Tuesday, July 18: 13 Hours, Three States, Two Nations

When I went to the motel office to drop off the key card, an older Korean man I’m willing to bet was the father of the check-in clerk greeted me by name and asked if I had slept well, which I had. Though this could strike one as creepy, I suppose, I’d guess he noticed what room I came out of and checked the name before I got there, a nice touch of customer service.

Getting another early start… Actually, since I keep mentioning early starts, I should explain that I had gradually shifted my sleep schedule over the two weeks before the trip, precisely for the purpose of early starts. A night owl, I usually keep to a midnight-to-8:30 sleep routine. Not the best sleeper, I find that maintaining a set schedule on weekdays helps. I have to allow extra wind-down time in bed to get my required 7 hours of actual sleep. On the trip I was on a 10-to-6:30 schedule except when staying with friends, my thinking being that even with a breakfast and shower every other day (daily if I’d gotten especially sweaty), I could make a VC or museum within an hour or so’s drive when it opened. That part didn’t really work out, because opening times ranged wildly between 8 and 10. But they almost always closed between 4 and 5, so the early shift was the right decision to get through those locations before getting booted out. All that said, when I say I got an early start in this, I mean I debarked the bed before 6:30, and thus left home even sooner than planned.

Two other sleep decisions worked out perfectly. I have gastric reflux, though with the rare symptomology of almost never getting heartburn, but instead suffering bad sore throats—as often as every couple months when I was younger. It is well-controlled today through a bunch of modified behaviors, including not eating less than four hours before bedtime and raising the head of my bed slightly so the gastric juices run downhill. Given the latter was not possible on the road, and the former could not be guaranteed, I slept “up” on a pile of pillows at a 30-degree angle or so. Many of the Founding Fathers always slept that way, thinking it healthier, and at least in this case it was. Only twice did I get the warning sign of a throat tickle, which I addressed by gargling before bed with warm water and salt I’d thrown in the traveling medicine cabinet for that purpose. Each time I woke up with no issues.

Anyway, as I was saying… Getting another early start, and no longer needing to see the Robideaux Pass, I headed back up Broadway to pick up US 26 and the pioneer trails on the north edge of Scottsbluff. The highway took me into Wyoming. One of the historical marker pullouts I hit told a too-typical story on its unusually low, metal, blue-background markers.

Three miles south, where Horseshoe Creek entered the North Platte, the largest gathering of Plains nations in historical times took place in 1851, between 8,000 and 15,000 people.1 Marker information supplemented from: https://americanindian.si.edu/nk360/plains-treaties-horse-creek/#introduction Among them were Sioux, Cheyenne, Crows, and five other nations. Some were traditional enemies, their camps placed apart from each other. Along with 270 soldiers there to keep the peace were two EAs familiar to the NAs, “mountain man Jim Bridger and Jesuit Father Peter De Smet… who worked among the Indians 50 years,” a marker said. They were there to negotiate a peace treaty with the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs, and they succeeded. The NAs agreed to let the government build roads and bases on NA lands. The U.S. agreed to protect them from EA attacks, and to give the nations $50,000 per year in supplies for five years, about $2 million in today’s money. This may seem low, but note that they weren’t selling the land, just allowing certain uses of it.

I guess you know what happened regarding the protection promise. I doubt you’ll be surprised to learn only the first of those five payments was ever delivered. Yet the nations held the peace 13 years, until deciding they had to resist the flood of white invaders.

That treaty meeting was supposed to happen at Fort Laramie, the most important army base of the Indian Wars. Nearing it on the approach road off 26, I spotted an old metal bridge and pulled over for the usual reason: I needed to pee. First I took in the sign indicating just how old. It was built in 1875 by the army, becoming “a vital link” to all of the other outposts and Wild West sites we’ll visit later on this trip. Then I went under the abutment and pee’d next to, but not directly on, this historical artifact.

I already knew I was going to be witnessed. Under the cantilevered edge of the adjacent modern-ish road bridge was a long line of bird nests, their residents swirling about in the space between and above the two spans. Like anyone who has seen Hitchcock’s “The Birds”—or Mel Brooks’ “High Anxiety”2 The former by legendary British director Alfred Hitchcock, made in 1963, features a series of deadly attacks by bird flocks. The latter, a 1977 parody of Hitchcock films, spoofs it by having Brooks’ character get chased—and then covered in white poop. —I had to fight the urge to immediately retreat to the car. Instead I went back up to the (old) bridge and enjoyed the mystery of their behavior, along with thoughts of the many types of people walking by me for 150 years.

Moment later I was at Fort Laramie. Flush those images you have from old movies of a U.S. Army fort in the Wild West. The real thing was much larger, rarely had a wall around it, and often had African-American soldiers, as reported earlier. The biggest of the forts was Laramie. For the first half-hour or so, I had the place nearly to myself, a rectangle of low buildings arrayed around a soccer-pitch sized open space, the parade ground. A lone ranger was languorously walking the far side unlocking doors for the day. I gave him space to do his thing as he came around, though glancing over my shoulder in case he wanted to greet me, which he did not. We shall reverse his course in slow detail. Your understanding the ultimate Western fort means I can just point out the differences at subsequent examples.

Before I got that far, I learned something impressive about the Mormons. Many of those unable to afford wagons and the animals to pull them not only walked from Illinois to Utah, they pulled carts the whole way. These hand carts could haul up to 500 pounds, but typically carried half that, which is daunting enough. Talk about your stressful day at work, day after day.

Many of them passed right through here. Standing at the edge of the parade ground, I was in the most important crossroads of the European-American West. Each of the trails passed through this spot, as did the Pony Express, stagecoach lines, and that first national telegraph line, as well as countless Native Americans, traders, mountain men, and famous names we’ve already mentioned. As the White Invasion moved beyond this point, Laramie took over from Fort Hays as the primary supply depot and troop base. Most major military campaigns of the era launched from here. Though many of the buildings were torn down for lumber after the fort was closed in 1890, others were used as homes and businesses and could be restored to reflect the fort’s earlier days when the Park Service took over. The first building on the right in the pic above was the fort trading post, which probably ripped off every group named above, and also housed the first post hospital.

