Pine Ridge, South Dakota

The small town of Pine Ridge, South Dakota, is the administrative center of the Pine Ridge Reservation, home of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) Nation. The Sioux were originally fur traders in present-day Wisconsin and Minnesota, who traded as far west as the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming by the late 18th Century.

A brief history of the Oglala

The history of the Oglala, the name many now prefer over Sioux, is intertwined with many other tribes in the United States through trade, migration and later, treaties with (and betrayals by) the US government.

In 1825, the Oglala branch of the Teton Sioux in Wyoming signed a fur trade treaty stating, in part, that the Sioux/Oglala "...reside within the territorial limits of the United States, acknowledge their supremacy, and claim their protection. The said bands also admit the right of the United Stated to regulate all trade..." By 1830, the Indian Removal Act forced Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River to migrate to the new Indian Territory of the west. Four years later, 4,000 Oglala people relocated to the American Fur Company's Fort Laramie, Wyoming, so they could continue their fur trade with whites. Buffalo hunting increased in order to satisfy demand, so the decline of this crucial resource was already beginning. Rapid western settlement, the California Gold Rush and escalating violence between whites and Indians led to more involvement by Washington, DC. As a result, the government began to establish a larger fort system in the West, including the purchase of Fort Laramie in 1849. The Indian Territories thus filled with government troops in order to secure the West.

During the 1860s, despite the national focus on the Civil War, civilian wagon trains increased across Indian Territory, encouraged by the Homestead Act. So did attacks against their intrusion. A steady escalation of attacks by Indians were followed by retaliatory massacres by US troops of entire Indian settlements. The '60s decade was one of slaughter in the Civil War in the east and the Plains War in the west.

1865 - Escalation of the Plains War between the U.S. military and the Sioux and Cheyenne. Ultimately, the Sioux under Red Cloud and Sitting Bull, and the Cheyenne under Roman Nose and Dull Knife, fight and harass the U.S. troops and drive them out of the territory. Nine treaties signed at the end of the year signal the supposed end of the Plains War, despite the fact that none of the war chiefs has signed.

1866 - General Sheridan takes command of U.S. forces in the West, stating the policy of exterminating the buffalo herds crucial to Indian survival: "Kill the buffalo and you kill the Indians." 

1866-1868 - Red Cloud leads the Sioux and several allied tribes in all-out war against the U.S. military (known as "Red Cloud's War") to close the Bozeman Trail that passed through buffalo hunting grounds in the Big Horn Territory from northeast Wyoming into Montana. In the 1866 Fetterman Massacre, 80 U.S. troops are lured out of Fort Phil Kearny and slaughtered by Indians led by Red Cloud and Crazy Horse. Eventually, the U.S. admits defeat and sues for peace, the only time Indian leaders defeat the United States in an extended all-out war.  Source

            Red Cloud           Spotted Tail  


By the 1870s the Plains tribes were fighting each other for dwindling resources, brought on by Pres. Ulysses S. Grant's Indian policies and the Army's buffalo extermination policy, carried out by Gen. William T. Sherman's troops and civilian hunters shooting from trains. Thus, the Indian nations were now desperately fighting for scraps of their formerly abundant primary sustenance. As if losing the buffalo was not enough torment, gold was discovered in South Dakota's Black Hills in Indian Territory and 15,000 miners flooded into the region by 1875. This set the stage for more Sioux attacks to defend their territory, followed by the confiscation of the Black Hills by the US government. What followed was more wars, more treaties, more betrayals. Sioux leader Crazy Horse was killed at Fort Robinson in late 1877 after voluntarily going to the fort to discuss the Territory conflicts. The death - assassination, really, of Crazy Horse was a demoralizing defeat for the Sioux. With Crazy Horse out of the way, President Hayes offered Chiefs Red Cloud and Spotted Tail their own settlement anywhere in the territory, as long as it excluded the Black Hills. Thus, the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations were created in June, 1878.



  Crazy Horse     Spotted Tail    Big Foot 
(Authenticity of photo is unconfirmed.)

About 15 miles NNE of Pine Ridge is Wounded Knee, site of a massacre of followers of Chief Big Foot (successor to Sitting Bull, who had been killed Dec. 15th) and the Ghost Dance religion. This revival of Sioux spiritualism, heartbreaking in its nostalgia, caused much hysteria among the whites, who were frightened by "Indians...dancing in the snow and [acting] wild and crazy." On December 29th, 1890, troops killed about 300 Sioux as they ran for their lives, including many women and children. They lost 25 of their own. This massacre "effectively squelched the Ghost Dance movement and ended the Indian Wars." See an eye witness account of the Massacre at Wounded Knee.

             Haunting film of a ghost dance by the Edison Co., 1884                                     

 ............             



