Swiss American Historical Society Review Volume 37 Number 3 Article 2 2001 Swiss In South Dakota: A Preliminary Sketch Leo Schelbert Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review Part of the European History Commons, and the European Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Schelbert, Leo (2001) "Swiss In South Dakota: A Preliminary Sketch," Swiss American Historical Society Review: Vol. 37 : No. 3 , Article 2. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol37/iss3/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Swiss American Historical Society Review by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Schelbert: Swiss In South Dakota: A Preliminary Sketch Swiss in South Dakota: A Preliminary Sketch Prepared in Commemorationof the Opening of the Midwest Dairy Institute, Milbank, South Dakota, June 7, 200 I Leo Schelbert It is a privilege to be here in Milbank today, to take part in commemorating two outstanding Swiss immigrants, and to be present at the formal opening of the Midwest Dairy Institute, a symbol, that the vision of Alfred Nef and Alfred Gonzenbach lives on in their sons, their families and the Milbank community. 1 Long before the arrival of the Alfred's in Milbank, dairying had been for decades a major form of enterprise for Swiss newcomers and their descendants. Once it had emerged as a business of milk-processing and cheese-making for urban markets, Swiss brought their skills in the 1870s to the Mohawk Valley of upstate New York, the region stretching from Albany to Buffalo. Gerbers and others from the Bernese Simmental built up many dairying establishments there, and in Little Falls near Utica a Dr. N. Gerber ran a large factory experimenting with the production of condensed, chocolate, and infant milk. With the westward movement Swiss continued those activities in states such as Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas. In Tuscarawas County of Ohio a Johann Beer manufactured the copper, tin, and wooden implements needed in the milk trade and Joseph Schwab produced cloth used in cheese-making. Also dairying in the environs of San Francisco was for decades in the hands of Swiss from Uri, Unterwalden, and the Tessin.2 Thus what the two Alfreds started in Milbank, South Dakota, in 1929 continued a long-standing Swiss tradition, noted for its search for excellence, innovation, and service to the community. 1 Patricia Frazee, "Alfred Gonzenbach and the Making of the Valley Queen Cheese Factory of Milbank, South Dakota," SAHS Review 30,1 (February 1994): 3-24. 2 See Adelrich Steinach, Geschichte und Leben der Schweizer Kolonien in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nord-Amerika (New York: Druck T. Bryner, 1889): 68-70; reprint: Swiss Colonists in 19th Century America, with Introduction and Index (pp. 393-525) by Urspeter Schelbert. Camden, ME: Picton Press, 1995. 3 Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2001 1 Swiss American Historical Society Review, Vol. 37 [2001], No. 3, Art. 2 4 Review [November Possibly the first mention of the suspicious entity called Swiss cheese in what is now South Dakota dates back to 1838/39 when the Georgia-born John C. Fremont, then assistant to the French scientist-explorer Joseph N. Nicollet, reconnoitered the region. He reports that their party had been invited to eat with leaders of the Sisseton Lakota who served them "the choicest, the fattest pieces of buffalo." In tum their hosts were invited to Nicollet's tent where they were served soup in deep tin plates. When these were filled, the meal began but, the story goes, "with the first mouthful each Indian silently laid down his spoon and looked at each other." Everyone in the tent was bewildered until the interpreter could clear up the problem. "Mr. Nicollet, " Fremont explains, "had put among our provisions some Swiss cheese and to give flavor to the soup a liberal portion of this had been put into the kettles. Until this strange flavor was accounted for the Indians thought they were being poisoned; but the cheese being shown to them and explanation made, confidence was restored." 3 General Contexts Although the 1980 US census has estimated some 235,355 Swiss of single, and 746,188 of multiple Swiss ancestry residing in the United States, that is close to a million people,4 Swiss in South Dakota as in the United States in general have been almost invisible. One searches nearly in vain for an entry "Swiss" or "Switzerland" in indexes of South Dakota historical surveys, in the periodical South Dakota History, or the some 25 volumes of the South Dakota Historical Collections. 5 An otherwise excellent 1980 statistical compilation lists zero people of Swiss ancestry for South Dakota's Grant County. 