Farther down the line stands the oldest known building in Wyoming, from 1849, with the intriguing name “Old Bedlam.” Enlisted men lived in barracks then as now, but officers got small homes, often duplexes or row houses, smaller for bachelors and larger for married folks. Old Bedlam was built for that purpose originally, also served as offices, and housed the post commander and his wife while the Civil War was hitting its climax back East. One wonders whether he felt like he was missing out on the action or glad to be out of it. No doubt his wife thought the latter. Then again, maybe he mistreated her.

You’ve heard me talk about reconstructed buildings; this can mean different things, so let’s get into the weeds on Old Bedlam. Panels inside detailed the process. When surveyed in 1939, the porch and second-story balcony were sagging and parts missing; windows and floors had gaping holes; the paint was long gone; and chimneys had collapsed. But the bones, the adobe and brick walls, were sound. Members of the Civilian Conservation Corps, a federal government program to provide jobs during the Great Depression, stabilized it. They rebuilt the roof structure and shingles, poured new concrete footings for the porch, and rebuilt the foundation using sandstone instead of the original clay, which wasn’t durable enough. They added new wooden decorative elements along the roofline, boarded up the windows, and ripped out rotting wood inside but didn’t replace it.

After World War II, the wood siding was rebuilt, with original boards reused where possible, and the porch decks and stairs reconstructed. They used nails cut from iron using a late-1700s process, known unimaginatively as “cut nails,” instead of the wire nails you’re used to, so they would look historically accurate.

In 1960 the Park Service decided to restore the building to how it looked in 1867. (The panel didn’t explain why that year was chosen.) Off again came the exterior siding, along with the interior wood facing on the walls and remaining flooring. Steel and concrete was used to reinforce everything. New chimneys were built, reusing some of the old bricks. New pine floors were installed, as well as doors, porch stairways, shutters, and window glass. The roof has been re-shingled since. One half of the building was furnished like officer housing, and the other as the post commander’s office. Basically the only visible portion original to the time is what you see to the right, the structural walls exposed for view in one small section.

Mind you, I am glad they keep whatever they can. My point to detailing this is, whenever you go to a historic building, it is more than fair—I first mistyped this as “fear,” which may be appropriate—to wonder how much of it is actually historic. When I visited the boyhood home of Mark Twain in Missouri while in grad school, the tour guide took us to his room and had us imagine him slipping out the window. Yet a small photograph in the gift shop made clear that wing of the house was entirely gone at some point. The room was built in thin air. In contrast, other places I’ve been, more often those of stone and brick, are largely as they were hundreds or even thousands of years ago.

In summation, there is a difference between restoring a building and completely reconstructing it. In this case, Old Bedlam is not the oldest building in Wyoming. It is, at best, the oldest structural walls in the state, around which a new building was constructed 80 through 60 years ago. When you visit old buildings, if the tour guide isn’t clear, ask. If they don’t know, assume you’re mostly walking on and in new construction that occupies the space the old building was in. We’ll visit a couple places that freely admit this.

Something I failed to ask is why the building was called “Old Bedlam,” which kinda bums me out now as I realize neither the Fort Laramie pamphlet from the Park Service nor the Internet tells me. A couple sites qualified it as the oldest military building in Wyoming without saying what was older.

Past some ruins of more officers’ quarters, I lingered at the northwest corner of the parade ground, picturing the cavalry drilling there, feeling the rhythm of the horses in my feet. Can you see them?

An officers’ duplex at the west end of the grounds was unremarkable except for one bit of decor: a stereoscope, seemingly the same model I inherited from my grandfather.

Behind that building I found a trail down to the Laramie River, which curls around the fort. A trading post—the Western-movie type of fort, though with adobe walls—was built here in the bend of the river in 1841, providing seasonal services to emigrants passing through in the warmer months. The government bought it eight years later as the start of Fort Laramie.

A marker just down the river told of another group that spent time at both forts. From the earliest days of mostly French Canadian fur traders crossing into Native lands, many also crossed into Native women. These rendezvous resulted in people who became known as “métis.” For more than a century they filled vital roles as intermediaries between EAs and NAs. As the Indian Wars came to a close and Eastern-style towns took hold, snobbery took over. The critical role the métis played in bringing peace to the West was conveniently forgotten, and they were pushed out of so-called “polite society,” which of course is always polite only to those allowed to be in it.

The old walls of the one-time headquarters, theatre, and school still stood. Another problem with the old Westerns is most ignore the fact families joined the troops on base, just like they do today. The school was the first in the state, set up three years after the fort’s founding, a panel in front said. But finding dedicated teachers was a problem. Early on chaplains were used, with mixed results. Then civilians were hired on one-year contracts, most of whom felt a year was enough. Sometimes soldiers filled in for extra pay, 35 cents per day (around $8 now)—low pay for public school teachers is an old issue. One former student said, “‘if the teacher got tired of teaching, he got drunk and (purposely) lost his job.’” Two teachers were deserters wearing iron shackles.

The first guardhouse Surely they found that better than the guardhouse at the edge of a bluff above the river. The reconstruction of the second of three was disturbing. I stepped to the edge of a thick-wood cell, the sides of which I could have touched at the same time, with a single vent for air above the door and no windows. I could not make myself step in. Far worse were the remains of the cells of the first guardhouse, found during reconstruction of the second. Repeat offenders were held in brick cells five feet high and long and maybe three wide, sometimes up to two weeks, with one meal each day of bread and water. “That’s just evil,” I remarked aloud. Just like solitary confinement today. Evil, and yet ineffective, given the persistently high recidivism rates. Perhaps the U.S. should try a different approach to criminals, after 400 years of punishment failing to stop crime?

A short distance farther along the slope was the foundation of a state-of-the-art latrine, as of 1886, a rectangular box extending beyond the edge of the bluff. It was meant to be comfortable enough that the men would use it, as opposed to less sanitary options. A pipe led effluent away from the camp… and into the river.

