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Following Black Elk’s Good Red Road

By Bernie Hunhoff

ONLY 11 AMERICANS have ever been canonized as Catholic saints. The 12th could be Nicholas Black Elk, a thoughtful and humble Lakota holy man who lived in the Pine Ridge country of southwest South Dakota in a tiny community called Manderson.

Black Elk is remembered as a tragic 19th century visionary who, in his old age, despaired the loss of his lands and culture. That much is true. However, Catholic leaders say he was also an exemplary Christian who preached and practiced hope and forgiveness. There are disagreements over which part of his life was most meaningful, but of course his latter years prompted the Catholic Church to consider him a saint.

His road to canonization, which began in 2017, could span decades. The same process took more than a century for Kateri Tekakwitha, a 17th century Mohawk woman who was canonized in 2012. First, Black Elk must be declared venerable by the Vatican. Then religious leaders will look for miracles attributed to him. However, the very fact that he is a candidate for sainthood has already brought bishops, religious pilgrims and other visitors to Manderson and the Pine Ridge.

*****

MANDERSON HAS 400 residents and one store. That is one store more that it would have if not for Emma Clifford, who for 40 years has operated Pinky’s, a social spot for youth and adults. As Black Elk’s legacy grows with the prospect of sainthood, travelers from far away now occasionally share the counter.

Sunday Mass welcomes worshippers at St. Agnes Church, which has become a centerpoint of the effort to canonize Black Elk.

“We are seeing not only Catholics, but non-Catholics, people of all faiths,” Clifford says.”But that is the story of Black Elk. When we pray to him today, we pray for people of all other faiths, hoping they will respect us.”

The town’s only other private business is Bette’s Kitchen, run by Betty O’Rourke, a great-granddaughter of Black Elk. She and her extended family serve meals in their home to locals and out-of-towners. Some days, they host meetings or gatherings on the hilltop residence, with its expansive views of the chalk-white bluffs that give the Pine Ridge its name.

The family’s land, on the southern edge of town, is where Black Elk famously welcomed Nebraska writer John Neihardt, author of the book Black Elk Speaks that brought literary attention to both of them many years after it was published in 1933. A one-room log cabin where the holy man spent some of his final years stands beneath shade trees halfway up the hill.

The busiest place in Manderson is a tribal school, the smallest of nine on the Pine Ridge with 152 students. Every year on Oct. 8, as the faculty and staff observe Black Elk Day, they track how many of the students are direct descendants of the holy man. At last count, there were 28.

St. Agnes Catholic Church, where Black Elk preached and prayed for decades, stands on the north side of town. The white church is plain even by rural standards. Below eight simple stained-glass windows are two rows of rickety pews — the same wood pews, no doubt, where Black Elk once sat and kneeled.

A brown tipi with a cross has been painted behind the altar. Statues of Mary and Joseph and a picture of Jesus stand at the front, but they share this church with Black Elk: his picture hangs above the sacristy door; prayer cards with his image lie in the pews; another photo of the Lakota holy man rests on a table with a sage bowl and an eagle feather; and just below the picture of Christ is a wood chair, colorfully painted by local artist Mark Anderson with Black Elk’s name and likeness.

*****

ON A WARM SUNDAY last summer, we departed Rapid City, turned left at Hermosa and drove two hours southeast, skirting the southern edge of the hauntingly beautiful Badlands country, to learn more about Manderson.

Black Elk descendants are numerous in Pine Ridge country. Betty O’Rourke, a great-granddaughter, ran a restaurant in Manderson with help from her grandchildren, Austin and Maisena. Photos of the man who may one day be a saint decorated the dining room wall.

When we arrived at 9 a.m., Betty O’Rourke and her family were busily preparing to serve a group of college-age missionaries who were scheduled to arrive for lunch. With her black hair drawn tightly back, you can see a resemblance between Betty and her famous great-grandfather, whose photos hang in the dining room of the restaurant and home.

“I was born a Black Elk,” she said, between checking casseroles in the oven.”My mother, Grace, was a Black Elk. They called her Gracie. My Aunt Kate was the first Native American woman in the U.S. Army.”

Betty says she and her husband, Chuck, are old enough to retire, but they keep running the restaurant for two reasons: the community needs an eatery and,”it teaches our grandchildren how to be in the world and run a business.”

She does not advertise or promote her connections to Black Elk.”Everything Grandpa said was that you should never profit from your culture,” she says.”We have certain people who do but I don’t think it’s right.”

Betty said she wouldn’t join us at Mass. She had to watch the casseroles.”When I was at Holy Rosary School, we would go to church every day. Sometimes two or three times a day, but you can’t get me to church today because I believe God is with me all the time. I don’t have to go to that building to pray to Him.”

She likes the priests from Holy Rosary, who often visit the restaurant.”They know how I feel and when they come here to eat, they don’t talk to me about going to church,” she laughs, and then she returns to the oven.

*****

MASS STARTS AT 11 a.m. on most Sundays. A priest and four Catholic nuns from the Holy Rosary Mission arrived just minutes beforehand because Joyce Tibbitts, the parish catechist, had already prepared the altar. Tibbitts does many duties that Black Elk performed for decades.

The simple but sturdy wood-frame church at Manderson was built by Black Elk and his friends in 1911.

The service began with Ave Maria, led by the nuns who had come from India to work as missionaries. One strummed a guitar. The church could hold a hundred people, but only a few dozen sat in the pews.

Father Edmund Yainao Lunghar, a priest from the Himalayan Mountain country in India, welcomed everyone with a smile. In a short homily, he told a story of a single mother who struggled to raise a troubled teenager. He said the woman steadfastly maintained that,”At the end of the day, no matter how much he misbehaves, he is still my son.”

Father Edmund asked,”How much greater is God’s love? How much will your heavenly Father forgive you if you turn to Him? Let us pray that we have a listening ear. The calling of the Good Shepherd, the whispers of the Good Shepherd, invites us to pastures where life is abundant.”

Midway through Mass, Tibbitts went from pew to pew, waving smoke from a bowl of smoldering sage toward each parishioner. It is a Native American version of the Catholic Church’s use of incense as ceremonial purification.

Rather than ring a bell, Tibbitts beat a drum as Father Edmund consecrated the bread and wine. A service at St. Agnes has the repetitive traditions of the Catholic Mass that bore the youth and comfort their elders, yet it is also like no other religious service in the world. During the Prayers to the Faithful, an appeal was made for a teen who had just died in a hit-and-run accident on the highway; another was said for a boy who was killed in a drive-by shooting that week.

One of the worshippers, a slender woman in her 50s, appeared to be intoxicated. During the Eucharistic prayers while everyone else was kneeling, she approached the altar. She’s not the first troubled person to do so at a Sunday service. It happens in other churches. But never was such a woman treated kindlier. Father Edmund gently assured her they could talk later. She returned to a pew.

At the close of Mass, the congregation recited a special Prayer for the Canonization of Nicholas Black Elk, which includes these lines:

Faithfully he walked the Sacred Red Road

And generously witnessed the Good News

Of our Lord Jesus Christ

Among the Native American people.

Open our hearts also to recognize

The Risen Christ in other cultures and peoples.

The congregation then stepped outside the old church building to socialize in an adjacent hall over coffee and baked goods. An artist’s drawings, featuring Black Elk with a halo, hang in the hall. Tibbitts says the art is considered inappropriate by the Church because halos are reserved for saints, and Black Elk is yet to be canonized.

*****

MANY SAINTS WERE imperfect early in life. Many suffered great injustices. Black Elk fits both categories.

He was born between 1858 and 1866. His tombstone in the weedy cemetery across the road from St. Agnes Church lists the former. The Catholic Church seems to have settled on the latter, while other historians cite 1863.

Black Elk nearly died when he was about 9 years old. He recounted the incident in great detail to Neihardt, whose daughter Hilda took copious notes for days and days during the summer of 1931. Her notes were published in Raymond DeMallie’s 1985 book The Sixth Grandfather. It’s considered more accurate than Black Elk Speaks, which is accepted as a more liberal translation embellished by John Neihardt’s own poetry and spirituality.

Black Elk used the missionaries’ Two Roads Map to teach children and adults about Christ’s life.

Black Elk recalled that his legs, arms and face became swollen and then he drifted into a dream state. He remembered being visited by grandfathers who instructed him in the good that comes from the harmonious red road and the evil that comes from the black road, including war and death. He realized that the sixth grandfather, a very old man with white hair,”was myself Ö at first he was an old man but he got younger and younger until he was a little boy nine years old.”

He saw a village of men, women and children who were dying.”I was frightened at the sight and tried to get away,” he said.”I passed in front of the tipi and all the people got up. The spirit said, ëThat’s the way you shall save men.'”

His recounting of the 12-day dream state took 22 pages in The Sixth Grandfather. Toward the end he notes,”They had taken me all over the world and showed me all the powers. They took me to the center of the earth and to the top of the peak they took me to review it all. I was to see the bad and the good. I was to see what is good for humans and what is not good for humans.”

*****

THREE YEARS LATER, Black Elk and his family were at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where Lt. Col. George Custer and the 7th Cavalry were annihilated by the Lakota. Black Elk, then 12, was kept away from the main battle but he had close encounters with soldiers. At one point he was urged by an adult warrior to scalp a dying soldier. The Neihardt notes record him remembering,”Probably it hurt him because he began to grind his teeth. After I did this I took my pistol and shot him in the forehead.”

As the fighting concluded, he and about six other boys returned to the battle scene.”When we got there some [soldiers] were still alive, kicking. Then many boys came. And we got our arrows out and put arrows into the men and pushed some of the arrows that were sticking out in further.”

He took another scalp and handed it to a younger boy.”Then I got tired of looking around,” he said.”I could smell nothing but blood and gunpowder, so I got sick of it pretty soon. I was a very happy boy. I wasn’t a bit sorry.”

