Indian Town

Sylvester Duane Foote Sr.

Description

The book is about a young Indian Boy that grows up in a small town in South Dakota. There is a section of the town that was for all the Natives to live that was called “Indian Town”. The boy grows up in poverty and endures all the hardship that goes with being poor. He eventually drops out of high school in the tenth grade to go into the service. This was his only option to get out of poverty and learn a trade. He finishes his military training and is sent to Vietnam where he ends up doing two one-year tours. He completes his enlistment with the service and moves to North Dakota and works until his retirement in 2009.

Sujets

• Biography
• Indiantown
• Indigenous peoples
• Autobiography
• Foote

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 08 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665569705
• Langue: English

Extrait

Indian Town
Where My Story Begins
Sylvester Duane Foote Sr.


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© 2022 Sylvester Duane Foote Sr. All rights reserved.
 
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Published by AuthorHouse 08/29/2022
 
ISBN: 978-1-6655-6971-2 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6655-6970-5 (e)
 
 
 
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
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T his Autobiography is for my children, Sylvester (Sly) Jr, Brittnee, Lillieonna and Synnove. My wife has been after me to write about myself because my children don’t have a clue about where I grew up, how I grew up and some of the things that I done in my lifetime. I will tell stories for you my children, some of the things that I did while growing up in a small farming town of Winner, South Dakota. I will talk about my experience while serving in the Army and how I ended up here in North Dakota. Some of the people I will mention are no longer with us, even though they play a major part in my life. Some of the events are not in order, I may be a little off on my dates of events or names I cannot remember. You must remember these events happened fifty or sixty years ago and my memory is not as good as it used to be.
I have six sisters on my mother’s side, they go by the name of Peneaux. They are Myra, Shirley, Brenda, Darlene, Bernada and Jackie. They are all grown up and have their own Families. Brenda lives and works in Mission, SD. Shirley lives in Ideal, SD. Darlene and Bernada live in Sioux Falls, SD and Jackie lives in Brookings, SD.
I have some brothers and sisters on my father’s side, but I only know a few of them. I didn’t grow up around my father and only met a couple of my sisters after my father passed away. The one’s that I remember are Quinna L, Rena W, Bonnie W and I think there’s a Kenneth W. I really don’t know this side of the family. I talk to Quinna, I think she’s the only one I talk to the most. From what I been told, I have a lot of relatives from the Wright Family.
I am a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe out of South Dakota, we are known as the Burnt Thigh Nation, or Sicangu’s. I migrated up into North Dakota as a young man and never cared to go home. I worked in Fort Yates, ND for many years and at United Tribes. After I retired my wife and I bought a home in Mandan, ND and that’s where we live now.
My parents are Caroline Roberta Foote and Hobart Wright. I don’t know my father because he was not around while I was growing up. I think my mother met my father in Winner, my mother and her friends used to go to Winner for dances and other doings. My father, he was from the Rosebud area and seldom they would come to Winner. My mother raised me with the help of my grandparents. I think I was born in the Ideal, SD area. Back in those days the babies were born at home, there was no money or insurance to go to the hospital. There were many mid-wives that made sure the babies were born so when a woman was going to have a baby the mid-wives will be called to help deliver. I think I was born east of Ideal, my grandparents lived in a house along a little creek. I remember there was a bridge just north of the house. When I was a little older, I used to go toward the creek and my grandma would say “There’s an old lady down at the creek and she would take you if you went down there”. My mother always stayed with her parents so when my grandparents moved to Winner, everybody moved with them.
