Please help!

My husband is a Native American history buff. We're planning a trip to visit Badlands and Wounded Knee but can find next to no travel/visitor information. We're travelling from Philadelphia and thinking of camping, but we don't have time to take aroad trip out so we have to fly. If anyone knows of an websites with information about the area, or has any tips, it would be greatly appreciated!

k. giblin

I ran a search using "south Dakota travel information" and came up with the following, don't know if you have already tried them:

travelsd.com � website for the South Dakota Dept of Tourism

state.sd.us - homepage for the State of South Dakota

sddot.com/travinfo.asp � Dept of Transportation for South Dakota

blackhillsbadlands.com � website for badlands area

For camping, try the American Camping Association site at acacamps.org

Fodor's has two books you might want to consider buying. One is just on SD, one is on that area of the US generally. Click on "products" above, choose books, then US then enter South Dakota.

The links above are great...You can also try the homepage for Badlands NP:

http://www.nps.gov/badl/

There are campgrounds at Cedar Pass and Interior, both of which are inside the park.

Here is a link to the "Guide to the Great Sioux Nation" page on the SD Tourism website:

http://www.travelsd.com/history/sioux/index.htm

Also, here is a link to the SD Campgrounds Guide for the entire state:

http://www.blackhills.com/sdcoa/index.html

This link is a website outlining a tour of the Oyate Trail, traveling over back roads to several important Indian sites:

http://www.oyatetrail.com/oyateattractions.htm

Wounded Knee is on the Pine Ridge Reservation - here is their homepage:

http://www.pineridgerez.net/

Hope this helps... have a great trip!

Duh... disregard the html tags- I didn't realize we couldn't create hyperlinks.

Just copy and paste the addy into your browser.

I'm part Oglala Sioux (real honest-to-God cowboy/Indian stock) and the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is where my family lives (my dad used to be a police officer & part of the SWAT team on the res in the '70s thru the BIA - Bureau of Indian Affairs - he moved us to SD in the early '70s shortly after the standoff at Wounded Knee with the FBI). During my 3 years there, I lived in Pine Ridge, Kyle, & Wanblee (Oglala for Eagle's Nest Butte) so maybe if you'd like some info you could e-mail me and I could get it for you. My e-mail addy is [email protected].

My uncle is a park ranger so I could give you some definitive info, just ask away. And of course I can ask my family questions.

Don't know when you plan to go but July 4th they always have a rodeo at Interior (3 miles from Cedar Pass - Interior is on the res but Cedar Pass is not). It's a nice, wonderful down-home-style authentic rodeo. My family has all manner of people who excel at barrel racing, calf-rope tying, etc..

And there are usually some powwows someplace on there during the summertime. Kinda cool, actually. My sister and I used to participate in them.

There is a KOA camping ground near Kadoka and at Cedar Pass but you won't find any camping grounds on the reservation itself.

There's a great historical book written by Stephen E. Ambrose, the great western historian called "Crazy Horse & Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two Great American Warriors" or something like that. Wonder if your husband has read it? I have 2 ancestors mentioned in that book: 1) Major Thomas S. Twiss, who graduated 2nd in his class 7 years before Custer and eventually became the 1st Indian Agent for the North Platte territory stationed at Ft. Laramie, and
2) Chief Standing Elk who convinced Chief Red Cloud not to sign a treaty with the U.S. govt. (Wanikiyewin, Standing Elk's daughter, married Thomas S. Twiss and that's where the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation Sioux Twisses come from).

Also, Wanikiyewin & Thomas' son, William, my great-great grandfather, had the terrible task of helping to bury the dead at Wounded Knee in the 1890s after the massacre there. Has your husband read "Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown? Surely, a classic. If he has, then he knows how they were finding the skeletons of the Sioux along Wounded Knee Creek for many, many years after.

Also, you know that Crazy Horse is buried SOMEWHERE along Wounded Knee Creek but no one knows for sure where. But it is said he is buried further south in Nebraska.

Anyway, sorry for the digression but you've hit a subject so very close to my heart!

Hope you have a fabulous trip and if I can help you in any way just ask.

I plan to be there 1st weekend in June for my family's reunion.

Hoka Hey (it is a good day to die)!

Here is the link to the National Park Service's website for the Badlands.

http://www.nps.gov/badl/

Watch out for those diamondback rattlesnakes!! ; ) And, please, don't take the fossils.

Beatchick,
Thanks for the wonderful perspective! I was born and raised in western Nebraska and vividly remember the standoff at Wounded Knee (I was VERY young at the time--ha!). A painful part of our history but one that we shouldn't forget...Do you still live in the area?

Tess, I was really young, too. When did it happen ~ '74 or '75? I might've been 7 or 8 at the time and we were living in California then (my dad's Aunt Stella lived there and still does and she was one of the ones who did the declaring of the abandoned Alcatraz as Indian land during the '60s or so - I think my dad had moved to CA to be close to her).

No, I actually live in Cincinnati right now. I was telling someone else that it's very ironic that my kids go to school in the Lakota School District as Lakota is a Sioux word meaning "the people" or roughtly "the real, natural human beings". I doubt that many people around here even know what that means or from where the word derives.

I can't remember why but we used to drive over the border past Oglalla to go to Gordon, NE. Maybe cattle auctions or to sell grain or something?

Glad someone could appreciate my burblings. : D

Anyway, sorry kgiblin, for hijacking your thread. @>->---