However, in the winter of his 17th year he felt a calling. He told the Neihardts that he heard a voice saying,”Your grandfather told you to do these things. It is time for you to do them.” He developed a horse dance.”After this ceremony was completed it seemed that I was above the earth and I did not touch the earth. I felt very happy and I was also happy to see my people, as it looked like they were renewed and happy. They all greeted me and were very generous to me, telling me that their relatives here and there were sick and were cured in a mysterious way and congratulated me, giving me gifts. I was now recognized as a medicine man at the age of 17.”

“He prayed with a pipe and a rosary,” says Father Daoust of Holy Rosary.

In 1886 he learned that Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show wanted to employ Indians to journey”across the great water” to Europe. He and about 10 friends joined, traveling by train to New York City where they entertained at Madison Square Garden for months.

“As we left New York I could see nothing but water, water, water,” he told the Neihardts. He performed for Queen Victoria in England, and later quoted her as saying that it was wrong for white people”to take you around as beasts to show to the people.”

He and three others became separated from Buffalo Bill’s entourage and found themselves lost in a strange country. None could speak English. Fortunately, London authorities linked them with another traveling show run by a man called Mexican Joe. They toured Italy and France for another year before returning home.

Back at Pine Ridge, he found his relatives and friends confined within reservation borders. Some were ill with strange diseases introduced by settlers and soldiers. Many were hungry and starving due to the demise of the buffalo culture and broken promises. Federal rules titled”The Code of Indian Offences” outlawed traditional dances and religious ceremonies. The rules also limited the practices of medicine men like Black Elk.

A new spirituality called the Ghost Dance was gaining strength. Black Elk heard that friends were dancing it below Manderson at Wounded Knee so he went to observe.”They had a sacred pole in the center,” he told the Neihardts.”It was a circle in which they were dancing and I could clearly see that this was my sacred hoop and in the center they had an exact duplicate of my tree that never blooms and it came to my mind that perhaps with this power the tree would bloom and the people would get into the sacred hoop again.”

The Ghost Dance’s popularity scared U.S. military leaders, and that led to Sitting Bull’s violent death on Dec. 15, 1890. It also contributed to the tragic confrontation between cavalry soldiers and the Lakota at Wounded Knee Creek on the morning of December 29.

Black Elk had spent a sleepless night because he sensed something was about to happen. He was walking at daybreak when he heard gunfire. From afar, Black Elk and a friend saw the wasicus (white men) coming with wagon guns. They heard shooting and cries. They saw women and children running to hide in the gullies. He and about 20 others rode to help. A bullet grazed his leg. He told Neihardt that he felt bulletproof, and that he heard bullets whizzing by.

In Black Elk Speaks, the holy man is quoted as saying that something died in the blood and mud and was buried in the blizzard that followed.”A people’s dream died there,” Neihardt wrote.”It was a beautiful dream Ö the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.”

That tragic poetry is not found in the actual notes, as published in The Sixth Grandfather. In DeMallie’s text, Black Elk describes the massacre and the aftermath. He laments that perhaps he should have died with the many others, and he says he prayed to the spirits above, saying,”Grandfathers, behold me and send me a power for revenge.”

*****

THIS IS WHERE Black Elk’s life story gets even more complicated. After the Wounded Knee massacre, he continued to serve his people as a medicine man. On many occasions, he found himself at sickbeds with Christian missionaries who were also there to serve. He had friends who had converted to Christianity. In fact, his first wife, Katherine War Bonnet, was a Catholic. She died in 1903.

This photo of Black Elk introducing the rosary to a Lakota child was widely used in Holy Rosary’s promotional materials in the 1940s.

In the autumn of 1904, he was tending to a sick boy who lived north of Holy Rosary when Father Joseph Lindebner arrived. The Jesuit priest, a native of Germany, was well-liked by many reservation residents, who called him”the Little Father.” Lindebner had baptized the lad earlier, and reportedly became upset that Black Elk was there with his tobacco offerings, drums, rattles and other items.

“Satan, get out!” Lindebner declared, tossing Black Elk’s belongings out of the tent. At least, that was the story told decades later by Black Elk’s daughter Lucy. She said her father did not return the anger. The priest obviously saw something special in the medicine man and invited him to accompany him back to Holy Rosary to learn more about Jesus Christ.

Black Elk, curious about the new religion, stayed two weeks at the mission. He found Catholic theology compatible with his traditional beliefs in the Great Spirit, wakan tanka, and on Dec. 6, 1904 he was baptized. It was the feast day of St. Nicholas, so he took the saint’s name.

The rest of Black Elk’s story is the era not covered in Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks. He converted hundreds of people. He and his friends built the St. Agnes Church building that stands today. He traveled, sometimes long distances by horseback in stormy weather, to tend to the sick and dying. He served short assignments at St. Stephen’s Mission in Wyoming and Marty Mission on the Yankton Sioux Reservation, but most of his life was spent serving the Pine Ridge people.

Bill White, a descendant by marriage to Black Elk, is a member of the Sainthood Working Group. White is a permanent deacon of the Catholic Diocese, serving at Porcupine on the Pine Ridge. He believes Black Elk became comfortable with Christianity because it fit his childhood vision of unity among men.”He saw the same thing written in Revelation. We are all standing before the Lamb of God. He always was striving to unite people. He had many non-Native friends throughout his life.

“I am certain he fits the model of a man who lived a heroic life and a model life,” White says.”He remained fully Lakota, and he saw that as being compatible with Christianity.”

*****

“BLACK ELK IS MY hero,” Joyce Tibbitts told us, as her congregation departed the church social hall on that Sunday morning. Actually, there are two halls behind St. Agnes Church — a Tekakwitha Hall, where Native American women once met in prayer groups, and a Black Elk Hall for the men. Today, Tekakwitha Hall is Tibbitts’ parish office, and a repository of information for the sainthood effort.

Tibbitts says the process began when relatives of Black Elk, who had attended the canonization service for Tekakwitha in 2012, asked Robert Gruss, then the bishop of the West River Diocese, if their grandfather might also deserve consideration. The working group was created, and it has already submitted a request to the Vatican Congregation of Saints.

Joyce Tibbetts’ tattooed arms reflect both Christian and traditional Lakota spirituality. Her pastoral duties at St. Agnes Church are akin to those performed by Black Elk in the early decades of the 20th century.

Though there are 10,000 saints, none are quite like Black Elk.”He prayed with both a pipe and a rosary,” says Father Joe Daoust, the superior of Holy Rosary Mission and a member of the group.”Some say he walked the two roads between Lakota and Catholic spirituality,” Daoust says.”But he actually blended the two into one red road to God.”

Tibbitts says she and others now walk that same road.”We are a swirl of religions — traditionalists, Christians and combinations of the two. We go to church and we also go to the sweat lodge or the big sun dance in summer.”

She says priests from Holy Rosary once distributed Holy Communion at the sun dance, but the practice was stopped — not by Catholic clergy but by traditional Native American leaders.”If a priest does show up at the sun dance today, the people will be respectful, but they cannot participate anymore.”

Tibbitts believes the challenges of everyday life on the reservation demand that anyone who wants to help — Christian or traditional — must be welcomed.”We’ve once again had a string of suicides,” she said.”The youngest was just 11, the oldest 18. We had a boy hit by a car. This week we buried a 20-year-old who died from illegal booze.”

Because liquor and beer sales are prohibited on the Pine Ridge, bootleggers are making home brews known as skips.”They use everything from hand sanitizers to rubbing alcohol, anything with an alcohol content,” Tibbitts says.”The result is a toxic brew that is killing our people.”

Poverty and health crises further complicate life in Manderson and the surrounding communities. Premature deaths are so frequent that plans are being considered to expand the parish cemetery, which lies just across the highway from St. Agnes Church.

Cynics might surmise that neither Native or Christian spiritualities have done enough to change a sad trajectory that has persisted since the buffalo were nearly exterminated and reservation borders were drawn. Optimists, on the other hand, would find hope among the good people who run the restaurants, stores, schools and churches of Black Elk’s home territory.

When Black Elk and Neihardt climbed Harney Peak (now known as Black Elk Peak) in 1931, the holy man spoke of the troubled times that faced his people.”The good road and the road of difficulties you have made to cross,” he said that day,”and where they cross, the place is holy.”

Seven decades after Black Elk’s death, it’s still easy to encounter holiness in his hometown. Sainthood might someday bring greater attention to the holy man’s humble, forgiving legacy. Maybe it would even bring about miraculous change.

However, the people we met in Manderson are not waiting for miracles. Like their town’s famous native son, they face the intersecting roads of good and bad every day.”I could see that it was next to impossible,” Black Elk said of his vision for a great flowering tree of unity in 1931,”but there was nothing like trying.”

Perhaps the beautiful miracle is that the trying continues today.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2022 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Pilgrimage for the Soul

By Lex Talamo

Lex Talamo became immersed in Lakota culture as she spent several years teaching writing to middle schoolers on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

I was 22 when I struck out from my home in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, for the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, teaching license in hand. My assignment seemed simple: teach 80 Lakota middle school students how to love writing, and to write well.

Pine Ridge, among the poorest places in the United States, soon assailed me with unanticipated problems. Many of my students’ home lives were marred by violence, poverty and abuse, which often resulted in unruly classroom behavior. My isolation, two hours from Rapid City, led to many”dark nights of the soul” that threatened to swallow me. I had fallen into a slump of dreading the mornings, the days, the rest of my life, and I didn’t know how to refocus my energy.

One afternoon, the Lakota Studies teacher wheeled his squeaky cart, complete with feathered rod and buffalo skull, into my classroom. His lesson was about the seven sites he said were sacred to the Lakota. “There is still power for our people in those places,” he told the students.”That is why our people still make pilgrimages, to this very day, to reconnect with the Great Spirit and pray for healing.”

I copied the list: Wind Cave, Sylvan Lake, Black Elk Peak, Bear Butte, the Badlands, the Black Hills and Devil’s Tower. I promised myself I would visit them all.

***

I decided that Wind Cave — the origin place of the Buffalo People, according to Lakota legend — would be the perfect place to start. The 115-mile trip would take me about two hours from the village where I taught. I spotted only a handful of cars as I followed Highway 18 west through a land of windswept beauty that left me dazed. Tawny prairie dogs barked and bustled around their colonies and several majestic buffalo grazed nearby as I arrived in Wind Cave National Park.

