SARAH CAMPBELL

The first white woman in the Black Hills was African American

A very short, very heavy-set Sarah Campbell dressed in flashy calico with her trusty black and white dog at her side appeared to be well-known throughout the Black Hills. She cooked and cleaned for others, delivered babies, nursed the sick and loved a good laugh. But very few people knew that she also owned five silver mines.           

Become a sleuth and solve the other mysteries

of Sarah Campbell’s life for yourself!

Was she the woman in the shadowy background of a photograph taken by William H. Illingworth the night before gold was discovered in the Black Hills? Campbell, who cooked for the sutler on Custer’s 1874 Black Hills Expedition, told Chicago Inter-Ocean reporter William Curtis that she also had cooked on the first boat up the Missouri river. Could she really have cooked on the American Fur Company’s steamboat Yellow Stone when she was only eight years old?

The author suggests that Sarah Campbell was the child Sally who was enslaved by fur traders in St. Louis and sued for her freedom at the age of twelve. Sift through the evidence presented to see if you agree.

And, finally, the most interesting mystery of all. Why did Campbell always claim to be the first white woman to enter the Black Hills?

SOUTH DAKOTA LIBRARY SPECIAL

FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH

AND WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH

Thank you

This book will establish Lilah Pengra as a major regional historian.  Impeccably researched and wonderfully told, she engages us to see ourselves while telling about Aunt Sally.  This should be required reading for how to ‘do’ history.                             

       Colonel Rod Thomas (USA, Ret), Editor

       Little Big Horn Associates Newsletter

Women of color in the west created places for themselves in unwelcoming environments by managing public faces while remaining true to private selves. Pengra deftly captures this duality in Sarah Campbell’s life by looking beyond the stereotypic depiction of her as the “fat, black, good-natured” sutler’s cook on the 1874 Black Hills Expedition. Instead she reveals Campbell’s skillful handling of the challenges of her time and place. Pengra’s biography of Sarah Campbell adds a sensitively recounted Black Hills chronicle to the complex panorama of African American history.

       Quintard Taylor

       Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History, University of Washington, Seattle

       Author of In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-1900

       Co-editor of African American Women Confront the West: 1600–2000

This delightfully told story of Sarah Campbell's journey through historically significant times is a “must read” for South Dakotans who believe they know their Black Hills' history. In addition, Pengra's background narrative of the connotation of color adds a fascinating dimension to the emotionally debated contemporary concept of race. The reader, oriented by plentiful and significant maps of the land and of the mind, will find that Sarah is with us still.

       Peggy Palmer, Avid reader of Black Hills' history

“Seeing color” presaged an exciting find for Black Hills miners. Readers will share this feeling as Lilah strips away the stereotype and unearths Sarah’s compelling story. It is a first class piece of work—a real treasure!

       Reid L. Riner, Director, Minnilusa Historical Association