Despite her many years of residence in the Black Hills, Annie Donnah Tallent, who with her husband David and their son Robert joined the Russell-Collins Party, also known as the Gordon Party, in Sioux City, Iowa, remains something of a mystery.  Little is known of the early life of the first white woman in the Black Hills except that she was a New York native.

The Gordon Party expedition in 1874 was without sanction.  Orders had been issued by the US Army in 1872 and 1874 that the government would allow no civilian forays into the land of the Indians.  Arrangements were made in secrecy even taking detours to avoid soldiers.

Mrs. Tallent was the only woman of the Gordon Party.  From her history, from her life in the next quarter century as a school teacher and postmistress, from those who knew her personally, she was a woman of high principles and good morals.  How she was able to compromise these ideals with the law-breaking aspect of the expedition is an unanswered question.

She was rendered a tremendous service in compiling her history.  The Black Hills or Last Hunting Ground of the Dakotahs, was published in 1899.  It started out to be a story of the expedition but the author wrote in the forward, “The scope, however, has been broadened so as to embrace, as nearly as practicable, all the important events that have transpired in the Black Hills during their 23 years of history.”

She concludes modestly, “If in relating the incidents woven into this story, the first person, singular number is frequently used it is not with any feelings of egoism nor in any spirit of boastfulness, but rather that as an actual participant in the occurrences described, it became a real necessity.”  The Black Hills is regarded as an authentic record of those years and is used extensively by researchers.  It is now out of print and the few volumes that are in existence are cherished and guarded.

When the gold-seekers were removed in 1875, they went to Cheyenne, returning to Deadwood in the spring of 1876.  She taught schools, was superintendent of Pennington County schools and postmaster at Rochford.

She died February 14, 1901 at the age of 72 in Sturgis where she had lived for several years.  Her husband, a few years after coming to Deadwood, was attracted to the gold fields of British Columbia and perished there during the burning of a cabin which he occupied.

From The Dakota Territory Times, Summer 2005-Old Time History of the Black Hills -Special publication of the Custer Chronicle