Bison, the noble beasts at the core of Lakota culture and once on the verge of extinction, still dot the West River landscape.

I signed up for a cave tour, which our guide began by recounting the story of Alvin McDonald, an eccentric teenager who moved with his family to the area in 1890. He had trouble making friends, so he sought sanctuary within the cave’s uncharted depths. Our guide flipped a switch in the large room, plunging the space into absolute darkness.”Think about that,” she said.”Think about exploring this cave, with its sudden drop offs, by yourself, and with only a candle for light.” She flipped the switch again, illuminating the water dripping off cave formations and cratered walls.

McDonald rolled out string as he explored so he could find his way around the cave, she continued. He left little puzzles — strings of letters — along the cave’s walls with the candle’s flame. Our guide showed us sooty markings on the cave ceiling, and then beamed her light into a crevice in the rock wall.”But my favorite story about Alvin involves this room and this passage,” she said.”If you’ll look toward my light, you’ll see a rare and beautiful crystal formation. Alvin knew there was a passage behind this, but to get there, he would have to destroy the crystal. He chose to leave the passage unknown, and the crystal intact, out of his respect for his cave.”

After the tour, I found McDonald’s grave, marked by a bronze plaque, near the natural entrance to Wind Cave. A Native American proverb popped into my mind:”Give thanks for unexpected blessings on their way.” McDonald’s story had sparked something in me, made me feel alive and reminded me that every day could hold unexpected blessings, as long as I showed up.

***

My next pilgrimage took me to Black Elk Peak, the sacred mountain where the Lakota welcomed the Thunder Beings each spring. KILI radio, the single station my car picked up, blared from my stereo as I tore down Highway 44. The road to Sylvan Lake, from which I could access the mountain trailhead, meandered through such tight turns above sheer rock precipices that my palms were sweaty and white. I reminded myself of what Reagan, my teacher friend on the Rosebud Reservation, had written to me once:”The hard stuff is always the good stuff. The hard stuff is what makes the story.”

Prayer flags adorn tree branches near the summit of Black Elk Peak. Photo by Paul Horsted

Halfway around the lake (really a manmade dam), I found a trailhead leading to Black Elk Peak and veered off the paved path. The way was steep and rocky, with giant metal handrails posted in one haphazard section of boulders. Jumping from craggy rock faces to the trail below, I felt like a child. I felt free. Unhindered. The sunlight on my face, which I missed so often due to the long hours I put in at school, invigorated my spirit. The solitude of the trail also strengthened me; I passed only a few people on my ascent.

I reached a point where the dirt path led to a wash of tangled woods; when I retraced my steps, I could not find the trail. I was still lost when the sun set and the temperature dropped. I found a cave-like crawlspace under an outcropping of rock. It was at least 10 degrees warmer inside than out, so I crawled in. I listened to the wind shriek past my sanctuary. I resolved to sleep if I could.

The sun’s rays peeked into my cave at dawn the next morning. I crawled from the space and tried to find the trail. Hours passed. Miles passed. When the sun shone directly overhead, hot and heavy in the sky, I abandoned all efforts to find a path. I picked a direction and ran. I did not stop until I heard the sound of a highway. I burst from the woods and found myself on an endless stretch of asphalt that gave no clue as to my location. No signs. No cars. No people. Then, a red sedan. I stayed by the side of the road, waving my arms above my head in distress. The car sped up and rushed past me.

I had no watch, no phone and I was out of water. I am going to die out here, I thought. Then a white minivan appeared on the horizon, making slow but steady progress down the hill. I prayed there were nice people inside. Then I stepped into the center of the road, waving my arms wildly. This time, the vehicle slowed and stopped.

I knew I must look crazy. My arms were scratched and bleeding from my crazed run through the woods. I had bits of leaf litter and twigs in my hair. I kept my hands loose and visible by my sides as I approached the minivan.

“Hello,” I tried, when the driver’s side window rolled down an inch. My voice came out choked and scratchy. I tried again.”I was hiking and I got lost …” My voice cracked. I took a step back, wanting to show that I was harmless, terrified he or she would leave me.”I was hoping you could point me in the right direction,” I said.”I’ve been wandering for the last 14 hours. I had to spend the night on the mountain.”

The window rolled down to reveal a pale-skinned couple in the upper bounds of middle age.”You poor thing,” the woman said. She sounded British.”You must be frozen. It was 34 degrees last night.”

Arriving at Sylvan Lake proved to be a turning point in Talamo’s pilgrimage.

I waited while the British gentleman searched for Sylvan Lake in his phone’s GPS.”It’s that way,” he said, pointing down the hill. I asked how far. He said,”Thirteen miles.” I started crying. The woman twisted in her seat and started clearing out the back of the minivan.”Get in,” she said.”We’ll give you a ride.”

The man got out of the driver’s seat and opened the door for me. I slipped inside, babbling my thanks.”I promise I’m not a serial killer,” I said. They laughed; the man assured me they were not serial killers, either,”just an old British couple eager to see the great United States of America.”

They seemed at ease with me. They were also chatty. They asked what I did for a living. I told them I worked as a teacher in a reservation school. They showed genuine interest.”How is that?” the man asked.

“It’s hard,” I said. The woman asked how I coped, if I believed in God. I told the woman I did not know.”God is my answer to just about everything,” she said.”I trust that the people He puts in my way will be the ones I am supposed to meet and learn from.”

About 5 miles later, the Silver Bullet came into view.”There!” I shouted, way too loud.”That’s my car!” The man pulled into a parking spot near mine. They refused money when I offered. The man thanked me for”adding some excitement” to their lives. The woman said, softly,”I can’t wait to tell our friends that we picked up a hitchhiker.”

I waved as they drove off and thought, too late, that I had not asked for their names. I turned and looked out over Sylvan Lake.

The pilgrimage’s mission was accomplished. I had never been so glad to be alive.

***

In November, temperatures plunged. I knew I had only a short amount of time left to explore before blizzards, with their shrieking winds and bone-chilling cold, ravaged the state. After Sylvan Lake, I was terrified of getting lost while hiking by myself. But I wanted to continue my journey.

I took my scathed soul to the Badlands. The sky was a wet, watercolor blue, in sharp contrast to the sand-colored rocks and white cliffs I passed on the way into a parking lot by an overlook. The rest of the parking spots were empty.

I chose Notch Trail, the shortest of three trails detailed on a brown sign. The trail led to a breathtaking vista — layers upon layers of striated rock, sharp angles, peaks like steeples stretching out to specks on the horizon. I found a rock crevice that cradled my body perfectly. I sat down. I put my palms flat against the rock. I closed my eyes. I felt the increased pulse of my heart, and through my hands, the heartbeat of the earth. I felt the strength of the land lace up my palms, through my body. When I opened my eyes, the world seemed three shades brighter.

The Badlands hold significance for the Lakota and several other indigenous tribes. Photo by Paul Horsted

“Thank you,” I told the winds, the earth, and whatever might be listening.

I walked back to my car, believing I had completed a successful hike. Then the wind blew, so fiercely that it turned me around toward an exhibit sign that declared,”The Baddest of the Badlands.” I spotted the first trail marker, a stubby yellow pole about a foot high just beyond the sign, and I felt a hunger so sharp and fierce it surprised me. I wanted the challenge. I started forward.

Mushroom-like formations sprouted from a sea of craggy rock. I felt alive, following this trail across the beautiful land of extremes. My walk became a symbolic act of spirit. I was not sure where I was going or how much farther I had to go, but I was willing to take the journey. Going one step at a time, I reached the final yellow marker, identifiable by a corresponding red stripe at the top. Another canyon vista stretched out to the horizon. Below, the rock dropped steeply away, leaving me dizzy from the height.

I stood on the precipice, lost in the savage beauty surrounding me, until the wind buffeted me away from the edge. The sun was sinking, and I beat a reflective retreat to my car. Blown by the wind, now caught under one of my car’s tires was a crumpled Badlands brochure.

While my GPS calculated my route back to the reservation, I flipped through the brochure, with its colorful photographs of narrow-leaf yucca, prairie dogs and black-footed ferrets. My eyes settled on a quote, attributed to author Kathleen Norris:

“The prairie is not forgiving. Anything that is shallow — the easy optimism of the homesteader… the trees whose roots don’t reach ground water — will dry up and blow away.”

The trip left me feeling empowered, eager and unafraid for what might come. That night, safely ensconced in my school-issued housing, I emailed my principal.”I feel very grateful and blessed to have this job,” I wrote.”I would like to stay for a third year as the middle school writing teacher, if you think I am doing a satisfactory job.”

I looked at what I had written, felt a trill of fear in my heart, and hit”Send.”

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 2019 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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The Modern Storyteller

By John Andrews

Downtown Rapid City has been artist Donald Montileaux’s home base for more than 40 years.

A pencil begins to scratch across a blank white sheet of paper. The noise is barely audible, but it’s there. Donald Montileaux is drawing Mickey Mouse.”It’s a stress reliever,” Montileaux says.”My other drawings take a lot of thinking, but Mickey, he just flows out of me.” He pauses for a moment.”You probably better not put that,” he says.”Walt Disney is gone, but his corporation is still around, and I might get in trouble.”

It seems doubtful that the multi-billion-dollar Walt Disney Corporation would kick up a fuss over a guy in South Dakota scrawling out a few Mickey Mouses just to keep his hands busy, especially if they knew the impact that one tiny cartoon character had on Montileaux’s life, and, in turn, the wider world of Native American art.

In his 71 years, Montileaux never earned a dime off a bootlegged Mickey Mouse. They’re drawn simply for the delight of his children and grandchildren, or because, after several decades of making art, his hands simply want to make more, even during an interview. His true passions are Indian warriors, horses and buffalo — not brown buffalo, but painted bright red, yellow or blue. His ledger art is an extension of the tribal tradition of painting or drawing on buffalo hides. Even casual observers can see the influences of his two main mentors: Herman Red Elk and the great Yanktonai artist Oscar Howe.

