- Black Elk, Oglala Sioux holy man
The timbered, rocky BLACK HILLS rise like an island from a sea of rolling hills and flat, grain-growing plains, stretching for a hundred miles between the Belle Fourche River in the north and the Cheyenne to the south, and varying in width from forty to sixty miles. For many generations of Sioux, their value was and still is immeasurable. The Hills are "the heart of everything that is," a kind of spiritual safe, a place of gods and holy mountains where warriors went to speak with Wakan Tanka (the Great Spirit) and await visions. They were dubbed Paha Sapa, or Black Hills, even though they are actually mountains (the highest, Harney Peak, rises 7242ft), and the blue spruce and Norway pine trees that cover them only appear to be black from a distance.
Imagining the Hills to be worthless, the United States government drew up a treaty in the mid-nineteenth century that gave them and most of the land west of the Missouri River to the Indians. All such treaties were destined to be broken when the discovery of gold turned the Indians' Eden into the white explorers' El Dorado, and fortune-hunters came pouring in. The story has an incomplete postscript: in 1980, the US Supreme Court ordered the federal government to pay the Sioux $105 million in compensation for the illegal seizure of the Hills in 1877. After heated debate among Native American representatives, this settlement was rejected and a steering committee subsequently formed to campaign for the return of the Hills themselves to the tribes. The legal battle continues, often hindered by a lack of consensus among the tribes.
The Hills these days are a major tourist destination, albeit attracting more Midwesterners, driven stir-crazy by the endless plains, than international travelers for whom forested hills may be less of a novelty. As yet, however, despite the real danger of the entire area becoming an ersatz Western theme park - as evidenced by its T-shirt stores, pseudo-historical wax museums, cowboy supper shows and water slides - marketing and merchandising aren't so extensive as to rob the Hills of all their beauty or dignity.
The more thickly wooded north is noted more for urban activities, with the casino town of Deadwood its busiest spot. No place in the Hills is much more than ninety minutes from the four presidential heads carved into Mount Rushmore , but even more remarkable is Crazy Horse Mountain , the world's most ambitious work-in-progress. In the shade of these great monuments, the less spoiled southern hills are home to the bison of Custer State Park and Wind Cave National Park , along with the town of Hot Springs .
Finally, a word about gold . Numerous outlets sell gold pendants of the area's distinctive grape-leaf design. The Hills variety has a frosted finish and comes in three shades - yellow, green and pink; the last two are alloys, made by mixing gold with silver and copper or zinc.
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