The uprising happened many years ago, in the early 1970’s.
I reminisced the experience this past Saturday as I attended Wheaton High School’s class of 1978’s forty-fifth class reunion.
I believe it was the last skirmish to ever take place where Wheaton High School students were attacked by Native American children posing as an Indian war party.
Let’s review the political landscape of the early 1970’s that would lead to the unrest between the Native Americans and we the European immigrant intruders.
During the 1970’s a Native American named Russell Means led many protests attempting to make known the plight of the American Indian. His actions drew many supporters.
He was best known for his role in the AIMS armed occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973.
The unrest filtered all the way down to the children of the Native Americans which we are about to find out as our reminiscing continues.
Wheaton High School had a science club that met monthly after school and various experiments and science activities were participated in by its members.
As the school year was drawing to a close the club decided to celebrate and take a field trip to Sica Hollow State Park northwest of Sisseton, South Dakota.
It is a beautiful area with flowing springs, hills covered with trees and many trails available for exploring.
Vehicles packed with excited students, several chaperones and firewood, hotdogs, buns and s’more fixings pulled out of the school parking lot and headed west, unaware of the adventure they were about to experience! 🙂
Arriving at the park the students were urged to explore the trails while the chaperones began building a fire and preparing for the hotdog and marshmallow cooking. (Cremation may be a better description.) 🙂
We assumed we were the only ones in the park as there were no other vehicles in the parking lot.
It did not take long however to discover we were not alone.
Our students began returning to the campfire complaining that there were boys running on the trails and they were mean.
“They are throwing rocks and hitting us with sticks,” the students reported.
Several of the chaperones headed for the trails to protect the students still on the trails and that’s when we discovered the fifteen- year- old leader with a tee shirt with the name Russell Means scrawled on the front.
Suddenly it became obvious what was occurring. The Russell Means fan club was visiting the park too.
We chaperones gathered the exploring science club members and hustled them to the blazing campfire where we proceeded to enjoy hotdogs and s’mores.
Enjoy might be an exaggeration as the ‘mean’ children roaming the trails had us all a little bit worried.
We hurried through our singed hotdogs and flaming s’mores and began packing the cars as we were concerned about the rock throwing club wielding youth that were still roaming the trails.
They must have viewed us from the tree covered hills and saw we were preparing to escape.
There was a grassy field between us, and the tree covered hills and we began to see the little warriors sneaking through the grass and preparing what they thought was going to be a sneak attack.
As the vehicles began to leave the park it suddenly felt like we were in the middle of a John Wayne movie.
Short, tall and middle-sized brown warriors rose from the grass covered field, whooping and hollering and waving home-made spears, clubs and heaving rocks at the departing vehicles.
To further rile the little warriors up one of our science students embarrassed us all by screaming out the car window, “You dumb Indians!” 🙁
There was no time for the racism lecture, that occurred once we returned safely to the confines of the Wheaton parking lot. 🙂
As we drove our shaken science students out of the Sica Hollow State Park I and another chaperone decided that the behavior we had just experienced should be reported to authorities.
So, the students were packed into two vehicles and driven home while I and the other chaperone went in search of the police department in Sisseton.
When the police chief heard about the’ children’s war party’ he said, “This is a job for the reservation police.”
He radioed the reservation police and in minutes they arrived at the police station.
Stepping out of their squad car were two of the biggest policemen I had ever encountered.
Now we were going to have to explain to them how many small Indian children had attacked our very white science group.
Thankfully they took the news very seriously and invited us to jump in the back seat of their squad car and return to the scene of the crime.
What a site we must have made with two hulking native Americans in the front seat and two scrawny white guys sitting nervously in the back seat. 🙂
As we approached the park, we met a red van and one of the two reservation police looked at the other and said, “That was Padre from the orphanage.”
The police made an immediate U-turn and proceeded to pull the red van over.
The officers got out of the squad and visited with the Padre.
As the discussion continued many little brown eyes were peering out the van windows and staring at the two scrawny white guys in the back seat of the squad car.
They knew their little war party scheme had just been busted!
In fact, upon returning to the squad car the reservation police said Padre promised the uprising would be dealt with in the morning.
We chaperones were relieved that we would not have to be present for the peace treaty signing that next morning. 🙂
It seems Padre had brought his little tribe of Indians out to the park to get some exercise while he returned to the peace and quiet of the orphanage.
It’s his fault that every now and then I awake from a deep sleep dreaming tiny little Indians are lobbing rocks at me and clubbing me with sticks. 🙁
Actually, I have a soft spot in my heart for the native children after working with them at the Bonanza Education Center for several years. So, their attempted surprise attack at Sica Hollow has been long forgiven. 🙂
It’s that Padre that needs a little shaping up though!
Until next time.
