Newest book on Custer County full of history

Chronicle Staff

Published: Wednesday, December 17th, 2008

Books which tell a story about familiar people and places seem always to be of interest to the local populace. Anywhere former residents may have gone on to, memories of home are eagerly sought after. This is the case with a recently published look at how it was in the Buffalo Gap community and on neighboring ranches during the 1930s. Titled "Buffalo Gap Frontier," it is published by Pine Hill Press, Freeman, S.D. Many old families are revisited with fondness, and bits of their history are passed along in a narrative that makes the reader want to say, "Gee, I didn't know that." Author Bernie Keating, 80, lives in Sonora, Calif., but grew up in Buffalo Gap, and with his siblings was a familiar sight as he played "cowboys and Indians" up and down its dusty streets. His playmates were descendants from pioneer times and though their rich heritage meant little to a small boy, Keating has since learned to appreciate the exclusive peek into the past that was a part of his boyhood days.  Keating starts by telling about spending summers with his friend, George No Water. His grandfather, old chief No Water, lounged in the shade by his tepee along Beaver Creek and often spoke in Lakota, with the younger boy translating.  "What did he say, George?" Keating would ask. Much later, Keating would learn that the elder No Water was the man who accosted Crazy Horse after the famed warrior stole his wife, Black Buffalo Woman, and it was No Water who tracked the couple down and shot at Crazy Horse, leaving the facial scar he carried for the rest of his life.  He also learned about many of the early mixed-blood families who came and took up ranching on the Pine Ridge reservation and Cheyenne River counry—the Eccoffeys, the Cunys, the Bondurants, the Bissonettes, the Normans, Wilsons and a host of others. Contacted at his home in the California foothills, Keating said, "As a little boy, I did not appreciate how unique my upbringing there had been. Now I realize my friends and neighbors included many of the settlers who came during the frontier years, and my Indian friends had been nomads in Sitting Bull's tribe. "Difficult to believe it now, but that nomadic lifestyle was considered normal in Buffalo Gap," Keating said. "I also feared some of the rough cowboys from the Cheyenne River country when they came to town because they wore holsters with guns, and I heard conversations from my parents about possible troubles. Gene Griffis was deputy sheriff and had come to town with a cattle drive in the 1880s. Aunt Anna and Uncle Gene, as we called them, were next door neighbors and my best friends. As a precocious and hungry little boy, I could always get a cookie at their back porch from Aunt Anna.” "My dad was the banker and took over the reins of the Buffalo Gap State Bank in 1932," Keating explained, adding that he wasn't aware until recent years of the tremendous contribution his father made to the ranching community. When the senior Keating came to the bank, Keating said that "virtually every rancher was in default on a mortgage, and he never foreclosed on any of them. He re-negotiated their loans and kept them afloat by taking small token payments, and became a role model for bankers in western South Dakota. My dad was one of the most respected and popular men among all the local ranchers and the townspeople of Buffalo Gap.” Keating's grandfather came to the Black Hills in the latter part of the 1800s to work at the Cuyahoga gold mine in Custer County. Keating says he was a country boy, arriving at the University of Colorado in Boulder wearing home-made clothes—but he had a NROTC scholarship and became a naval officer with three combat tours on a destroyer during the Korean War. He finished graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, during the tumultuous 1960s (he has just finished another book about those years on campus). As corporate manager of quality assurance for Owens-Illinois, Keating became a public speaker and traveled around the world. He studied creative writing as an avocation and after retirement, began to put his words to paper. "It was my boyhood friend, Dr. Dick Sewright of Hot Springs who suggested that I should tell the story of that unique place of my youth, Buffalo Gap. After I retired and had time, I began to pull the story together. Then I realized that to tell about the three-sub-cultures of that time, I needed the assistance of a couple boyhood friends, “ he said. “So I asked Pat Cuny from the Pine Ridge Indian reservation and Tom Norman from the Cheyenne River country to join me. They are already historical legends. We had a lot of fun and and many interesting conversations as the book developed" "It was Tom Norman who told me he had heard from someone that the Fort Laramie Historic Site had a file on Adolph Cuny and other of Pat's ancestors. What a treasure trove that became. Even the Cuny family on the reservation was not aware that such a file existed. It became a vital part of the book.”  “Buffalo Gap Frontier” is available at local bookstores in the Southern Hills and at Border's and The Journey Museum in Rapid City.  Summing up his memories, Keating says, "Despite the hard times, I  had a happy childhood, and cherish the memories of the Buffalo Gap of my youth. I still consider it as my 'home town.'"