That said, Greg and I spent two days on our journey touring the Badlands of South Dakota. It is a strange and other-worldly landscape of spires and grassland plains all in the same place. At first glance, it looks like a barren wasteland, but stand still, and look closer, and it is reveled as abundant with life.
This vast wilderness still supports wild Bison, Turkeys, Prairie Dog Towns, Coyotes, Bobcats, Deer, porcupine, many wild birds and the elusive black-footed ferret. This is also the ancient home of the the great Lakota Sioux People (think Dances with Wolfs). This once powerful, proud, beautiful people, were respected, by other area tribes as the great unifiers of the plains.
However, once General Custer discovered gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota in the mid 1800's; the government of the United States decided that they wanted the riches of the Black Hills, regardless of the multiple treaties that they had made with the Sioux people.
From 1868, with the Fort Laramie Treaty, the majority of the Sioux were forced onto the Pine Ridge Reservation. The reservation was an area that was far from their traditional lands were water, and game were plentiful. It was also far from their beloved and sacred Black Hills, were they held religious ceremonies and buried their dead. The isolation and aridness of this land did not allow for any independence or self-reliance for the Sioux. This was a devastating blow for the once self-sufficient people.
Most of us associate modern day Native American's with casinos, resorts and new found wealth. Trust me, this is not the case with the Lakota Sioux and the Pine Ridge Reservation. In my honest opinion, they have gotten the very worst of any reservation deal ever made.
However, leaders like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse refused to bring their people to the reservation, fearing that living on government rations (of rotten meat and small pox infected blankets)would snuff-out their very existence.
And the great chiefs were right, after a decade of living on the Pine Ridge Reservation,losing family members and children to small poxes, measles and starvation a large number of Sioux became desperate and placed the hopes in the the visions and dreams of elders, who promoted that the Sioux should participate in the infamous "Ghost Dances".
The chief who promoted this dance, said it would insure the demise of the whites and would allow the Sioux to return to their old ways, who wouldn't want to dance for that. The only problem was that it freaked the reservation managers and local settlers out! The newspapers wrote about this Indian uprising and the fact that the Sioux wanted the inhalation of all whites. This of course, was a grand overreaction to the simple hopes of a truly demoralized and desperate people.
The hysteria, as well as a goal to eradicate the viscous savages from the new gold country, lead to a sickening beginning of Americas history, the massacre at Wounded Knee. The camps, where close to 300 Sioux had gathered (just south of the reservation), became a slaughter zone.
On the morning of December 29, 1890, the troops of the 7th Calvery, commanded by Major Samuel M. Whitside intercepted Spotted Elk's (Big Foot) band of Lakota and 38 Hunkpapa Lakota near Porcupine Butte and escorted them 5 miles westward to Wounded Knee Creek where they made camp. The rest of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, led by Colonel James Forsyth, surrounded the encampment, supported by four Hotchkiss guns.
The troops then went into the camp to disarm the Lakota. One version of events claims that during the process, a deaf tribesman named Black Coyote was reluctant to give up his rifle, saying he had paid a lot for it. A scuffle over Black Coyote's rifle escalated and a shot was fired, which resulted in the 7th Cavalry opening firing indiscriminately from all sides, killing men, women, the old and children. Those few Lakota warriors who still had weapons began shooting back at the troopers, who quickly suppressed the Lakota fire. The surviving Lakota fled, but U.S. cavalrymen pursued and killed many who were unarmed.
In the end, U.S. forces killed at least 150 men, women, and children of the Lakota Sioux and wounded 51 (four men, and 47 women and children, some of whom died later); some estimates placed the number of dead at 300. Twenty-five troopers also died, and thirty-nine were wounded (six of the wounded would also die). The dead and wounded where left where they were as a blizzard moved in.