Nearby a model tipi was set up. I’ve seen many, so I wasn’t sure why I was stopping to take a shot. ‘Why is this picture of a tipi interesting?’ I wondered. The answer quickly followed. Because it’s in the right part of the country, ‘unlike all the fake ones in the East.’ I’ll have a much better representation for you a couple days’ hence. This one was meant to represent the many Natives who came through this fort for trading or treaties. The original residents of the Plains more often did business with EAs, including the army, than fought them. The fact that most forts did not have palisade walls reflects the fact they felt no threat of a mass attack.

A marker here noted that Fort Laramie was basically the U.S. embassy to the Northern Plains nations, who would gather in force across the river (also where emigrants and visiting military units camped). The treaties signed here created the reservations in the region and their related agencies. By 1890, with peace finally imposed on the Native nations, Fort Laramie was closed.

I looped around to the left of my entry point to newer cavalry barracks built as the Indian Wars heated up. In some ways, barracks life has little changed. The enlisted men slept in a line of bunks upstairs; a marker by the foundation of an earlier set claimed the term “bunkie” came from Wild West barracks, referring to a soldier’s best buddy. Downstairs was the kitchen and mess hall. Best of all for me, this one now features modern bathrooms.

The remains of the third hospital is on a rise behind the barracks, and brought some surprises. For example, it was built in what seems like the worst possible place for various reasons: in the first post cemetery! Soldiers moved six bodies during construction, but others remain in place. A marker asks you to stay on the trails and treat the area as you would a burial ground. On the plus side, it was remarkably modern for its day, 1873, a 12-room facility with plastered interior walls for easy cleaning and verandas for fresh-air convalescence. Civilians could use it, too, for $1 a night. How’s this for proof that health care costs are out of control in this country? That equals about $30 now. Finally, I had not heard of the construction method for the hospital. Equivalent to concrete buildings today, it used “lime-grout”—burnt limestone or “quicklime”, gravel and water—poured into wooden forms. First tried here, the army realized the result was cheap and sturdy, and used it on most buildings at the fort afterward.

After a brief debate, I made myself not go to a distant marker. Again, if I stopped at every marker, I’d never get to the Northwest. “Naturally,” I joked aloud to no one as I walked downhill, “that would have been the best fact from the trip.”

As I returned from the rise, a tour group was arriving. I couldn’t figure out what they were all carrying.

On the way to the Visitor Center, I stepped up to a prairie wagon of the type many emigrants used, narrower and thus easier to handle than the more famous Conestogas. I first waited for a lady to take a picture. She was African-American. We Southerners have an insidious habit of inserting race where it is entirely irrelevant, but that’s not why I have made a point herein of mentioning the race of the people behind the desk at historic sites. I’ll jump ahead to report only two on the entire trip were black, and one of those was at Nicodemus. In my experience the percentage of African-Americans and Hispanic Americans and NAs interested in history and places of natural beauty is equivalent to that of European-Americans, yet the vast majority of travelers I ran into were white. Granted, the majority of the places I visited were run by EAs back in the day, but I went to plenty that were NA-centric; several of these forts had entire African-American regiments; and national parks have no race. Even at Nicodemus, the Junior Ranger guy, a couple that pulled up in a camper, and me, all white.

I don’t have the answer. But I suspect that, along with the fact that on average minorities have lower discretionary income in the U.S., the lack of representation among those who greet them plays a role in discouraging a wider range of travelers. I know some of my conservative friends will argue it shouldn’t make a difference, but what matters is, it does. I can speak from some experience, having felt out of place at times in India and Brazil, and even in business events I attended in America sponsored by African-Americans. The fact relatively few white people show up to those makes the point.

Now, finally, I went to the VC, housed in what used to be the food storehouse. I kinda did things backwards, I told one of the staff, by touring the fort and then hitting the VC. He smiled politely, but was not amused. As it turned out, my order of events was just fine, because the few VC exhibits added little to what I’d already learned. One trope of the Western movie was brought to real life, though, in the form of an actual Gatling gun, one of which was at the fort in its heyday. As you likely know, this was an early machine gun, a clever design that placed 10 guns in a circle around a central axis. Turning a handle rotated and fired them one at a time, as bullets were fed from the top out of a metal box open on the bottom.

On my way back toward the Sage a mystery was solved: The tour group had been carrying fold-up camp chairs in bags, now arrayed in multiple semicircles across from the trading post for a lecture while the group was led up the same path I’d taken.

I left the fort with a sense of satisfaction. I had not been aware of the significance of Fort Laramie when I added it to the itinerary, merely knowing the name. Now by virtue of getting into my car and going, I had visited a place of vital significance to every type of human who lived in the American West.

A short backtrack down 26 led to a left, taking US 85 almost directly north on a slow rise up the arid but beguiling Rawhide Creek Valley. This was, as planned, my biggest day of backtracking, making my way northeast to catch a number of major sites. Yet I had checked online and the atlas, trying to avoid the minor northwest track this highway eventually takes, forced by the creek’s course. I didn’t find one in this relatively road-less area, and I’m glad. Because the next intersection to an eastward route, 20 miles up, was in Lusk, which had a couple surprises to share.

As usual, I was looking for a bathroom by this point. For those of you of a certain age, or a certain condition like pregnancy, allow me to present my list of free bathroom locations you might not have thought of:

public libraries

hospitals small enough to offer free parking

other public buildings, like City Hall in Columbia

grocery stores

big-box stores

pharmacies

The first of those categories presented itself in Lusk in a surprising package. Andrew Carnegie was a terrible person. He built a fortune in the mid-1800s as a steel and railroad baron through bribery, cheating, safety shortcuts, and ripping off the workers those shortcuts didn’t kill. Then he turned around and gave away many of his ill-gotten gains, which left him… still rich. Does this story sound familiar? Modern billionaires are doing the same thing. Ricardo Semlar, a Brazilian who turned his father’s manufacturing company around by adopting radically progressive management practices, expressed my position perfectly. He said people who gave away millions after their career made too much money in the first place.

