1 10 1 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/46614/archive/files/af8c9511830c1aec1203045ec416d8e6.MP3?Expires=1790208000&Signature=mVzK-YZqvscb2IYpYNdtNFj2XQo%7E77a6i6exZKK6XgoocAJc%7ESwRvyNrOYCY2%7ExlGleJReYK%7Eo59nvfhY8EDtGpDGyx5S-2WW2Y3zHwn9fJUWro1ohdUX%7EInwRMl2XDnha1x2ceiWFKSnooRvFHvfVkvngCTQPQD9YuxBRWeig102-0%7EyHOVEMbHyZLc%7ESy27X%7EfC-f%7E0an3YzH%7EzgDwuPjr07tWos5r2chILfmnxOoj0ndSM-g%7EH75Olj6d9MfIwd5PdxokY3o5hRrX9qJgCKmmbBcmGLwaRshXhRCc3VtVQy-X-UR-byRn95xT8AJmVu37yIZPJIhzCQy8MOJ4JA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM e366c1298ca73abfe07f775a23bbd7b6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bill Duhamel audio pt. 1 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/46614/archive/files/bea10563f7d2d8bdfdc51451aeeeed80.MP3?Expires=1790208000&Signature=ApogOH55qd5Xwcx9cxZVbEzlou92S-ryM8aLbx7BCV6QtLrqSagPOhGIjfPXgexdUSoJZp68ZOPiFzH-JK55ieY0SvLXKZ7Iz38wVDxwL4fM22vY2D%7EfuTo3hceAORYGQpiYLFPvh7uf5RYQZ9PJ591so2on3JAw3u3m3rNf5dM84p4Hareyp42jwpwh6JqLpSlkOGqEp%7E%7ELe9Jy1tpwYT1loZt%7Et9YXBsV9lAYloWEbBztGVDoxvHLcvkUGVqP39k-4VDsdmIxn0P6VQLvPSIq4azgjj4YEnYU%7Ehx8g5dmCWB1IJs5m7Lvm64PqT7VI-rgW9wVfiw95jT%7EnCkDJlQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM a47ebb7193e2be8fa53d51ca381b22e5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bill Duhamel audio pt. 2 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/46614/archive/files/a6ffa41cdfb11848251ca516a83d2383.pdf?Expires=1790208000&Signature=nZAShDSbdjba9yiEQmrad%7E-2LOQZTSWw-9PpHqw3YJs9%7E9wQUphbzDmf6G57ACIoXiEZWGF5nc2zzIx3t%7Em94S1RMFOkOZmANQs35d%7E4g3EC1YoMvfP68QVSQC7wJ-R3f6PxIsoayw95No39dPmwW4FHw4FMwTXClPVUYaUsjZFiyCfIzepLsfJN3tLznrukjJ-OxDXI76hXAabx49rdxfDln%7E6jj7P1ZU1B6UKKL8ww8VB0U289EA5nUWujIQfY2lzI4uS8sLUfnPMRTqY99%7E7v4lp7UJu-k0m%7E1SvclRzNA3JrMUdtE%7Eg5AiOoK9D53Jm427hJPvcCZzXgLCYSVw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 3b07361363369ee715bb8cfa202b5426 PDF Text Text Kim: The first Peter Duhamel came here from Canada. Bill: My great-grandfather. Kim: Your great-grandfather. Bill: It was about 1857, we think. Kim: Yeah. I remember that when he came, according to the book, he had just almost pocket change and he was a young man. He came from Canada and cut wood and was pretty industrious but that he almost had (incomprehensible) as Hugh Glass. I mean, he lived off the land in the wintertime. He ate wolves and whatever he could catch. Bill: The big problem was that wolves didn't eat him. Kim: Yes. Yeah. Bill: Actually, there's an interesting story there, about Peter Duhamel, or Pierre, 'cause he was born in Quebec, outside of Montreal. Probably...I've seen different places, 1838, 1940. My belief is its 1840, because we have a newspaper article that my sister Peggy got. She went up there to try to trace the family in Quebec. There's a story written about 1906 in French, and they're talking about the...I don't remember now...six brothers or five brothers, and he was like the third brother in that story. In fact, I've got...she made a plaque of the newspaper deal, at least the part of it that referred. It didn't matter if you worked backwards from that date, at its age it would've been 1840. That's why I believe that's probably it, but the thing is, he died in 1927, and in this last probably 10-12 years, he was an invalid. What people had, you know, a hundred years ago or so, is a good question. His first wife had died and so he remarried and he lived on 3rd and Kansas City St., and so when people came over to dinner, she'd say, "Well, she's fixing dinner. Go down and talk to Peter," or Pierre. There was a fellow who was a bookkeeper for the Duhamel Company. If you give me a minute, I can tell you his last name, because his grandson was connected with the School of Mines and still lives in Rapid City. But he used to go down and visit. Before he was the bookkeeper for the Duhamel Company, which owned this building and the store in those days, he'd been a reporter for the Spearfish 'Queen City Mail'. So when Peter died in 1927, he sat down and wrote some of the stories down. It's about...I've seen the manuscript...probably �60-80 pages long, typewriter, double-spaced. So I was out visiting my Grandma (Maybe?), that would be Peter's daughter-in-law, and this is about 1969. She lived out in the country by the cave, and I was telling her I wished I'd paid more attention and listened to some of the stories she told me when I was little. When I was a kid, I didn't listen to a lot of things. It came in one ear and went out another. Essentially, she went over to a desk she had and pulled open a drawer, and she had this manuscript. She said, "You could take this and read it, but I want it back." It's been a little mouse-chewed and there is a hole through the middle. Very brittle paper but had been rolled up, so if you held it, it rolled back up. I looked at it, and I had my secretary lay out an early, oh, what they called an IBM-something. It was an IBM electric typewriter and they had mag cards next to it, and you could type on the deal and on the typewriter to start on a mag card, so that you could make duplicates. Copies. So she went through the manuscript and retyped it. Occasionally she'd have to ask me, when we hit the hole, she couldn't figure out what word fit in there, you know. If I read the (incomprehensible), just what I thought there would be, 'cause it went all the way through the manuscript. Did that, and I made copies for the rest of the family and then gave it back to my grandmother. She died, then, two years later, in 1971, and nobody ever saw that manuscript again. I said, "Golly, if I hadn't gotten that, that whole story would've been lost." The deal, we sent to the South Dakota museum down in Pierre, you know, so they've got the full deal. That was the basis for the first two chapters of the Duhamel book. Kim: Okay. Bill: See, 'cause you know, they could dust quite a bit out of that. The longer length was this other article. Why do I always have a party at the Galit's house? Oh, ten, fifteen years ago. This fellow...oh, I can't think of his name now...he said, "You're my grandfather who has the same last name that wrote the story about old Peter Duhamel." I said, "Yes, I've seen it." He gave me a copy of the manuscript that he had found in there. It wasn't identical, but it was pretty close. It was a draft. The difference would be negligible. It turns out that I always thought I was fortunate that I got this from my grandmother but probably would've had another copy. But this was long after the Duhamel book had been printed. That was printed in '93. So forgive me time. Usually, about ten minutes from now, I'll think of the guy's name. Kim: Do you have plans to do anything with that manuscript? Bill: We just gave it to the state. It's in the library down in Pierre. Kim: Oh. �Bill: That's where it is. They all had access to it. If you read the first two chapters of the Duhamel book, which I think are the most interesting part of the book, that's my own bias, they were condensed from that. But the longer deal is there. Kim: Yeah, I know when he was writing that book, he actually went to Sioux City and spent some time there to absorb the kinds of feelings that your grandfather could have had, you know, weather-wise. Bill: Sioux City was a very small, little town, back in those days. You know, a few shacks, I think, down there. Kim: But it was a key jumping-off spot. Bill: Oh yeah. Kim: A lot of people going west. Kim: But did we say...I know that it's in the book, but for the recording, when did he arrive in the Black Hills? Bill: We believe, you know, and again, theorists sometimes get, but I think it was the summer of 1857. Then they went through the winter, and they drew straws and he lost and got the short straw. He ended up having to stay out here, 'cause they had furs that they were taking down the river to Sioux City, and he worked for Pierre Choteau in St. Louis. Was a (incomprehensible). If you know anything about St. Louis' history, Pierre Choteau was very big in the early 1800's in St. Louis. That's where Fort Pierre was really named after: Pierre Choteau. In fact, when I was in school in Saint Louis, they had Choteau Palace, which has different name now. It was a big old mansion, down there off of...this was the block of spring, the block behind Lindeau, which was a major East-West Street. So he didn't have a pistol or any firearms and he had to stay with the furs through the winter. In the book, they talk about how, you know, he's in a little tent and he'd hear the wolves outside, you know. He was worried about the wolves getting him, and he didn't have anything to go hunting with, so I think he had a knife and probably made some spears, you know, some things. That's an interesting story, and probably more details in the manuscript. �I should ask if you want that. My sector could probably dig it out and copy it. The full manuscript, because nobody gave it down to Pierre. I'd say the original, but we don't have it here. Kim: That way we could read that and mark it up and wouldn't have to worry about handling the original. But he was very young when he came here. Bill: Yeah, he was a teenager. He was about 17, we think. Kim: Yeah. I was thinking maybe even younger than that. Bill: He was like third. They were all boys, and he was like third or fourth. The custom was, you know, the oldest boy would get the farm, which they all chose--because the farm, basically, up in Quebec, would be a pile of dirt with rocks on it, you know, it was not the prosperous butcher. It's not like an Iowa farm. Kim: Right. Bill: And so he got enough money from his dad. He said, "Well, I'm going to be gone," and he took a train down to the Ohio River and then went by steamboat down the Ohio, around, up through St. Louis, caught on with Pierre Choteau, came up the river