Badlands and Black Hills
It is hard to imagine the effect that the Badlands would have had on those early settlers, dreaming of riches in the west, pressing deeper into the country, hoping to find their little corner of the new world.
Equally for the native Lakota Sioux the area provided strategic advantage. Much of the last passages of true native defiance occurred in this corner of South Dakota. Having seeded much of what is now eastern South Dakota to the US government, the Lakota Sioux tried to hold to the 1856 Treaty that gave them control of western South Dakota. That did not stop George Custer illegally surveying the Black Hills in 1874 and when his engineers (almost inevitably) found gold, illegal prospecting exploded onto the native lands. The government broke up the Sioux nation, scattering the tribes over five reservations. The last real ‘military’ style resistance was the massacre of Wounded Knee in 1890.
The case regarding illegal seizure of the Black Hills was judged in favor of the Lakota by the Supreme Court almost 40 years ago. However it remains an open case as the tribe still fight for the land, not financial compensation.
The Badlands and Black Hills now have a different role. They remind you of the huge capacity of nature to level ones ego, and jolt some perspective. There are 86 distinct fossil layers in those Badlands cliffs. 86 occasions where the flora and fauna evolved sufficiently for scientists, eons later, to see distinct identifiable ecosystems.
Tourists flock to see Mount Rushmore, another slight on native lands, slowly being redressed by the addition of the beautifully striking Crazy Horse memorial.
First 24 hours in …
We’ve been in South Dakota less than 24 hours and it’s already bowled us away.
We pulled into Porter Sculpture Park, along it’s rutted drive, expecting nothing like the whimsy we found. Wayne Porter has crafted an eccentric, eclectic creation of metal structures. Everything from giant goldfish escaping the confines of their bowl to a magic red (of course) dragon. He opens the park for about 3-4 months a year and spends the winters creating new pieces in his family’s blacksmiths. Alan chatted to Wayne about commissions but Wayne shies away from these. His process is very much ‘see where it goes’. The giant horse he created had no plans and he’d sit on its back to decide the next step.
Wondering the sculptures is a journey through Wayne’s imagination and whimsy. Would you accept flowers from his skeletal dinosaur or shower with the cod? It proved to be a magical stop for the night.
Then heading west we reached the Badlands. It is as though Mother Nature has said ‘so you like the out of nowhere weird, do you? Well I can outdo anything you humans can knock together..’ There she stands brazen in the prairie flats, a sudden wildly weathered escarpment, peppered with monoliths and pinnacles.
Already South Dakota is showing itself to be wonderfully surreal.
