Sacred and Profane: The Black Hills

Custer's camp in the Black Hills in 1874 

September 1-2

At the gift shop at Devil's Tower I bought a copy of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, Dee Brown's 1971 account of the devastation of the North American tribes as the advancing citizens of the new United States of America moved ever westward in the name of Manifest Destiny. As I traveled through the Black Hills from Montana, Wyoming and into South Dakota, I continually saw the names of places and people from the pages come alive before me: Red Cloud, Custer, Crazy Horse, Little Bighorn, the Yellowstone River and its tributaries the Tongue and Powder. Its hard not to see ghosts at every turn, imagine battles waged and journeys traveled across the very ground I now traverse with speed and ease.

So named because their Ponderosa Pine covered peaks look dark from a distance, the Black Hills (or Paha Sapa in Lakota) are a small, isolated mountain range rising up from the Great Plains. The Black Hills hold spiritual significance for a number of tribes, but the Cheyenne and the Lakota have the best documented and extensive historical record of their cultural connection to the place and continue to maintain some of those relationships in modern times (see Devil's Tower post).

The Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868, granted ownership of the Black Hills to the Lakota, Yankton and Arapahoe tribes, but the discovery of gold in the hills soon after lead to the flagrant violation of the treaty, the Black Hills War and eventually the seizure of the land by the US government in 1877.

"Two lovely legends of the Lakotas would be fine subjects for sculpturing -- the Black Hills as
the earth mother, and the story of the genesis of the tribe. Instead the face of a white man is
being outlined on the face of a stone cliff in the Black Hills. This beautiful region, of which
the Lakota thought more than any other spot on earth, caused him the most pain and misery.
These hills were to become prized by the white people for reasons far different from those of
the Lakota. To the Lakota the magnificent forests and splendid herds were incomparable in
value...If the Lakotas had been relinquishing any part of their territory voluntarily, the Black
Hills would have been the last from the standpoint of traditional sentiment...
How long the Lakota people lived in these mid-west plains bordering the Black Hills before
the coming of the white men is not known in tribal records. But our legends tell us that it was
hundreds and perhaps thousands of years ago since the first man sprang from the soil in the
midst of these great plains....So this land of the great plains is claimed by the Lakotas as their
very own. We are of the soil and the soil is of us. We love the birds and beasts that grew
with us on this soil. They drank the same water we did and breathed the same air. We are all
one in nature. Believing so, there was in our hearts a great peace and a welling kindness for
all living, growing things."  --Luther Standing Bear

Yes. There are many ghosts. One of the first towns to spring from the Black Hills in answer to the goldrush was the infamous Deadwood. Unrecognized due to its violation of the 1868 treaty, the town boomed nevertheless, unencumbered by such things as laws and government. I have been a devoted fan of the HBO series of the same name, with its Shakespearean, expletive heavy dialogue and complex characters based on real historical figures. Such  was my introduction to the history of Deadwood via Netflix. I once had a discussion with a friend about the portrayal of historic events in movies and television. He was vehemently opposed to the corruption of truth in the interest of artistic license, but I argued that one should never assume what was being portrayed was factual and that, if the story evoked an interest in learning more, that was a good thing. I'm not entirely confident in my position and, of course, the underlying assumption that viewers will filter what they see with skepticism, is probably faulty. But I digress. I came to Deadwood to visit Wild Bill Hickok (who was murdered there), Calamity Jane, Seth Bullock, Charlie Utter, Al Swearengen and the places they had lived and died.

As I dropped down out of the hills and got my first view of the town, I became so excited. It look every bit as had imagined it: narrow streets lined with tall frontier style building of brick and wood vanishing into a pine-covered gulch . It was only after I was immersed that I could see what a close up look afforded me---it's a historic wonderland dressed in the trashy attire of a casino.

