Badlands - South Dakota

About 75 million years ago a shallow sea spread across the Great Plains when the Earth’s climate was warmer than it is now.  This sea covered an area from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and stretched across the land from western Iowa on the east through Wyoming on the west.  As the Rocky Mountains rose under the moving Continental plates, the sea retreated and drained away leaving a sediment layer rich in fossilized animals from the sea.  Now the emerging land experienced a humid and warm climate with abundant rain and developed a dense subtropical forest.  Millions of years later as the climate dried and cooled the forest became savannahs and then the grasslands that they are today.  The ancient soils have collected one of the greatest arrays of fossil mammals on Earth, most of which are now extinct animals.  Some were small and deer-like.  Others resembled sheep.  There were three toed horses and early ancestors of modern pigs.  Saber-toothed cats the size of a leopard shared the land with small Subhyracodon rhinoceros and massive hippopotamus-like animals called Metamynodon.  Squirrel like rodents lived in the trees and ancestral rabbits nibbled on plants below them.

It has only been for 11,000 years that the land supported humans.  First were ancient mammoth hunters.  Much later nomadic tribes followed.  Their lives were built around hunting bison whose range extended from the eastern Rockies all the way to the western Appalachians.  Sioux and later Lakota came to these plains utilizing horses they had acquired from the Spaniards to dominate the land for 100 years from the mid-1700s.  Touching the land gently, they hunted and harvested only what they needed to support their way of life.  Eventually, European trappers, soldiers, miners, cattle farmers and homesteaders displaced the Lakota by introducing wheat fields to cover the prairies and practically eradicating the buffalo to replace them with cattle.

Preserved within the Badlands National Park are nearly 60 species of grass forming what remains of the native grasslands.  These grasses evolved to withstand high winds, long spells of dry weather and frequent fires.  Under the protected conditions in the park, black tailed prairie dogs, muledeer, pronghorn antelope, bison, coyotes and bighorn sheep once again thrive here.  Even one of the rarest of mammals-the black-footed ferret has found its way back to recovery here after being reintroduced in 1999.

This has been a marvelous stop in our travels to an area that is completely new to me.  The colors of the rock and the starkness formed a formidable barrier to the peoples who came here earning the name “Badlands” but I find them to be anything but that.

    

A Woman's Tools

I have been fascinated at the last two historical sites we’ve visited with the tools and crafts of women.  From food preparation to decorative beading, it is interesting to see the feminine influence within these pages of history.

Presuming that women were involved with food preparation and crafting while men hunted (as we’ve been told and without doing further research right now) I want to share some tools that I saw at Pictograph State Park and what the experts shared of their knowledge about them: 

The mano and the matate were a two-piece tool set (shown above) used for grinding seeds, nuts and roots to produce a flour or meal used in cooking.  The mano was rolling pin shaped and held in one hand and rolled against the food to be ground on the flat matate.  Pestles were used to pound and pulverize meat, which could be mixed with berries and animal fat to make a sun-dried, nutritious food called pemmican. 

Sticks with fire-hardened ends were used to dig roots.  Bone and chipped stone scrapers were used to remove hair and flesh from deer, elk and buffalo hides.  Knives were fashioned for cutting by attaching chipped stone to sticks called hafting which creates leverage to make the cutting of meat, antler or wood easier.

Bone beads, pendants, and pierced animal teeth were used as bracelets, necklaces or clothing decoration.

Awls were made of bone for stitching hides and clothing.

Remember, this is 9,000-year old technology created from the natural elements found in their environment.  They already knew what types of stone worked for making these tools, what berries and grains they could safely eat, how to preserve meat and other foodstuffs and most important of all how to make fire.

Jumping ahead 8,000 years we come to the culture of Native Americans who defeated Custer in 1876.  Add all of the above skills to these below:

They knew gray thistle could be used as a diuretic, tonic and astringent.  Hairy golden aster tops were used to make a tea that helped with sleeping.

Plains prickly pear was used to make candies, jelly or a refreshing drink.

Yucca (soap weed) flowers and pods were added to salads and other dishes.  The petals are a little sweet and nutty tasting.

Elaborate beading work was used to decorate belts, leggings (first photo below) and other clothing items along with moccasins, pouches, jewelry or pendants they hung over teepee entry doors.

If you suddenly found yourself “beamed up" into this same environment, could you survive?  And this is just the tip of the iceberg of what they knew about their natural world and what it could provide for them.  These two sites are fascinating to me because of a culture that is revealed not because of a battle that was fought.  I am glad I spent time at both.