FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER!

(re-run)

A decade ago, my boyfriend (at the time) and I took a driving vacation from my mom’s place in Iowa, up to Sioux Falls, and across South Dakota to Rapid City, Mount Rushmore, and Crazy Horse.  I’d never seen the Badlands or the Black Hills. First we heard the story of Mount Rushmore, USA government style, and then at Crazy Horse we heard it, from the Native American point of view, how it was built on sacred Lakota land, promised in a signed treaty and then later reclaimed by the U.S.  Government when gold was discovered there.

Crazy Horse will be a much bigger monument than Mount Rushmore when completed. The museum below is a treasury of all things Native American. After having read a dozen books about the tribes, the broken treaties, and the horrible things they did to settlers and the U.S. Government did to them, I can reflect back on the trip that educated me about some of our country’s history.

It never occurred to me that every other person I’d see in South Dakota would be descended from the Lakota Sioux, with straight black hair and flatter noses than European ones.  One Lakota man told me a little bit of history while I admired his arrowheads, streetside.

“The Lakota ruled the land once we got horses,” he said. 

“I hadn’t really thought about them before that,” I said.

“We were a dog culture before,” he said.

It’s those kinds of encounters that get me reading up to learn more about something, like Lakota Sioux and other tribes.

Two things that stick out from that trip, besides the arrowhead guy, was the restaurant called the Busted Nut, where there were coffee cans filled with peanuts in the shell, and you were supposed to crack them open, eat the peanuts and throw the shells onto the floor. We ordered supper, and the waitress asked if we wanted to add the salad bar for only $2.00 each. We said sure.

Being from California meant that we ate lots of salad and expected a wide variety of veggies to put atop our romaine lettuce, arugula, mixed greens and kale. When we went over to see our choices, I had to laugh. Under the plastic sneeze guard (is that what it’s called?) we found a huge bowl of iceberg lettuce, a small bowl of cherry tomatoes, a large bowl of Cool Whip and a small bowl of red Jello, cubed. There was also a wide variety of thick salad dressings to choose from.

We made our little salads, worth just about $2.00 each.

The other thing that stands out a decade later is the sad couple at the bed and breakfast where we stayed in the Black Hills. They had sold the place to a younger couple, and they were financing the sale themselves. The previous winter had been a bad one, and no one came to stay the whole month of December. Everyone cancelled because of the weather. The young couple lost money that month and bailed (as in packed up and left). Since the older couple still held the mortgage in their name, they had to come out of retirement and go back to work at their B&B.

You’ve got to give them credit for sticking together and seeing it through. They mentioned the golf games they played during their short retirement, the friends they’d made, the fun they’d had. It was hard to listen to.

Did they tell all of their guests or just us? Were they looking for tips? Were they so sorry of their choices that they wanted to warn others? It was a lovely piece of property, but running a B&B is work, and they wanted to quit and have fun in their golden years.

In other words, don’t buy a Bed &Breakfast, especially on sacred lands stolen from the Lakota!

P.S. I recently read somewhere that the Lakota tribe is still fighting the U.S. Government for their land back. The latest offer is 6 billion dollars, but the Lakota tribe refused it, stating they want their sacred lands instead.