One of the ways Carnegie gave away money he didn’t earn in the first place was building more than 1,600 libraries across the country. What is unusual about the one in Lusk is not only that it is still standing, but that is still a library! I can’t find a stat on how many still are. But the vast majority I have seen serve other functions, as community centers and museums and such. I looped around the outside, past the door I’d first noticed on the corner, to the extension built off the back. The architect had nicely borrowed some architectural elements from the old building. Stepping up into the original building, now used as the children's’ section, I was enthralled to find the interior largely intact. I went back down and asked at the desk if they had anything on the history, and was pointed to single-panel brochure reporting the building opened in 1919.

Sharing with the librarian my surprise at the building being in its original use, a man standing at the desk interjected that he’d heard 75% were still in use. “As a library,” I emphasized, and the librarian and I listed off other uses we knew of. He shut up.

I let fluids out in the bathroom. The Sage was getting low on his. The only gas station in town was horribly overpriced, however, and that for 85 octane. A number of stations across the West offered this lower antiknock value, and the usual higher ones, but always with 87 as well. His whole life, the Sage has only gotten 87. I crossed my fingers and put in two gallons of 85, enough to ensure I would get to the next town that I knew would have any fuel.

From that corner I headed directly east on US 20 to a disturbing sight. A railroad traveled with us on the left, which turned out to be the Union Pacific, the first to cross the continent. I’ve been to the spot in Utah where the last spike was driven in 1869. First spotting some crews working along the tracks and thinking little of it, I then realized they were removing derailed train cars. I looped back for a better look. Coming so soon after a major spill of hazardous materials in Ohio, it was sobering. There were seven or eight cars, but the fact the road was open suggested there was no danger. A news article I just looked up confirms these were the last of 21 coal cars thrown off eight days earlier, with no injuries to workers. Seeing the results of a derailment added a new experience to my life’s list.

Back across the border the road turned into yet another Scenic Byway. I’d already lost count of how many I’d been on this trip, and many more would come, a happy side effect of sticking mostly to two-lane roads. This one passed swales and bluffs and pockets of trees until I came to Fort Robinson State Park. As I turned into the entrance road beside a substantial building, families were pouring out of vehicles parked on the right-hand side, some with kids in bathing suits, which I found confusing. We pulled over and I looked at the building, trying to discern if there was a place to buy tickets, before realizing the clumps of humans were going to and from a small trailer on the left side ahead. There I learned a broader recreation park had been build around the old fort site, which I was already in, with campgrounds, a lodge, trails, and a swimming pool.

I, however, I told the lady in the trailer, was only here for the history. She pulled out a map on plain paper and started circling spots. I bought a day ticket for the Sage’s dashboard. A short straightaway and a right brought me to the Historical Society Museum at the base of the parade ground. I figured this would be a quick spin. I was wrong.

The lady around my age at the front desk offered an unusual perspective. She had been born at Fort Robinson! It did not close as a military installation until after World War II, and then was used as a U.S. Dept. of Agriculture research station until the 1970s. She moved back after 18 years away, so if she didn’t have the answer to any questions I had, she told me, she would know who would.

We’ll visit larger collections of NA artifacts, but I will use one here to introduce Red Cloud. Against existing treaty terms and the advice of frontiersman Jim Bridger, mentioned earlier, a man named John Bozeman arrogantly blazed a trail right through Native American hunting grounds to new-found gold fields in Montana. The army, as usual, interceded on the side of the white treaty breakers, to bad results. It then invited NAs to Fort Laramie in 1866 to negotiate a treaty permitting the Bozeman Trail. Stupidly, it sent more troops into the contested drainage of the Powder River at the same time. Red Cloud, a leader of the Oglala Lakota (“Sioux”), refused to sign the new treaty, and led other refusers to war—a war they ultimately won, because they forced a treaty two years later at Laramie that restated Native ownership of lands north of the Platte River. The museum had armbands Red Cloud wore, their size suggesting he was a buff dude. His nation was given a reservation in this area, and the government “agency” set up in 1873 to provide services related to the treaty was named for him. We’ll visit it soon, because Fort Robinson was built a year later to keep order at the agency.

Another artifact struck me as a poignant exemplar of the Indian Wars. Its placard repeated its story: In South Dakota, one May day in 1877, “There were two Indians of Crazy Horse’s gang who came to stampede our horses at 4 a.m., one was killed and this moccasin was on his foot.”

I promised to focus on the differences from forts after Laramie, so here we go:

The post surgeon in the 1880s, Dr. Walter Reed, went on to prove that mosquitoes carried yellow fever. You may recognize his name, as the military medical center used by U.S. presidents in suburban Washington is named for him. The museum displayed prescriptions written by him, illegible of course, but at least I could read his signature.

During World War II, Fort Robinson watched over a nearby prisoner-of-war camp for German soldiers. An exhibit explains they were brought back in empty supply ships and used to replace American farm workers off at war. Eventually 3,000 men were here, treated so well that only one tried to escape. This was the basis for one complaint of African-American soldiers, who returned to worse treatment in the U.S. than the German enemies had received. Another first for me was seeing a POW’s uniform.

Fort Robinson was used to train dogs for K-9 duty in the Army during the war. The museum displayed a kennel and a picture of a dog chasing an “agitator” while training.

A picture of another dog from, I’m guessing, World War I (based on the uniforms), manages to be both cute and disturbing at the same time:

The Ninth Cavalry, an African-American unit, was headquartered here for 11 years. Ten of whose members won the Congressional Medal of Honor, this nation’s highest military award. They left behind the most specific and touching artifact of the Buffalo Soldiers I’ve ever seen: A portion of their regimental china.