His paintings hang in homes and galleries around the world — and beyond. Within the last decade, Montileaux brought his art to the pages of children’s books, first as an illustrator and more recently as a storyteller. It was a long journey that required time, patience and ultimately acceptance from tribal elders as he sought to bring a much revered and protected Lakota tradition to a new medium.

And it all started at a kitchen table on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, when a father took his son into his lap and began teaching him how to draw Mickey Mouse.

***

Montileaux spent the first five years of his life in a small house in Kyle, the only child of Floyd and Clara Montileaux.”My mother and father only had eighth grade educations, and they had a hard time with life,” he says.”But they knew that the only way to really achieve anything was through education, and they wanted to give me a good education.”

The family moved to Rapid City, where Montileaux’s father took a job in a sawmill and his mother went to work as a dietician at St. John’s Hospital. Montileaux attended Catholic school through eighth grade. The course offerings did not include art, which led him to consider other career paths.”When I was in eighth grade, I wrote a little autobiography and said I wanted to become a priest. My dad was Lutheran, and my mom was Catholic. Dad said, ‘Maybe we need to broaden our son’s horizons a little bit.'”

They enrolled their son in public school, and an artistic fire that had been kindled on the reservation was reignited. Entertainment had been scarce in those days, so after the evening meal, while Montileaux’s mother washed dishes, he and his father grabbed a few comic books and sat at their kitchen table.”‘Let’s draw,’ he would say to me, and he’d help me. Mom was the judge. I drew a lot of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy. That’s how he entertained me, but he also instilled a desire to become an artist.”

That desire blossomed at Rapid City High School.”In ninth grade, I was signing up for classes and one was industrial arts,” he says.”I just saw ‘arts’ and said, ‘Oh, I love that. Art.’ So I signed up. I walked in the door and here are all these nails and hammers and saws. I thought, ‘This is not what I wanted.’ So, I headed to the counselor’s office, and he said, ‘You want fine arts.'”

“Confrontation” features Montileaux’s brightly colored horses that seem to fly off the pages of a century-old ledger book.

Montileaux explored ceramics, sculpture, drawing, painting — every artistic medium he could imagine. He was also drawn to the Sioux Indian Museum and Crafts Center in Halley Park, a facility administered by the Indian Arts and Crafts Board of the U.S. Department of the Interior.”I was too young to be in there alone so I would get kicked out. But I would continue to sneak in because they had this Native American wax figure called Oscar. I loved that guy.”

His precociousness aside, the museum curator, Ella Lebow, appreciated his persistence and, perhaps more importantly, recognized his artistic ability. In 1964, during his sophomore year, she recommended him for acceptance in a new summer art institute held at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion under the guidance of Oscar Howe.

The opportunity allowed Montileaux to learn from the two artists who became his lifelong friends and mentors — Howe and Herman Red Elk. Red Elk was a Yanktonai, born on the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana in 1918. He became interested in art while recovering from tuberculosis at the Sioux Sanitarium in Rapid City. He enrolled in art courses at Black Hills State College in Spearfish and, through a program at the Sioux Indian Museum, studied traditional buffalo hide painting. Red Elk eventually joined the staff at the museum, where he remained until his death in 1986, and became one of the region’s most highly skilled hide painters.

Howe, born on the Crow Creek Reservation in 1915, is perhaps South Dakota’s most influential Native American artist. After studying at the Santa Fe Indian School, Howe abandoned the more traditional style he had learned there in favor of a more abstract method. His new paintings, marked by bright colors and pristine lines, helped push the boundaries of Native American art.

Howe taught at Pierre High School until 1957, when he was named artist in residence and professor of art at the University of South Dakota. He remained there until his retirement in 1980. In the early 1960s, he launched a summer art workshop designed to help students learn more about Native American art. Howe’s program lasted only a few years, but inspired the university’s current Oscar Howe Summer Art Institute, open to high school students in grades 10 through 12.

Red Elk and Montileaux traveled across the state together for Howe’s workshop in 1964 and again in 1965.”Oscar Howe was everything I wanted to be — an artist, a teacher and a family man,” Montileaux says.”He was a taskmaster and a professionalist. Before he even started drawing, he knew where those lines would go. He mentally had it in his head before he put it down on paper. So, for a 10th grader sitting in class — kind of wild and crazy and hard to stay attentive — he really had little time for me. But Herman was a mature adult, and he helped me get through that first two weeks with Oscar because Oscar was so regimented. But the second summer I went down there, I really became friends with Oscar because I had matured a little more and my drawings matured.”

Even though Montileaux had been a rough-around-the-edges sophomore in 1964, Howe could see that the young man had paid attention. Many of the techniques Howe had taught were becoming evident in Montileaux’s drawings. One night, Howe invited Montileaux and Red Elk to his home for dinner, where they met Howe’s wife, Heidi, and daughter, Inge Dawn.

“You don’t have a Lakota name,” Howe told him.”Montileaux is not a very Lakota name. So, Herman and I have been talking through the winter about a name for you. You’re like a little bird. You’re into everything. You fly all over, like a little yellow bird. So we’re going to give you the Lakota name Yellowbird. You’re going in a good direction, but you’re all over the place getting there.”

“I really feel proud of that,” Montileaux says.”Oscar and I developed a friendship. We became an extended family in the two weeks that I was there. After that, I could always call Oscar and talk to him. He was always available. After I became a successful artist and Oscar had passed away, Heidi would come to art shows and visit me. She would catch me up on the previous year. When she came into a show, everybody knew that for an hour don’t even come close to me, because that was Heidi’s and my time to talk.”

His stint in Vermillion helped Montileaux earn a full scholarship to the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After three years there, he earned another full scholarship to the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. But he soon discovered that the friendly and relaxed lifestyle to which he had grown accustomed in South Dakota and the Southwest did not exist on the East Coast. He came home and enrolled at Black Hills State College in Spearfish.

In 1970, he moved to the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation to teach elementary and junior high art.”I had wanted to be an art teacher, but I realized a teacher has not only the six or seven hours in the classroom, they devote 24 hours, seven days a week,” he says.”I had no time for my art.”

After three years at Cheyenne River, Montileaux moved back to Rapid City, hoping to find that ever elusive time to paint and draw.

***

That combination proved difficult to find. Montileaux needed a steady income, so he went to work at the Sioux Indian Museum, where he met his wife, Paulette. They were married in 1974.

In 1977, work was just finishing on the new Rushmore Plaza Civic Center. Montileaux took a job as a building foreman and was immediately thrust into preparations to host one of the most influential entertainers of all time.”I got hired two weeks before the building opened, and in less than a month we had Elvis Presley. It was just a buzz. Since I was the building foreman I got to go backstage when Elvis arrived. I was probably 5 feet from him, and I was just thrilled.”

A buffalo hunt scene from “Tasunka: A Lakota Horse Legend.”

Montileaux eventually became the Civic Center’s event coordinator and finally its assistant manager. In the meantime, he’d created an art studio in his home. But the demands of a full-time job meant he still couldn’t give his art the time it needed.”What little time I had I would go down there and try to get inspired. I always thought the pieces I produced during that period were all unfinished. They just didn’t have that quality, that polish, that they could have had if I’d had more time.”

Still, a highlight of Montileaux’s career came in 1995 when one of his paintings was launched into space aboard the shuttle Endeavour. Montileaux was looking for ways to support a program called SKILL (Scientific Knowledge for Indian Learning and Leadership), offered through the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. Richard Gowen, the school’s president, suggested Montileaux do a painting and sell prints, the proceeds from which would help fund the program.

Montileaux produced a Badlands scene with three young Native Americans gazing into the starry night sky.”I could not think of a title for this piece,” he says.”We were at the printer and he says, ‘I’m going to push the button, we need a title.’ Everyone was talking about what they saw in the painting. I said, ‘I don’t know Ö Looking Beyond One’s Self.’ He said, ‘Man, that’s great!’ and he hit the print button.”

An engineer working on the Endeavour’s upcoming mission offered to include the painting in the shuttle’s payload, in an effort to further publicize the fundraiser. It blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on the morning of March 2, 1995. Montileaux was not there. Instead, he stepped out into his front yard in Rapid City before sunrise that morning and, at the very minute Endeavour was scheduled to launch, he looked up at the stars — just like the subjects in his painting — knowing that his work was on an unprecedented journey into the universe.

Montileaux’s painting completed 262 orbits aboard Endeavour. Upon its return to earth, it was given to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. Montileaux and others from the School of Mines traveled to the nation’s capital and presented President Bill Clinton with the No. 1 print.

Montileaux remained a weekend and evening artist during his 22-year career with the Civic Center.”We’d go to art shows on the weekends, and I’d always come back so inspired. Then we’d have to go to work the next day. I wished that I could be a full-time artist, and just do this.”

Finally, in 1999, at age 51 and with his three children grown, Montileaux and his wife began to consider that very possibility.”If you can make the house payment and put some food on the table, that’s all we really need,” Paulette told him. So Montileaux retired and, for the first time in his professional life, focused solely on art.

***

“I tried it and it just blossomed,” Montileaux says of the transition. One reason for his immediate success was his ledger art, a form in which scenes are drawn or painted on authentic ledger paper used by Indian agents or merchants during the late 1800s and early 1900s.”It had been dormant for so long that everyone was totally excited about it,” he says.”It was just me and about 10 other people doing it, nationwide. It was a very limited number of us.”

“Lakota Horse Nation.”

Ledger art is an extension of the buffalo hide painting tradition at which Herman Red Elk excelled.”In the wintertime, Herman would tell me stories about his drawings and what they meant and their symbols. So I tried to be hide painter for a while, but he was a master. I researched and found that once the buffalo were annihilated from the plains, Indians had no way of holding on to their ceremonies and history because they didn’t have a written language. So they did ledger drawings.

“Hides were so hard to come by, and you had to have bone brushes and rabbit skin glue and earth pigments. It was dirty and hard to do. I picked up a colored pencil and laid it on a piece of ledger paper. All of my drawings that I used to do on those hides came alive on that piece of paper.”

