Much like its rock formations, the history of Badlands National Park is layered. To begin at the beginning and get a clue to the end, all one has to do is look at the park’s steeply eroded buttes, gullies, ridges and mixed-grass prairies. For the land-lover, the view seems almost nonsensical. Steep dips and dives of rock formations and endless seaweed-like grassy fields make the greater Badlands area seem more akin to an ocean floor than dry land. It makes sense, then, that the Badlands we’re familiar with today began underwater.
Over 80 million years ago a great sea stretching down from Canada cut through the heart of North America, dividing it into three separate land masses. The main section of the sea, the Labrador Seaway, split in two like a wishbone around an interior landmass in Canada before converging again just above the Dakotas – one can imagine the volatile soil movements the meeting of two giant waterways might evoke. Around 35 million years ago, the great sea receded. The Great Lakes, Hudson Bay, Beauford Sea and many of the rugged rock formations and flat prairie lands of the interior states are its remnants. Violent storms and volcanic activity were soon to follow, and the Badlands became a depository for mud, sand, and volcanic ash carried by rivers and streams from the surrounding Black Hills. (Home to Mt. Rushmore and a major player in the story to come.) That influx of sediments built up the layered spiral formations seen in Badlands National Park today.
Then, beginning roughly half a million years ago, the castles made of sediment began to slip back into the barren sea. Eventually. About one inch of erosion occurs each year – a slow and steady geographical change, to be sure. But roughly 215 years ago the area’s natural resources and wildlife began to deteriorate at an almost unprecedented rate, a change that seemed to coincide perfectly with the westward expansion of the 1800’s and the deterioration of the great warrior tribes of the Mid-West.
Native Americans first appeared in the greater Badlands area over 11,000 years ago. The dried sea had left behind an almost pristine landscape for roaming animals: The prairies provided ample environment for bison, bighorn sheep, deer and antelope, while the valleys within the rocky structures collected great pools of fresh water. All this, along with the high rock formation vantage points for spotting, made South Dakota and the greater Badlands area in particular an ideal home for hunter-gatherers.
For nearly 10.5K years the Native American culture throughout the region remained relatively consistent, with most of the native people's time and energy directed towards survival. Then came the first white explorers in the early 1500s, and with them, horses. Overnight the amount of land a typical Indian could traverse in a day quintupled. Survival became easier, which resulted in, among other things, the emergence of the warrior nations. Control of the greater Badlands area and the Black Hills to the east passed from tribe to tribe in the centuries that followed until the powerful Lakota, also known as the Sioux, took the iron throne in 1776 – big year for new beginnings. The Lakota would remain in control until the mid 1800s, when a rare element with very little practical value was discovered out west.
Why did the settlers cross the country? To get to the golden side. In the mid-1800s, families and foreigners poured into Indian Territory by the thousands hoping to cross into California to find a nugget of fortune. The Lakota were content to let them pass so long as they didn’t stay, and the U.S. Government was happy to give the Lakota what lands they wanted so long as they didn’t attack the defenseless settlers. In 1868 both sides agreed to a treaty that granted the Lakota people their sacred Black Hills and a large portion of what is today Badlands National Park forever. No white settlement allowed. Forever. The treaty would last all of six years. The inadvertent architect of its demise: a renowned and egotistical Civil War commander and Indian Fighter named Custer.
An important caveat of the treaty of 1868 was that the Lakota agreed to allow a fort to be built in the Black Hills. In 1874, General Custer led a scouting party for a new fort into the region. With him were 1000 soldiers, 3 reporters, and numerous gold prospectors – they weren’t scouting the location of a fort so much as they were scouting for gold. And they’d soon find it. Reporters reported, greatly exaggerating the findings, and within a year over 15K new homesteaders and fortune-seekers had overrun the Black Hills. Towns sprouted up everywhere – almost all of the towns in the area today were settled illegally during the gold boom of 1875. The U.S. Government didn’t have the resources to enforce the treaty. So they rescinded it. The Lakota were told to withdraw from the hills to settle on designated reservations. Troops were sent in to enforce the order.
Many Lakota, exhausted from years of disease, death and persecution, gave up the struggle to enlist in the American army. Others, including the great Chief Sitting Bull, resisted. He joined forces with his former enemy, the Cheyenne, and set off toward Canada for refuge. The federal army followed in pursuit, with Custer and 500 soldiers of the 7th Calvary leading the charge. Bull-headed and eager for glory, Custer ignored pleas to wait for reinforcements and scouting intel and pushed his troops forward. His hope was that he’d surprise Sitting Bull’s warriors with a swift attack and they’d flee. What he hadn’t anticipated was that Sitting Bull’s band would resist.