The Ninth was the spearhead of the response to the Ghost Dancers. By 1890 the Indian Wars seemed over, with all of the Native nations in the U.S. forced onto reservations. Many people had converted to Christianity, under varying degrees of willingness and completeness. A couple of these had dreams foretelling the return of Native Americans’ power and traditional ways with the aid of the ghosts of their ancestors. Cults that combined Native and Christian thought arose from those dreams. Believers thought performing a “Ghost Dance” would speed things along, and shirts or dresses worn during these dances would make the wearer bullet-proof. This would lead to tragedy. I knew the story well, but had never seen one of those “bullet-proof” shirts.

After checking with the fort-born volunteer as to the location of the POW camp, the Sage and I made a loop around what I now knew to be the “new” parade ground centered on the fort expansion of the later 1800s, with a newer assortment of the same categories of buildings found at Laramie. Behind the Park HQ building was a small natural history museum—I decided to skip the $3 entry fee, but use their bathroom. Beyond it was an equine hospital, a standard horse barn with a nonstandard operating room. That featured a tall frame for holding patients in place, and something I should have realized existed but hadn’t: a vaguely horse-shaped operating table with straps, hinged such that the horse can be attached and anesthetized and the table tilted down.

Across the highway was the original site of Fort Robinson, around the “old” parade ground. This held the primary reason I was here.

The quote about the moccasin above mentioned an Oglala named Crazy Horse, who was a highly successful war leader, starting with Red Cloud’s War. He refused to sign the treaty ending that conflict in 1868, instead leading his people deeper into Native-held territory in today’s South Dakota and Montana. They helped defeat Army units on the Rosebud River and, far more famously today, at the Little Bighorn.

As you might expect, the Army responded in force, and Crazy Horse was harassed into surrendering at the Red Cloud Agency near Fort Robinson the next year. After he was asked to help subdue another tribe on the move, the Nez Perce, a translator bungled his response (perhaps purposely) to sound like a threat against whites. The general at the fort ordered his arrest. Near the guardhouse, he supposedly struggled when he realized he was to be imprisoned, and was bayoneted in the back by a private. I knew when creating the itinerary that the guardhouse was here, though it turned out to be a reconstruction on the same spot.

I moved the Sage to a parking lot nearby, walked to the guardhouse, and then went to check out the rocks-in-concrete monument a few paces in front of the door. This claimed to mark the spot of Crazy Horse’s killing. I’m glad I did not know at the time there is some controversy on this point.3 See “The Death of Crazy Horse: Fables and Forensics”: https://www.historynet.com/death-crazy-horse-fables-forensics/ I’m not glad I had the sequence of events wrong, conflating it with those around the similar murder of Sitting Bull, which we’ll get to. The bottom line is, I thought Crazy Horse was killed bring taken out of the guardhouse, but instead he was being pulled toward it as mentioned. So I imagined the killing with him facing in the wrong direction. But my feeling would have been no different: a profound sadness tinged with anger that tied me to the spot for some minutes.

I explored more of the old parade ground, and next took the Sage to the old graveyard, a few tombstones behind a low, plain, chain-link fence. Most of the graves were moved to a national cemetery. Finally, I tried to follow the museum volunteer’s guidance and the map I had to the site of the Pine Ridge Agency. The latter was missing some key details, however, and I ended up driving past some off-duty park workers who gave me curious looks and into the park’s workshop and equipment complex. As another worker began to approach, I held up the map to my face in irritation and made my way back out. The next turn was more definitive, and after a couple miles on dirt roads, passing a sign pointing out the POW camp location in a small valley, I pulled up to an empty square of grass mown out of the surrounding prairie.

Here once stood the Red Cloud Agency, which in its day looked like a mini-fort with a trading post in the middle. The treaties between the U.S. and Native governments often featured promises from the feds to provide food, clothing, seeds, and equipment every year. This is where the local Natives came to get those supplies. Of course, the beef was often rancid, the grain infected with meal worms, the clothing and equipment cheaply made and insufficient for the population, etc. Part of this was due to usually corrupt government agents. Commerce happened here as well, such as Natives trading furs for more goods. Behind the monument in the pic below is a rectangular depression that was the basement of the trading post.

I wandered the grounds, imagining the Oglala wandering about with me, mixing with soldiers and mountain men and government functionaries. Crazy Horse surrendered here. Except for all of them, I was alone. The wind blew about my ears, in a way hard to experience in the East. Conveying this experience, the sounds and the wide skies, to Easterners is difficult, so I decided to try an experiment. The pictures in this were taken with a Sony Handycam. I raised it to the horizon, hit the Record button on the back end, and slowly spun in place taking a panorama shot. Checking the results that night, I was pleased with everything except the scruffing of my Converse All-Stars in the dry grass. I decided to take more, minimizing the feet movement, and have been gratified by the response of those who viewed them.

Twenty minutes farther down the highway I filled up the tank in Chadron, the town named for a relative of my new buddy in Abingdon, Va. There is a Museum of the Fur Trade, where his ancestor was probably mentioned, but I didn’t particularly want to learn the details of that industry. So on we headed, another half-hour to a left in tiny Rushville, up WY 87 straight toward the angriest-looking cloud I had seen on the trip. When I got to the South Dakota state border, I was also at a national border. There was a small South Dakota sign, and a big “Welcome to Oglala Sioux Nation” sign. I entered, briefly, the massive Pine Ridge Reservation, passing a welcome sign to Lakota country. But first, I needed to pee.

Fortunately I had just seen a live Dollar Tree and dead Family Dollar a block apart, which is interesting, given those are part of the same company. I went in and looked for a drink. The shelves, in and outside of the coolers, had a lot of empty space, yet people were shopping for food. I settled for a cherry soft drink, as no juices were available, and then looked for a bathroom, which turned out to be locked. A manager had just came out of the office, and he asked the nearest clerk where the key was. She was friendly as I checked out. I was the only non-NA in the joint the entire time, workers or customers.

I ran back to the Sage as the cloud sat above and began to throw rocks at me, or so it sounded on the roof. I couldn’t actually see hail, but if it wasn’t, these were the heaviest rain drops I’ve ever experienced. I worried about the Sage. I also thought that this was going to make my next stop interesting, it being entirely outdoors, and the most mandatory stop of the trip not involving friends. It was too early to bunk in for the night, and there was no motel closer than Chadron, nearly an hour behind me.