My grand-fathers name was Stephan Foote. He was a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe out of Montana. The story goes that he had two brothers, Frank Foote and a half-brother by the name of Silas Jones. My grandpa left Montana and came to South Dakota and traveled along the Missouri River visiting the Tribes that lived there. He met my grandma somewhere around the Sisseton Area, fell in love and married my grandma sometimes around the early 1920’s. They eventually moved to Ideal, SD, part of the Rosebud Reservation where they lived so when they started enrolling members into the Tribe, they automatically enrolled him into the Rosebud Sioux Tribe even though he was a Northern Cheyenne. Back in the 1980’s we went to Billings for a bowling tourney and I had on this jacket that had “Foote Racing Team” on the back and this little old lady from Lame Deer, she must have been in the eighty’s came up to me and asked where the ‘Foote name came from so I told her who my grand-parents are and when she heard that Stephan Foote was my grandfather, she said she knew him and I was part of a big family of Foote’s. She also knew of the half-brother Silas Jones, so I told her Silas was living in Dupree S.D. on the Cheyenne River Reservation. The little old lady introduced me to a group of people, I guess they were all Foote’s to this day I still don’t know any of them.
My uncle Harold Foote was the one who told me about my grandpa Stephan Foote and his brothers and how one of them by the name of Frank Foote stayed on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation and the half-brother Silas Jones settled on the Cheyenne River Reservation in Dupree S.D. My uncle Harold was the one that said I should go visit him since I lived close to Eagle Butte, S.D. I was working in cherry Creek at the time so one Friday after work on the way back to Fort Yates I stopped in Dupree and asked where Silas Jones lived, and they gave me directions to his home. When I introduced myself as Duane Foote to him his face light up and asked me who my grandparents are, so I told him Stephan Foote was my grandpa, and he told me that Stephan was his half-brother and that he had another brother that lived on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana. We sat and visited for a long time, and he did tell me that Stephan did go to school in Pennsylvania at the Carlisle Boarding School, and that my grandpa was there the same time Jim Thorpe was there. Stephan (my grandpa) used to tell stories about riding the railroad back and forth from Pa. to Montana. He used to tell stories about how they stayed with the HOBOs along the railroads. The HOBOs had a secret system, that they would put markings on buildings to warn them about bad cops, places that would give handouts, and towns that didn’t like HOBOs and would beat them. The HOBOs had their places to sleep and stay all along the route of the railroad and everyone traveling the railroad was welcomed to stay with them and share their food. As we were visiting his wife kept the coffee coming and suddenly, she asked what my grandma maid name was and I told her it was “King” My grandma’s name was Martha King, and she said she knew her because she went to boarding school with her, I told her she passed on back in 1964. I stopped in a couple of times after that to visit and one day I stopped in and there was nobody there after that I never seen them again.
My grandmother’s name was Martha Mercy Foote, her maiden name was “King”. She had three brothers that I know of, I don’t know if she had any sisters. Her brother’s names are John K, William K. and Lloyd W.C. She told me her parents originally came from the Mdewaukanton Tribe out of Minnesota and her parents name was “Her Pretty Pipe”, Some-where along the line the name was changed to “King”, probably when they relocated to the Sisseton area. John Ks family was his wife Pauline, the children were John Jr, Burton, Dale, Ruby, Clarice, Lavina and Joyce. Williams Ks family was his wife Vera, the children were Leroy, Richard (Dick Mouse), Leonard and Carmen. Lloyds Family was his wife Thelma, the children were Vivian, Thomas, Linda and Frela. My grandma’s Family was her husband Stephan, the children were William, Caroline (Roberta)my mother, and Harold. I can’t remember if there were any more children that they had that maybe passed away, these children were the only ones that I remember.
I remember as a little boy (maybe about four years old) my grandma and Grandpa lived east of Ideal, on the road towards Hamill, S.D. there was a county road with a bridge and we lived right south of there, along the creek. I used to wonder towards the creek and my grandma used to say there an old lady that lives down there, and she will steal you if you go down there. I remember we used to go to Ideal for Sunday services and other doings like Christmas, the community members would get together in a small community building and have their meals and such. Later, after we moved to Winner I remember going to Ideal for socials, games and square dances.
My grandparents moved to Winner when I was still a little boy. Winner was a small farming town with about three thousand residents, the town had a main street and highway 18 ran east and west through town, there was a high school and a couple of elementary schools. When all the Indians started coming into town there was a camp of Indians from different Reservations. The camp was right north of the railroad tracks and next to a meat packing plant. Today (2018) the camp was located where the Racetrack is now located. There were a couple rows of square tents where people lived. I think we went through the winter the first year there, the tents were nice and cozy and as small children we thought it