- The beauty and majesty of Badlands National Park
We enjoyed a yummy breakfast at the Holiday Inn Express and then headed out for our final big haul across South Dakota today. Our destination — the Badlands.
We made it past Rapid City and even managed to avoid Wall Drug (having pretty well “seen the elephant” there as kids — along with the giant jack rabbit, free ice water, and many other charms). Soon we were rolling into the spectacular, desolate vistas of Badlands National Park.
Driving the Badlands. The spectacle is available for all who take the time to see.
The badlands of South Dakota differ from the North Dakota badlands we saw at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. They are starker and drier, with less vegetation. They are just as beautiful and impressive. Massive, striated buttes and peaks stretch out across vast horizons, many eroded into fantastical castles and spires. These are the eroded remains of an ancient inland sea which covered the land about 75 million years ago. Over the millennia this land has played home to ocean and jungle, dinosaurs and other exotic extinct creatures, and finally desert, tough and crazy homesteaders, and one of America’s most famous national parks.
The landscape appears eternal, but the forces of erosion are always at work here
We spent several hours driving the park’s scenic loop, admiring the Badlands from the various great overlooks. Neither words nor photos can adequately capture the magnificent scale, fantastic formations, and timeless dessicated land that unfolds before visitors to this unique place.
Portrait of eons of change
Life finds a way at the Badlands
There is human history here too, though most of it isn’t very happy. The Indians hunted in the Badlands, but like most people, avoided too much travel through the dry and difficult terrain. A famous exception came in 1890. For over a year the Sioux Reservation had been rocked by terrible trouble. The Sioux people, already forced to live on reservations, were being displaced and pushed aside to make room for homesteaders. Desperate for the return of the buffalo and their native ways, the Sioux were gripped by a spiritual uprising called the Ghost Dance. As we wrote about in The Two Graves of Sitting Bull, the uprising took a horrible turn on December 16, 1890, when Indian agency police moved in to arrest Sitting Bull at his camp near Mobridge, South Dakota. In the resulting gun fight, Sitting Bull, seven of his followers, and six Indian police officers were killed.
Spotted Elk (Big Foot)
The surviving ghost dancers decided to flee south under the leadership of Spotted Elk (also known as Big Foot), a half-brother of Sitting Bull who was a respected chief known for advocating peace and reconciliation with the whites. The group swelled to over 350 people, all trying to make it to the Pine Ridge Reservation where they could band together with tough, savvy Red Cloud and his people. But they didn’t make it. Instead, they were intercepted by the Seventh Cavalry (Custer’s old unit). Weary and ill with pneumonia, Spotted Elk ordered his people to put up no resistance.
They set up camp near a creek called Wounded Knee. Most people know what happened next. On December 29, 1890, the troops attempted to confiscate the weapons of the Sioux. Some of the people began to do the ghost dance. Others refused to give up their weapons without compensation. Someone fired a shot. Any actual fighting lasted a minute or two at most. The army officers could not restrain their men, who used machine guns to fire into the milling crowd of exhausted Indian civilians. Over 250 Indians and 60 soldiers were killed (the latter mostly by friendly fire).
Though we weren’t equipped to do so, you can visit Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and find buffalo herds, fossils, and the sites of ghost dances and other Native American history in the South Unit of Badlands National Park. Most of this area is accessible only via unpaved roads deep in the park’s interior and/or hiking on ancient buffalo trails. The park service asks that explorers be experienced wilderness trekkers and know what they are doing, which left us out. An additional hazard is thousands of shells and unexploded ordnance from the Air Force bombing and gunnery range that blasted a large portion of this incomparable landscape and Indian homeland from the 1940s to the 1960s.
As for us, we were pretty parched by the time we reached the end of the park loop and the cute and inviting Cedar Pass Lodge, where we relaxed with BLTs and icy Cokes. The gift shop here was truly superlative, with a great selection of books, Indian art, jewelry, and classy gifts. We took the time to go through the park visitor center, which has good exhibits on the geology, flora, and fauna of the park.
One last look
Touring this park took most of the day, and was well worth it. Afterwards, we had a long haul to make it to our final overnight stop back at Al’s Oasis in beautiful Chamberlain on the wide Missouri. Our dinner was a fitting one. After spending so many days on the road learning about, searching for, and seeing buffalo, tonight we ate them, in the form of delicious buffalo burgers. Washed it down with a slice of apple pie.
The Badlands was our final sightseeing stop on our 2009 trip along the Lewis & Clark Trail through Nebraska and the Dakotas. I adore reading, but there is nothing like seeing places with your own eyes, feeling the heat or the cold, and learning the local lore to truly make the history of our great country come alive. On this trip, I got an unforgettable sense of the sweep of time, from ancient seas to dinosaurs to the millennia of Indian history to the explorers and pioneers who sought to conquer the wilderness and bend it to human will.
The road trip blog entries have been really popular — thank you! — and starting after the holidays we will be blogging about many of the other Lewis & Clark sites across the country that we have had the opportunity to visit. And here’s to more adventures on the trail in 2010!
I’ve seen the Badlands of South Dakota briefly when I was younger, so I don’t remember much of it, but I’ve heard its best seen at sunset! Buffalo burgers are the best.
How do you keep a people down? ‘Never’ let them ‘know’ their history.
Keep telling that history; read some great military history.
The 7th Cavalry got their butts in a sling again after the Little Big Horn Massacre, fourteen years later, the day after the Wounded Knee Massacre. If it wasn’t for the 9th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers, there would of been a second massacre of the 7th Cavalry. Read the book, “Rescue at Pine Ridge”, and visit website/great military history, http://www.rescueatpineridge.com
Great photos and history. Love deserts and USA has some of the best- Australia’s are quite different. Can’t wait to get back to do this trip.