to Sioux City, and then from there, he started tracking around here. There was about six or seven young, French teenagers from Quebec in that group. Kim: And he didn't speak English? Bill: No. No, he didn't. In fact, even when he died, his first language was French, his second language was Lakota. Kim: Ah. Bill: Third language was English. They always spoke this kind of broken English with a terrible accent, but I mean you could understand him. He felt my dad was stupid because I was his grandson who could not �speak French. He called him Francois. "You're stupid! Can't speak Francois." It isn't anything about my dad, but this is on the side. As a kid during World War II, I could remember my dad...well, Pierre's my great-grandfather. His son, Alex, spoke Lakota, and then my dad and his brother, Peter, also spoke Lakota. Well, during the war, I could remember that when the police would pick up a Native American, for some kind of problem, and they couldn't speak English, (in those days, there were a lot more that couldn't speak English than today), they would call my dad to go down and talk to him and find out what his side of the story was. Then my dad would tell them, and then he'd tell the Native American what the...he was kind of the intermediate. I don't know he did it all the time, but I do remember that happening during the war, you know, so this would be early, mid-40s. Kim: Okay. Bill: I don't know any Lakota. It got lost with me. Kim: Then going back, your grandfather, if I remember right, wound up in Denver when Denver was a pretty young city. Bill: Oh, well actually, my great-grandfather, Peter, did. Kim: Peter, yeah. Bill: See, the other thing is, of that group of French boys, most of them intermarried the Indian women. He was probably the only one that didn't, and he went down to Denver and married a German woman, Katherine, but I can't remember what the German name was, who worked as a teenager on the Union Pacific Railroad. She was like a maid or something on the train, you know, she pulled the beds and cleaned up and everything. Then they settled in Denver. Denver, at that time, was a very, very small town. Peter, basically, was a fur trader, and he'd leave Denver to come on up into Wyoming and the Rockies and then over through the Dakotas. Then he'd take his furs...this is as he's older now, must've been a teenager more, he'd take it over into Ft. Pierre and send it down the river to Chateau. But then he'd, for the winter, he'd go back to Denver. See, every time he came back, there was a new baby, 'cause I think, again, there probably were seven children in that family, two boys and the rest were girls. The story, if you read it very carefully, about 1880, he had kind of a ranch or farm, whatever you want to be it, cattle, outside of Longmont, which is what, 30 miles from Denver? It's northeast. He and Alex...the story is, he and Alex, I can't believe the two of them, there had to be some other people too, drove a herd of about 800 head of cattle from Longmont up here to...they settled down on Battle Creek, south of Rapid City. I've got to go ask Ray Hillenbrand, because I'm virtually certain, because one of the �Peters...see, there's Peter, Pierre, the first one, but I had an Uncle Peter, and a brother Peter, and I've got a grand-nephew Peter. So Peter Duhamel runs all the way through the family, establishing who is who. Alex would've been a very young boy, I'm guessing 10, about 10. I don't remember exactly. He was older than my grandma, maybe. That was his wife. I can't remember how much longer and older. I could probably go out to the cemetery and find that one, 'cause I know where they all...My dad took me around. There's family in different sections of the cemetery, out there, but I know about where they all are. They settled on Battle Creek and _____, south of Rapid City. Well, they had a daughter. I can't remember. Her name was Katherine? Or was it Margarete? Margarete was another daughter. Anyway, they married John Horgan, and so that was the Horgan ranch, down there, which Emma and Amber set. I'm positive, since their mother was a Duhamel, that that really was the old, original Duhamel ranch, down there. That's the 777 that Ray Hillenbrand bought from the Horgan's, probably late 80's is a guess? I remember that they converted it to a Buffalo ranch. I remember Amber said that he spent most of his life on a horse, following the rear-end of a cow around. He was just glad to sell out and get out of the business. Emma was on the first national bank-board. Emma's was a little bit more proper. Amber's was a little bit more fun. Kim: I want to stay in that same time-frame for a minute. The other thing that I read about Pierre Duhamel at that time was that he had a wood contract. He was cutting wood for someone and drove, actually, one of the very first herd of cattle, if not the first herd of cattle, into Rapid City, from what I understand from working with Dale and other things that I'd read was that he had a knack for...He built his herd by trading, and he would find oxen that were lame and would sear their hoofs with a branding iron or a hot iron and make them sound again, and then he'd trade them and trade them for cattle. Slowly, that's how he built his herd. Bill: That was down at...see, the wood contract, basically, you know, 'cause he's a settler, he's starving to death as a kid out here, he was down at Ft. Laramie, and that was on the Oregon Trail, down there. He was buying the lame oxen, you know, from the settlers coming up, because they said, "its crazy old Frenchmen. They're going to die anyway." The Indians that showed him how to cure by burning the hoofs, whatever, and I have no idea what the disease was. I don't remember quite...the wood contract, that's what he was doing down there, just trying to get wood for the soldiers, but then he was using that to buy cattle. Kim: I think they were lame, probably, from travel. �Bill: Yeah, but the Indians showed him how to handle it, and he'd buy it and did something with hot irons. Yeah, he'd sear the bottoms of the hooves and it made them sound again. So that was pretty inventive. Kim: That's what I was saying, that could be pretty hazardous, too. Bill: Yeah. Bill: It might be, who knows? Kim: One of those... Bill: 'Cause you know Peter, Pierre, there, this is him up there. He was the president of the Pennington County Bank, which is where Neugebauers is now, if you look at the building at the top. That's the building after the first one burned down, but you can see the vault behind him. I've got the big picture of that in my office, but he was not 5-foot tall. Kim: Yeah, I know what you mean. Small. Bill: He's probably about 4'11 and very thin. Those days, you didn't eat a lot, just survived. But in fact, in the family, whenever there's somebody that's shorter, you say, "Oh, it's the Duhamel side of the family coming up." But Peter Heffron, he runs Sitting Bull Cave, and in family, he would be short. He's probably not that short. Peter might be 5'6, 5'7 or something like that, but say, "Well, it's the Duhamel side." My dad was only about 5'4. Kim: Oh, was he? Bill: Yeah. One sister's 5'4 and one sister is 5'2. Peggy, who's dead now. So there's a short side of the family, and then my mother was tall and that was the tall side of the family. �Kim: Okay. When he was in the bank, then he also got down to the cattle business here. Bill: Yeah, he was on the cattle business, actually, before the bank. Kim: Partnership with Quinn, and who was the other partner in that? I know they went to South America by cattle. Bill: Well, they went down to Cuba... Kim: Cuba... Bill: ...and lost their shirt. They were going to go to the cattle business. This was after early 1900's. About early 1905, is my guess. My dad said they went down there and they figured, you know, this was after the Spanish-American war. The United States was in Cuba, and they're going to make their fortune down there in cattle, 'cause there's no blizzards or anything, it turned out. There were other things that killed cattle that they'd never seen, up in this country. My dad said they're just lucky to get out with anything, 'cause they just...It wasn't the people, it was just the disease. They didn't know enough about how to handle it. That was in Cuba. I never heard that they went into South America, there's Cuba. Kim: Okay. I knew it was one of those countries. Bill: He did go down...Now, as I recall, he sold out of the cattle business. There's different versions. I think my dad always talked about the blizzard of '88. Somehow, if you read March or September, they talk about the blizzard of '86. Maybe there were two blizzards, who knows? Kim: I think '88... Bill: That's the one that my dad always talked about. �Kim: was the bad one. That was the one they called 'the Children's blizzard', where a lot of them never got home from school. Bill: But apparently he had had the cattle sold out before then and went back to Quebec. He kept word up there, 'cause he said, you know, he's used to being out here in the prairie or the pioneers and the frontier, and so he came back but he got out before, so he didn't lose the cattle. Then he came back and he went down to Texas. Again, this is based on what my dad had told me. I don't think this is in the book. But he got some longhorns and picked them up, basically, on handshakes. They had a big drought down there, drove them up, and unfortunately, longhorns had too much grow into the horns and not enough into the meat. They didn't do too well. I don't even know in Texas. Probably have the ceremonial ones or they didn't even have longhorns. I don't know, but anyway, my dad told me that he did it on a handshake and then went down later and paid them all off, you know. He said he'd come back. But that was the old days, when