How
did a Perkins County homesteader with an eighth grade education develop a scientific
career and become director of the University of South Dakota Museum?
It all began
when young William Henry Over found an arrowhead in his father's field near Albion,
Illinois, where he was born in 1866. Like the seeds his father planted in that
field, the chipped scrap of stone would produce many crops in a lifetime of collecting and
learning.
While other boys
entertained themselves in more conventional ways, young Over began collecting insects,
plants and artifacts. "When I was 15," he told a USD Volante reporter in
1942, "I exhibited my first archaeology items in a small showcase in my home in
southern Illinois. It was then I knew my ambition was to direct a large
museum."
As a young man Over moved
to Minnesota to engage in business. But he continued gathering artifacts, a
collection he exhibited in 1901 at the American Exposition in Buffalo, NY. During
these years he lectured locally on topics from potatoes to primitive man.
By 1908 Over was living in
Deuel County, SD. His interests had extended to fossils, and his growing expertise
enabled him to recognize unknown snail and crab fossils, two of which were subsequently
named after him: Pisidium overi and Dakotacancer overani. Soon, Over, his
wife and their two children, one son and one daughter, moved on west to homestead in
Perkins County.
Over's occupation now was
farming, but he never stopped collecting. In 1912 he published an article entitled
"Notes from the Northwest South Dakota" in the journal, Curio Collectors. He
began to study natural history in Perkins County, ranging from fresh-water shells and
fossils to colossal bones of the dinosaur, triceratops, and he described artifacts left in
Perkins County by the Arikara people.
The previous year, Over had
written about the hard work of breaking rocks to obtain specimens of Sphenodiscus
lenticularis. The essay came into the hands of University of South Dakota Dean E. C.
Perisho, who also served as the state geologist. "This article was the means of
getting me to Vermillion," Over said. the family moved to Vermillion in 1912,
and Over became assistant curator of the USD Museum.
In
his new position, Over became especially active in archaeology, developing his interest in
the history and culture of the Native peoples of South Dakota. In 1907 he had given
a talk in Clear Lake about the earliest South Dakotans, the Arikara, whom he described as
semi-civilized people who used fire, made tools and pottery, and cultivated the soil,
raising corn, squash, beans, pumpkins and tobacco, semi-sedentary people living a
"quiet and peaceable life" in earth lodges in permanent villages.
From 1917 - 1919, Over and
his associates spent two months of each summer searching for pre-historic villages along
the Missouri River, finding 125 such sites. Over's article, "The Arikara
Culture in South Dakota," provided the earliest understanding of these people.
A 1931 Volante article said the USD Museum had the largest collection of Arikara
artifacts in the United States, a collection Over said "put the Arikara Indians on
the map." By 1934 he had concluded that their earth lodges, pottery, corn and
other plants indicated the Arikara had originated in the Southwest.
Two years after joining the
museum, Over began gathering live animals. committed to attracting and educating
young people, he obtained three live opossums, a snowy owl and some snakes, including a
diamondback rattlesnake from Texas. In 1941 The Chicago Zoological Park bought all
of Over's snakes from the University.
Throughout his long career,
Over's interests continued to expand. His writings include Amphibians and
Reptiles of South Dakota, Birds of South Dakota, Fishes of South Dakota, Mammals of South
Dakota, Trees and Shrubs of South Dakota, Wild Flowers of South Dakota, Archaeology in
South Dakota, and even the Life History of Sitting Bull. He left
practically no sphere of knowledge about South Dakota untouched.
In 1936 the board of
regents and the university recognized Over's accomplishments by granting him the honorary
degree of doctor of science. After 35 years of service to the university, Over
retired in 1948 at age 82. The following year the regents named the University
Museum the W. H. Over Museum.
William Henry Over died
February 20, 1956, having provided an incredible amount of knowledge about South Dakota's
natural and cultural history. The seed which fell on W. H. Over had truly
multiplied.
Published in the South Dakota
Magazine
May/June 2000
Volume 16, Number 1, 33