Wounded Knee Cemetery. A white flag flies as it did on the day of the massacre.


     

This map shows the old Unceded Indian Territory, the Great Sioux Reservation in brown and the current South Dakota reservations in gold. The Pine Ridge reservation is the rectangular gold section, lower left.

           


The reservation and town
of Pine Ridge

Though small, with a population of 3,308 in 2010, 94% of which is Native American, Pine Ridge is the largest town on the reservation and tribal headquarters for the Oglala Sioux. The territory served by Pine Ridge High School, with over 1,000 students, is so remote that many have difficulty getting to school due to transportation and weather hardships in winter. Weather is severe in South Dakota - wind is a constant, up to 100 deg. F in summer and a low of -50 is possible in winter. White-out snows are not uncommon, but at least tornados are rare. Water can be difficult to find, trees are scarce, the soil erodes easily if not farmed wisely. The primary use of land in southwest SD is for cattle ranching. 

Most socio-economic and health statistics for Pine Ridge are grimmer than anywhere else in the country. Median family income is $20,170 and 61% of the population lives under the poverty line. For the reservation as a whole, the picture is even more shocking: 85% unemployment, the most chronic and lethal alcoholism in the country, the highest rate of teen suicide and highest infant mortality in the US. (Multiple sources linked here.)

In spite of hardship and so many cultural losses, Pine Ridge and the young Oglala Sioux are serious about their customs and spiritual practices. If you have never been to a genuine pow-wow, you've missed a lot. They often tour university campuses around the country (Stanford is one I know of), so try to attend one. Hearing the powerful drumming and the otherworldly singing, it is easy to understand how that unnerved white settlers and missionaries in the early days of Indian Territory.  

                                   Pine Ridge High School

    In any small town on the prairie, the high school is the center of social life - and not just for the students. Pine Ridge H.S. sports takes inspiration from Jim Thorpe, the two-time Olympic gold medal winner of 1912 who was a Sac Indian from Oklahoma. Pine Ridge HS has named its sports teams The Thorpes.  He has always been an icon for Native Americans involved in sports, though his own life post-Olympics was one of hardship and alcohol problems.  Another inspired athlete from Pine Ridge, Billy Mills, won track gold in the 1964 Olympics.  He later joined the Marines. Today, Mills is very involved in the community as spokesperson for Running Strong for American Indian Youth and is the author of two books. 

The legacy of Thorpe and Mills shows in the Pine Ridge kids...

    

    

(High school info from their website.) 

Resources are thin on the reservation. Whites think the government takes care of all their needs. Not so. The government provides bare subsistence and poor medical care, enough to assure angry dependence and no more. They live just about as close as one can get to the middle of nowhere, with no industry to provide jobs. The photo above, right, is of Pine Ridge students in an ROTC Camp in Minnesota. Native Americans are heavily represented in the military, a viable choice for kids with no hope of getting a job on the reservation and no job experience to acquire work elsewhere. The high school's test scores are low, drop out rate high and few make it to a four-year college.

The young are doing something absolutely necessary for their futures - interacting with society outside the reservation. This video about KILI radio: Voice of the Lakota Nation, has the Pine Ridge combination of pride and dark humor. And, you'll meet a young descendant of Red Cloud. It's a rough, homemade expression of cautious hope.  The second video presents "the poorest population in America."  Sometimes there isn't enough food, family life can be chaotic, adults might not be dependable and the children have heartaches and dreams...  

               


I wish only the best for the future of these kids, wherever that takes them. I looked at a lot of sources before writing this post. Many of them had one or more of these undertones: shocked white guilt, the hostile/helpless victim, or evangelical religious zeal. All of those seem a little off the mark to me, and not so useful, in that when taken as a main focus they can serve as an avoidance of problem solving. The approach to change in this community needs to be realistic, non-sentimental, centered in the here-and-now and the future.

Some of the most helpful work is being done by religion-based groups who focus on the work, rather than the religion. The venerable Catholic Red Cloud School provides a good education for kids lucky enough to have the right combination of smarts, money for tuition and uniforms and a desire for a parochial education. The school was founded in 1888 by Jesuits after years of lobbying by Red Cloud to allow Catholic Mission education at Pine Ridge. Prior to this, the government had mandated an "Episcopal-only" reservation. Red Cloud School serves 600 students and has a long waiting list. 

The prairie and the Badlands in the southwestern corner of South Dakota are both barren and rich with life, harsh and soft, tragic and hopeful. Above all, it's a beautiful place. If you visit you will be changed in ways you'll like.


Pine Ridge South Dakota.kmz (1.2 KB)



 

I always loved your posts, but they seem to come alive, when posted here, Thanks

This is a terrific post, Diane. I still want to watch the full videos and delve a bit deeper into the subject.