your word was good, you know, you just know your leases. Kim: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. What about the store? Bill: The Duhamel store? Kim: Yeah. Bill: Okay. The Duhamel store started as a hardware store over on St. Joe's Street, over where the beauty college is, between 6th and 7th Street on the south side. It was Ackerman & Duhamel. Again, I know some of the Ackerman's, but I don't know what the relationship all the Ackerman's. I guess that's something you could run down, too. And then Pierre, Alex, and probably Joe, was another brother, bought out and they changed it to Duhamel's. That was 1902. Then they built this building, which was built...probably took a year and a half, two years to build this building. My dad said he and his brother, Peter, who was older, used to play in this building when they were building it. You know, they'd be running around up on the nails and the planks and stuff. Then they moved over here sometime. There was a plaque down in the corner of the building and somebody went back and checked the...they looked and the Rapid City Journal couldn't find anything but I think they found the Gate City Guide and they got some information out of that, way back. In fact, you may have even helped on that when they were doing that plaque. �Kim: No, not that, but I know some of the research I've done in the past, I've run across big ads that ran in the Journal, you know, for singles. It was like china and clothing and dry goods. Major, major department store. Bill: Yeah, it really was a major department store Kim: Plus the (can't make out) division and so forth. Bill: In fact, back in October of 1929...Occasionally in a book, you'll see a picture of going out of business, of the Duhamel liquidation. What it was, back in '29, now Peter had died, and so Alex was not the business man that his father was. So they decided to get out of the store, and they signed the contract with Sears to sell the store and building to Sears. They sent it back by train to Chicago, where Sears Headquarters was, for them to sign it. Well, while in transit, the Great Crash occurred at the end of October, and Sears refused to sign it, at that point. 'Cause I asked my dad, I said, "What's the science liquidation, going out of business sale and everything?" 'Cause they believed, you know, they had a deal, and they'd signed the contract, but by the time it got back to Chicago, the Crash had occurred and Sears hit now. The store was in serious financial problems in the early '30s, then, and partially because my grandfather, Alex, was extending credit to everybody. Nobody had any money, and then he asked my mother, who then would be his daughter-in-law and was my dad's wife and they had two young children, Peggy and Peter. Peggy was born in '30 and Peter in '31. This would've been about '32 or '33. If she could come in and help. She was kind of a self-taught bookkeeper. She worked over on 7th Street for Hugh's Grocery Store, which...God. I met him. He retired out in California and I met him in the early '60s. He died out there. He's someplace down there where today is Silicone Valley. I can't remember his first name. She was about 14 and she worked there in the grocery store. Somebody showed her how to keep the books and then, basically, she just kind of did that. So she came in here to keep the books and found out that the bookkeeper was embezzling. Kim: Oh. Bill: She caught that, fired him, and basically, they ended up writing over $500,000 in bad debts off on the credit 'cause people didn't have the money to pay. They're buying harnesses and things like that. Fact, that old harness there we found in the basement. That was used at Mt. Rushmore. All the work that Gutzon Borglum did, all that leather work, was done down in the basement. That picture of Gutzon, there, that was done in the leather shop in the Duhamel store. Kim: Oh, where he was coming down the mountainside? �Bill: Yeah. Kim: Really? Bill: Yeah. Basically, they were just the old...you see the harnesses that they modified? Kim: Yeah. Hmmm Bill: They put boards in. They just notched the boards, you know, and so they weren't sitting on the leather strap. You're sitting on the board held in by the leather strap. I wish it would've had a fit, back today. Kim: Yeah, for sure. Bill: So what she finally did is she subdivided the building, because they had like a plumbing shop, a tin shop, they didn't have rattlesnakes. They had pet and things. The rattlesnakes were more for a tourist attraction than anything else. They had a few in the front window there on 6th St. They'd be in there, where people would go by and look through the window at them. The leather shop. It basically was general department stores, is what it was in those days. So what she did is, like Pete Melgrand was the manager of the plumbing shop, which I think also was down in the basement. So, she said, you know, "I'll sell you the business and then you rent from me." That's what she did. They had furniture, and the furniture, Sue and Tobin came in from Sharon, I think, someplace eastern South Dakota. They came in and set up. Where the quilt shop is today, that was Sue and Tobin, and then eventually they went over to build over by the Rose Market on St. Joe, there, west of, as we say, 8th Street. By subdividing it, that's how they pulled the building, basically the company, out of the red. On Fridays, they would leave $10 in the till for change. They'd take probably about $10 out to live on, and everything else in the cash register they took over to our doll at the bank, 'cause he had the mortgage on the building. My mother said, you know, he couldn't afford clothes anytime he wanted because they were basically behind, legally. She asked him about that and he says, "Helen, you're paying and most of the people aren't. I could probably foreclose the whole town and what do I have? A bunch of empty buildings." He said, "The fact that you're in here..." It took her 'till, I think she said about 1937 before she got the building paid off and they got out of debt, because in the early 70s, they were basically not in actual bankruptcy, but technically, they couldn't cover it. There's an interesting story there on the Pennington County Bank, probably since I've signed a lease here, I've got to be a little discreet, but the bank examiner came in. This was after the �crash. Examined the bank. It closed up 'cause they were supposedly in liquid. So, you know, most banks, especially in those days, they didn't have enough money to cover everything, so they had to foreclose everything they could. The people in the money had money in the bank, God I think maybe 82 cents or 94 cents on the dollar, eventually. I think a year or so. You know, as they liquidated things and got out. Now, the stockholders, like the Duhamel family, they lost everything. They got nothing. The bank examiner then went on the steps to make it that. To protect myself, I should probably leave it there. Kim: Was Pete Lenway involved in any of those operations? Bill: Not that I know of. Now, they knew Pete Lenway well, but I've never heard that Pete was involved with them or not. Kim: Okay. Kim: Do you have a family story of how you got into the saddle business? Bill: No, but they were in the saddle business, my recollection is, from 1902. I think maybe they were just servicing, finding work for the ranchers. You know, they needed tack, they needed saddles, they just didn't... Kim: Harnesses. Bill: Harnesses. They just kind of get into them. The saddles, I know. I took my dad, one time, to auction down at the Civic Center. They were auctioning off Duhamel saddles, and he looked at me and he says, "If I'd known the value of these things, I would've kept a couple dozen of them." Kim: Well, anything with the 'Duhamel' name on it at the auction is highly priced. I know they had some little kids vests that I've seen go to auctions and _____________and things like that. �Bill: This kid that used to stamp the _________down in the basement of the store that my dad and I used to go out to the 4-H, out to the fairgrounds, and when the 4-H people came in, we'd just give them out, you know. They were advertised more than anything, you know. I hadn't seen one of those in 60, probably close to 70 years. Maybe not quite close to 70, 'cause the late '40s, I remember doing that. I think the last one I saw at the auction went for what, $125. Kim: Is that's what's in the bottom right corner? Bill: Yeah, that's what. That's what. In fact, if you go down to the Coolidge statue, if you look at the back, there's the...Duhamel mark is on that. Kim: On the bronze? Bill: On the bronze. Kim: Oh, really? How cool. Bill: The Boy Scouts raised the money and gave that the Cal Coolidge. It's the Duhamel symbol. I don't know the history from there, but whoever did that statue traced it in the silver in Wyoming, someplace. Kim: John Lopez did the statue. Bill: Okay, well he went over there, found the deal, he took pictures, looked at it, and he saw the Duhamel mark that's down, back there. If you go down and look at whose statue, it's down there. It's on the back there. That was down at the basement of the Duhamel building, here. Kim: So it was just serving the market need, then, that they started making tack and saddles came in. �Bill: I think so, because I'm not sure they...they hired Mother Bakers, you know, because I don't know that Pierre or Alex knew anything at all. They were both cattlemen. Primarily, Pierre, and I say Pierre, we call him Peter, but just to distinguish from...he basically made his money in cattle, back in the open ranges. One of his classic sayings, this I get from my dad, 'cause he was dead long before I was born, was, "The only good sheep man is the dead one." 