The wide-open spaces of the Great Plains roll away
to infinity to either side of I-90 in SOUTH DAKOTA
. Though the land is more green and fertile east of the Missouri
River, vast numbers of high-season visitors speed straight on
through to the spectacular southwest, site of the Badlands
and the adjacent Black Hills - two of the most
dramatic, mysterious and legend-impacted tracts of land in the
US. For whites, they encapsulate a wagonload of American notions
about heritage and the taming of the West. To Native Americans
they are ancient, spiritually resonant places.
The science-fiction severity of the Badlands resists
fitting into easy tourist tastes. The bigger, more user-friendly
Black Hills, home of that most patriotic of icons, Mount
Rushmore , have been subjected to greater exploitation
(dozens of physical, historical and downright commercial attractions,
and the mining of gold and other metals), but encourage more active
exploration (via hiking trails, mountain lakes and streams, and
scenic highways).
Time and Hollywood have mythologized the larger-than-life
personalities for whom the Dakota Territory served as a stomping
ground: Custer and Crazy Horse
battled here for supremacy over the plains, while Wild
Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane were denizens
of the once-notorious Gold Rush town of Deadwood
. On a more contemporary note, Kevin Costner's award-winning
Dances with Wolves (1990), shot in the state, boosted
South Dakota's tourism image, though Costner's own ambitious development
plans for the Black Hills have meant that he himself has fallen
foul of the Sioux.
Sioux tribes dominated the plains
from the eighteenth century, having gradually been pushed westwards
from the Great Lakes by the encroaching whites. To these nomadic
hunters, unlike the gun-toting Christian settlers and federal
politicians, the concept of owning the earth was utterly alien.
They fought hard to stay free: the Sioux are the only Indian nation
to have defeated the United States in war and forced it to sign
a treaty (in 1868) favorable to them. Even so, they were compelled,
in the face of a gung-ho gold rush, to relinquish the sacred Black
Hills, and ultimately the choice lay between death or confinement
on reservations. For decades their history and culture were outlawed;
until the 1940s it was illegal to teach or even speak their language,
Lakota. More Sioux live on South Dakota's six reservations now
than dwelled in the whole state during pioneer days, but their
prospects are often grim. Nowhere is the leg-acy of injustice
better symbolized than at Wounded Knee , on the
Oglala Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation - scene of
the infamous 1890 massacre by the US Army, and also of a prolonged
"civil disturbance" by the radical American Indian Movement
in 1973.
Today Native American traditions are celebrated
by music, dance and socializing at powwows ,
held in summer on the reservations; the state tourist office can
supply dates and locations. Apart from powwows, South Dakota summers
are taken up with historical celebrations, volksmarches (a friendly
sort of community walking exercise), ethnic festivals and rodeos.
The 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition
will be celebrated between 2003 and 2006; check for event details.
The state has 170 parks and recreation areas for hikers and campers.
In winter, downhill skiing is limited to Terry
Peak and Deer Mountain outside Lead in the Black
Hills; cross-country skiing and snowmobiling are more prevalent.