While he collected awards for his ledger drawings, Montileaux’s paintings truly rounded into form, particularly the horses that have become his trademark. Once again, their origin lies with Herman Red Elk, and the stories he told while the two of them worked at the Sioux Indian Museum. Warriors used to survey the land for advantageous points from which to attack enemy tribes, Red Elk said, often a small rise or a hill. As they sprinted down the slope, warriors gave a small tug on their horses’ reins. A pouch of herbs slid into the mouths of their mounts, giving the animals a burst of energy.”He said the horses would just fly off the hill and into that enemy camp. As soon as he said the word ‘fly,’ my horses never galloped or loped again. My horses fly.”

The legs of a Montileaux horse are fully extended, sometimes inches and sometimes feet above the ground. Observers can almost hear them thundering across the prairie, just as Herman Red Elk said they did. It’s a technique that Montileaux has mastered.”Herman always told me that once you put that black paint onto a hide, you can’t make a mistake. You have to know where you are going with that line,” he says.”Herman used to close his eyes and draw his horses. And now today, I can close my eyes and I can draw my horses, too. It’s something that all artists have to do. We practice our craft so much that it becomes an extension of who we are.”

In Montileaux’s case, his art is very nearly an extension of the two great mentors who shaped his career.”The design that I put down is Herman. The brilliance of my color is probably Oscar showing through,” he says.”They’re not in any way close to Oscar’s presentation. But the training, how to mix colors, how to stretch my paper when I do a watercolor, he’s there. Every time I do something, Oscar’s there.”

***

In 2006, Montileaux’s art entered a new realm when he was asked to illustrate a children’s book. Tatanka and the Lakota People told the traditional Lakota story of how the holy man Tatanka turned himself into a buffalo to help the Pte Oyate (buffalo people) survive after their emergence from the underworld through Wind Cave in the Black Hills. The text was written and edited by a group of Lakota elders and scholars. Montileaux’s paintings were done in a two-dimensional style reminiscent of buffalo hide paintings.

Stories such as Tatanka were traditionally kept within the sacred realm of Lakota oral history. Montileaux recalls many evenings as a child on the Pine Ridge Reservation spent at his grandmother’s cabin, a tiny home with no electricity, listening to grandfathers and uncles tell stories. It was often the only form of available entertainment, and they commanded the room.”When my uncle Albert came, it was really kind of a gift,” Montileaux says.”We’d all gather around him and he’d just take us away, telling us about wild horses, and Indians and all these things that had happened. And we never once thought that he was keeping a tradition alive by being a storyteller. We just thought of him as Uncle Albert coming to tell us a story. I never thought of him as a traditional storyteller, but he was.”

Montileaux read stories to youth at the 2019 South Dakota Festival of Books in Deadwood.

In 2014, Montileaux sought to bridge the divide between oral history and written stories once again, this time as both illustrator and storyteller. The idea came while visiting Alex White Plume, a Lakota elder perhaps best known for his battles against the federal government over the legalization of industrial hemp.”One night, Alex told stories. He’s a terrific storyteller,” Montileaux recalls.”He sat down and told this story and I thought, ‘My God, I’ve heard that story from my grandpas, grandmas and uncles throughout my childhood.’ It just struck a chord that I would like to write that story. And I listened to it — really listened to it — for the first time, because Alex was such a great storyteller.”

The story was about tasunka, the horse, and how these new creatures, once tamed, made the Lakota people rich and powerful. Montileaux worked on a few early drafts and shared them with White Plume, who remained unsure.”I really like what you’re doing here, but storytellers traditionally tell the story verbally,” White Plume told him.”We don’t write things down because we want people to listen to us when we tell stories. We want to make an impact on them.”

Montileaux understood White Plume’s concerns but explained that the Lakota people aren’t as centered as they once were. They live around the world and gathering for traditional storytelling sessions is much more difficult in the 21st century. They needed a new way to hear the stories that remain so important to their culture.

He went back to his Rapid City studio and finalized his text and ledger drawings. He asked Agnes Gay, the assistant archivist at Oglala Lakota College in Kyle, to provide the Lakota translation. After a rewrite that more sharply focused the story for children in second through fifth grade, Tasunka: A Lakota Horse Legend was published by the South Dakota Historical Society Press in 2014.

Montileaux brought the finished version to White Plume’s ranch near Manderson, unsure of what the elder would have to say.”His eyes lit up as he paged through it. He was pretty happy with everything. You could tell by his voice. He got done with the book and said, ‘Sit down. You got some time? I want to tell you a story about muskrat and skunk.’ So he told me the story, and then he said, ‘You know, I’ve thought about this and I think maybe you’re the one. Maybe you’re the person who does this for our tribe.’ And that was really an honor, because he accepted the fact that the book was good, and he gave me another story. But he also accepted the fact that we had to write things down to keep them alive.”

That began the latest chapter of Montileaux’s life, that of modern-day storyteller. The state historical society press published Muskrat and Skunk in 2017. This story explains the origins of the Lakota drum, once again with an accompanying translation from Agnes Gay.

Montileaux’s books reached a wider audience in 2019, when the press published all three stories in one volume called Tatanka and Other Legends of the Lakota People. As the South Dakota Humanities Council’s Young Readers One Book author, Montileaux spoke to students across the state leading up to his appearance at the South Dakota Festival of Books in Deadwood. More than 10,000 copies of Tatanka were distributed to second graders statewide.

***

Montileaux has established an artistic routine in retirement. His home studio contains everything he needs to do ledger drawings. He’s always on the lookout for ledger paper, particularly books that date between 1870 and 1930. They’re more plentiful than a person might think. They usually turn up at auction sales, or friends let him know if they see one in an antique store or elsewhere.”Every day I wake up, get my slippers on and come to my room,” he says.”I either pull out a piece that I’ve been working on or I start something new and different. Oscar Howe used to tell me, ‘Do every piece like it’s going to end up in the New York Museum of Fine Art, or even in the Louvre. Always have that attitude when you’re doing a piece, that it’s going to go far and it’s going to be there forever.’ I’ve always had that attitude.”

He keeps his painting supplies at a studio inside Prairie Edge, a store and gallery specializing in Native American arts and crafts in downtown Rapid City. He’s currently at work on another children’s book and a series of murals that will be installed inside South Dakota State University’s new American Indian Student Center sometime in 2020. Still, he wants to push his own artistic boundaries.”I really like to look at nature now. I’m trying to be that type of artist, like Renoir and CÈzanne. You know how the colors of their fields look so bold and beautiful? I want to do that, but I want to incorporate some Lakota feeling into those pieces. Maybe a medicine wheel someplace.”

The pencil scratching begins to grow fainter.”He’s got some great ears, a little nose and his hand is coming up,” Montileaux says as he puts the finishing touches on Mickey Mouse. Donald Montileaux has received worldwide accolades and awards for his books and art, but for maybe just a moment, he’s back at that little kitchen table on the Pine Ridge Reservation where it all began.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2020 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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A Somber Anniversary

By John Andrews

An estimated 146 of the roughly 300 Lakota men, women and children who were killed during the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 lie buried in a mass grave. Survivor Joseph Horn Cloud traveled the country raising funds for a stone marker that was placed at the grave site in 1902.

We were about 30 minutes late getting to Leonard Little Finger’s house because we had gotten lost on the Pine Ridge Reservation. After nearly bottoming out our Chevy Impala on a road that could barely be described as minimum maintenance, we knew we were on the wrong track. We headed back to Oglala, where some friendly youth at a school told us that Leonard was their Lakota language teacher. They kindly gave us directions, and soon we found Little Finger in his home just on the edge of town, patiently waiting for us.

The first things we noticed upon going inside were photographs — dozens of them — hanging on his walls. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren smiled down at us. But there were also black and white images, and they were clearly very old. One was a photo of his paternal grandfather, John Little Finger. Another showed his maternal grandparents, Joseph Horn Cloud and Millie Bald Eagle. Next to that was a photo of Horn Cloud’s brothers, Daniel White Lance and Dewey Beard.

They were all survivors of the Wounded Knee Massacre, which took place on Dec. 29, 1890. We had come to Pine Ridge to find people just like Leonard: descendants of Wounded Knee survivors who could tell us stories that their ancestors passed down about that day. Little Finger was the first person we met and held by far the strongest connection to the massacre.”I had 39 relatives there at the time,” he told us.”Only seven survived.”

In all, roughly 300 Lakota men, women and children died at the hands of the U.S. Army’s Seventh Cavalry. They were members of Chief Big Foot’s band, who fled the Standing Rock Reservation after Sitting Bull’s death on Dec. 15. They were traveling to a peace conference with Chief Red Cloud at Pine Ridge when the cavalry met them near Wounded Knee Creek.

The Little Finger family name stems from an incident that occurred during the massacre. According to family oral history, as soldiers explained their plans to bring the Lakota to Pine Ridge, one cavalryman said he would show them what would happen if they tried to run. He shouted a command and another soldier lowered his weapon, which they claimed was not loaded.”When he pulled the breach back, my grandfather saw a bullet go in there, and it locked,” Little Finger told us.”Then he barked again, and they all came up.” That’s when the 14-year-old John Little Finger swung and knocked the soldier to the ground, breaking his little finger. The boy ran, and soon gunfire erupted.

We also met cousins Ingrid One Feather and Fred Stands. Their great-grandfather, Peter Stands, survived the massacre and lived with several others in a cave for much of the following year. One Feather said she knows that Stands’ wife and two of their children were killed, but he rarely talked about that day because he feared reprisals from the government.

Myron Pourier is the great-grandson of the Lakota holy man Black Elk, who also survived the massacre. Much of Black Elk’s recollections were published in a book, Black Elk Speaks, in 1932, but one story not recorded in those pages tells of Black Elk’s encounter with Red Willow two days after the massacre. A soldier, still pursuing Lakota warriors, shot Red Willow’s horse from under him. Black Elk lifted Red Willow onto his own horse and together they rode to Red Cloud Agency.”We’re still close to the Red Willow family,” Pourier said.