Deadwood: charming at a distance

In 1989 Deadwood became the only place in the US outside of Nevada and Atlantic City to legalize gambling. Some sources point to gambling as the savior of the town, but it has saved it by pickling the historic buildings in a brine of turpitude. The National Park Service in its assessment of the threats to historic landmarks lists "development and visual integrity" as the greatest threats to Deadwood's historic district. You won't see much evidence of the casinos in my photos, I tried to crop them out where possible.

I opted to splurge for a room rather than camp, and chose my lodging wisely---I stayed at Deadwood Dick's in downtown, a hotel built in the late 1800s and owned and operated for 30 years by Dave and Mary, who spent many winters vacationing in Cambria!

Deadwood Dick's Hotel: one stop shopping for lodging
greasy food and antiques.

I wish the rooms were still $2.00

In a sea of casino hotels, Deadwood Dick's was the coolest and most authentic place in town with narrow, brocade-carpeted hallways leading to funky but clean and comfortable rooms, and the original Otis elevator that required a lesson from Dave to operate. Harry never quite trusted that thing.

Please don't leave me in the moving cage!

What's happening to the wall?!

After checking into our room, Harry and I head out on a self-guided walking tour of historic Deadwood. Even though it's raining and we are walking a gauntlet of sketchy looking people hanging outside of gambling joints, we manage to see a few of the sites of the town's more notorious events.

Saloon where Wild Bill was murdered during a poker game
by Jack McCall, who was acquitted at trial in Deadwood
 but later convicted and hanged in Yankton.

Location where Jack McCall was apprehended

Nevertheless, by dinner time I had my fill of the new and "improved" Deadwood, and got some take out to each in my cool room under the watchful (and slightly creepy) eye of the Wild Bill photograph hanging across from my bed. Whatever. He's kind of hot.

James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok 

The next morning started with breakfast and coffee made by another former San Luis Obispo county resident, who ran a coffee house on the same block as Deadwood Dick's. Up to this point, no one I met on the road trip had heard of Cambria. Within two days, three people one block apart, in the middle of the Black Hills, know and love Moonstone Beach.

Harry at the hitchin' post while I go for coffee

Then we are off to the Mt. Moriah cemetery where, perched on a hill overlooking the town, some of Deadwood's rock stars are buried.

The gates of Mt. Moriah 

The steep hike up the hill to the cemetery virtually eliminates all tourists not loaded into the tour bus. So up the hill I trudge, sadly without the forbidden dog, to hunt for the graves of Wild Bill, Calamity Jane and Seth Bullock. Harry would so have enjoyed that. Since the tour bus has just unloaded at Bill and Jane's site, I say "nope, nope" and climb first the highest hill to the grave of Seth Bullock, hardware store owner and eventual sheriff of Deadwood. Arguably the most revered of townspeople, he is buried on a hill with a view of the memorial he built to Teddy Roosevelt, with whom he had a strong and enduring friendship.

Grave of Seth and Martha Bullock

The view from Bullock's grave toward the Roosevelt Friendship Memorial

I never did get a good ponder at the gravesite of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane as some sort of impromptu speech by a visiting representative of one of the more vehement religious organizations prevented me from lingering.  Not sure why he chose this grave site to make his point, although I didn't stick around to learn what point he was actually coming around to. I took a quick snapshot and fled.

Quick pic under duress of the resting place of Wild Bill Hickok and
Calamity Jane, who wished to be buried next to Hickok.

There are more than a few tricky moments when visiting the Black Hills if you care to think about the history much. Here I am in Deadwood, hero-worshipping outlaws and others who settled this town with blatant disregard to agreements with people who had lived, died and worshipped in these hills for millennia prior. The story of the devastation of North American tribes is laden with heartbreaking cruelty, treachery, betrayal and even a systematic repression on the part of the US Cavalry of demonstrations of mercy within its ranks. But I am happy to be living in this country, free to drive about on highways and comment on the misery of others far removed from me. Would I have wanted events to have turned another way? It's easy to be outraged. Not so easy to to induce or even desire change. As Pagoo points eastward to the National grasslands, I leave Deadwood and the Black Hills behind with a confused knot in my stomach and an unsettled heart.