Postscript: Reflections Sitting Alone in the Root Cellar

On November 10, 1910 the Valley Irrigator in Newell, South Dakota, published these words which earlier appeared in the Spearfish Mail about conditions further north in Harding County.

While out in the Camp Crook country last week Fred Nash took Dr. Sherrill of Camp Crook to see some patients who were reported sick at their ranch about twenty-six miles northeast from that place. The family consists of father, mother and two little children, and all were bed-fast and literally starving to death, having nothing in the house except rice. They are newcomers and are so destitute that the county will be compelled to care for them for some months to come. They live in a sod house, are two miles from water, have no fuel, and are in a bad way generally. Dr. Sherrill carried the little boy, about four years old, to Camp Crook and placed him in the hospital. The child was nothing but skin and bones, and his chances for recovery were considered rather dubious. Doubtless there are others in that region in the same fix.

Listening to the wind blowing through the prairie grass. Kate