These families, and many more, will forever remain connected by the tragedy. Dealing with it in their daily lives can still be burdensome, even after 129 years.”Let’s say you look at time as a cloth,” Little Finger explained.”Then along comes some violence and tears it. You can stitch it, but you can never tear the threads that consist of that fabric. I come to that every day. I already know the impact that it had, but it can be historical trauma if you don’t understand it and know what it was. There’s a spiritual side to it. There’s no one person who represents this fabric. It just depends on who you talk to. One is going to be very historically traumatized, and the other is going to say, ‘It happened. It’s over, and we have to get on with life.’ And all in between.”

December in South Dakota can a joyous month for families gathered to celebrate the holidays. But it also marks a somber anniversary for the men and women who still live with the effects of our state’s darkest day.

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Traveling Pine Ridge Today

By Bernie Hunhoff

Horseback riding remains a common form of transportation on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Photo by Jerry Grier.

Nowhere in South Dakota is history more raw and alive as on the Pine Ridge. Black Elk’s log cabin still stands on a hillside near Manderson. Lakota artists bring their paintings and carvings to the Red Cloud Heritage Center, a missionary outpost of old red brick architecture built by Jesuits a dozen years before the great massacre of 1890.

The Wounded Knee gravesite is perhaps the most solemn place in the American West; beneath the cemetery hill, Emerson Elk and his extended family market their crafts and try to explain that opening and never-ending chapter in South Dakota’s history.

Yet, despite the abundance of culture and history on Pine Ridge, many South Dakotans are hesitant to visit. The news media seldom reports on the reservation unless there’s a murder, suicide, crime, government corruption, racial issue or poverty study. So is it safe to travel the region?

As executive director of the Pine Ridge Chamber of Commerce for the last 14 years, Ivan Sorbel has answered that question many times.”Wherever you go in the world, you need to use common sense,” he says.”You wouldn’t go to Chicago and walk down dark alleys at night or drive around in the projects. But if you are mindful of where you’re at, you’ll find that people are the same everywhere.”

Sorbel likes to tell the story of an elderly couple who visited the Badlands and inquired about driving south through the Pine Ridge.”Someone advised them that they should not do so because it’s not safe,” he says.”This guy and his wife decided to go anyway. They came through Interior, and a tire blew out on their car. So they were stuck along the road when a Native American fellow pulled up in his pickup truck. He helped them change their tire and got them on their way, and when they got to the Chamber of Commerce they couldn’t wait to tell me what happened.”

Belva Matthews runs a busy coffee shop called Higher Ground in Pine Ridge.

Sorbel says stories like that happen throughout rural America, and that’s his point; the reservation is no different.”We’re rural America, a place where country folks are more apt to stop and help you than city folks.” He also explains that all of the modern safeguards are available on the Pine Ridge: tribal police, EMTs, cell phone service, park rangers and search and rescue teams.

You can’t really know South Dakota without exploring the Pine Ridge. Encompassing 11,000 square miles, it is roughly the same size as the state of Connecticut. Landscapes are so pristine that it takes little effort to imagine the past. So much remains unchanged, the prairie or the architecture or the people, from the 19th century when the Lakota suffered a major tear in their universe.

Black Elk was injured in the massacre. Many years later, he wrote that he”could still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. A peoples’ dream ended there. It was a beautiful dream.”

By the numbers, the Pine Ridge remains a distressed place 125 years later, arguably the poorest in America. Unemployment is 80 percent. Most people earn only a few thousand dollars a year. Cancer, suicide, alcoholism and heart disease rates are well above the U.S. average. Diabetes and tuberculosis are eight times higher.

More than a third of the Pine Ridge’s 40,000 people are under age 35, partly because the youth stay home but also because the average life expectancy is just 48 for men and 52 for women. Seventy percent of teens drop out of school.

“We are a very depressed people,” acknowledges Brad Piper, 25, who works in a Pine Ridge coffee shop called Higher Ground.”We don’t always have enough to look forward to. We go to Rapid City on weekends because it feels livelier, we feel younger there. But when we are back here we feel old.”

Brad Piper and his wife, Stephanie, help run Higher Ground with Piper’s mother, Belva Matthews.

However, cultural isolation hasn’t resulted in an exodus of youth. The median age of the 40,000 residents of the Pine Ridge is just 20.6 years. Some of the youth are determined to challenge the cycles of poverty.”It will take a lot of hard work to change things but we’re trying,” Piper says. He and his wife, Stephanie, cleaned out a storage garage near the coffee shop and started a fitness center where young people lift weights and exercise.”We have some high school athletes with so much talent, but not everybody has learned a work ethic to keep going off-season. Once the season is done, they’re done. We’re trying to show them how to make it a lifestyle.”

Piper is lucky to have an entrepreneurial mentor — his mother, Belva Matthews, who started Higher Ground a dozen years ago because she wanted her hometown to have a gathering place like shops she saw as a student in St. Paul, Minn.

“She’s a whirlwind,” says Piper.”She constantly keeps this place running. It’s a place where people feel safe, one place where they can forget they’re in Pine Ridge.”

He is intrigued with customers who come from afar because they’ve read or heard about the Lakota and their history.”We get German people who like to trade coins, and a man from Switzerland was here who grew up in Italy. People from China come. You hardly feel isolated, at least not here at the coffee shop.”

That’s true wherever a traveler is likely to go, whether it’s Big Bat’s Convenience store, just down the highway from Higher Ground, or Red Cloud Heritage Center, west of town. Drive another half-hour west and you’ll arrive at the tribe’s Prairie Winds Casino, where gamblers play blackjack or sit at one of the 250 glittering slot machines. The casino is open 24 hours a day, and now has a restaurant and hotel — all providing paying jobs in a county where the average per capita income is less than $7,000.

Highway 18, which runs east-west along the southern edge of the Pine Ridge, is often the only road that visitors travel. That’s unfortunate because the prettiest scenery and much of the history — and the future — of the reservation lies north of Highway 18 along back roads and small towns.

Here are 10 travel tips gleaned from traveling the reservation. It’s far from an inclusive list, so explore for yourself.

Jerilyn Elk and three generations of the Elk family operate a gift shop below the cemetery at Wounded Knee.

Wounded Knee Cemetery

There is no museum or visitor’s center; only the mass grave of the massacre victims high on a lonely hill. However, on summer days the Elk family operates an arts and crafts bazaar below the hill by Highway 27. They make and sell dream catchers, tomahawks, beaded bracelets and necklaces — and they patiently tell and retell the history to interested visitors. They also share clippings, photos and papers of the massacre, including a four-page listing of the men, women and children who were killed at the massacre.

Yellow Bear Canyon

Pristine prairie, forest and river valley scenes are everywhere on the Pine Ridge, but Yellow Bear Canyon between the towns of Allen and Kyle is a favorite of many locals and travelers. Trout can be caught at Yellow Bear Dam, along with largemouth bass.

Sheep Mountain Table

Badlands National Park lies on the north edge of the Pine Ridge. The White River Visitor’s Center offers information and exhibits on the ancient landscape. Sheep Mountain Table is a little-known gem. Motorists can drive to the top of Sheep Mountain on a dirt path that was carved by homesteader Mary Hynes and her children in the 1920s. Atop the table, you’ll be as far removed from civilization as you’re likely to get in the Dakotas.

Singing Horse Trading Post

Roswitha”Rosie” Freier, a native of Frankfurt, Germany, runs a bed & breakfast and gift shop. She also sells beads and other art supplies to local artists, and features their work in the store alongside $5 slingshots from China.”When we tell people where they’re made, they usually put them back,” she laughs. Freier also gives trail rides on her herd of gentle horses, and arranges stargazing excursions, hikes and tours.

Roswitha “Rosie” Freier, a native of Germany, offers horseback riding and other tours at Singing Horse Trading Post near the Badlands.

Fishing the Dams

Local anglers catch catfish in the White River, but the best Pine Ridge fishing is found at four dams built for irrigation in the 1930s. Irrigation didn’t work in the arid soil, but the dams have become popular recreation areas. The tribe stocks the waters with largemouth bass. The four include Kyle Dam, Yellow Bear Dam, White Clay Dam (south of Pine Ridge) and Oglala Dam, the largest and the only one with walleye. Tribal fishing licenses are required, but they are affordable; a five-day family pass is $20.

White River Visitors Center

The National Park Service exhibits and videos tell the history of the Badlands with a Lakota perspective, including the story of The Stronghold, a nearby mountain table where Native Americans fled after the 1890 massacre. An artist-in-residence program is held throughout the summer. Located on Highway 27 in the north-central region of the reservation.

Pine Ridge Chamber of Commerce

Cultural displays, animal exhibits, art, a veterans’ tribute and children’s section have all been developed in the Chamber building, which is 7 miles west of Kyle along Highway 2.

Chuck O’Rourke and his family keep watch over Black Elk’s cabin near Manderson.

Oglala Lakota College

Tribal colleges have led major changes in reservations across South Dakota. OLC, located across the street from the Pine Ridge Chamber of Commerce, welcomes visitors to a cultural center with an audio-video tour of the Lakota in the 19th century, ending with the events that culminated at Wounded Knee in December of 1890.

Red Cloud Heritage Center

The highly respected Native American arts gallery includes a historic collection and gift shop. Housed in a 19th century Jesuit mission, it is part of a lively complex that also includes a Catholic church, Red Cloud Cemetery and Red Cloud School, where students have an 88 percent graduation rate and usually head for college or other educational training.

Hunting the Prairie

Pheasants have expanded their range into the Pine Ridge country. Other game includes mule and whitetail deer, antelope, buffalo, elk, turkey and various varmints. Tribal licenses and guides are required for all hunts.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the November/December 2015 issue of South Dakota Magazine, which also included a series of stories commemorating the 125th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117. For more information on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, contact the Pine Ridge Chamber of Commerce near Kyle at (605) 455-2685.

