Southern Black Hills offer Virginal Field For Spade of Archaeologic Investigator

Discovery of a Folsom point near Hot Springs, South Dakota, calls attention to a rich but little explored area there for the archeologist. Numerous pictographs have been reported on the cliffs in Red Canyon, and L. D. Buker, a rancher at Provo, South Dakota, has found examples of ancient pottery.

Professor E. B. Renaud, of the University of Denver, made an archeological survey of the region in 1935, and other work has been done by Dr. William Duncan Strong, of Columbia University, by Dr. W. H. Over, of the University of South Dakota, and by an expedition from the University of Nebraska. But even yet, little is known of it.

It is regarded as probable that the Black Hills, being surrounded on all sides by prairie, would draw early tribesman because of the facilities there for hunting and for agriculture in watered valleys. So far, however, few evidences of ancient man have been discovered there aside from those found in the southern section. Badger Clark, poet laureate of South Dakota and an advisor to Friends of the Middle Border, reports that though for many years he has searched for flints near his home at Legion Lake, in the central Hills, he has found but few that bear evidence of having been worked by human hands.

The Folsom Point reported by Arthur Bruce, of Hot Springs, South Dakota, was found on a small pine-fringed plateau in Sec. 17, Twp. 7, Range 5, overlooking Hot Brook. This creek has been known in modern times as an east-west route for Indians, for it connects sparsely forested areas ideal as buffalo ranges. Here camp sites have been found with arrow heads, scrapers, and other evidences of comparatively recent occupation by Indians.

Prior to the coming of the white man, this region was inhabited by roving tribes of the Sioux, who being nudged westward by the Chippewas and other tribes that had been supplied with firearms, are known to have crossed the Missouri River about the time of the Revolutionary War. The Sioux, in turn, elbowed the Cheyenne and the Crows farther west.

Evidences of these tribes have been found in canyons and in isolated "parks" in the foothills surrounding the Black Hills. Bear Butte near Sturgis, for example, not only has been productive of finds linked to traditions still extant among the Sioux and the Cheyennes. These modern tribes have, apparently, long regarded the Black Hills with superstitious awe. Occasional trips were made into the canyons for lodge poles, but there is no evidence that the tribesmen took up habitation there except in outlying sections.

A possible explanation is offered by Miss Ella Deloria, daughter of a Sioux clergyman, in her book, "Speaking of Indians." Her fellow Dakota Sioux, she writes, believed in the manifestation of the Wakan, the great spirit, in designated rocks or other phenomena of nature. Prayers could put them at peace with most mediums of the Wakan, but one was unpredicatable, often capricious, and therefore to be feared. It was "the thunders." It - or the lightning that accompanied it - struck without warning.

This led to a fantastic ceremony known as Heyoka-Wozeip, in which the Sioux did everything contrary to usual custom. Praying, they behaved like clowns. In the winter they fanned themselves as though the sun were shining. They would put up a shelter with great care, then sit elsewhere. The purpose of it all was to propitiate, by misleading, the capricious Wakan of thunder.

It is probable that through association the Black Hills became awesome to these tribesman because there the rainfall was greater than on the prairie. Low-moving clouds would be caught and held by such mountains as Harney Peak, with sharp storms - punctuated by thunder and lightning - resulting. Thus the Hills were to be avoided.

The awe and reverence associated with the Hills are known, historically, to have been a factor in the tenacity with which the Sioux opposed the westward tide of white migration. The Treaty of 1868 reserved this area to them, and the Hills became a symbol to the Sioux of their independence and security. But when the official, though illegal, expedition of General George A. Custer from Bismarck, North Dakota, to the Hills in 1874 discovered gold there, Indian tenure was doomed. Despite the military, miners flocked in during 1875 and 1876. In the latter year, Custer's command was wiped out on the Little Big Horn River in Montana, and in the resultant flurry of white indignation, the Indians were persuaded, cajoled, and forced to relinquish their title to the Black Hills and retired to the Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Standing Rock and other reservations set aside for them.