New friends and badlands

View of the Badlands from the Red Shirt Table overlook

I had heard the name Archie Tobacco in association with my grandfather since I was young. He was a Lakota who raised horses and who my grandfather befriended in the 1920s or 30s. My grandfather made several trips to Pine Ridge in those years, including one with my grandmother after they were married. We knew Archie had a big family and a horse ranch on Pine Ridge, but not much else.

Evidence of these connections was locked away in 16mm film canisters in my parents’ basement. 2019 became the year when they finally converted the film to digital. The company that restored it slowed down the films, making it look more like a window to the past than the original film would.

My Dad got into contact with Archie’s descendants, and we had stop at Pine Ridge planned. The Tobacco descendants offered to have us gather, watch the movies and have a potluck at the Red Cloud School on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

We caravanned to the reservation, with a brief stop past Red Shirt Table, not far from the Cheyenne River and the boundary of the Pine Ridge Reservation. While the crags possess a unique beauty, this unit of Badlands National Park occupies a major chunk of the reservation, not a foot of it arable land. At the Red Cloud School, formerly the Holy Rosary School, we walked through the museum and art galleries while waiting for the family to arrive. Soon enough we found ourselves among 32 family members, from Archie’s grandchildren now in their 60s to their grandchildren.

Resting place of Red Cloud

Out of respect for our new Lakota friends and out of a desire not to exploit their generosity, I won’t get into specific of the day, and will just say it was a day I hope to never forget. They were gracious hosts, blessed us with gifts and good company. Even now I get a little choked up thinking about those brief hours how the shared history of family members several generations ago led to this day.

After a goodbye to our new friends, we explored the core of the Pine Ridge Reservation along the ride home. First we drove up the hill above the Red Cloud School and made a brief visit to Red Cloud’s grave. As he did not participate in the Indian wars of the 1870s, Red Cloud far outlived his contemporaries, dying in 1909.

Red Cloud’s grave in a hilltop cemetery felt much like a 2012 visit to the grave of the last traditional Crow chief, Plenty Coups. There’s just a sense of peace, even I am not part of either tribe and can be no closer than a friend. It’s a place you close your eyes, listen to the wind and nearby birdsong. The streets of the tribal headquarters, the town of Pine Ridge, were largely quiet on a Saturday afternoon.

Thankfully we did not take the turnoff for Whiteclay. Even if the liquor stores are closed, I didn’t want to see a place that had been such a source of misery. Alcohol is illegal on the reservation, but not across in the Nebraska line in Whiteclay. For more than a century, traders then the liquors sold freely to those on the reservation.

Pine Ridge is larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined, yet has less than 30,000 residents (tribal enrolled members is a much larger population, with many living off-reservation elsewhere in the Black Hills). The Wounded Knee Massacre required some hiking to the church built by the massacre site. We drove on through the reservation, passing little blocks of houses and a field of sunflowers that seemed to reach the horizon.

An unexpected traffic jam in Manderson

Few people were out anywhere in the reservation towns we crossed. In Manderson, we came across an unexpected traffic jam. A parade of horses crossed the road, with a prancing pony in the lead and dozens of horses herded by a pair of Lakota teens.

Then the reservation’s patchwork of ranches, houses and farms fell away into the badlands. The ages of the earth sat exposed as we wound up the road and crossed the White River. The tables and spires wound down outside of Rapid City, the low, green hills growing smoother by the mile.

Closer we drew to Rapid City, the badlands dropped away and gentle grasses swayed on the hills.

As the land grew more fertile, it was not hard to imagine the Great Sioux Reservation or the lands the Lakota once freely roamed. The ugliness of that treatment is a stain not simple scrubbed away, and their descendants are at best ignored by the American masses. With us, they were gracious and giving.

Behind us was a day few would experience, and whose details don’t need to be written down to remember as long as memory allows.

Field of sunflowers