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Beyond the Chair

By Michael Zimny

James “JJ” Janis wants people with disabilities to come out into the open and talk about them, but he also wants people to see beyond the mechanized wheelchair that helps him get around. The Chair is Not Me is the title of a book of poems and prose he’s just published, which he hopes will spark a dialogue between diversely abled communities.

“My primary purpose is to foster an understanding between the diverse ability community and those that don’t have a disability,” Janis says.”It’s getting better but we need to do more work and by we, I’m talking all of us.”

Janis was born with cerebral palsy and grew up on the Pine Ridge reservation and in Rapid City. In his poem “My First Taste of Freedom,” he recalls that as a child, before he had a wheelchair, he sometimes got around in a little red wagon, “powered by my cousins’ legs.”

“We didn’t go very fast or far if people didn’t eat their morning eggs.”

Disabled people’s voices are rare in the media landscape, and consequently some of the issues they face aren’t widely discussed. Janis wants to change that with poems like “Unsung Heroes,” dedicated to direct support professionals (DSPs).

DSPs help disabled people, in countless ways, to go about their daily lives — taking them to appointments or visits with family and friends, helping them eat, shower, groom, get dressed. They are indispensable to the people they serve, not only because of the support they provide, but also because of intangibles like relationships and moral support.

“Their influence can ripple throughout our lives,” Janis writes.

DSPs are not highly valued by the market. They often receive at-or-near minimum wage pay. Turnover is high.

This places stress not only on the DSPs, but on the people they serve. “When I have somebody leave after a year, two, three, and even four years, it’s like a board pierced my heart,” Janis says. “When we lose someone, even if they’re just going to a different job, it’s like the loss of a family member.”

As an advocate, Janis is working to bring more attention to the work DSPs do. As a writer, he’s hoping to bring the issues faced by his community into the mainstream. He’s not shy about reaching out to high-profile people. He sent a book to George H.W. Bush. “I wrote him a letter thanking him for signing the Americans with Disabilities Act,” Janis says, “and told him about how civil his administration was compared to what was going on today.”

“When [President Trump] was running, he mocked a news reporter [who] had cerebral palsy, and it was kind of a disgrace. So, I was going to send one to President Trump to let him know that people with diverse abilities can do something, and he shouldn’t do that.”

The Chair is Not Me — which is illustrated by a group of diversely abled artists — is opening doors. Janis and some of the artists have been invited to present a show at the Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City next summer.

Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Stories Beneath the Stones

Six national cemeteries lie within South Dakota’s borders: Black Hills National Cemetery, Fort Meade National Cemetery, Hot Springs National Cemetery, Akicita Owicahe Veterans Cemetery (Rosebud), Akicita Owicahe Lakota Freedom Veterans Cemetery (Pine Ridge) and the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate National Cemetery near Sisseton. Our November/December issue features a story about them and a new initiative through Black Hills State University in Spearfish that seeks to uncover the stories behind the men and women who are buried within these hallowed grounds. Our photographers traveled the state to gather images from each cemetery. Here are a few more that didn’t fit into the magazine.

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The Story of the Grass Dance

By Michael Zimny

Adrian Primeaux brought the art of the grass dance to an international audience with his appearance in a video called”Stadium Pow Wow,” by A Tribe Called Red, a Canadian music group that blends elements of hip hop, dubstep and First Nations traditions. The video, directed by Kevan Funk, features a montage of”day-in-the-life” scenes of Native life in different locales.

Primeaux’s scene was shot in the Badlands of Pine Ridge, where he was raised. We spoke with Primeaux about the story behind the grass dance, how elements of his regalia tell the story, and how a new generation of Native artists is taking indigenous art forms into the future. Here are his responses, in his own words.

The Story Behind the Grass Dance

The story stems from a young boy who was crippled. He told his grandfather that he wanted to run and ride horses and dance like all the other kids, to basically be normal. And his grandpa said well, you can be. We have certain ways and certain spiritual beliefs that would guide you to be that way. So his grandpa told him to go to this sacred area, a fasting ground, and to seek guidance and to fast and pray there, and to sing for four days.

So this boy went to a patch of sweet grass where our people would go for these types of sacred ceremonies. He fasted there on this bed of sweet grass for four days. And through that he was tested by elements, and on the fourth day he was about to give up, and there was a big storm that came. Within this storm he was approached by different elements and different beings. And just about the time he was about give up he was approached by a deer. This deer walked up on him, and this boy being deprived of any kind of food or sustenance for so long, I guess he had to dig deep within his spirituality to kind of maintain his composure.

He was able to have some kind of communication with this deer and this deer was speaking to him through his mind and he was telling him,”Hey what are you doing here? Why are you all alone? As a young boy, why are you out here?” This boy was like,”I can’t run and dance and play like the other kids, so I am seeking guidance. I am seeking help from the Great Spirit.” So this deer started talking to him.”Ok I see that your intention is pure, I am going to give you something. I am going to give you some songs.”

And so he was shown some songs that talk about a story of a buffalo in a storm. Whenever a buffalo encounters a storm, as hard as it gets, it keeps going forward, because the buffalo knows that at the end of the storm there’s always going to be a rainbow. There’s always hope at the end of the storm. So this boy endured, and he was given some grass dance songs. So he took these songs back to his people and this boy, he told his grandpa about these songs and he sang them for him. And little by little, he was able to move his crippled legs. He moved his left and did the same on his right.

Pretty soon he was able to dance. Everything he did on his left, he did on his right. These songs, originally, they were healing songs, and the dance was originally a healing dance.

How the Grass Dance Story Lives Through the Dancer’s Regalia

On [the boy’s] outfit he put these buffalo [hide] and gourds. So on my feet, I have red fluff on my feet. That’s symbolic of the buffalo who’s able to weather the storm. The bells are symbolic of the lightning and the storm that the boy had to endure, the sound that it makes.

On my arm I have deer tail armbands, and that’s in remembrance of the deer that spoke to the boy whenever he was instructed and gave him these songs. The rainbow [beadwork and designs] represents the rainbow after that storm that the boy endured. It symbolizes hope, so every grass dance they have a rainbow design. The hoop is the hoop of life, the circle of life.

The grass is symbolic of the sweet grass from where he was fasting. Everything that this boy had to endure was basically incorporated into this outfit. Each of my dance moves is symbolic of balance.

On Being a Millennial and Indigenous Artist

A generation ago, there was a lot more intergenerational trauma that was a little bit more widespread amongst Native peoples. Boarding schools left a really far-spread impact on Native culture. We were never encouraged to dance, to grow our hair long, to use our language, a generation ago. And now we come to 2016 and we have this new generation: people who are creating bands like A Tribe Called Red, people who are creating movies like Avatar — a movie that’s promoting indigenous people.

This generation now, we have a deeper sense of pride. We have our own unique voice as far as dancing. We have a unique voice as far as music. We have a more unique interpretation of dance compared to how it was maybe 20 years ago.

We take some of the core of those old dances and incorporate them into something new, into something that modern people can appreciate. [A Tribe Called Red] takes old elements of what we appreciate as music — the drums, the pow wow songs and they incorporate it into a new style of music. A lot of new generational Natives, and non-Natives as well, can appreciate this Native music. They can appreciate the Native dance. They can appreciate the indigenous lifestyle, and its old elements incorporated into something new.

Along those same lines, my style of dance is the same. I have these old elements of dance, these old appreciations of the nature, the grass, the balance, the life cycles within my hoop, the old appreciation of the walks of life, the animal nation, the plant nation in my dance. Then I incorporate it into a new style, in my own mind — what I see as a young Native man, what I am seeing as beautiful. I also see neon colors as beautiful. I have a plaid base on my outfit; I see plaid clothes as something fresh and new, whereas times ago they would use maybe a buckskin cloth and a beaded vest. My outfit is made from plaid Hollister shirts and neon ribbons. I try to carry the old styles of our cultural ways and incorporate them into something new.

Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Into the Badlands

By Mike Heintz

Editor’s Note: The March/April 2016 issue of South Dakota Magazine features a story on an old World War II era bombing range in a portion of the Badlands. Mike Heintz, a South Dakota native now living in southern California, photographed the area in October of 2000. This is the story of his journey.

Heading out of Rapid City into the Badlands on Highway 44 can put you into another dimension. It starts when you drop down into the Cheyenne River Valley with its great stands of old cottonwoods. You might be lucky enough to catch them after the first frost when the leaves have turned. The wind won’t let them stay for long. From there, you approach the Badlands, a maze of eroded cliffs and spires carved in prehistoric times. They are aptly named for their inhospitable reality, stark beauty and threatening nature. Little has changed since the beginning. These canyons have produced a colorful and foreboding history.

Dozens of old cars litter a remote portion of the Badlands that was once used as a bombing range during World War II.

Just before I entered the park I drove through the little town of Scenic. The Longhorn Bar survived there from 1906 until just a few years ago. It may well have been the most infamous bar in South Dakota. I can’t imagine the characters that sat on those bar stools made from iron tractor seats bolted to the angle iron. The bullet holes in the walls are real. Now, the skulls hung over the porch roof are melting away and falling off the board rack to which they were tied. A piece of plywood is nailed over the front door, which has become a place to note your feelings. The old sign reads:

Long Horn Saloon

1906 Scenic So Dak 1906

Whiskey Beer Wine Soda

Tobacco Lunch Dancing

Indians Allowed Lakota Iyos Nina Upo

You can sense the Pine Ridge. It lies across the White River just south of town. It’s a huge piece of land as large as the state of Connecticut. Much of it looks as it did 200 years ago, and much has happened there since. It was created as a place to contain some of the last of the warrior tribes. This can be a lonesome road because it’s little used except by the people who live out there, or by the occasional traveler wanting to see the wilder side of South Dakota. The highway gets bumpy as it crosses into the Badlands. It’s the gumbo soil on which the road is built. It’s always changing. I passed a big prairie dog town. There has been a real effort to kill them off, but with only limited success. Most drivers in that country are on a point A to B mission. Everything in between is wasted time. To me it’s a movie that’s different every time I drive it. The landscape changes with the seasons and light.