Tansi: My name is andre But my spirit name is SPOTTED ELK. I grew up on the streets with no direction at all. Always praying to the Creator for him to show me the way. I went through many years of drugs and booze and jail before i came to a point where i could take no more. I prayed to Creator one last time asking him to finally make me or take me. I was finnished. Whatever i was doing my whole life just wasnt doing it for me. Creator took pity on me and he sent his spirits or angels( whatever one would chose to call them ) to save me and guide me onto the right path.
That path was the Red road that i now follow. I was told 20 years before that all i needed to do was go to a sweat anjd my whole life would chang,e and i would find all the answers that i was looking for. Until i went to my first sweat i never really remembered them telling me that. All i know now is that i entered a sweaqt lodge ceremony around 8 years ago and my life has never been the same.
When you recieve a spirit name you are supposed to do it during a specific ceremony, mine was given toi me as soon as i sat down in the lodge. I had no idea what was going on. Everyone was hugging me and telling me how i had such a powerful name and that i was priveledged to carry that name. Anyways , i had a massive vision that really kind of freaked me out , but actually kind of went allong with other prophecies from other people in past. This time i saw it though and it was so real i couldnt figure it out at first.
I then found a staff and was given a feather and had a small bundle that i attached to the staff. My elder told me to carry that staff everywhere i went. So i did. Not knowing why, i just did. All i knew at the time is that it was very powerful and people respected it and me immensely. I had again no idea why at the time. I carried it everywhere for at least 3 months even into a church service with someone i figured needed to be in church that day. Anyways at the time i was just trying to get away from the street life i was so used to and had just recently quit drugs and booze. i thoughjt it was the drugs and booze making me see some of the things i was seeingso i quit them altogether. Nothing changed, i still had dreams and visions of immense greatness. I thought i was crazy so i checked myself into the crisis centre and asked my elder to come and see me.
I told him of my visions and how they were so strong and real. he responded first by telling me never to tell the psychiatrist about them . He would surely lock me up. He then told me that my name was a very powerful name and it was not for him to tell me why, i needed to find that out for myself. What he did know is that my circle in past lifestyle was over. He told me that we dont elect ourselves to be an elder, that the people , spirits and creator do this and with me they had. He said it was my time to start teaching. Again he also said it was for me to find out how and about what.
Wow that was not to much help but somehow he made me feel better. One day i just decided that i needed to go on a journey north, and so i did. My life has been a blessing ever since. I have not worried for anything as it has been provided to me, i know that what i want i need to work for but everything i need Creator provides. It is so awesome the power that the Great Spirit has. He is connected to every one of us and as are we to him an each other. I now know that we are all part of the same great circle and that i am but a small spoke in that wheel of life. I have been blessed with a house a wife and a beautiful baby boy. again another way that God has taken hold of my life so firmly. I owe my entire being now to the native traditional culture and way of life, and to those who showed me the true way to live.
Last year I Sundanced to give thanks for all that God has done and for sending me his spirit helpers to help me. It was a wonderful experience and i cannot say ive seen anything more beautiful. So peaceful and so many different tribes together for one purpose. It was amazing. During this sundance i again while staring at the tree saw my vision in extreme clarity. It will not go away. I cannot tell you of it all except to say that it is time for the sleeping giant to wake up and FOR NATIVES EVRYWHERE TO COME TOGETHER AS ONE AND MAKE A STAND TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. I believe that many natives were taken long before their time which has left their spirits unable to rest. I also believe that they return in all of us to try to right the wrongs that were done so many years before, so they can finally rest in peace.
My point to this is that after many years i realised who Spotted Elk was and what he stood for. I realised that the staff i was carrying was a sundance staff and a leaders bundle. One that a leader would carry with him to let people know he was leader and was building a community , tribe or a nation. The visions and dreams i have had are far to great for me to ignore , and they are getting stronger everyday. I believe that SPotted Elks Spirit is in me and he is trying to use me to wake the Nation up and bring back the old ways. The traditional values and the culture that was so long ago stolen from Turtle island and almost erased. It may be far fetched but it is what i see in my dreams and i will die trying to achieve this vision. Now i am either completely and totally insane or i am on to something, but like i said i am prepared to die making this vision come to life.
My name is andre And i know nothing about being Indian,however i do know that i owe everything i have to the traditional way of life and am living proof that it works. I wish to see everyone as awake as i am to these ideals and have made it my lifes purpose to right the wrongs done so many years before. I was adopted so i know not where im from, but i know that I have been adopted into the native culture and i also know that i have family everywhere because we are all part of the same spirit. When we sweat we leave part of our spirit with everyone of those who sweat with us. I have probably done several hundred sweats all over now and thats only the beginning. However i also know that all those people that sweat with me took my story back to their respective communities and spoke of what i stand for and the passion and dedication i have towards fulfilling my vision. i love my native brothers and sisters with all my heart because they showed me how to live, for that i owe them a debt i intend to repay.
The reason i came to this site is i was looking for a little more historical information on Spotted Elk and couldnt really find anything extensively informitive on him. there was however this spot to write comments so i thought i would share my story as my Spirit name came from him. He was a powerful warrior and one of the great chiefs also. I am honored to carry his name with me in spirit and am trying to do what i think he would want me and us to do.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read a little about my story and hopefully maybe somebody somewhere will get something out of it. If only one person gets hope or help from it i would be happy. If many were inspired and or recieved something they could use in it then i would be sure that ive done something if only just a wee bit right and id would die a happy man.
Ekosani/Thank you:
Andre
Spotted Elk