'Cause they had the open range, and when the sheep men came in, they started, you know, fencing it off, and that...so Grandma Maymies, that's my grandmother, her older sister, Maggie, married...well, he was Norwegian but he shortened his name. It's over in Wyoming. (Incomprehensible) thinks he got into sheep-ranching. So, my dad and his brother, when they were little, went down in the mountains by Laramie and spent summers with sheep, up in the mountains. So here's Pierre, who hated sheep-men, and his grandsons are working as shearing sheep, down in the mountains, there. Can't remember his name, but his name is on Independence Rock, over in Wyoming. You know where Independence Rock is? Kim: I've been by that. Bill: There's a bronze plaque. He was the Speaker of the Wyoming House, and they had a dedication back in the 20s. You know, they had the governor, but they had his name. My dad, when we’re driving by, one time, he said, "Let's go read the Independence Rock," and showed me. "There," he said, "that would be your great-uncle." The thing is, somehow, there's some relation between him being Speaker at the Wyoming House and Two-Pot-Dome. Again, that gets very vague, but we're talking about the early 20's and their whole thing over there, and the family that spent a whole lot of oil stock, floating through the family for years and years. I still have some. That came down from my great-aunt to her sister to her sister, it was my grandmother. Then my mother stepped in and said, "For God's sakes, don't pass that to butter myself," because you know, the government could come in, in those days, they'd just take a big whack around the state taxes and said, "Skip it and send it on to your grandkids," which would be my brother and both sisters and I. It was basically Standard Oil, 'cause right now I've got British Petroleum and Exxon stock, but if you trace back, I think they go up to that old Standard Oil, back there in the 20s. You know, 'cause then they had the trusts, the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, tried to break up Standard Oil. That was the real target. It took a while to get there, but that was breezy, that one, because British Petroleum, I think, Standard went into them and went into Exxon. Anyway, that all came from them. I've still got a sizeable chunk of stock, there, if I did. And this is after been passed down four, five times. Kim: That's interesting. I want to know about, and I'm not sure which sequence this goes into, but the Indian dancers in front of the store. The store, when it was more of a...well I remember first coming here in the 60s, and that was the first place we ever went, because I just loved that store. Bill: Although, when you were there, they didn't do the Indian dances. �Kim: No, no. They hadn't by that time, but it was, you know, you had Pendleton blankets that smelled like leather, and Billy Latin was working in there. Bill: Yep. He's my cousin. Kim: Was he? I didn't know that. Bill: Yeah. He was my mother's nephew. Kim: Okay. You just felt like you were home. I lived in Minnesota at that time, so this was all great to me and I always loved cowboys and Indians and all that. So then there was another story that had to do with the cave. Didn't Jacques Cousteau come here looking for blind fish? Bill: It was Jacques Cousteau’s son, but I can tell you that story's true. Peggy was appalled over that one. But let me go back on the Indian dancing. Probably, again, you know, the Duhamel's basically, partially because old Peter knew all these French families. You know, they intermarried. So, you know, they got along and they spoke Lakota, you know, and my dad, back in the '20's, used to go out in the Duhamel store wholesale, like camp stoves, and they went out around Western South Dakota, selling to little trading posts. You know, they'd wholesale stuff and then they'd sell it. In fact, he said down there, I think it was at Mission, he said he used to deal with the barkers and they always had this string of little kids around there. One of them, I doubt he was bald, my dad didn't know which one. He just said, you know. I know up at Red Owl... Kim: That is the __________of the TV personality? Bill: Yep. Up at Red Owl, I think the Kovarik’s were up there. They had a little store, and he used to go in there, you know, said, "Oh, yeah, I know those people." The fact is, he said he used to drive an old Model T around here in the '20's, so he'd be in his 20's, born in 1902. He said the first thing you learned was when it rained, you stopped, 'cause he said you weren't going to go anyplace because they didn't have gravel. If they're lucky, they had kind of a dirt trail, but he said once it got muddy, it's as if that old gumbo just came up. If you didn't stop, you're going to get caked in it and you're never going to go. He said he always would just kind of look around, seek out someplace, and he'd just take off and walk crosscountry. In those days, you opened there door, and, "Come on in, have something to eat." He'd visit �with them until it stopped and things dried up, then he'd go back in his car. He just drove all over in Western South Dakota, so he knew everybody. Because of the relationship, you know, with his grandfather, he really got along very well. He also could speak Lakota with all the Indians, although he felt closer to Rosebud in Cheyenne than Pine Ridge. He, for some reason, was more over that area. I think that's where most of the Frenchmen ended up, over there. Oh, the Indian deal. Okay, but because he knew all the Indian families, a lot of times, especially in the '30's, they were pretty well destitute. Actually, they were always destitute, but more destitute, I guess you'd say. So they opened the cave, the Sitting Bull Cave, which is South of town. It was _____________They owned that land and they clearcutted. Once they'd clear-cut the lumber, they had no use for it, and somebody told my Uncle Peter that there was a cave there. This had probably been late '20's, early '30's, and Peter and somebody else went out there. They went in, and there's a little hole they go in and then it drops off, and they took lanyards and ropes and went in and let themselves down into there. That's the original entrance to the cave. The cave now, they had a line through that, to get down to it. It's still awfully steep. So in the '30's, there was the beginning of the tourism in the Black Hills. Pretty skimpy, but you know, by today's standards it's nothing. In fact, my dad used to talk about the Bumblebee Highway. I think that was US 14. Kim: Black and yellow trail? Bill: Yeah, black and yellow. But they used the symbol of the bee and he said, you know, he used to go back and try to help promote that as a _________. You know, from, he said Milwaukee but in fact 14, today, comes out of Chicago. 14 went on up to Minneapolis and they came home from Minneapolis. Well, 16, stayed south, and then they'd now be at Wall. The old days, I think they had a place called Phillip Junction. It's where the Esquire corners went like that. So I think as a church promotion, and also to provide jobs for some of the friends from the reservations that had come up here for the summer, they set up an Indian camp, up south of town, where the cave is, but it's down in one of those valleys. Again, since we're recording, we do have to be careful about the valley, but there was a camp down in the valley, we'll just say that. They set up the Indian pageant, and they had that round building up there, which is now on the Historic Register as an example of a round barn. We never thought of it as a red barn, but anyway, that's a Public Classified thing. The Historic Register in it had the doors open up like that and then they'd hook it up so you'd hold them up so you could get air through. They had little bleachers, and that's a pretty small building. I can't imagine that many people, but they used to have Indian dances up there. So then they would come to town, and at night, guessing 6, 6:30, 7. In the fifties, I think it was about 7:00, but I think it's earlier when they had the pageant. This is in the thirties. They would have it out on the sidewalk, in front of the Duhamel store on 6th Street. Then my dad would, and actually my Uncle Peter was much more closely identified with the Native Americans. In fact, other than long, red hair, he kept on like the women out in the West, who identified as black, you know, 'cause if he didn't have the red hair, they would've though he was a Native American. But anyway, he would stand up on a little stool. Both MC'd the Indian dances, but also, invite the men, get on the wall. They had the story of Custer's last stand, and there was a painting, a very early one, so just like stick-men figures. Then they'd tell the story, and that's how they got the people in the store. Then they'd also say, tonight at 7 or 8 o'clock, whatever it was, a reasonable time, they'd have the Indian pageant out at 9 miles south of town, 9 miles to the Alex Johnson. It's up there in the hill. Then they discontinued the...actually, Peter died, I think, in August of '41. My grandfather, I think, died in December of '41. I can't remember which died first. I think Peter died first. He was only, like 41. Peter, my dad's brother, this is the Second Peter, �see that's why these Peter's get all mixed up. So my dad ended up doing that, since his brother was dead, and a carnival...what do you call those guys, they stand up, the honkers? Kim: Barker. Bill: Barker? Yeah. He explained to my dad how he was doing it wrong and he showed him how to do this, where you kind of talk out of the side of your mouth and bellow out. You could hear him all over the street. Like shouts and everything. So they stopped during the war, and then after the war, you started...in my recollection, they went into the early '50s, 'cause as a kid, I remember I got to pass the hat. What you did, you'd have all the people round, pass the hat around, people put money in, and then I would just take it and split it up equally among whoever of the dancers showed up. There was some consternation, because the women got the same amount as the men, which defied a number of people. Some of the men thought they were fancier dancers and they had fancy stuff, and they should be paid more, but that's not the way it went. By today's standards, it's worth a lot of money, but in those days, you know, they give you 10 bucks a night for probably 20 minutes' work. In fact, I think they used to have some wagons, horse-drawn wagons, and I'm almost...well, they used to use them in the parades. Oh, the guy that just died out by the airport. The guy that drove across...Stover? You know, the Story place, right at the base of the airport, Highway 44. He drove his pickup across an ice pond, and it collapsed and he didn't get out. Kim: Oh, I remember reading about that. Bill: He got some of those old wagons. He fixed them up, and they just gave them to him. I just remember that. They'd be all on their Regalia, they'd go through town on them. I'm trying to think of what they actually drove out to the cave. I don't think...'cause they had cars by then, and I don't think they'd take horses 5 miles out of town on the highway. 