Drove north to South Dakota. As we went north there was less farming and more ranching. The land got flatter, too. Drove north to Chamberlain, South Dakota, where we stopped at the Aksa Lakota Museum and School. It had some wonderful exhibits of Lakota crafts, both from the past and the present. It also had a fine video showing life in a Lakota village in the early 1800s. It taught how to make a tipi, how to kill and skin a buffalo, transport the meat with a travois, cook, get water using buffalo bladders as the water bags, sew using split buffalo sinews and awls for making holes in the hides. To heat water you would heat stones in the fire and then put the hot stones in a buffalo stomach bag full of water. You might make a stew of buffalo meat, onions, prairie turnips with perhaps some mint leaves for seasoning. Bows were made of stripped wood and strung with twisted buffalo sinew. Clothes were made of buffalo skins, and decorated with dyed and flattened porcupine quills. They might also be decorated with cowry shells, which were gotten in trade with the Northeast Indians or the Indian tribes on the west coast. After the Europeans moved in, beads were used to decorate the clothes. An Indian received a feather for every brave deed he did, so an Indian with a chief's headdress of many feathers was brave indeed. Unfortunately, the museum did not allow us to take photographs inside, and sold no pictures of the artifacts, so we could not bring back pictures.
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Akta Lakota Museum in Chamberlain, SD:
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Akta Lakota Museum in Chamberlain, SD: Aron Cowen in tipi
Dear Journal,
Today we drove to an Akta-Lakota Museum and learned how to put up a teepee. (See picture on next page). Tie-Dye and I are thinking of building one. Then we got lost on the native American scenic byway for a while, and went into “the Big bend” of the Missouri, but found our way, had lunch in a crazily heavy wind, and got to our motel. After that, we went on a scenic walk when I pretended to be an Indian scout. We also found a string of bullet cases. We had dinner and cheesecake for dessert, went into the state capitol, and fell asleep.
Aron
After the Aksa Lakota museum we took the Native American Scenic Byway. We crossed the Missouri (yet again) at Fort Thompson and ate our picnic lunch there by the dammed-up Missouri. It was coldish, about 64ºF, and very windy, but beautiful nonetheless. Very treeless - hill and flat with grass cut short by cattle and horses. The colors of the green grass, light tan grass heads, yellow flowers, and blue sky with white and grey clouds was fantastically beautiful. Once in awhile you could see parts of the hills without their green cover, and then they looked like the bad lands: black and grey hills.
When we got to Pierre, South Dakota, we walked out to the Teton Council Site by the Missouri. Then to our Comfort Inn motel to unpack a bit and so Aron could join his Johns Hopkins chat session. This week they worked on Fibonacci numbers. Aron also had a chance to reach his advisor, Daniel Chou, before joining the chat group.
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on the road in South Dakota: the Missouri
We then took a walk through Framboise Island Park in Pierre, SD.
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Framboise Island hike in Pierre, SD: Arthur Luehrmann and Aron Cowen
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Framboise Island hike in Pierre, SD: Arthur Luehrmann and the Missouri
Went out to dinner at Mad Mary's Steakhouse and Saloon, where we had the best prime rib of beef we've ever had!
After dinner we went to the State Capitol building in Pierre, South Dakota, and walked through it. I was amazed that: a)it was open until 10p to the public, b)the whole capital was opened, without any police or security guards in sight - you could just go in, c)you could wander anywhere, even into the Senate and House chambers, d)no one else was around at all. We saw a lone girl tourist who was from another town in South Dakota.
Back at the hotel we checked our email. I had 600 new messages. Sigh… 280 were labeled as spam and could be tossed away immediately. Another 150 were not marked as spam, but easily recognized as spam and tossed out. Another 160 were peace messages that I could forward to Beth Wilson and Lorene Lamb and then erase. But it all takes time, so I was late getting to bed.
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the Capitol, Pierre, SD:
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the Capitol, Pierre, SD: