Jan Nickelson shared these photos of Bear Butte, a favorite of hikers for its spiritual significance.
Bear Butte
Tag: meade county
Ballin’ in South Dakota
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| Carroll Hardy of Sturgis was one of South Dakota’s noteworthy athletes. |
This week I got my registration form for the annual history conference in Pierre. I’ve never attended, but this year’s focus on our sports history looks especially interesting. Conferences like these love to focus on the political or economic aspects of our history, which are important. But cultural and social components like athletics are just as important, and sometimes overlooked.
One of the speakers is Mel Antonen, who grew up across the street from the baseball field in Lake Norden and became a national baseball writer. He’s going to talk about how baseball games in Yankee Stadium and South Dakota are alike. I’ve heard the presentation before, and it’s well worth hearing again. Not to steal his thunder, but he’ll probably tell the story of covering Cal Ripken when he was going through contract negotiations in Baltimore. He ultimately decided to stay with the Orioles, and when Antonen asked why he turned down more money and bigger markets, Ripken said,”Mel, you just don’t understand baseball in a small town.”
South Dakota has a rich sports tradition. A few years back we asked longtime Yankton sports writer Hod Nielsen to compile a list of 12 of our greatest athletes. That’s not to be read,”the 12 greatest athletes in South Dakota history.” It’s simply a list of impressive athletes that Nielsen saw during his decades of work for the Yankton Press & Dakotan.
He chose all-time greats like Billy Mills, the Pine Ridge native who won the 10,000-meter race at the 1964 Olympics.”Smokey Joe” Mendel briefly held the world record in the 100-meter-dash when he ran it in 9.5 seconds as a senior at Yankton College. Sturgis native Carroll Hardy made an impact on professional football, but he’s probably best known as the only man ever to pinch-hit for the great Ted Williams.
And South Dakota’s athletes continue to make history this week. The University of South Dakota women’s basketball team is in the WNIT for the first time. They welcome Drake to the DakotaDome in Vermillion Thursday at 7 p.m. Also Thursday, South Dakota State University’s men’s team makes its first ever appearance in the NCAA tournament. The Jacks play Baylor at 6:30 p.m., on truTV. And SDSU’s women, in the tournament for the fourth consecutive year, play Purdue Saturday at 12:30.
If you’re near a television or radio, watch and listen. You might hear names we’ll be talking about 50 years from now at another history conference.
Butte Country
There is something poetic about a lone butte rising from western South Dakota’s grassy seas of rolling plains. These lonely landforms not only break up the horizon, but are important landmarks and points of reference to local residents. Often a person will tell you where his ranch or land is based on the proximity of the nearest butte.
Buttes also play an interesting role in the history of the area. Bear Butte, near Sturgis, is still considered a sacred religious site for both the Lakota and Cheyenne tribes. Thunder Butte was famously used as a landmark for mountain man Hugh Glass on his crawl across the prairies after being mauled by a grizzly bear on the Grand River. The Slim Buttes bear sad memory of a brutal battle fought a few months after the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876.
Besides the history, I also find the names of the buttes quite interesting. To me they have a touch of romanticism to them. For example, it doesn’t take much to imagine riding herd at Blackhorse Butte or surveying the plains with the keen eye of a majestic Golden Eagle perched on Eagle Butte. Many times, the names of buttes were derived by what the butte looks like. Haystack Butte and Castle Rock Butte along Highway 79 north of Newell are good examples of this. Other buttes have interesting stories and legends that the names come from. In a history of Ziebach County, the Native American name for Thunder Butte is given as “Wakanganhotan.” The meaning is said to be “place of holy thunder.” I’ve heard people say that the Lakota thought that all thunder or thunderstorms originated from Thunder Butte. However I’m pretty sure that this hand-me-down story is more legend and corrupted speculation than the real origin of the name. Regardless, the butte holds a lot of meaning to me as I grew up within sight of it on the western horizon.
One of my favorite older photos is of the sun setting on top of Thunder Butte on a late August day in 1994. It was a high overcast afternoon, and I could tell it was going to be a good sunset. I grabbed my camera and hurriedly got into my dad’s old blue Chevy work pick-up and headed west. As I was driving I got the idea to line up the photo so the sun would appear to set on the butte. In order to do this, I had to cover a lot of ground in a short time as well as veer off the trail. I’m sure my dad would not have approved if he saw me cruising over the open prairie at a speed that caused the toolboxes and fencing gear to bounce quite vigorously. The good news is that he never knew — well that is, until he reads this article. I think the photo was worth it though.
This December, I finally really saw the”bear” in Bear Butte. I was shooting an old barn and sunset just southwest of the butte and in the fading light I began to make out the slumbering bear. It was actually quite a magical moment. Someday I plan to climb that butte. When I do, I’m sure I’ll feel very small in a very large world. I’ve felt it before while on the top of Thunder Butte. To be on a high place looking down on the beauty of creation is a humbling yet wonderful thing. I suppose”sacred” is another very good word for it.
Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog.
Sacred Bear Butte
I’m always on the lookout for new hiking trails in South Dakota, but there are a few that keep me coming back. One such trail would be Summit Trail at Bear Butte. I got hooked after first visiting with my parents when I was a teenager. The scenery and view were amazing, but I was fascinated by the butte’s spiritual significance. We saw many colorful prayer flags tied to tree branches. There were pouches and cans of tobacco that I assumed were left for offerings. As the strong winds blew through the trees and tangled my hair, I knew there was something going on here that was much bigger than me.
Bear Butte, located just outside Sturgis, was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1981. The area is sacred to many Native American tribes. According to Cheyenne custom, this is where holy man Sweet Medicine met the Creator and the Four Sacred Persons who guard the Universe. It is still the site for many traditional religious ceremonies and visitors are asked to be respectful. I recall seeing a sign asking us not to photograph religious artifacts or anyone in prayer.
Summit Trail is 1.85 miles long and winds to Bear Butte’s highest point, 4,426 feet above sea level. It takes about 2-3 hours, depending on how often you stop to contemplate the meaning of life. It’s windy at the top, so bring a jacket, and there’s an amazing view of the Black Hills, Sturgis and the surrounding states.
Plans to drill oil near Bear Butte sparked controversy earlier this year when SD Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ Board of Minerals authorized Nakota Energy, LLP to construct up to 24 oil wells one and one-half miles west of Bear Butte. And about 360 acres of the oil field were within the Bear Butte National Historic Landmark boundary. The South Dakota Historic Preservation Office and many American Indian groups quickly objected because laws protecting cultural, archaeological and historic sites were not obeyed.
This spring the board did revoke the original permit and granted a new one with stricter guidelines. Now only five wells can be drilled and they must not be within view from Highway 79. I assume you will still be able to see them from the summit of the butte. Personally I would prefer the landscape not be marred. I’d rather not have to see any oil wells at all near one of my favorite hiking spots in South Dakota.
Trees and Us
I once accidentally set fire to a tree stump in our yard. It had been cut, and dry, jagged spires of wood rose where the tree snapped as it fell. Naturally it became the perfect place for a boy to stuff firecrackers.
For the 10-year-old me, the remains of that tree were nothing more than an opportunity for Fourth of July fun. The older and wiser me knows there must have been a story behind that tree. It was part of a line of trees planted along our lot line. Maybe one of the town founders planted it?
It’s interesting how in South Dakota, we form connections to trees. Perhaps it’s because when our ancestors first arrived in Dakota 150 years ago they encountered a landscape largely devoid of trees. When we look at the tall cottonwoods around our farmyards and small towns, they are a tangible connection to the pioneers we never knew. They are also full of history.
We’ve written a lot about important trees. There’s the landmark cottonwood that wouldn’t die in Henry. Planted in 1882, it survived a 1971 tornado, a windstorm in 1984 and a fire that destroyed the town cafÈ and bar. Victims of this year’s historic Missouri River flood are dealing with damaged homes and other possessions. But Curt Mortenson told us about a 200-year-old cottonwood near his house that’s been surrounded by water all summer. He said a photo taken in the 1880s shows a steamboat tied to it. No one knows the toll the flood will take on trees in the river valley.
In our September/October 2007 issue, Melvin Marousek wrote about a grove of trees his father planted in Meade County.”For more years than I like to remember, I have made periodic pilgrimages to this lonely but, to me, hallowed homestead where so many memories lie waiting to be resurrected,” he wrote.”It is here that lost memories well into conscious thought and long sleeping ghosts drift by — ghosts of many descriptions, some light and airy and cheerful, others sad, tired and grim.”
I heard about another important family tree just today. A stately cedar stood on the John Hynes homestead west of Conde for 112 years until a wicked thunderstorm ravaged the top third of it in the spring of 1994. The loss prompted Earl Grandpre, owner of the Hynes farmstead, to pen a tribute recalling memories and tracing the tree’s grand history.
Hynes brought his son to Dakota Territory to find a homestead in 1882. They filed on a quarter of land a half mile west of Conde. That fall they returned to St. Paul, where the rest of the family had stayed. Hynes told his wife there were no trees on the homestead he had selected. So the next spring, before they all came to Dakota for good, she went to the banks of the Mississippi River and collected a small cedar sapling. She placed it in a suitcase full of dirt from the riverbank and tended to it during the long covered wagon ride west. They planted the tree just southwest of their original shanty.
“Jack and Ed Hynes told me many times the story of this tree,” Grandpre wrote.”They seemed to want to impress on me the importance that they placed on it. They knew that my wife and I would own and farm this land, and though they didn’t say so, I know they did not want me to destroy this tree. They did not have to worry. My wife would never have let me or anyone else hurt this tree.”
That’s because trees can be as important to us as they were to the men and women who brought them here.