16 was very narrow and very hilly, back in those days. I had a good friend of mine, broke his back in a car accident down there, coming down that hill from the cave. If you look on the side, you can see where the old Highway 16 used to be. You can see the cuts. It's grown-over with grass, but if you look carefully, you can see contours. They didn't have the earth work equipment, so those days, you went over hills, not through hills. Sharp curves. Kim: Do you know, I've heard that Sitting Bull actually hunted in that area. How did the cave get its name? Bill: Really, I think, they took it after the old Chief Sitting Bull. But in fact, and the lore for the tourist, I think they said that Sitting Bull was there. Personally, I doubt that, but John Sitting Bull, I can't �remember, this was in the book. John Sitting Bull was a good friend of theirs. I don't think he was a grandson, I think he might've been a nephew or something. He was out there, and he's the one that, strictly speaking, that's where the name came from, was from John. Kim: Oh, alright. Bill: I heard a great story one time. I don't know if all of it's true, I like to think at least part of it is. There was a couple of, three men, I guess. They were from Minnesota. They were trappers, and they were out in the area in the 1870's, and the story is they were in that area where the cave is, and were captured by Sitting Bull because they were heading west towards the Big Barn. Asked them where they were from, and they were thinking really fast on their feet, and I think they said Fort Abercrombie or something like that. So the story was that Sitting Bull said, "Well, I caught you. Can't let you go, but go with us. I'm headed toward Canada myself, later on, and we'll just take you up there and let you go," and so forth. Then, when the Custer battle took place, these men were in Sitting Bull's camp, reportedly, and saw everything that happened. Got away during the night, when they were all celebrating and everything. So they would've been eyewitnesses to the whole massacre. I'd been trying to track it down. I found newspaper accounts of it, and I really think part of it, at least, is true, because when he got to, I guess it was Fort Abercrombie and then he ended up at Fort Snowing, and told the story to military authorities, he told things that if he wasn't there, couldn't have been known. His name was Ridgley. Bill: Okay. I have not heard the story. I have no doubt that Sitting Bull was in this area. Well, there was actually, at the valley where the cave is, I... Kim: No, I didn't either, but that was the story I heard that was how he wound up making his way there. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bill Duhamel transcript pt. 1 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/46614/archive/files/0525ee69ad89e657e26a8223834125c1.pdf?Expires=1790208000&Signature=HxvaLbPiGmHl8uH2azc0vw3dX2%7EL-4n%7EqXWPTf2otB8c7D-feacCz73unheIVE%7EiIdrRDT1VxmwzztxhzkBOPWYXIlx78ivVtLnJe34n92QCuvXq-sVGzZz38SalEiSiA32avY0ag%7EeqgJNmrJZH0omQSY2xRLxjBVcFkI9EYqUqiXDX7MjtYsVc5D8UxGxTEM9IOwBzzWgU98thYuiNsQWuvO-gS4Zu-nNhlYFGXvw%7ExnD5VtY4yJPGqHDerEsgDOuBRDVeuWNdYnBdzbanAFq1eB-mTqYEzdKFEMQcNuWVsYPW7Mtt9wWFNMvZw-NA9IM2RBLrf0iZkbnJfW5Jtw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 30bbb87de87e0e59bf1ec1ff6eb0f7b3 PDF Text Text Bill Duhamel: Earl was a young man. My grandmother, Mayme, told me this story, and I can't tell you the exact time. It'd be back in the '30s, probably late '30s. Do you happen to know what year Earl was born? Kim Morey: No. Bill Duhamel: I don't, but anyway, the cave used to have a wooden teepee at the top, which was the ticket office. That's where my grandma, Mayme, used to be. She is, she's there with my dad. Then they had the round building, which was the...and then they had a wooden building, which was the store, and they had little..._______ is a strong term. They had kind of like a buffet, and they had pop and snacks and things in the little old gift shop, up there. So, some tourist drove in and said to my grandma, "There's a rattlesnake on the road when we came off Highway 16, coming up to the top, there. There's a rattlesnake in the road." So my grandma, Mayme, says to Earl, "Go out there and kill the damn rattlesnake." So Earl went down, and he didn't kill the rattlesnake. Instead, he captured it, and he put it in a wooden box and got just regular screen and put it over the top. Then he figured out, I think it was a nickel, he'd say to tourists, "If you want to see a live rattlesnake, give me a nickel." He'd go over there and he'd kick the box, and he'd start rattling and they'd look through the screen at it. He was fascinated by how the tourists were fascinated by reptiles, by snakes, you know. That was long before Reptile Gardens, and I'm positive, and Johnny's probably heard that story, but my grandma Mayme told me that. This was back, well before the war, so probably guessing '37, '38. The cave, I think, started in '34, I think. I think that is what actually owned the land beforehand, before they got everything going and they started running tourists. Kim Morey: Do you know, were people coming through here on the way to Yellowstone? Bill Duhamel: Yeah. The Black Hills was just a place for Chicago and Milwaukee, going through Yellowstone. Then Mt. Rushmore was the attraction... Kim Morey: Later. Bill Duhamel: ...that started pulling them off, you know, and I told people, I said, "In the long run, wait 'till Crazy Horse gets done." Now, I'm probably not going to see it when it's done, but I said, "That's just going to dwarf Rushmore." 'Cause, you know, I've seen pictures of Borglum's stone mountain, and everybody was always talking about that, and I thought, "That's nothing compared to Rushmore," so it's just, you know. In fact, I was thinking that environmental deal that Korczak would have to go through today. He'd never get it done. Kim Morey: Yeah. Bill Duhamel: The cave, basically, down at the bottom, there was a place where, you know, it's a live cave, and in especially wet years, it drips. The water goes down there, but there's a place, they call it 'the Diamond Lake', which would be...this table's probably bigger than the Diamond Lake, down there. It probably, might've been all of 3 feet deep at the time. It was kind of a diamond shape, and was probably three-fourths of the table. My dad would go out and buy goldfish at the beginning of the season, and dump 4-5 of them in the deal. Well, after a while, they kind of bleached, and it just went white. They weren't very big, and they never survived more than a year. He'd feed them when nobody was around, and I said, "They're the blind fish." So this wasn't Jaques-Gusteau but his son. He was caught falling off, after Jacques, I think it died. So he contacted, or whoever sent the police, contacted my sister, Peggy, �who's always worried about what other people thought, and said, "We've heard about this cave with the blind fish in the lake and we want to come down, with our scuba deal, and take a look at this." I think it was just horrifying. First of all, they're just goldfish, dumped in every, probably late-winter or so. Then secondly, I mean the police, saying, "Can I come down with the scuba deal?" That's the true story of the...in fact, the other interesting thing, probably, down in the Journey Museum, they have the famed, 'Duhamel Indian Collection?' Kim Morey: Yeah. Bill Duhamel: Well, there's two version of the famed Indian Collection. The one that, as a kid, I could remember, probably started before I was born, back in the '30s, but my dad knew most of the old Indian families around the region, and he said a lot of them were from down in Rosebud. The money, they would bring hand-made moccasins or leggings, something, and sell it to my dad. Basically, you know, they weren't looking for handouts. They (were) proud, you know, and said, "Look, I want to sell this to you." At the time, downstairs in my mother's office, she was the bookkeeper, she set up the top, and then my dad (incomprehensible) would be down by the cash register. Afterwards, each time, my mother comes stomping down the stairs, says, "Goddamn it, Bob, I told you! Don't want any more of that crap! Stop giving them the money!" They put some up on the side of the walls in the store, you know, some of the bigger pieces. Well, they used to sell trucks, at the Duhamel store, so in '85, when they went to close the store, after, roughly, 80 years, I said