If you’re from Sheridan or Johnson County,
you’ve heard spine-tingling tales of Lake DeSmet’s legendary denizen, ‘Smetty.’
Counting Native American stories, the lore of Smetty goes back centuries. Click on the images below to enlarge.
One such legend tells of a band of Native
Americans camped on the shores of DeSmet. During the night, they heard the
strangest ruckus shattering the night’s silence. The next morning, the group’s champion
swimmer shook off the previous night’s weirdness and took a dip in the
inviting, cool water. All was hunky dory until he noticed something rising from
the depths, at which he panicked, churning the water into a froth in an effort
to reach shore. He slipped beneath the waves before his horrified friends, never
to be seen again.
Hard evidence is sorely lacking for all but a
handful of people who’ve borne witness to some strange goings-on in and around
Father DeSmet’s namesake.
The Wyoming Room holds several Smetty accounts
in the form of books and articles. One account finds three ranchers in 1892 who
saw an “enormous shadow which closely resembled a sea serpent.” Another, this one in 1924, tells of Frank
Krout who claimed he saw a creature resembling
a “wet bay mare” rise in the middle of the lake.
And there was Edward Gillette, namesake of the
town, who chronicled an incident involving the Barkey family in his 1925 book, Locating the Iron Trail. While fixing
fence on the banks of DeSmet, the Barkeys bore witness to two sea serpents
resembling “a long telephone pole with lard buckets attached” making a big fuss
in the water.
Mrs. Oliver Townsend of Sheridan wrote of an
incident involving one of her family’s ranchands when she was a little girl.
The man, a Missouri native who spent every spare moment fishing, came charging
back from his morning fishing trip, face blanched in panic. He had seen “a 30
to 40-foot long serpent, about a foot and a half thick, with a bony ridge on
his back close to the head with resemblance to a horse’s mane.” The creature,
according to the Missourian, “was of a brownish black in color and swam with
his head held high out of the water with motions of a snake swimming.”
A different rancher, recalled Mrs. Townsend,
was working his horses on the lake banks when they startled, rolling their eyes
toward the lake, second later bolting away from the shore. The rancher then
noticed a serpent swimming toward him and followed his horses’ suit forthwith.
In December 1911, 11-year-old Mary Olga Moore of the Meadow Ranch self-published a book (you can read more about her
here) on the history and lore of Lake DeSmet for her family and friends. Her remarkably eloquent and mature hand weaved a dramatic telling of an encounter with the monster by none other than Father DeSmet himself:
“Suddenly, the silence was broken by the roar of many waters and the heretofore calm surface of Lake DeSmet was lashed into myriads of mighty waves, as a tawny body plowed its way through the seething, swirling waters.”
Moore also tells of a tragic Native American
legend in which a mother, excited to show her baby’s swimming prowess to her newly
returned, battle-gloried husband, set the babe in the water and ran downstream
to catch him. Before his horror-stricken parents, an unknown beast took the
babe in its jaws to a watery grave.
As you might imagine, the lore has generated its fair share of Smetty fan
fiction.
In 1938, W.K. “Hi” Cole, manager of the
Sheridan Flour Mill, took a satirical turn with his entry into Smetty lore.
After hearing about a sighting earlier in the year by a witness he deemed
credible, Cole decided to hunt the monster himself. With the help of the then
managing editor of the Sheridan Press, Cole landed Smetty after a 10-hour fight
only to see the carcass explode, littering the shore with “12 horseshoes, the
wheel of a road grader, Father De Smet’s Bible, 13 Indian scalps, a backless
bathing suits, a piece of track from the North and South railroad, and an
outboard motor.” Ida McPherren, who chronicled the event, explained that the
monster was fake but the explosion real, a riff on the legends old-timers
passed on. Reading between the lines, could it have been that the local
satirist embellished a story about creative fishing tactics? As in the kind
with dynamite?
Click on the image below to enlarge.
 |
| The Sheridan Press, August 12, 1938. |
Fan fiction and satire aside, sightings of
something strange in Lake DeSmet persist, witnessed by earnest folk. In the
early 1950s, recounted one Upton resident via Facebook, he and his aunt motored
out to the middle of the lake on a still summer day bereft of other boats.
Going for one of the big ones, he wound his pole back behind his shoulder to
perfect his cast, but caught his aunt’s posterior instead. To make matters
worse, a swell of unknown origin crashed
into the small boat, nearly depositing the boy and the woman into the lake. The
two hastily beat a retreat to shore,
each resolving to never go near the unholy mere ever again.
A few years later, another account goes, a
man’s ice fishing trip came to a halt when the monster burst through the lake’s
frozen hide. The following day, people found a 50-yard rip in the three-foot
thick ice. The latest account I could gather happened in the early 90s during a
fishing derby. While setting up their camper, a pack of derby contestants
noticed something large moving through the water, rise up, then descend beneath
the waves.
Throughout the years, folks have described
Smetty as a gargoyle, a flying fish with claws, an alligator-like creature, a
giant seahorse, and as “a blob that upsets fisherman’s [sic] boats.” And probably as scores other colorful chimeras.
Could Smetty lore be a simple as cases of
mistaken identity? Tall tales? The product of overactive imaginations? Or could
there really be a holdover from the Jurassic terrorizing the dark depths of the
region’s most famous lake? What do you think? Chime in below and let us know!
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