In I drove to a foreign country, passing through rolling, broken topography with scattered trees, farms and homes. Then the trees proliferated and I was entering the town of Pine Ridge past a church and a possibly closed school building. At the main intersection I turned right and drove through a mix of pre-fab and old concrete single-story commercial buildings, and by a Pizza Hut. After maybe a mile I was out of town as the sun reappeared magnificently, having defeated the demonic cloud.

At the final step I followed the directions on the itinerary, barely making a left before an immediate right onto a dirt double-track that made a good attempt at removing my kidneys through my anus. When I reached the top of a small rise, I was confused. There was a cemetery there, as I expected, but something seemed off. Mostly, I had thought the road would be smoother, and was expecting a church behind it. Down the hill I spotted a large historical marker and decided to try the other side’s driveway, which was smoother. After I pulled across the road, the sign confirmed I was in the right place. After reading both sides—because the front side had arrows spray painted on the bottom to make sure readers knew there was more—I walked down to flats behind it within a distant half-circle of trees indicating a creek bend.

When the Ghost Dances broke out, the government’s Indian agents got nervous. They sent the army to round up the usual suspects. One of them was Sitting Bull.

A few years after they agreed to move to Pine Ridge, gold was found in the Black Hills, roughly 90 miles northwest of where I stood. The Black Hills were and remain sacred to the Sioux, and were entirely theirs by the treaty in which they agreed to the move. You can guess what happened. Sitting Bull was among the many who resisted a new white invasion. He was among the leaders of various nations who won a battle I mentioned on the Rosebud, and later took out Custer—after Sitting Bull predicted the victory based on a trance. His success as a war leader led eventually to his becoming principal chief of the Sioux. Despite numerous victories, with buffalo supplies dwindling due largely to over-hunting by whites, Sitting Bull guided his people into Canada. But that government refused to provide supplies to a U.S. tribe, and Sitting Bull eventually surrendered his nation, which returned here. After an amazing life twist I’ll cover later, he was living at a reservation on the eastern border of the state when the Ghost Dance movement began. Though he wasn’t involved, the agent had him arrested, and he was killed as his warriors tried to protect him.

By December 1890, the aforementioned Red Cloud was on the rez negotiating for a peaceful way forward. Already starving due to inadequate crops, hunting, and government supplies, and fearing further violence, some Lakota headed for Pine Ridge from smaller reservations. A band of around 350 Miniconjou Lakota under Sitanka (“Big Foot”), including some Ghost Dancers, headed this way. The 7th Cavalry—Custer’s old outfit—was sent to round them up and take them to Fort Omaha.

Sitanka’s people camped where I was standing along Wounded Knee Creek. Spotting scouts from the 7th, he sent word they would surrender. On the 29th, the soldiers forced the Miniconjou into a small clearing and surrounded them, with four Hotchkiss machine guns (similar to Gatling Guns) covering from a hillside above. As the soldiers began confiscating weapons, one man began Ghost Dancing, creating more tension among the cavalry. When a Miniconjou’s gun went off by accident as it was being taken, the cavalry opened fire. Most of their guns taken, the Natives were mostly defenseless. Many were killed immediately, including Sitanka. Women and children took shelter in a ravine, but the machine guns were turned on them. The marker said 146 were killed, half women and kids. Around 25 soldiers died, probably from their fellow soldiers’ guns on the hill or in the crossfire.

I was standing where it happened. This was the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre. I felt a little sick.

As you can see, the site today is an open field with a dirt track circling inside. Presumably still used for commemorations, it has an open roof near the parking lot probably used either for craft booths or to provide elders with shade. You can see it behind the sign in the photo.

The cavalry buried the Native dead, Sitanka among them, where the machine guns had been. Turning around brought a sad curiosity. I first read this story decades ago in a landmark work on the Indian Wars from the Native perspective, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. In re-learning the story for the trip, I had misunderstood which side of the hill the camp was on, which made it seem much closer. The hill was in fact more than 400 yards away (four football fields). Machine guns are notoriously hard to aim even today, at any distance. Not only was it a horror for those Hotchkiss guns to open fire toward women and children, it was friendly fire murder. Troops were mixed in with the warriors at the time.

Hotchkiss guns and cemetery site from the field I felt like a trespasser. I had done some research regarding this while planning the trip, and was reassured by a quote from a Pine Ridge official confirming his people wanted EAs to visit. The sources turned up the likelihood that locals might shadow me and expect payment, or try to sell me stuff. In the former case, I was prepared to balance respect with aloofness. I was actually hoping for the latter, preferably someone trying to sell me a handmade dream catcher I could buy as a gift. Perhaps the storm is why no Sioux appeared, which caused mixed feelings.

Pictures were taken a couple days after the massacre when troops came to collect their dead and bury the victims. This one of Big Foot seems to express the shock and hurt of people unexpectedly murdered in mass:

I stood in the valley contemplating what had happened. I admit, the visit did not have the emotional impact I was expecting and hoping for. Maybe it’s impossible for reasonably ethical people to comprehend how humans could do such things to each other—and I say this as someone who has done things others can’t comprehend. As a Buddhist I should be able to tell you I would never kill another human being except to defend myself or an innocent. Sad to admit, though, there are plenty of individuals who, were I given a chance meeting with them in an empty spot with guarantees I wouldn’t be caught, I would want to kill. Given my decades of martial arts training, I know many ways to do so without a weapon. I, like, you, am an animal with a highly irrational side. But I haven’t done it. Even when I had the means, motive, and opportunity, I resisted the urge.

So, yes, I judge the officers who gave the orders and the men who followed those illegal (even then) orders. They were mass murderers who should have been locked away for life, not celebrated for their “victory” over outnumbered, outgunned, and for the most part unarmed human beings.