something to Bill Blanton. I said, "There's a lot of this stuff." He said, "Bill! We've got 7 trunks full of it, up in the attic!" Up above here. This is 7'3. There's an attic above the third floor, and it's dry up there. He said, "Yeah, we should fill a trunk up." Then I'd haul it up, stick it up there, then get another truck. All it was, is my dad was just giving ten, twenty dollars, whatever, you know, and he'd (say), "Bad idea." He wasn't collecting anything. He just knew that they needed money, and made a deal, turned up there. I remember, my mother was just furious. Always mad, because, "You haven't got money for that crap," you know. So then, when Art McCoy wanted to get the Journey, he came in and said that, you know, he'd like to get that in the new museum, which wasn't named the Journey Museum, just the new museum. So they did, and they had a guy up in Piedmont. Kim Morey: Jim Aplan. Bill Duhamel: Yeah. He did the appraisal, and I think he appraised it about $500,000, and they just donated it to the city. If they hauled it all back to New York, they probably would've appraised several million, you know, in New York. But you know, we didn't care, 'cause all it was, was a tax deduction. Yeah. That's about all it amounted to. Then you take a lesser deduction. You take it all in one year. You spread it over 5 years, you took more, but if you died, then you couldn't get it, you know. I asked my mother, "What do you want to do?" She says, "Oh, hell, I'll live more than 5 years. Take the spread it over 5 years." So they took $100,000 a year with their tax return, as deduction. That was the famed Duhamel collection, so I've always used that. Kim Morey: That's interesting. Bill Duhamel: My dad's name, you know, is Francis Alexander, F.A. Duhamel, but he had an aunt Francis, my grandmother's sister, was Francis, and he thought 'Francis' was a girl's name, and so he had his first cousin, Paul Bebeau, who said, "Well, get another name. Bard!" That's where he got 'Bard.' Then he had, if you look out here, on the picture out here, it's also on the cover of the Duhamel book, a little, turquoise tie, you know, that says 'Bard.' He has several of those, and basically, that's where it came from. Well, so most people didn't know the journal gets all mixed-up as to what his name was. They �have F.A. Duhamel, you know, 'cause he never went by...he signed the checks and things, F.A. Duhamel. The more interesting thing about it is, Paul Bebeau, his cousin, was a fireman. He was older than my dad, but he was a fireman in the Rapid City Fire Department. If you go over to the old firehouse, there's two plaques on the wall. One is Paul Bebeau, and he was killed, fighting a fire down here, by the railroad tracks. Then the bystanders called him, but he couldn't hear a thing in the fire, and the turned and the walls collapsed. The bricks came down on top of him. Kim Morey: Oh, gosh. Bill Duhamel: But he's one of the two firemen that died, back in the early days of Rapid City, and the plaque is still over there, on the firehouse wall. Kim Morey: Do you remember anything about, you had been too young, but remember, they had already been talking about the Pageant of America. Bill Duhamel: That one had...that was already built. Can you tell me any more about it? 'Cause it doesn't ring a bell to me. Kim Morey: Well, it was back in the late '20s, when they were starting Rushmore, and Rapid City, at that time, really wanted to get on the bandwagon and promote tourism, because Rushmore would bring a lot of people, here. So, at that time, they didn't have a Chamber of Commerce, they had a Commercial Club, I think it was. There were two things that they did that just totally amuse me. One was this Pageant of America. They though if they could have this tableau when people got here, before they got to Rushmore, and they would start with Louis and Clark, and the earliest history of the frontier. Then they would have all these actors, and everybody in Rapid City would have some role to play. They'd have a cottage industry and they'd have people making costumes, and these people would wear costumes to work, and they were supposed to be given, like, an hour off a day to go out and just troll around town. Bill Duhamel: I haven't heard that story. Kim Morey: Yeah, and it's up on Skyline Drive. They actually started an amphitheater, for it. Bill Duhamel: There was an amphitheater? Kim Morey: Yeah. Bill Duhamel: I remember just the amphitheater, but I've never heard the rest of the story. Kim Morey: Yeah, well that was it, and of course, it just ran into...they actually raised quite a bit of money, back east, but it just all kind of disappeared, you know. Bill Duhamel: I do remember, you know, there was a bunch of really big promoters, and I remember, after the war, they were trying to get the United Nations to come out. Kim Morey: You talked about that with Jung today, and that was his grandfather. �Bill Duhamel: Yeah, he was one of the early promoters. She had a tour bus, you know, it was a big convertible. Kim Morey: Yeah. Bill Duhamel: And they'd go around the hills, you know. In fact, Chuck Laws used to drive that. Kim Morey: Well, and the other thing they did, that just amazed me, and this was in the '30s, was that Al Capone was in a little bit of trouble in Chicago, and they wanted to get him out of Illinois, and so they heard, here, that he liked to fish, and they thought, "Wow, if we could get Al Capone in Rapid City, and people see him walking on the street, how great would that be?" They actually wrote him a letter. Bill Duhamel: I haven't heard that one. Kim Morey: And didn't know how to how to find him, but they addressed it to Mr. Scarface in Chicago, and he did get the letter. The governor, at that time, I can't remember who he was, and he said, "Over my dead body is he coming to South Dakota." But they actually did that, to promote tourism. They thought that would be a good deal. Bill Duhamel: There was something...you didn't talk about Bronco's being involved in the guy that parachuted on the top of... Kim Morey: George Hopkins. Yeah, we talked about that, a little bit. Bill Duhamel: Yeah, 'cause Bronco's B was one of the groups behind...I think they were the JZ's or something. That was what year? About '38, 39? Before the war. Kim Morey: I wanted to say it was a little bit later. I'm thinking...'42 sticks in my mind, somehow, but I don't know. Bill Duhamel: I don't think it was during the war, 'cause during the war, they... Kim Morey: Might've been earlier. Bill Duhamel: I think it was before the war, but Earl was involved in the planning. Those are the promoters, and I mean, anything to get anything. Kim Morey: Right.Yeah. A little history on that. I thought I'd like to put some together, someday, 'cause Bill Quothy has a lot of pictures, that Bruce Al took, of that incident. Bill Duhamel: Oh, was he? 'Cause I guess, I... Kim Morey: Yeah. He was stuck up there. Bill Duhamel: My brother stopped and visited with Bill, one time. Bill's older than my brother, but my brother was born here in '31, and he was here more of the '30s, '40s, then he was gone. He's a retired surgeon, now. He's back, either outside of Detroit or in Florida, so he's very dogmatic. Not always correct, but very dogmatic. Well, there were just a lot of things that happened here, and I think, maybe �we won't have time today, but the broadcasting, we haven't talked about any of the broadcasting. KOBH and KOD. Kim Morey :Yeah. Considering the hour, that's something we probably...I know your schedule is tough, but that's something I'd really like to... Bill Duhamel: Needs a separate timeslot. Kim Morey: Right. Well, that, and after talking for an hour and a half or so, you tend to get a little bit tired. Bill Duhamel: Well, see, the big thing is, is you've just got to give me the triggers. Kim Morey: Right. Bill Duhamel: You know, the triggers, I can tell stories, and just...There is one interesting story, which I did insist is in the Duhamel book. My grandma Mayme was in Owens, and her dad, Tom, their parents were from Ireland, and they had deliveries stapled up in Sturgis. This was about 1880, could've been 1879. Probably about the cemetery. Probably get the year he died, but lightning hit the livery barn in Sturgis, and it caught fire. He ran in and out of the stable to get the horses out, and the next day, he keeled over, dead, and they said he had a heart attack. Probably, with hindsight, he had smoke inhalation, running in and out of that deal, you know? It just got in his lungs. So, his widow had four kids, probably 10 to 5, roughly that age. And so basically, in those days, now, there's no social security, there's no pension, no nothing, and so she went down and homesteaded on what's north of New Underwood, the creek that runs along there. Is that Box Elder Creek? Kim Morey: Box Elder Creek. Bill Duhamel: The thing is, it was a stagecoach stop between Ft. Pierre and Sturgis, and Tom was the only boy. He would run out, when the stagecoach came in, and unhitch it, and then hitch up a new team, and you know, then he'd take the horses and brush and dry them off. Then, they took care of them, you know, so that the stagecoach, either way, would pick it up, there. This would be my great-grandmother; she would cook meals, and then sell them to the passengers, you know, some would want them, some wouldn't. They knew roughly about the time, but I know there was a daily station, so I don't know about that. That's how she survived. So then, the thing is, when South Dakota became a state, you had to refile for the land, but you had to live on it. There was a hired hand, and my grandma told me the story, I do not know his name, who'd lived there, you know, and helped. So he rode into Sturgis, because they're in Meade County, to file on the land, since he