6 We know better, of course! Indeed, depending on their last names and their native tongue, Swiss and Swiss Americans are viewed mostly as being either of German, French, or Italian origin. In addition, Swiss seem to have tried to blend as quickly as possible into the given society and to remain inconspicuous as newcomers. Heinrich Lienhard, for instance, himself a rather recent arrival, met in 1845 some 3 "Fremont's Story - 1838-1839," South Dakota Historical Collections X ( 1920): 90; based on John Charles Fremont, Memoirs of My Life I ( 1886): 48. 4 James Paul Allen and Eugene James Turner, We the People. An Atlas of America's Ethnic Diversity (New York: Macmillan, 1988): 56. 5 See for instance A Guide to South Dakota . Compiled by the Federal Writers' Project (Pierre, SD: State Publishing Co., 1938): 371; or Herbert S. Schell, History of South Dakota. Third Edition, Revised. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975. 6 Allen and Turner, We the People, 286. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol37/iss3/2 2 Schelbert: Swiss In South Dakota: A Preliminary Sketch 2001] Swiss in South Dakota: A Preliminary Sketch 5 fellow Glamese in St. Louis who were on the way to Wisconsin where they planned to begin the town ofNew Glarus. "On such occasions," he explains I felt it my duty to educate them regarding American customs, specifically not to walk down in the middle of the street, but keep to the side, and not to call out loudly to one another by name in public, thereby drawing the attention and contempt and disapproval of passersby. 7 Yet Swiss are a distinct group of immigrants, coming from a nation with four native tongues that are divided up into numerous subdivisions, with a more than 700-year long separate history, and an enduring tradition of communal democracy. 8 They are also fairly evenly divided into Catholic and Protestant communities,9 the latter mainly not of the Calvinist, as so often assumed, but of the Swiss Reformed persuasion that was formulated in the mid-1520s by Huldreich Zwingli in the City of Zurich. 10 At the same time also communities of Anabaptists had emerged in Swiss regions as well as in the neighboring Alsace and in the Palatinate. 11 Swiss dispersed world-wide, especially after 1450, when Europeans learned to navigate the open seas and when the Atlantic ceased to be an obstacle and was turned into a much traveled highway. 12 In the last five 7 See John C. Abbot, ed., New Worlds to Seek. Pioneer Heinrich Lienhard in Switzerland and America , 1824-1846. Translated and Annotated by Raymond J. Spahn. Foreword by John Heinrich Lienhard IV (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000): 198. Lienhard also was embarrassed by their attire, "their wide pants," "their great clumsy mountain shoes," and the men's "thin black stocking caps pulled down over their uncombed heads" (199). 8 See the lucid interpretation of Jonathan Steinberg, Why Switzerland ? 2nd edition. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1996. A convenient brief summary is "Switzerland," Worldmark Chronology of the Nations. Vol 4: Europe . Timothy L. Gall and Susan B. Gall, Editors (Detroit: Gale Group, 1999): 571-583. 9 The Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations. Europe (Detroit: Gale Group, 200 I): 48, observes : "Religious denominations as of 1998 stood at 44% Roman Catholic; 40% Protestant; 7% atheist; 2% Muslim; l % Eastern religions; and 1% unknown or undecided. There were also 58,501 other Christians; 19,175 members of new religious movements; 17,577 Jews ; and 11,768 Old Catholics." 10 A short biography is Ulrich Gabler, Huldrych Zwingli: His Life and Work. Translated from the German by Ruth C. L. Gritsch. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986. Zwingli's understanding of Christianity is featured by W. P. Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. 11 See for instance Claus-Peter Clasen, Anabaptism, a Social History, 1525-1618: Switzerland, Austria, Moravia, South and Central Germany. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972. 12 The global dispersal of Swiss is sketched in Leo Schelbert, Einfahrung in die schweizerische Auswanderungsgeschichte der Neuzeit (Zurich: Leemann, 1976): 181-241. Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2001 3 Swiss American Historical Society Review, Vol. 37 [2001], No. 3, Art. 2 6 Review [November centuries European peoples, for millennia consigned to Eurasia's western-most comer, went all over the world to reconnoiter and established economic, military, and cultural hegemony in the continents of Asia and Africa. In regions of Australia, New Zealand, and the Western Hemisphere Europeans and their descendants achieved complete dominance by displacing indigenous peoples and replacing them with their own progeny. 13 Thus over several centuries New Spains, New En glands, New Frances, even New Switzerlands emerged 14,that is N eo-European nations such as Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Brazil. The region of what is now called South Dakota became a de facto domain of white people only after the 1870s.