When Custer emerged over the ridge to where Sitting Bull’s party awaited, his Indian scout claims his face 'turned a pure white' when he saw the 6K Lakota and Cheyenne before him, outnumbering his troops 12 to 1. Stubbornly, Custer pushed his men forward. Over 200 American troops would die unnecessarily under his leadership at the Battle of Little Big Horn. But the error of Custer’s judgment would be masked by propaganda of his bravery and courage in the face of certain death by a ‘savage’ enemy. The 7th Calvary and surrounding homesteaders were eager to avenge their fallen comrades. Fourteen years later, they’d get their chance.
“The difficult Indian problem cannot be solved permanently at this end of the line. It requires the fulfillment of Congress of the treaty obligations that the Indians were entreated and coerced into signing. They signed away a valuable portion of their reservation, and it is now occupied by white people, for which they have received nothing…. The dissatisfaction is wide spread, especially among the Sioux, while the Cheyennes have been on the verge of starvation, and were forced to commit depredations to sustain life. These facts are beyond question, and the evidence is positive and sustained by thousands of witnesses.”
In just 30 years, the Lakota had gone from the greatest warriors and hunter-gatherers in the region to war captives. The buffalo herds that had once sustained them were gone. The land chosen for them was desolate and nearly impossible to farm. Those who were able to feed themselves still had to fight off the infectious European diseases that had already decimated Native American populations. They were a desperate people searching for hope; and many would find it in a new religious movement known as the Ghost Dances.
Created by the Indian leader Wovoka, the ghost dances were spiritual dance rituals that were said to unite dead Native American spirits with the living to help eradicate the world of evil and remove white settlers from Native American lands. The Lakota believed the garments worn during these dances, which they called Ghost Shirts, possessed great powers and would deflect bullets. It was mostly a peaceful movement; the U.S. Government saw it as militaristic. It ordered all Native Americans to stop Ghost Dance ceremonies and return to their reservations. The army was dispatched to enforce the order.
In an attempt to bring the Ghost Dances to an abrupt end, the U.S. Army sought to arrest the old hero of Little Bighorn, Chief Sitting Bull. Sitting Bull and his people had struggled to survive during the harsh winters of Canada following the Battle of Little Bighorn, and had since peacefully surrendered to U.S. forces. After years of travel, including a stint participating in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, Chief Sitting Bull had returned to a Lakota reservation in South Dakota to live among his people. He was living there at the time when soldiers were dispatched to detain him.
The arrest didn’t go smoothly. The U.S. Government had sent mostly Lakota soldiers to detain Sitting Bull. Upon their arrival, a band of Sitting Bull’s followers surrounded and chastised them for abandoning their people. An altercation ensued. Six Lakota soldiers were killed; Sitting Bull was shot in the head from point-blank range by one of them. He died immediately. His followers fled into the Badlands to seek out Chief Big Foot, another great Lakota chief, for protection. With nearly 350 followers, men, women, and children, most of whom were sick and exhausted, Big Foot set out from the Stronghold section of the Badlands toward Pine Ridge, a white flag raised.
The 7th Calvary, the same Calvary that had been slaughtered at the Battle of Little Bighorn, overtook the group just north of their destination. The captives were escorted to a nearby creek to camp for the night. The following morning, with no provocation or any signs of resistance, commanding officer General Forsythe ordered his troops to disarm the Native Americans. A Lakota medicine man began to perform the Ghost Dance in front of the soldiers, exclaiming that the Indians all wore Ghost Shirts and bullets could not harm them. Almost simultaneously with the dance a rifle is said to have accidentally discharged. It was all the 7th needed to avenge their fallen comrades of Little Bighorn. Gunfire erupted within the encampment. Outmanned, outgunned, and in a much more vulnerable position, the Lakota took the lion’s share of casualties. The incident was reported as accidental. The facts suggest otherwise. The night before the massacre four rapid-fire cannons had been positioned around the then peaceful Native American encampment. Of the 350 Lakota present, men, women, and children, nearly 300 were slaughtered within minutes. The Wounded Knee Massacre would be the last major altercation of the American–Indian Wars. Its survivors were taken to the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation. In the months to follow, 30 Medals of Honor were to be granted to members of the 7th Calvary for their participation in the massacre of 300 innocent men, women, and children, more than any other battle in U.S. history.
“When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there.”
