Built solid, with one of the world’s most prized building materials, Indiana Bedford limestone, and interior finish in St. Meinrad Indiana sandstone, the Church of St. Paul at Marty, South Dakota, is adorned with Dakota Sioux Indian symbolism. The edifice on the Yankton Sioux Reservation looms at the end of a Section Road ten miles south of the once busy Ravinia train depot. There the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad steamed westward toward its terminus in the town of Platte. From Ravinia, every piece of construction material had to be trucked the ten miles to the building site—every stone, brick, bag of cement, bolt, tile, steel, window and door lumber––plus food. This weighed heavily on the surrounding school complex, which in the early1940s boarded 80 summer orphans and up to 450 students nine months of the year, with every need supplied, including transportation to their homes on 13 outlying reservations.
Largely from private letters, this history of 1942 “Miracle on the Prairie” includes the improbable story of Benedictine Father Sylvester Eisenman, his builder-brother Leonard, and the un-traditional heroes of the shrine that now attracts tourists and pilgrims.
Back in 1921, Yankton Sioux elders Edward Yellow Bird, David Zephier (Black Spotted Horse), and Chief Thunder Horse journeyed 1,000 miles to St. Meinrad Abbey, Indiana, to obtain itinerant Father Sylvester as their permanent missionary.
Also, generations of women at Marty, led by venerable Grandma White Tallow, created rare porcupine quill and beadwork items, and quilted hundreds of vibrant-colored Star Quilts for sale and raffle among benefactors in the east. The star design, lost in legend, represents eternal life.
An early supporter was Mother [later Saint] Katharine Drexel, who devoted her wealth and her life to serve American Indians and African Americans. Her insight and encouragement endured.
By 1940, all but two of the eleven fireproof buildings at Marty received Leonard Eisenman’s direction and detail. Trained at Winona Technical Institute in Indianapolis, he caught the mechanical hysteria of the newly discovered automobile. He labored on Henry Ford’s Indianapolis assembly line in1914––pure jubilation the day Ford raised a day’s pay to $5.00. But at the same time Ford sped up the belts beyond the strength of many workers to endure. Leonard then pioneered in Southern Indiana with a garage and dealership for Hudson & Essex, among others, before his brother implored him to move the family West, and help build the Mission.
Leonard was, in 1940, ready to face the challenge of a lifetime. There were no bids. No contractor. No companies with heavy equipment, forms, scaffolding, lifts, cranes. No skilled sub-contractors within miles. But it was, Father Sylvester said, “to be a place of worship worthy of the Indians’ long enduring faith and sacrifice.”
Time for digging the basement came. With no backhoe or front-end loader, Leonard outfitted the Diesel with the two-yard Fresno, to scrape out the sand.
To be exact, not every building material came via rail. The most basic element was to be borne up from the prairie itself, by the enthusiastic hands of the school children. To ride the old flatbed trucks miles out onto the fields surrounding Marty, the boys jostled for position. Exciting encounters with prairie dogs, snakes, rabbits and skunks. Nearby homesteaders, brought close to the Reservation by the Land Sale of 1892, viewed as good riddance the piles of field stones cleared off their farms. But the stones would face much cracking by hand with sledge-hammers, and crushing in a rebuilt rock crusher.
Operating on a Hupmobile engine, the home-made rock crusher first crushed, then screened to size. The high school boys picked the rocks under 12 inches to feed into it.
On August 5th, 1941, the shop-designed water cooler stood its ground against the 100o heat. For the main slab, 750 sacks of cement fed the mixer and wheelbarrows from 4:00 A.M. to 10 P.M.
The Japanese attacked the U. S. Navy at Hawaii December 7, 1941, when the building was half finished. Then began a frantic scramble for supplies and workmen––and the Fort Randall Dam job upriver siphoned off workers.
On February 8, 1942, Leonard reported: “A home-made steel elevator shaft now stands up on the first floor slab ready to lift the concrete into the forms for the pillars. We have speeded up the hoist 20% in order to be able to handle the 1,000 trips (two wheelbarrows each) in one day for the tower slab."
The final and largest arch, Leonard wrote Aug. 16, 1942, “is now being built and is out of the ‘danger’ stage. There was a course of stone to lay on a single arch form clear across the area, the width of the stones being 3 ½ ft. and thickness 4 inches. The form was only two 2x8’s bolted together with angles for splices. The short angles were tack-welded to the iron pipe posts of the scaffold for support. As the stones came closer and closer to the keystone position, I couldn’t leave the job anymore. I kept my hand on the last stones laid, as one could rock the whole business without effort! The keystone brought a lot of relief, but I felt better yet when they completed the first 8 feet of brickwork over the stones. Then they filled the space under the concrete arch at the bottom with brick which prevents a buckle. So now, with two days to set, she is as safe as in Abraham’s bosom. Still have to set two angle iron forms for the molding stones on each side of the arch.”
Everybody helped. Oblate Sister of the Blessed Sacrament Christine Hudson remembered: “We Sisters joined in, sifted sand, hauled bricks and crushed rocks. We searched for the next number on the limestone blocks laid out in the field, for the stonemasons. Some stones were a heavy load for four men.”
On December 17, 1942, distant newspapers marked the Day of Solemn Consecration. The LAKE ANDES WAVE headlined:
MAGNIFICENT, NEW CATHOLIC CHURCH AT MARTY MISSION DEDICATED TODAY
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