I took the better road back up the hill. Four days later, the victims were thrown into a deep trench, marked today with a rectangle of concrete:

I walked around the trench in meditation. It was the best I could do to honor these people. Then I went back to the monument on the right, which lists the known victims Big Foot was the only one I recognized, but they were all as important as any other human, including the men who killed them.

Outside the fence are a number of modern-era graves, originally the cemetery for a church that is no longer there. (The lack of a church building is part of why I wasn’t sure I was in the right place on the first pass.) Regrettably, most of it is overgrown, though a path was mowed. My guess is someone clears graves of their own loved ones. A number of these were revelatory, covered with decorations. This one in the photo had whirligigs and two flags (one for the University of Michigan), many flower vases, a hanging plant, and I think a bunch of outdoor lights. This turns out to be a Plains Indian thing, for later in the trip I saw entire cemeteries decorated this way, which I have not seen on reservations in the Southwest or Northwest. I love it.

A U-Haul truck had pulled up behind the Sage, accompanied by another car, carrying an EA family that had arrived downhill shortly after I did. They invited no interaction. There was nowhere for the woman to park, so she had left it in the dirt road. But she had been kind, leaving me enough room to maneuver out. I headed back downhill and hung a left to continue up BIA-27, my first Bureau of Indian Affairs road. Numbed, I suppose, by having finally visited a place I’d held so long and strong in my imagination, I drove 10 miles before realizing I’d failed to visit the actual town of Wounded Knee.

My first introduction to the circumstances faced by Native Americans today came by way of CBS News in February 1973, when I was 13. Concerned about alleged corruption in the BIA and the elected tribal government, traditional tribal leaders asked for help from the American Indian Movement (AIM). Formed five years earlier, AIM was an NA equivalent to the Black Panthers, who advocated responding to racist force with force, but also provided social and educational services to its community. AIM swooped into Wounded Knee one morning with 200 men and took it over. More militants from dozens of Native nations arrived in support, setting up barricades. The U.S. Marshal Service surrounded the town and tried to prevent more people and supplies from getting in.

Gunfire, including machine guns, broke out a number of times. Perhaps miraculously, only two Natives were killed and one Marshal badly wounded. The siege lasted 71 days, “the longest civil disorder in the history of the Marshals Service,”4 https://www.usmarshals.gov/who-we-are/history/historical-reading-room/incident-wounded-knee. I also read a pro-AIM source and a neutral one in writing this up. which dates to 1789. Movie star Marlon Brando, then at the height of his fame, showed up to support the Natives. Eventually an agreement was hammered out that, to an outsider, doesn’t seem to have changed anything. Hundreds were arrested, though few were convicted due to faulty evidence handling.

I had parked, as best I can tell from pictures of the day, exactly where the church stood at the time. They show men with guns behind earthworks in the distance, so I’d already been in the heart of the “Incident at Wounded Knee,” as the Marshals insist on calling a two-month occupation. But I wanted to see the town itself, which didn’t take long. It is a collection of homes clustered on the hillsides, a church, a post office that I think I recall from the occupation coverage, though I couldn’t confirm that. I’m still glad I made the 20-minute round trip that gave me a fuller sense I’ve experienced Wounded Knee, to the degree a passing white man can.

I drove north and then west. What I saw of Pine Ridge Reservation is beautiful, a green carpet accented with vast wildflower fields. Most of the homes were manufactured, but many were double-wide and/or well maintained. The roadsides were no trashier than many small roads back East.

The land appears fertile. Yet the Web tells me the rez has the lowest per-capita income in the country, with unemployment rates above 70%. I don’t know what has prevented the Oglala from fully exploiting their land, in the financial sense of the word. But I recalled the story told me by a young Oglala man I picked up hitchhiking the first time I drove to Washington State. He normally lived in L.A., where his family had put together a decent life. But he returned to the home they still had on the rez in the summer. Each time he had to kick out squatters who had broken in and clean up disgusting messes they left behind. He blamed substance abuse, but did not let his people off the hook. We acknowledged together the many wrongs done to NAs over the years, but he felt they were harming themselves more than anyone else was by that point.

Shifting west on South Dakota 44, I found myself back someplace I’d long wanted to see again, ever since that same trip: Badlands National Park. This is attributable to the westerns, I admit. Whenever the outlaws disappeared into “the badlands,” I was fascinated. We don’t have badlands in the East, unless you count strip malls. There are many areas meeting the definition across the West, basically meaning broken, arid terrain with dry washes, mesas, bluffs and hoodoos (eroded columns). This helped outlaws hide, but made travel difficult for the EA emigrants. I’d been in plenty in 25 years of living out West. But I’ve never forgotten pausing at a scenic overlook on I-90 on that first trip, reading about the badlands at the edge of the park, and, being poor, talking myself out of a scenic drive. Now I was driving through at leisure and could pull off as much as I wanted. Which I did.

All the usual adjectives apply: otherworldly, alien, forbidding, lonely. Choose your own:

Driving through, I realized this trip was the right decision. I was amidst my most extended period of effortless happiness in half a decade. As a chronic mild depressive, that was a positive break from my normal reality.

As the Great Plains peter out, so too does the reliable road grid system I so appreciate. The topography forces what appear on a map to be indirect routes, but make sense from the ground. An exhibit at Fort Laramie said Fort Robinson was 70 miles away, which may be true by horse. The Sage had to carry me around 120. This was true again now, as I wanted to go directly west, but had to take a rough semicircle northwest and southwest instead. At the northernmost point of the arc, at the edge of Rapid City, I joined the masses. With a touch of disdain, I followed a sign that pointed the way to Mount Rushmore.

I am not a fan. First, it was carved on Sioux land without Sioux permission. Second, it adds insult to injury, by putting four men who, revered as they are with good reason by European-Americans, also had key roles in the destruction of Native American culture. George Washington specifically stated, with apparent regret, that the only chance for Natives in this country was assimilation. The land is stolen property Thomas Jefferson bought from the first thieves. Abraham Lincoln oversaw military actions taken against NA treaty rights. Finally, Theodore Roosevelt supported grabbing nearly 90 million acres of NA land for national forests and parks.5 https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/theodore-roosevelt Plus, I think it’s ugly, compared to mountains in their natural states. But I wanted to see the Black Hills, and an NA counterpoint to Rushmore we’ll hit tomorrow, and the only route took me right past Rushmore.