lived on the place, and take it. One of the neighbors, he told somebody, one of the neighbors saw him and he was just sauntering in from out there in Sturgis, said, "I'm going in to file on the land, you know, since South Dakota's a state, and you claim it." So the neighbor went and told my great-grandma. This is Mayme's mother, 'cause she's a widow. So she hitched up a puck-board, and Grandma Mayme was with her, and she about killed the horse but whipped it, all the way to get to Sturgis. She caught him, just at the end of Sturgis, and he didn't know she was coming. Grandma Mayme said he just went right by, and there's a little bridge over a creek, or something, a little wooden deal. She went over it and kind of ran him off the side, there, went in and filed on it. That ranch...Diadia. Diadia Owens, was her name. Back in the early 1900's, she sold that to the Miller's. It was Walter Dale's dad. So she had me take her out there, this was about '69, �she died on February 9, '81, no, '71, and she was 97. Good story, found out how old she was. But anyway, she wanted to see the place, and she told me, "That's where I met Walter Dale, the first time." Walter Dale, I remember his dad had bought this from Diadia Owens, and you know, like 19'2, 19'4, I don't know. I can't tell you when. Then she told me this story, you know, about how they got this deal. My grandmother probably got married into Alex in the late 1890s, in there. Then Walter Dale, you know, that's the first time I met him, long before he's even in the legislature, and that story, I just said, "I want that in there," you know, just because I thought it was an interesting story about the early days. You know, the widow who survived with four little kids, and the oldest girl, Maggie, she's probably the oldest of the children, is the one that married...I can't think of the name. He was the Teapot Dome guy, over there. Okay. So what else, besides the broadcasting, would you be interested in? Kim Morey: Well, I think it sounds like we're just kind of getting started on the family stories, so I think we could talk more about the developing of the store. Bill Duhamel: It's too bad you're not a few years earlier, when Bill Whiten was still alive. He died of pancreatic--no, not pancreatic--prostate cancer. Then Dorothy just died a year and a half ago. Kim Morey: I did a story on him for the Rapid City Journal, several years ago. Bill Duhamel: Was he still alive, then? 'Cause he could tell you... Kim Morey : Oh yeah, he was alive. Bill Duhamel: 'Cause he came to the store in '35, from down in Crawford. He was raised on a ranch, down there. His mother was my mother's oldest sister. Then he left. Right after Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Marines. Was injured in Pearl Harbor, not during the attack but in a trading deal. Injured his back and the rest of his life, he had to wear a brace. He said he felt good there, riding a horse. So every Sunday, if he could, when he could, he'd get out and ride. Kim Morey: That store was his life, I remember at different times. Bill Duhamel: That's it. Bill Duhamel's beloved people sued. He was Bill Duhamel. Kim Morey: Oh, I see. Bill Duhamel: Those people see, that's Bill Duhamel. He's Bill Blanton, but in fact, you know, his mother, or his aunt, and he called my dad his uncle, you know, so I had an uncle. That's how the story closed, 'cause he came to me and he was turning around 70, he said, "I'm going to be 70, here in a year or two, and I'd like to retire. And so, give you a year or two notice, and see if anybody in the family wants to take over and run the store." 'Cause my mother got into broadcasting, that time, and we had a big family meeting, and I said, "Look, I don't know anything about retail, and I'm busy up here, so I don't have time to do it." It turned out, nobody else did, and so that's the story, and they had the big auction in '85 and they closed the store. I hated to see it go, but the store wasn't making money. My mother had me take her out to Kmart, probably in the late '70s, and she walked around. My mother was the buyer in the store, in the early years, and she said, "Kmart is selling things cheaper than I can buy them, wholesale." And she said, "You know, we rely on service loyalty. In the long run, price will win. We cannot survive." That was just part of the thing that led to...Bill wanted to retire, then the store closed. �Retailing's a rough business. I mean, you see Macy's going into bankruptcy. I mean, if Sears was in trouble, I mean it just goes on and on. Kim Morey: Yeah, loyalty isn't there, anymore. It seems to be gone, forever. Bill Duhamel: The way she, at the store, she had a very good...she could buy right, but also, she had a sense of taste. She's the one that brought Pendleton in, but a part of the deal, when she brought it in, is, "I'll have an exclusive in Rapid City." And she said, "I'll use the radio and the TV to advertise it," and she made a deal with American Tourister, and what's the other old luggage? Kim Morey: Samsonite. Bill Duhamel: Samsonite. She was the only one in town, but later on, you know, little by little, she lost all the exclusives. Rapid City grew, and her volume wasn't that big, anymore. At the time, you know, when she was opening it up, at that time she did a lot of stuff. She just brought things in. She'd go to Chicago or New York as a buyer, and could spot things, and then would make a deal. Kim Morey: That's what Kay did, up at Mt. Rushmore, too. Bill Duhamel: Yeah. In fact, Kay said that my mother helped her, 'cause my mother's older than Kay. My mother was born 19'4, and Kay, I'd guess at least 10, maybe 20 years younger. But Kay said, when she was married to Carl, that my mother would give them a lot of advice on the retail in the stores and what to buy, and stuff. I thought Kay did a good job, up there. Kim Morey: Beautiful place. Bill Duhamel: On the stuff that she did, you know. It's not all the t-shirts and junk that's there now, but that's... Kim Morey: It sure represents South Dakota, though. You were just probably came out of there, and it looks a little different, these days. Bill Duhamel: But you see, a lot of these people I knew, just kind of passing. Kay was always cordial. You know, it's just like, well, Markham Reedy. Do you know anything about who Markham Reedy was? He came out here later, but he was the IRS guy in town. I knew him as Mister, and his wife, I should know this one too. Anyway, I called them Mr. and Mrs. Reedy, and they lived a block away from me. I grew up on the corner of 8th and Columbus St., which is where the bank is, now, the community bank. There used to be two little houses, there. Anyway, they had one child, who is now my wife. In fact...Jenny would kill me if I can't tell you her mother's name...'Cause I always knew her as Mrs. Reedy. Now, she knew who I was, but you know...So, growing up, you know, in fact, when I came back...Now I was gone for 15 years...I don't want to get in too far. When I came back, people knew the name, but they kind of forgot who I was, because my brother and both sisters were both redheads, and I had dark hair. I had the color of hair that fleet has. Mine started turning gray, like my dad's, when I was 21. They just couldn't place me, 'cause they thought of the Duhamel kids as the redheads. Here's this kid, with...who's been gone for 15 years. I remember, I knew Art Dahl, and a lot of those old timers, you know, but they were kind of...we're talking about two generations older, but I was just kind of 'around them', you know, what you'd call 'good friends' with them. �Kim Morey: That's another thing that I'd like to touch on, I think, when we get together again, is some of those people you did meet, and what you remembered about them. Bill Duhamel: Well, let me tell you. I do have one good story, for you. This is, oh, I can't tell you when, but my dad, they decided, was going to get the Black Elk award, you know, for tourism, promotion tourism. In the 20s and 30s, he really worked hard on that. So they said, at first they were going to surprise him, so they said, "We'd like to get a video of him." So on New Year's Day, I had Helene, and we had a family dinner, over at the house. So I said, well, Helene said, "I'd like to record some of your reminisces about the family and that." So she asked him how he'd met my mother, you know, a little bit of that. Then I said, "See, you're pretty good friends with Black Elk." Said, "Oh, yeah!" he says. "Yeah." And so he starts talking about Black Elk. Kim Morey: Are you talking about Ben or the older...? Bill Duhamel: Nick. Kim Morey: Nick is the older... Bill Duhamel: Nick is the older one. But what it was, see, he's talking about Nick, we knew, and that's Ben's dad, and he was the spiritual. The thing is, and he's going on and on about Nick, what a great man he was, and Nick was out at the cave and the deals with his wife, and Ben was out there, too. So when I finally figure out he's talking about Nick, I switched. I said, "Tell us about Ben." Says, "Ben! Good old Indian. Got in the fire water a little too much, but he says he took care of his parents as they got old, you know." You know, 'cause Nick was going blind, and he says, "He did take care of them, but I didn't think that for the Black Elk award that he'd be qualified to hand them out. He got fire water a little too much." There's another Ben Black Elk story, too. Ben Embrose-Horgan, his mother was a Duhamel, was my dad's first cousin, and Embrose was probably 7-8 months older than my dad, and Ben was probably a year, year and a half older, but growing up, they knew each other. So Embrose, you know, had the ranch down there, which is now the Triple 7. One day, he's out riding, you know, and checking the cattle, and he says, "Somebody cut the barbed wire fence. You