The Black Hills, Part 1
In which Moominmama walks on sacred ground and learns the stories of the Lakota and other Plains tribes who consider these hills to be holy...
Tourist visits to Devil's Tower in eastern Wyoming picked up dramatically after Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the film continues to draw visitors, probably more than an interest in Native American stories. The KOA campground outside the National Monument plays the film for campers every night during the summer season.
Fortunately, that wasn't Moominmama's campground though she wouldn't mind seeing the movie again. Instead, she wanted to learn the Lakota side of the story.
Bears, both grizzly and black, were common in the area at one time. And as one of the native stories goes, seven sisters were playing in the woods when a giant bear set after them. They ran, desperate to escape. A star in the sky heard their cries and lifted the ground under them to bring them to safety. The bear tried to claw his way up but failed, leaving deep gouges on the sides. The story ends one of two ways. Brother Star either lifts the sisters into the sky where they became the Pleiades, or he calls on the birds, each flock lifting up and flying one sister home.
Science, however, says the appearance of the gouges is the result of lava, not bear claws. The rising lava hardened into columns when it cooled and shrank. Furthermore, the magma pushing up from the earth's crust did not rise up toward the heavens. It would have remained under dirt for millions of years, requiring the nearby Belle Fourche River to erode away the softer sandstone, leaving Bear Lodge behind.
Whatever story you embrace, it is a striking natural feature, enormous at 867 feet tall and visible for miles. It is a holy site and invites native pilgrimages similar to the Medicine Wheel in the Bighorn Mountains. Ribbons and scarfs and other gifts are tied onto trees around the base, which has a circumference of about a mile.
Bear Lodge is on the western side of the area known as the Black Hills but very much part of the iconography of Plains Indians. To protect the Black Hills, the Sioux Nation, a confederacy of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota, agreed to cede control over most of eastern South Dakota and other lands in exchange for keeping the Black Hills for their reservation back in 1868. These hills were that important to them.
The deal called for the Black Hills to be "set apart for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation" of the Sioux Nation. Per the terms, no future treaty to cede any of this land would be valid unless executed and signed by at least three-fourths of adult Sioux Nation men. 
Then George Armstrong Custer, exploring the hills in 1874, declared to the world that his expedition found gold. By 1876, a new treaty was drawn up, sorely lacking in the required number of Sioux signatures, giving up all control of the Black Hills in exchange for subsistence rations. Congress approved this new agreement in 1877, and the Black Hills were overrun by gold prospectors and other opportunists.
The Sioux fought back in court, arguing the new treaty was a violation of the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment. This court battle went on for decades! In one early decision, the Sioux's claim was ruled to be a "moral" one and thus not protected by any requirement to provide just compensation. Really?
Finally in 1980, the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled in the Sioux Nation's favor. The Sioux were entitled to more than $17 million for the lands taken from them in violation of the original treaty. Except they don't want the money. They want the land. That $17 million has been sitting unclaimed and is now valued around $2 billion.
Those first people enjoyed the fruits of living above the ground for all of the summer and fall. But winter came, and they were hungry and cold. They went back to the cave and begged to come inside.
The Great Spirit was not going to let them return after they violated his edict, but he didn't want them to die either. Instead, he gave them great wooly coats and four hooves with which to traverse the snow-covered ground, and two horns to defend themselves. They became the bison.
When the rest of the tribe emerged from underground, with the Great Spirit's blessing, the people were reunited with their brothers, and the Lakota and the bison would be forever connected.
Moominmama did get inside of Wind Cave on a tour that takes advantage of an entrance blasted out as part of the search for gold - fortunately away from the Lakota site.
Failing to find any, the original explorers fell back on tourism. This is not the only cave discovered in this area, which is rich in limestone and filled with underground tunnels, many miles of which have yet to be explored!
One final note: since becoming a national park, both bison and black-footed ferrets have been restored to this big grassland ecosystem on the southern side of the hills. The ferrets were believed to be extinct until a small population was discovered in Wyoming in 1981. Those were successfully bred in captivity and reintroduced in South Dakota. The ferrets eat prairie dogs, so bringing the ferrets back requires protecting a sizeable and healthy prairie dog community, which also exists near Wind Cave.
Bison were brought back to South Dakota starting in 1913 with a small herd from the Bronx Zoo, combined with animals brought from Yellowstone National Park.
They now wander all over Wind Cave National Park and adjacent Custer State Park, leaving platter-sized pies on the hiking trails. I've seen them before in Yellowstone, but they remain very impressive creatures. And as important to the Lakota, I believe, as the landmarks they cherish in the Black Hills.
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