(Editor's Note: This feature is provided by the South Dakota Historical Society Foundation, the nonprofit fundraising partner of the South Dakota State Historical Society.)
Badger
Clark turned four years of cowboy life into a career as one of America’s most
successful cowboy poets.
Charles
Badger Clark Jr., was born Jan, 1, 1883, in Albia, Iowa. His father, a minister,
moved the family to the Plankinton area three months later. The family later
lived in Mitchell, Huron and Deadwood. Clark attended Dakota Wesleyan
University for one year and then lived in Cuba for two years before returning
to the Black Hills to work for the Lead Daily Call. When he was diagnosed with
tuberculosis, he followed a doctor’s advice to move to a dry climate. He went
to Arizona, where he tended a small herd of cattle at a ranch near Tombstone.
“I
drearily acknowledge that I was no buckaroo worthy of the name,” Clark wrote.
The
compensations he found from cowboy life were freedom and the beauty of the
desert range. He expressed his feelings for his new life in verse.
His
stepmother, Anna, sent a poem he included in a letter to her to Pacific Monthly
magazine in California.
When
that poem, “Ridin’,” was published and Clark received $10 for it, he decided he
had found a job for life.
“If
they’ll pay money for such stuff as that, I’m fixed,” Clark said, according to
his biographer Helen Morganti.
 |
| Badger Clark |
After
four years in Arizona, Clark returned to the family home in Hot Springs, where
his father had taken the job of chaplain at the Battle Mountain Sanitarium.
After his father’s death in 1921, Clark continued to live with his stepmother
until she moved in 1926 to what was then called the State Soldiers’ Home
and Clark moved to Custer State Park.
Returning
to South Dakota did not end Clark’s career as a poet. Anna encouraged her
stepson to write a poem reflecting the cowboy religion. Clark told her that he
had heard cowboys use biblical expressions, but not in the context of a
religious nature, according to Jessie Sundstrom in “Badger Clark: Cowboy Poet
with Universal Appeal.”
Nonetheless,
Clark did comply with his stepmother’s request, which resulted in one of his
most popular poems. “A Cowboy’s Prayer” has appeared on postcards, in greeting
cards and is read at rodeos.
The
fact that the poem is often attributed to “author anonymous” did not seem to
bother Clark.
“Mr.
Anonymous has written some marvelously good things in the past and when a man
reaches a height where he is identified with Anonymous, that’s success,” Clark
is quoted as saying.
Clark’s
first volume of poems, “Sun and Saddle Leather,” was published in 1915. The
novel “Spike,” containing short stories about life on the Arizona ranch, was
published in 1925. “Sky Lines and Wood Smoke” was published in 1935, and “boots
and bylines” and “When Hot Springs was a Pup” were published after Clark’s
death.
The
cowboy poet’s work has never gone out of print. The South Dakota Historical
Society Foundation, the nonprofit fundraising partner of the South Dakota State
Historical Society, oversees the reprinting and distribution of Clark’s work as
well as other materials about him.
Clark
took his poems to the people, reading them at schools, colleges, clubs,
churches and other gatherings. A commanding presence with a Van Dyke mustache
and beard, he would recite his verse wearing knee-high boots, riding breeches
and a military-style coat.
He
is credited with speaking at the first cowboy poetry event in Elko, Nev., where
he entertained a large crowd at the Elko High School gym on April 3, 1926. He
was honored at the 2013 National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko when an
ensemble cast of artists from across the West recited or sang their favorite
work of his.
Often
speaking for “travel and meals,” honorariums from his speeches and publishing
royalties earned him $500 to $700 a year, enough to live at his cabin in Custer
State Park. Clark described his home, the Badger Hole, as “four rooms and a
path.” It had no running water, no electricity and was heated by burning wood
in the range, the fireplace and in a round heater in the living room.
“Sufficient,”
he said, “for a bachelor in the backwoods.”
Although
never married, Clark was once engaged to a classmate at Deadwood High School,
according to Sundstrom.
Gov.
Leslie Jensen named Clark the South Dakota poet laureate in 1937, but Clark may
have preferred another title, as he signed a letter, “Dutifully your poet
lariat, Badger Clark.”
Clark
remained the state’s poet laureate until his death from throat and lung cancer
in Rapid City on Sept. 27, 1957. He is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Hot
Springs.
He left a poetic heritage rich in beauty and
an understanding of the American West.