can see from the tracks. They took our cow and a calf." So he goes back in, gets on the phone, rings it up there in the party blind, calls the sheriff over from Custer County. Says, "Somebody stole a cow and calf from me." So, the sheriff drives across, through the park, over to the ranch, and Embrose has a horse saddled, and they go out and they start following the tracks. They come along, and it's Ben! Ben has the cow and calf. Embrose says, "Ben! What the hell are you doing? If you had asked me, I would've given it to you!" He says, "Embrose, I knew that! That's why I took them!" Then the sheriff said, "What are you gonna do?" Embrose said, "Well, I'm not going to prosecute Ben. As far as I'm certain, there he is! The sheriff's furious. He drove across the mail to get there and then rode out, 'cause out there, and I can't remember whether my dad told me that or Embrose told me that. One of them told me that. I used to see Embrose over all kinds of places. Embrose was full of fun. Emmett was the straight-laced one. Kim Morey: Was it true Ben Black had a wig? Bill Duhamel: Don't think so. Remember, when you used to be up at Mt. Rushmore, if he had his damn good one, you know, 'cause the way his hair is pulled down. Kim Morey: Yeah. Right. �Bill Duhamel: I don't know, and my dad never mentioned it. Kim Morey: Okay. I had heard that. Bill Duhamel: But, you know, when Eileen was a little girl, we were out visiting, she might have been 3. We were up at Mt. Rushmore, and Ben was up there, and I said, "Let's go up and see the Indian there and talk to him. She goes up, and Ben says, "What's your name?" She says, "Eileen Duhamel." So he sits down on the_____, you know, on one of the _____, and puts her on his lap, and he starts telling stories. After it, she says, "He knows grandpa! He knows grandpa!" I said, "Of course he knows grandpa!" See, I didn't say who he was, in that. She was very impressed. This had to be about '65, and she was born in about '62. May have just been '66, 'cause she would've been 3. She's probably 4, but she was just impressed about the nice Indian and that, and how he knew Grandpa Bud. Kim Morey: When Telstar came on the scene in the early '60s, Ben Black Elk was the first face on Telstar to go around the world, imagine that. Bill Duhamel: I could believe that. You know, there's a whole another story about 'cue the buffalo', that's related to that. Kim Morey: I haven't heard that one. Bill Duhamel: You have or haven't? Kim Morey: No. Bill Duhamel: It's a true story. This is a true story. Mike, the guy I had lunch with, was there, but they were doing the Telstar, and the thing is, they had a very tight window, because they weren't using the satellite on the first one, it just went around the world. So they picked something up, and they had the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, from Salt Lake, up at Mt. Rushmore, sing. I don't know if it was 'America the Beautiful' or what it was. CBS was in here, and they had the buffalo, down at Custer State Park, and they wanted to show the Buffalo. They were going to have the stampede, you know, they're coming over the hill. They went through our control room, up here, you know, this whole thing, 'cause this is where the...and they had to use AT&T microwave, 'cause they didn't have satellites, and they didn't have cable, or anything yet. So the guy in New York says to the control room, up here, "Okay, cue the buffalo!" Fortunately, the buffalo, they had it running. I think they only had about a 24-minute window in which they could hit the satellite, while it was going by. They had them running, and it wasn't much after that, the buffalo came over the hill, and that was the famous saying. That's been in several books. Kim Morey: I hadn't heard that one. Bill Duhamel: Bret Bandeheist, about the story of "cue the buffalo." Moni was probably just in the camera, was up in the studio, at the time. Kim: It's kind of like, "Cue the thunderstorm." Bill Duhamel: I remember the story. This was in the Rapid City Journal, years ago. I can't remember. It was the farmer from Iowa that stopped in Custer State Park and wanted to get a picture of the buffalo, but is facing the wrong way for the sun, so he goes up and slaps it on the butt, you know, to get its �attention. The turn. Now, he's probably used to a cow. The buffalo spun and hooked him in the belly, with his horn. Kim Morey: Oh wow. Bill Duhamel: He didn't die, but they called him into the hospital, 'cause the horn would've been a neat incision, but it just...we always joke about the Iowa farmer. Get the buffalo's attention, he did that. I remember that story in the Journal. I came back in '67, so it would've been after '67. Kim Morey: I remember it was in the 90s, there were two people killed, one summer, down in the park, that got too close and just thought they were big cows. Bill Duhamel: Well, sometimes, they're pretty peaceful. You're always very respectful around the buffalo. Kim Morey: Yeah. When the tail comes up, it's time to go. Bill Duhamel: In fact, my brother went to Georgetown, Undergraduate, and there's one of the bridges, I think it's in Rock Creek Park, and they have the buffalo statue, by the end of the bridge. But the tail's up. My brother said, "There's either two things. The tails up, either it's gonna charge or it's gonna do something else." Kim Morey: Yeah. Bill Duhamel: He just made the joke about...and then, the people back at Washington had no idea what he was talking about, but the Buffalo with the tail up, back there. Kim Morey: Crazy stories. Bill Duhamel: Well, there probably are. Just a lot of them. Most of these stories would be, basically, something that somebody told me. It's like, Ben Black Elk. I believe it's true. I've had my dad being halfIrish, taking a good story and making it better. Kim Morey: Well, see that your schedule is going to allow enough time. Kim Duhamel: Oh, contact Sharon again. Bill Duhamel: Yeah. Sharon's around. Sharon disappears. She was my secretary for 26 years, and then decided that she wanted to retire, just 'cause she turned 70. I said, "That's no big reason." So she both here, and she has a place, a small fixer-upper in Phoenix, that her daughter's a flight attendant. Basically, they bought this place really cheap, when the prices were low. So she went down there, and then she's got it all fixed up. Her daughter stays there quite a bit when she flies through. She's not based there. She's based out of Charlotte. But Mason's headquarters are down in Phoenix, and she's like the number 4 flight attendant, in terms of seniority, so therefore, she's a mucky bucket among the flight attendant, whatever that's worth. Then she kind of got bored, and I think, also, the 150 degree summer days. George is still here. George has his horses. So anyway, she came back, so I made a deal with her, that if she comes back for a couple of weeks, like during the winter, I'll pay a round trip on the Allegiant, and then she catches me up. She knows where everything is, and then I call her up. If I'm looking for �something, she tells me, "Second cabinet, third drawer from the top, three-fourths of the way back." She knows exactly where everything is. Kim Morey: Oh wow, that's scary. Bill Duhamel: So she's cutting back for the summer, and she'll be with me, probably, the early fall. Then I think, you know. She and her daughter travel a lot, too. Kim Morey: Okay. So I can...I should be able... Bill Duhamel: Set something up for her. Yeah. Kim Morey: Yeah. Okay. Bill Duhamel: She's easier to get ahold of than I am. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bill Duhamel transcript pt. 2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interviews Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rapid City Public Library Description An account of the resource Oral Histories recorded for the Rapid City Oral History Project by Rapid City Public Library Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Bill Duhamel Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Kim Morey Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 53:56 Location The location of the interview Rapid City Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview: Bill Duhamel Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 06-24-2015 Subject The topic of the resource banking, Black Elk, Black Hills, buffalo, cowboys, Duhamel family, Duhamel Saddle Makers, Duhamel store, fur trading, Journey Museum, Lakota, Independence Rock, news broadcasting, Pierre Choteau, ranching, Rapid City, Sitting Bull Crystal Cavern, South Dakota, South Dakota State Library, World War II Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource signed release to Rapid City Oral History Project on file. Description An account of the resource The Duhamel family has a long history in the Black Hills dating back to Bill's great-grandfather's arrival in 1857. Bill Duhamel shares many stories with a sense of humor. Topics include Duhamel Trading Post, Sitting Bull Crystal Cave and numerous family relationships with others in the community. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context https://catalog.rapidcitylibrary.org/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=289847 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rapid City Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Rapid City Public Library Language A language of the resource en Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rapid City Public Library Historic Rapid City Rapid City Library Foundation Banking Black Elk Black Hills Buffalo Cowboy Duhamel Family Duhamel Saddle Makers Duhamel Store Fur Trading Independence Rock Journey Museum Lakota News Broadcasting Pierre Choteau Ranching Rapid City Sitting Bull Crystal Cavern South Dakota South Dakota State Library World War II