, there came the first “boom” in the history of the county. All sorts and conditions of people took up half sections, and Hughes County was almost homesteaded between the years 1881 and 1883. The second boom came in the years 1899-91, later followed by a reaction and slump. About the year 1903, Pierre was selected as the State capital. All sorts of efforts were made to steal the honor for some other town until in 1905 a bill provided for a capitol building at Pierre which was completed in 1913. The railway began in 1906 to extend to the Black Hills. Thereafter, until 1910, all the region west of Missouri was settled, and practically all of these new settlers came through Pierre. In 1911 the construction was finished, people were out of work, and there came another slump. There was also a drought during the period 1911-12-13.

Transportation and Roads

There is practically no competition between railroads in any of these counties. Each has one main line running through it, along which are located the county seat and other smaller centers. Beaverhead has the Oregon Short Line; Sheridan the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; Hughes the Chicago & Northwestern; and Union the Colorado & Southern. Three counties also have small sections of branch lines, and Sheridan has twelve miles of trolley line giving city service, and reaching all but one of the mining camps to the north of Sheridan City. None of these counties has really adequate train service. The distance from markets thus becomes an acute problem in certain parts of all four counties, but especially in Beaverhead, Sheridan and Union on account of their greater distances.

Each county has at least one good stretch of road. A large proportion of the crossroads have never been improved. Many of them are only trails. Beaverhead has 2,365 miles of roads, of which 1,500 miles are improved and 865 are unimproved. Approximately $278,147.00 has been spent on roads in the last five years. The combined length of public roads in Sheridan County is 796 miles. Five miles are hard-surfaced, five are red shale, seventeen are gravel, 150 are State Highway and 410 are legally established traveled roads, sixty-six feet wide and dragged when necessary. There are also 200 miles of unimproved roads known as “feeders.” During the last five years, approximately $310,000.00 has been spent on county roads, not including the amount spent on State roads. Both Sheridan and Beaverhead are fortunate in their location on highways leading to Yellowstone Park; Beaverhead is on the Western Park-to-Park highway, and Sheridan is on the Custer Battlefield highway.

During the past four years roads in Union County have improved. The Colorado to Gulf highway from Galveston to Denver, enters the county at Texline and continues for seventy-five miles to the Colfax County line northwest of Des Moines. This is graded road and it is maintained partly by the Federal Government, which pays 50 per cent., and partly by the State and county which pay 25 per cent. each. There are 180 miles of State highways in the county for which the State and county each pay 50 per cent. Two Federal Aid projects are also under way in the county at present. Something over 650 miles of roads are maintained by the county, and there are about 2,000 miles of community roads which are dependent upon local care.

The total road mileage of Hughes County is 978, with no hard-surfaced but with four miles of gravel roads, and 175 miles of other improved roads. There are also 799 miles of unimproved road. Forty-five miles of highway have been built by the State between Pierre and Harrold and are maintained by the county.

The People

All these counties were settled chiefly by homesteaders who came from all over the United States, but chiefly from the Middle West and Southwest. Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma are the states most widely represented. A great many are children of original homesteaders.

The breathless haste with which settlers occupied and developed this great primeval region of the West, rich in natural resources, is shown by the following figures of population:

The greatest period of growth for Beaverhead was from 1870 to 1880; for Hughes from 1880 to 1890; but both Union and Sheridan made their largest increase from 1900 to 1910, while Beaverhead during those years has made a slow, steady gain.

Hughes has had “booms,” and has gained and lost population in succeeding decades. Sheridan and Union, the newer counties, have forged rapidly ahead of the others in population. Sheridan, on account of her city, has made a rapid urban increase, but her rural increase has been slow and steady. Union is a large county with no Forest Reserve area and has been homesteaded rapidly. Although, in 1903, 265 square miles were taken away from Union, the population in 1910 was 11,404, or an increase of 151.9 per cent. during the decade from 1900. The density of rural population per square mile in Beaverhead is 9.8, in Sheridan 3.5, in Hughes 3.3 and in Union 3.

The West has a smaller percentage of foreign-born population than the East or Middle West. In three of the states represented, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota, the percentage of foreign-born has decreased in the last decade. In Montana, it decreased from 24.4 per cent. to 17 per cent.; in Wyoming, from 18.6 per cent. to 13 per cent.; and in South Dakota, from 17.2 per cent. to 12.9 per cent. New Mexico, with the smallest proportion of foreign-born of any of the four states, went from 6.9 per cent. in 1910 to 8 per cent. in 1920.

Sheridan, with 15.9 per cent., is the only one of the four counties studied whose foreign-born population remained constant. In Beaverhead, the proportion fell from 18.1 to 14, in Hughes from 11.4 to 8.1 and in Union from 2.2 to 1.7. The total number of foreign-born in all four counties is 4,670, or 9.7 per cent. of the total number of people. Germans predominate in Union, Hughes and Sheridan. In Beaverhead, the predominating nationalities are Danes, Swedes and Austrians. The New Americans in Beaverhead, Hughes and Union are largely on the land; in Sheridan County, the majority are in the mining camps.