Badlands

Stronghold Unit – Badlands National Park

Maureen Brucker

“The word, badlands, applies to any region where erosion in poorly consolidated sediments creates a rugged and barren landscape.”  http://geopubs.wr.usgs.gov/open-file/of03-35/of03-35.pdf

I have known of the badlands of South Dakota for a very long time.  As a twelve year old, my family and I took the obligatory western vacation popular in the fifties for New Yorkers – the trip west.  Along the AAA route was something called The Badlands.  It was hot in the car.  People were getting on others’ nerves.  Suddenly there was a road sign that said something about Wall, South Dakota, no water for ninety miles, or something to that effect.  As good tourists, we stopped and all had lunch.  While the meal was unremarkable, the water had a lasting effect.  It was the first time any of us had tasted such heavily mineralized water.  This combined with the heat confirmed that most of the four in the car would never return to this corner of the world.

In fact, it was more than fifty years later, on a trip with Beatrice Weasel Bear to the Black Hills, that I laid eyes again on a part of the park.  This time, it was the southwestern end known as the Stronghold Unit, specifically Red Shirt Table.  It did not take much for me to decide to plan a trip back to photograph the area.

Grassy Plain

Half a billion years ago, the Cambrian Sea stretched across the western Dakotas.  As it receded and advanced in turn, it left layers of sediment containing fossils.  These, frequently limestone in composition, produce the ‘living rocks’ so prized for their spiritual value in inipi or sweat lodge ceremonies. (Tradition of the Afraid of Bear/American Horse Sun Dance Tiospaye, at least.)

According to park literature, 30,000 years ago, the area of South Dakota now called the maka sica or badlands was a grassy plain.  It became a shared meeting and hunting grounds for many tribes.  Not surprisingly, Lakota storytellers speak fondly of what was once just such a special plain, until dissention among those tribes using the area resulted in its destruction as a reminder of broken promises.  Unfortunately, as we will see, the badlands are still a ‘land of broken promises’.

The legend of the end of the world involves a cave in the badlands as well.  In this story, an ancient woman sits in her cave making a decorative strip for her buffalo robe.  She has a blazing fire going both to keep her warm and to cook her wojapi which is a berry soup.  A large black dog keeps her company as she covers the strip with quillwork.  When the strip is finished, the world will end.  However, everytime she gets up to tend the fire or the wojapi that black dog pulls out part of her work.  This obviously delays completion or the end of the world.  http://www.aaanativearts.com/article939.html

Ghost Dance

The Ghost Dancers used the easily defended table areas of the badlands for dancing as it allowed them to be away from prying eyes of settlers and government agents.  The terrain still lends itself to such clandestine activities.  In a frontier climate where the spirituality of the Indian in general and the Lakota in particular, was viewed as being hostile to acculturation, the practice of such ceremonies needed to be hidden from unsympathetic eyes. 

By the end of November, 1890, due to the influx of soldiers requested particularly by Agent Royer on the Oglala Reservation, over a thousand Lakota headed for the Stronghold seeking privacy and protection.  They gathered supplies often through raiding as they traveled and by the time they settled in to their destination, there was enough food and other essentials to last the winter of dancing.

In early December, the military arrived on the scene.  After many days of threats and discussions on both sides, Crow Dog took a large contingent back to Rosebud in an effort to avoid further confrontations. http://books.google.com/books?id=xmuvaigLcTcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=in+the+shadow+of+wounded+knee&source=bl&ots=piptCb8XIR&sig=FMra1Kw3Uy0U-jZYv1ouZmg1Lzk&hl=en&ei=Yn1tTeH8D4KisAOts8DCBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

“The United States Army was also guilty of a massacre in early December of 1890. Troops A & B of the 8th Cavalry under Capt. Almond B. Wells was stationed at Olrichs, S.D. Wells allowed Lt. Joseph C. Byron to enter the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and massacre a small band of Indians under Chief Two Strike on Cuny Table with cannon fire. All the Indians were killed. This incident appears to have been covered up by the United States Army for the past 100 years. The property of the Indians was buried and the soldiers of the 8th Cavalry were sworn to secrecy, so that even General Miles, the overall commander at Wounded Knee in 1890, may not have been aware of it.” http://www.dickshovel.com/mario.html

Survivors of the Wounded Knee Massacre returned to the Stronghold to regroup and heal. Many of those also died and were buried at this location.

Only the winds and the earth know for certain how many Lakota graves inhabit the Stronghold area. Suffice it to say it would be well over the hundred fifty recorded above.

Artillery Range 

During the Second World War, the US Government under the auspices of the newly formed United States Army Air Force, took over 341,726 acres of land on the Pine Ridge Reservation, home of the Oglala Sioux people, for a gunnery range. Included in this range was 337 acres from then Badlands National

Monument.’ http://64.78.11.86/uxofiles/enclosures/badlands_bombing%20range_Brochrure.pdf

As sensible people struggle with the thought of American bombs raining on Lakota graves, one has to stop and consider: Understanding the need in wartime for bombing practice to occur and the convenience of choosing an already partial federal instillation rather than seeking permission of others, would people be as blasé if it was suddenly decided to use Arlington National Cemetery? 

The acreage was taken ostensibly from the reservation for the war effort but in 1939 the park was established.  Suddenly, when the land that had been appropriated for a good faith national security issue was returned, the national park coveted property was not included.  This was a bitter pill for those who had lost family lands and suffered relocation for the sake of our World War II success.  In many cases the displaced families had protected the massacre graves known to be on their lands.

Many of those descendents of the displaced land owners particularly from the National Park area still watch over the land and the graves in an effort to keep them safe from diggers of all kinds.  After all, it is their history and their heritage.

National Park

While both of the above descriptions discuss the basics of the founding of the National Park, the first discusses the missile site dug into the land casting a military purpose to what is very special to the Lakota.  The second deals with the appropriation of the gunnery range and the slick manner in which much of the land was subsequently ‘acquired’ for the park and eventually rubber stamped by the tribe.

There is yet much to be settled and resolved concerning this land.  The geologists are eager to dig up the fossils.  The land is still despoiled with unexploded ordinance.  The relatives only wish to insure that graves remain undisturbed.  The past history of lies and stealing of bones, artifacts and fossils preclude a climate of trust.  Only time and honor will bring about solutions that begin to approach justice for the Lakota – the owners of the land.

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Please note that all pictures are available for purchase as signed and matted 8x10 photographs.  Identify each picture by the section of its inclusion. Other sizes available on request.  Contact Maureen D. Brucker at moebrucker@hotmail.com.