From: Winner,
SD
To: Wall, SD
Miles today:
269
Total miles:
4866
I pulled out
of Winner, in central South Dakota, under blue skies but temperatures again in
the 50s. Today I intended to drive due
west along US 18 for about 150 miles. One of the things I wanted to see was the
change in climate as I moved to western South Dakota. In fact, it did become noticeably drier. Officially I moved from the Tallgrass Prairie
region to the Mixed region. You can see
the difference.
 |
| Central and Western South Dakota. Left: near Winner. Right: near Wounded Knee. |
After my
foray west, I turned north on SD 24 and headed for the creek, town, and
battlefield / massacre site of Wounded Knee.
It was here, in late December 1890, that 200-300 Lakota men, women, and
children died at the hands of the US Army, along with a smaller but significant
number of soldiers as well (many by friendly fire). The long, unpleasant story
that led to what was probably an unintended eruption of violence between the
two groups is famously documented in Dee Brown’s 1970 book “Bury My Heart At
Wounded Knee.” (This line actually comes
from a 1927 poem by Stephen Vincent Benet called “American Names,” and is not
about the conflict; but Brown liked it and so used it.) Once the killing started, however, it quickly
evolved from “battle” to “massacre” as some of the soldiers ran after and
killed fleeing women and children. Some bodies were found two miles from where
the shooting started. A few days later, the
bodies were collected and placed into a mass grave. That grave is now a small monument; here is a
picture.
 |
| Site of the mass grave near Wounded Knee |
But there
are some odd twists. The killing
occurred at the edge of the Lakota (often called Sioux by others) reservation
called the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which is in South Dakota, just south
of the Badlands. It is still there, and
so are the descendents of the survivors of that massacre; I talked to some of
them today. The mass grave is actually surrounded by another of other
single-person graves, with headstones. These graves belong to some of the survivors
of the event, or close relatives. It was
quite moving.
More history
happened here. In 1973, with the success
of Dee Brown’s book and another 60 or 70 years of friction between Lakota and
whites (and within the Lakota community), a group called the American Indian
Movement took over the town of Wounded Knee in order to call attention to their grievances. The government tried to crack down, and people on both sides were
killed, but popular support was with the Indians now. (For those old enough to remember, it was
this situation that led Marlon Brando to decline the 1973 Oscar for “The
Godfather,” and in his place sending Apache actress Sacheen Littlefeather to
the podium for a short but pointed speech.)
Anyway, things seemed very calm today, even friendly, although the
absence of jobs and other problems continue to plague the Lakota. They
absolutely consider themselves to be a sovereign nation; I was their guest as I
passed through.
From Wounded
Knee I drove north on small roads into Badlands National Park, which is
actually where I had intended to spend much of the day. The term “badlands” derives from both Indian
and European expressions regarding the difficulty in traversing it. Geologically, it is an erosion
phenomenon. Deposits laid down at
several distinct times – when South Dakota was a shallow sea, and later when it
was above sea level but rivers ran over it (depositing lot of mammal fossils) –
started eroding away about a half-million years ago. To the north is fairly flat grassland, and to
the south is also fairly flat grassland, but the latter is some 200 feet lower
than the former. The White River, named
for its color whenever it rains, carries away the soft clay that comprises
slices of 70 million years of deposits.
None of the rocks are very hard; they are really still just compacted
clay and mud that come apart in the rain.
The result is formations that truly seem unearthly. There are a ton of photos out there, but here
are a couple of mine.
 |
| Formations in Badlands National Park |
The Badlands
and the nearby Black Hills (formed by the upwelling of a magma dome millions of
years ago) are quite distinct from the rest of South Dakota from space. Here is an edited screenshot I took from GoogleMaps.
 |
| South Dakota from space, courtesy of Google Maps |
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