Nothing ahead. Nothing behind. Flat. Hot. Endless. The sun curdles the grass through a cloudless sky. Green turns from greenish brown to brown then to dust. All of it spoiled. Castles crumbling. I check the map again – Pine Ridge, just ahead – then look at the gas meter: Half-full. Or empty. Depending. A man appears up the road. His jet-black hair swishes behind his shoulders as he shuffles along the concrete with a hanging head, three large plastic bags to a hand swelling at their bottoms. I stare. He doesn’t look up. I wonder where he’s going in that nothingness. My car pulls into the only gas station before The Badlands – California plates, a surfboard strapped atop. I emerge pale like the scorched landscape. People stare – dozens of them. I’m the only non-Native American in sight. “Cal-i-forn-i-a,” a man exclaims as I emerge from my car. Another, short and stocky with warts covering his face, looks me over and smiles. He asks about California, then shares a story about how he’s been in the army; how he’d been stationed near San Francisco; how he’d lived all over. He asks if I’d like to come to his house to purchase Indian artifacts. “I don’t have any money,” I tell him. He nods solemnly. “I know how that goes,” he says, then lowers his head and walks slowly away. A skinny man with a round face knocks on my window before I can drive off. He speaks quickly and smiles with crooked teeth and looks everywhere but at me. He tells me he’s just out of jail and needs money for transportation to go to his friend’s funeral. I don’t believe him, but give him a dollar to leave me alone and drive quickly away into the nothingness. Wondering. Had I known what I know now, I might have been more empathetic.
Right in the heart of the Land of the Free are a conquered people still trapped within war camps. Their land is spoiled – caused by poor farming practices that led to the Dust Bowl. Their water, those once abundant fresh-water pools within the Badlands region, is being poisoned by mines, cattle herds and pesticides from people working the same land that had been promised to the Lakota people a hundred years ago. And, like the rocks of the Badlands, their culture and health is steadily eroding due to the diseases and destruction the European-Americans left in the wake of their search for gold and fortune.
Despite all this, the Lakota people receive very little support from the people surrounding them, many of whom are descended from families that once illegally stole the Lakota’s land. A startling number of banks and lending institutions just outside the reservation are currently being investigated for targeting the Lakota with fraudulent or predatory lending. Local laws have been passed to prevent the Lakota and other Indians from practicing their native religions. Alcohol is illegal to own or sell on the reservation, yet only 400 yards off reservation is a town called Whiteclay, population 14. No government. No public buildings. No police force or any other commonalities of your typical town. Only 4 liquor stores – the town exists to sell the Lakota people alcohol.
Perhaps the most startling oppression is that of the U.S. Government. The Healthcare program that was offered by our government to the Native Americans in exchange for large portions of their land is strikingly underfunded and understaffed. Reservation schools are in the bottom 10% of funding, with a 70% drop out rate. The money? The treaties? Those have been largely ignored. In the longest case in American History, the Supreme Court finally acknowledged that the United States had illegally taken the Black Hills from the Lakota people. Instead of returning the land, the Supreme Court offered the Lakota the original worth of the land plus interest, or 109 million dollars. The offer was refused.
Human history is largely the story of conquest. The Lakota people are no exception. They were conquerors long before the arrival of the United States. And many of the acts of their ancestors, like those of ours, were brutal and savage. We cannot change the past. But to find a people so heavily persecuted and ignored due to the color of their skin in a country that so proudly totes the flag of diversity and acceptance evokes in me the feeling of shame, even hypocrisy. I don’t believe this is a deliberate public oversight, nor do I blame politicians – their job, right or wrong, is to address those issues most important to the American public. Because of that, the American public has a responsibility to raise the flag of injustice wherever it is found. That’s difficult when an issue is unseen or misunderstood. And the issues of the Lakota and their fellow Native Americans go largely unseen and are largely misunderstood. I’d driven straight through Pine Ridge Reservation, past the Wounded Knee Massacre site, had interacted with a number of Lakota people, and still I had no idea I’d entered an Indian Reservation until I retraced my cross-country route in an atlas some days later.
As I learned the Lakota’s story in the weeks that followed, my perception of them changed. I stopped looking at their situation as a product of their own doing, and instead saw it as the result of a much more complex history, a history wrought with disease, betrayal, disappointment, murder, and heavy, heavy cultural and personal loss. I don’t know what should be done. But I know something needs to be done. And all I have the power to do right now is to share what I experienced – to hoist the flag of injustice with the hope that someone pays attention. I’m proud of the strides our country has taken in the way of acceptance and inclusion in recent years. But it seems intrinsically wrong that the people most consistently oppressed and overlooked in America are also the people most akin to the land we call home.