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SOUTH DAKOTA
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 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.
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view Vacation Rental Homes in SOUTH DAKOTA click
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