Another 20 miles and you come to the town on Interior. A survivor of its own history, these little towns next to the rez have always been a result of the collision of culture. It’s a rough and tumble place that still buys groceries at the old Badlands Store and socializes at either the Horseshoe or Wagon Wheel Bar. They have both seen wild times. The owner of the Wagon Wheel had a pet bull named Radar that he kept out back. Many a patron found out the hard way that old Radar wasn’t an easy ride. There is a gas pump across the street in a vacant lot. You can pay for gas at the bar — a good thing to know if you’re caught on Highway 44 after dark. It’s probably the only place to get gas between Kadoka and Rapid City.

It was there that my mother and I met Ansel Woodenknife at his cafe. We were the only visitors, and as usual I struck up a conversation while trying some of his special fry bread. He mixes and packages it behind the cafe. The ingredients are based on his grandmother’s recipe. He markets Woodenknife Fry Bread Mix all around the country.

Old car bodies were arranged in a circle with a cross through the middle as targets for B-17 pilots and machine gunners from the nearby Rapid City Army Air Base.

I have been finding and photographing old abandoned vehicles all over the West for many years. I’ve felt compelled to do so out of a sense of art and history, and to do it before it’s too late. When I told Ansel about my project, he said,”I know where there are some old cars.” He said that in 1942 the then Army Air Corps seized a big piece of the Pine Ridge and turned it into a bombing range. Much of the property was confiscated and the people living there were forced to leave.

Sometime around then, many old cars were gathered and hauled out to several remote places. They were arranged in the shape of a circle with a line crossing itself in the center — a giant bull’s eye to be practice bombed. Mostly the pilots used dummy bombs filed with sand. As Ansel told the story my imagination grew.”Yes,” he said.”Those cars are still there.” We agreed that maybe someday we could go out there and find them.

The years passed by, and almost every fall when I came home from Southern California, I’d ask him about the cars. Finally, after about seven years, he said,”Let’s go tomorrow.” I met him that morning and we headed west with our pickups to get into the rez. We had to ford the White River, aptly named for the sediment it carries out of the Badlands. We drove down a little dirt road to the riverbank and he said,”Water’s too deep.” We’d have to try another time.

Three more years passed and I was visiting a friend near Silver City. I called Ansel and he said,”I’ll meet you at the station in the morning.” He had his friend Leroy with him, a very gentle older Indian who helped Ansel around the place. I first met Leroy on an earlier visit when he was loading boxes of fry bread mix into Ansel’s truck.

Most of the cars are pre-World War II models, though some have been identified as late 1940s.

I hadn’t even had a chance to get coffee before I raced out of the Hills and across the Badlands to Interior. By that time I was getting hungry and had no idea when I might get something to eat. The Badlands Standard had two gas pumps and sold a little bit of everything. We gassed up, I got my coffee and had a cheese sandwich that was frozen solid as a rock. Then we headed off to the White River.

This time he thought we could get across. I was apprehensive. The river was wide and so cloudy you couldn’t see the bottom. I watched them go first. The water was up to the bumper. I let them get clear across before I drove in. No way was I going to lose my truck”Butch” to that white water.

We set out across the raw prairie, occasionally coming to a fence that we had to follow until we found a gate. We climbed into the back of Ansel’s truck and Leroy pointed south to a distant set of hills.”See that pine tree on that hill way over there? The second hill to the right is where I saw the planes fly over when I was a kid,” he said. We headed that way. The grass was grazed down close to the ground, so we left no track. There aren’t many roads across that land and we weren’t even close to one. We drove a long way and never even saw a cow.

Then, as we crested a little hill, there they were. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I wasn’t quite prepared for what I saw. There must have been 50 or 60 cars out there, mostly in a circle about 40 feet apart. They were rusty brown with the burnt gold grass up to their hips. They were mostly of a 1930s vintage with a couple of ’40s. Some had roofs caved in, but most of them were intact. The engines were gone, so they were just shells.

Both Native and non-Native farmers were moved off their land to make way for the bombing range.

After all these years I was finally there. After a bit, Ansel said,”We’re going to go now.” It had never occurred to me that they were going to leave me out there on my own. Could I even find my way back out? Soon the boys were gone, and I was left alone in that haunted cemetery of old cars. The grass was tall and leaning over in the wind. The cars creaked and the loneliness of that place settled into my bones. It reminded me of a little graveyard.

Shooting with film is becoming a lost art. All of my work has been on Kodachrome and most of it with a hand held camera. I like my old Nikon because it’s heavy and you can hold it still. You have to wait for a moment when the wind dies down and hold your breath for each shot. A couple of hours of that can be exhausting. I knew that I was a rare visitor, and that carried a responsibility to do my best. Sometimes you know that you were chosen for a moment in time, and I think that’s what happened on that day. Some of the cars had”OST” spray-painted on them in orange. Ansel told me that meant”Oglala Sioux Tribe.”

The days grow short in late October and I knew it would soon be time to go. I didn’t know how long it would take to find my way back. I think we had come about 14 miles, and things look different when you are going the other direction. I had to find the same spot to cross the river, maybe spend the night in the truck and continue the next day. I was lucky and got back across before dark. By that time the frozen sandwich seemed like a long time ago. I stopped at the only cafe (the Woodenknife had long since closed). The girl was curious about what I was doing out there. When I told her she said,”Oh, you’re the one. Ansel called my husband this morning and asked if he knew where those cars were?”

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Badlands and Good People

By John Andrews

This place isn’t Shannon County any longer. That’s because the members of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation didn’t want to live in a county named for a man complicit in the woes of their people. So they got out the vote and picked a new name, one more representative of the 13,500 people who live here. This is now Oglala Lakota County, and if you visit you’ll see the vibrant Lakota culture juxtaposed against places that tell the sometimes sad story of their past.

The county was formed from neighboring Fall River County in 1875 and named for Peter Shannon, chief justice of the Dakota Territorial Supreme Court from 1873 to 1881. After his judicial career, Shannon found his way onto a committee with former Gov. Newton Edmunds and James Teller, of Ohio, to negotiate land sales with tribes on the Great Sioux Reservation west of the Missouri River. They endeavored to acquire 11 million acres. In return the government promised 25,000 cows and 1,000 bulls to be divided across the remaining reservation land.

“The commission had to obtain 3/4 of adult male signatures per tribe,” says Jesse Short Bull, who helped lead the name-changing effort.”It was not a popular concept. The interpreter, Samuel D. Hinman, was accused of intimidating people to sign or face military removal. Hinman also acquired signatures from children as young as 5 years old at area day schools on the Pine Ridge Agency.”

It took the efforts of two more commissions before the signatures were finally obtained and the land transferred. Short Bull says it seems like Shannon was the odd man out on the commission, but he nevertheless played a role in shaping Lakota life.”When you think of the line of incompetent military officers to ill prepared Indian agents that the tribes had to deal with, Shannon was not in their category. He was a smart man, and vowed no wrong doing on his part when the Edmunds Commission was being questioned. With that being said, he was still part of the driving force that changed the course of history for the tribes and everything that came with that — the breakdown of Lakota culture and the introduction to a new way of life.”

So after 140 years of the Shannon name, the issue was placed on the November 2014 general election ballot. Residents voted overwhelmingly (2,161-526) for the change. After several legislative formalities, Shannon County officially became Oglala Lakota County.

Big Bat’s is the busiest gathering place in Pine Ridge.

The county contains the Pine Ridge Reservation, home to the Oglala Lakota Nation. It’s consistently ranked among the poorest counties in the nation, but there are bright spots. Mark Tilsen and Karlene Hunter created Native American Natural Foods in 2005. Headquartered in Kyle, they produce the Tanka Bar, a mix of cranberries and ground bison modeled after a traditional food called wasna. They began the venture with four employees, but now 16 people work on various Tanka products including Tanka Dogs, Tanka Bites and Tanka Wild, a derivation of the buffalo and cranberry bar that includes wild rice.

You can’t pass through Pine Ridge, the county’s largest city, without a stop at Big Bat’s. Sure, you can get gas, oil and junk food at this convenience store, but its walls also contain art by Lakota artists like Donald Montileaux. A fire devastated the store in 2001, but Bat and Patty Pourier invested $1 million and rebuilt the busiest gathering place in town.

You can find even more art inside The Heritage Center at the Red Cloud Indian School. Its annual summertime art show runs through Aug. 9 and features more than 50 Native artists each year.

Pow wows feature dancers in brightly colored regalia. They dance in several categories, including traditional, fancy and grass.

Summer is also pow wow season on South Dakota’s reservations. They feature men and women in traditional regalia dancing to the beat of the drum. Oglala Lakota College’s Graduation Wacipi is June 19-21 in Kyle, and the annual Oglala Lakota Nation Wacipi Rodeo and Fair is July 30-Aug. 2 in Pine Ridge.

If you want to explore nature and are up for rugged adventure, the Stronghold Unit of the Badlands National Park lies in the northern part of the county. Most travelers zooming across South Dakota on Interstate 90 only see the Badlands from a loop that runs south of Wall. The Stronghold is less developed and contains a mix of parkland and private land. Its 133,000 acres of rugged badlands and mixed grass prairie was used as an aerial gunnery range during World War II. It was added to the park in 1976.

Paved roads are few and far between in the Stronghold, but they are nonexistent in an even more remote section of the Badlands called the Palmer Creek Unit. It’s nearly inaccessible for vehicles and surrounded by private land. Only exploration on foot is recommended, but you must seek permission from landowners before crossing their land on the way to Palmer Creek.

Oglala Lakota County contains two remote regions of the Badlands. Photo by Carl Johnson.

One of the most visited spots in Oglala Lakota County is the Wounded Knee Massacre Site northeast of Pine Ridge. This is where, in December 1890, 300 men, women and children belonging to Big Foot’s band of Lakota died at the hands of the Seventh Cavalry. They are buried here in a mass grave.

It’s a sad chapter that people here will never forget, but with entrepreneurs like the Pouriers, Tilsen and Hunter the future is bright. After all, if you can change the name of your county then anything seems possible.

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth installment in an ongoing series featuring South Dakota’s 66 counties. Click here for previous articles.