Close Encounters

We have been traveling from the Bighorn Mountains to the Black Hills for the last few days stopping at the National Monument of the Battle of the Little Bighorn which was fairly emotional for us because we had been talking on our travels about how the European Americans valued the Earth so differently than the Native Americans and then to see all the white (7th Calvary Soldiers) and red stones (Native Americans) who died in the battle,one group fighting to take the land away for its resources and the other group fighting to save their way of life. We hope that someday all people can look at the Earth as being a part of themselves and not just to be taken and used.  

We stopped in the little town of Buffalo to go to the Occidental Hotel and Saloon which is just like stepping back 100-150 years http://occidentalwyoming.com/

Pat in the Occidental Hotel Saloon

Everyone from Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid to Theodore Roosevelt stayed there at one time. We learned about a man named James Gatchell in a Museum of the West run in an old Carnegie Library. Gatchell ran a drugstore in town and as a boy became a friend of the Cheyenne and eventually spoke for them.  He had a particular friend named Weasel Bear who as a youth participated in the Battle of Little Bighorn. Gatchell was a great collector of artifacts of the west. http://www.jimgatchell.com/

Recognize this bandit?

 Again we missed the rodeo by 1 week. Next time we plan a trip I am not going anywhere without the entire Western US rodeo schedule.
Then we hiked  The Place the Bear Lives, better known as Devil's Tower which was the first National Monument.  Many different groups of Native Americans have used this as a sacred place where they came to get strength from the mountain. You can go and read the Native American stories of how the Tower was formed. The one I like is of the Kiowa People where a boy turns into a bear and chases his seven sisters.  He turns into the "Tower" and the sisters turn into the stars of the Pleiades. It strikes you so looking up that your heart almost stops.  Because it is sacred to many Native American tribes you must have special permission to actually climb it. Hanging from the trees that surround it are prayer bundles. The Geological story is almost as amazing.  About 50 million years ago magma was forced into layers of sedimentary rock and cooled underground.  Erosion of the sedimentary rock over millions of years by the Belle Fourche River exposed the Tower.  Pretty Amazing and it is still rising. 
Since we saw Mt. Rushmore 20 years ago and it didn't inspire us then we decided to go the the Crazy Horse Memorial, which is a nonprofit organization. The Founders Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski and Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear decided not to use governmental monies but only private funds because they could not trust what the government would do..Based on the words of Red Cloud of Lakota, 1891 and those words "They made us many promises, more than I can remember-They never kept but one; they promised to take our land and they took it!"  The work has gone on since 1948, Ziolkowski died in 1982, but his children (6 of the 10) and grandchildren are continuing the sculpting.  The Crazy Horses' face is done (all of Mt. Rushmore would fit into the face),  the Indian University of North American opened in 2010 and they still have to finish carving the mountain (see what it is suppose to look like in Ziolkowski model below) build the medical center, Avenue of the Chiefs and Indian Museum of North America which is being housed now in the Visitor Center and Native American Educational and Cultural Center.  Still they give an impressive amount of scholarships and think that they will be done within 20 years.  The Project's main controversy is the same one that surrounds Rushmore.  Most Native Americans consider the Black Hills and its mountains sacred and so sculpting the mountains is wrong in their eyes even though Crazy Horse Memorial benefits Native Americans and was started by a group of Chiefs . Rushmore was an insult to the Native Americans from the very beginning which was first suppose to have Native American faces as well as Presidents and the carving of the mountain. In fact the United Nations believes the Black Hills should be given back to the Lakota and other tribes. The land was part of the treaty of 1868, but the US government reneged on the treaty and took the lands they had promised.  Certainly giving the Black Hills which are part of the National Forests could help in reconciliation.  I can't imagine how though we can make retribution for all the land we took, the oppression we have caused and how it will ever be right.