The soldier came back four days later, after the weather had cleared to take photos, grizzly souvenirs and to put the frozen bodies into a shallow mass grave. They actually found one infant girl who was still strapped to her mother chest, who had somehow survived the rampage and the blizzard. She was brought back and was adopted by Brigadier General Leonard W. Colby. She was more of a "indian trophy" to him than a wanted child. Her people named her Zintkala Nuni, the Lost Bird. Her life story is terrible and tragic. You can google it for all of the heart wrenching details.
This tragedy was not the last to strike the Sioux people. Little, by little, over the passing decades, the land that the tribe was grudgingly given was whittled away. It has been said that 80% of the land on the reservation was not suitable for growing any crops. So what the Sioux ended up with, was pretty much worthless dirt.
During World War II, in 1942, the Department of War annexed an additional 341,725 acres of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for use by the United States Army Air Force as an aerial gunnery and bombing range.
Among the 125 families forced to give up their allotted land was that of Pat Cuny. He was an Sioux who fought with the 83rd Infantry Division of the US Army, who landed in Normandy at Omaha Beach two weeks after the Normandy invasion in 1944 after his transport was torpedoed in the English Channel, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge, helped liberate the Langenstein concentration camp, and fought to the final conquest of Nazi Germany.
Another family forced to give up their land was that of Dewey Beard, a Sioux survivor of the Wounded Knee Massacre. He was the model for the Indian Head nickel, he was 84 years old at the time of the taking of his land. He supported himself by raising horses on his 908-acre allotment which he received in 1907.
The compensation provided by the government for this land grab was nominal and paid out in small installments insufficient to make a down payment on other properties. Dewey Beard and others like him became homeless. He testified before Congressional hearings in 1955 when the Sioux sought to address their grievances over the land taking.
"For fifty years I have been kicked around. Today there is a hard winter coming. I do not know whether I am to keep warm, or whether to live, and the chance is I might starve to death."~Dewey Beard's 1955 testimony before Congress at age 97 on the taking of his land for inclusion in the Badlands Bombing Range
The U.S. military used the Badland Bombing Range, as a live-fire range for 30 years. Since 1960 the U.S. returned portions of the range to the Oglala Sioux Tribe in a piecemeal fashion. In 1968 Congress enacted Public Law 90-468, authorizing the return of 202,357 acres, but it also set aside 136,882 acres of former tribal lands to establish Badlands National Monument.
The Sioux, at Pine Ridge are not in any better shape in present times. A demographic study was done of the tribe in 2011 and it reported the following:
- 80% of residents are unemployed (versus 10% of the rest of the country);
- 49% of the residents live below the Federal poverty level (61% under the age of 18);
- Per capita income in Shannon County is $6,286;
- The Infant Mortality rate is 5 times higher than the national average
- Native American amputation rates due to diabetes is 3 to 4 times higher than the national average;
- Death rate due to diabetes is 3 times higher than the national average; and
- Life Expectancy in 2007 was estimated to be 48 for males and 52 for females
This blog entry might seem unuseual for this type of trip and no doubt seems like a soap box. And it is, because for the life of me I can't understand why this is not a widely know and hot issue. I talked to folks in South Dakota and Minnesota and many feel that current conditions on the reservation is solely the Indians fault. I am sure that their are many things that the tribe could do to help the situations, but the answers will never be solely theirs. In my thinking, it will take a national approach to right (the century's worth of)these wrongs.
So what can we do? First we need to be aware of this terrible, current situation. I sure wasn't aware of it (again, I am thinking all native people are happy in their casino wonderlands...NOT!). We need to press South Dakota & national politicians to do something about the dismal conditions at Pine Ridge. If your a person of faith we need to lift these brother and sisters up before God, because they desperately need His help and love. We also need to start listening the Lakokata Sioux themselves. Seems to me that we listen to every other group who has some sort of a grievance or had an injustice done to them in this country. For me, the lack of complaining by the Sioux, is a silence that is just unbearable. I am going to open my ears and try to carry the message to anyone who will listen. I hope now that you have read this you might feel the need to do something too.
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