The plan was to find an overlook where I could see it without paying. But I now have a fourth reason to despise it: The government to which you and I pay taxes forces us to pay to see it. Slopes and trees block all views from the winding approach road, Alternative US 16. Having found no viewpoint, I passed the entrance to the National Memorial and continued on SD 244. A pullout then presented itself, but in effect the only view it permitted was a look up George Washington’s nose. Fuming, I drove back, got in the line of cars while grumbling about the $10 entry fee, and made my way to the top level of the parking deck. At least I got a nice view of a Christian teenager’s fit legs as she got out of the church van that pulled in to my left. I exchanged a smile and hello with another cute girl in devil-tempting shorts, and strode rapidly up several flights of steps to arrive at a concrete veranda with a distant view of the foursome.

I got close enough for a decent look at their indecency, texted a phone shot to my longest-tenured friend Tom Herbert because I knew he’d appreciate it, took this camera shot, and pee'd. Don’t worry, I used the restroom, not the mountain. You can walk much closer, but I’d checked off the box. I found a box to pay the fee, where I was more than happy to take the Senior Discount, so I only gave $5 to the upkeep of this monstrosity ‘even though I lied—I’m only 42,’ I joked to myself. Come to think of it, ‘I wonder how many people lie,’ given there was no way for the machine to check ID.

Now, if I were a smart person, at the stoplight at the exit I would have followed the nice direction sign and turned right to go to Custer, where I’d booked my room for the night. But as some of you know, I will go out of my way to drive a road I haven’t been on. And I was going to drive part of that route tomorrow. So of course, I took the long way. Which turned out to be a really, really, long way.

I have driven some bodacious mountain roads in my time, but these had not prepared me for Alt 16 between Mount Rushmore and Custer. Imagine yourself driving up a narrow road so winding you sometimes drop to a near stop to get around the curves. You pass a sign warning of an upcoming height limitation, and shortly see a wooden bridge you will pass under. Seconds later, you also pass over the same bridge, after a climbing hairpin turn. Two more of these “Pigtail Bridges” carry the route. Farther along, the topography cannot support the narrow two-lane pavement, so that splits into two separate strips of asphalt. Three tight tunnels challenge your trust of drivers coming the other way. Forget looking at the views. The over-the-shoulder in-motion overlooks I indulge in the North Carolina mountains, with which my father scared the hell out of my mother when they were courting, are impossible here. Take you eye off the road for a few seconds, and the rest of your body will soon follow. I felt like I was making major progress when I got up to third gear (out of five in my manual transmission). I can confirm a state web page that says the 14-mile route will take an hour or more to traverse.6 https://gfp.sd.gov/csp-scenic-drives/

The massive grin that rode my face most of the way had started to wane from fatigue and hunger when I finally reached an explanation for this road at a pullout. This afforded, finally, a view of the scenery I’d been missing.

A pair of historical panels told the story of Peter Norbeck and the Iron Mountain Road. Born in a sod house like I described at Nicodemus, he made himself rich digging farm wells. Money led to politics. He was the governor of South Dakota from 1917–20, and then U.S. Senator until dying of cancer in ’36. As such, he led a successful investigation into Wall Street scandals that contributed to the Crash of 1929 and Great Depression. He also led putting financial regulations into place as a result (as a Republican, I’ll add). He had a role in creating four parks I visited on this trip. Meanwhile, he squeezed in time to design and manage construction of this road and a similarly convoluted highway to the south. Though this route likely took three times longer than the recommended way, and my empty stomach was screaming by the end… totally worth it.

The road empties into Custer State Park, which I suppose honors the man who facilitated the theft of the Black Hills from its Native American owners. He passed through the valley of the park in 1874, leading an exploratory expedition. Civilians with him apparently found some of the gold long purported to be here by French traders, prompting the Black Hills gold rush discussed earlier. The rest of my drive along Alt 16 through the valley was pretty, but I didn’t care. I was tired and hangry.

Sometime after 8, I pulled into the town where Custer camped and named for him, settled on narrowing flats at the juncture of two mountain creeks. It looks pretty much like any historic tourist town, but retaining some authenticity. To that end, past the main intersection I pulled uphill into the Rocket Motel just beyond the flats. Its square parking lot was surrounded on three sides by a line of white-painted concrete, single-story cottages. These were terraced up two sides and along the up-slope side, each with two or a few red room doors.

I asked the next morning, and learned the left set, shown in the postcard above, was built in 1949; the top a year later; and the right side where my room was, in 1951. The owner my age, gender and color said I must be either one other name, or me. He tried several times to run my credit card to no avail, explaining that sometimes internet service in the small town was spotty, and then asked me to come back in the morning to pay. He mentioned that the restaurant across the highway gave a 10% discount if I showed my old-fashioned actual key attached to a plastic triangle with my room number. The room had the style of its age, but was clean and well-maintained.

None of the other restaurants in town still open per Google seemed promising. I walked across five lanes in the dark to the building with a taproom facing the street and signs pointing up the external wooden staircase to the restaurant. Styled as American, decorated as faux rustic, with a mixed menu, most of the staff was Mexican. I’m not being racist here; I lived in New Mexico long enough that I can usually tell the difference between Mexican versus somewhere further south. I just found the mix of cultures interesting. Unfortunately, the food was not, since I didn’t bother recording anything about it in the journal. It was overpriced even with the discount, and I had trouble getting a bill and leaving at closing time because they were gathering to celebrate a worker’s birthday.

Thus ended the busiest day of the trip, in combination of hours spent touristing/driving (~13) and sights seen across three states and two nations. I am reluctant to leave it, one of the greatest days of my life.