Deadwood THREE-PETE.
This trip to Deadwood was a walk down historic main street, a visit to Tatanka (Indian name for buffalo), and the Roosevelt Friendship Tower.
Our first stop was downtown Deadwood, before it got too hot. We parked in our usual place, the Visitor Center parking lot, the only place with free parking. Downtown Deadwood is a lot like any tourist town trying to survive... the old building are filled with commercial businesses. I took pictures of some of the original buildings still standing... that is after they were rebuilt because of the in the late 1870s.
Tatanka is a cultural museum conceived in the mind of Kevin Costner. Originally Kevin bought the land to build a hotel resort, honoring the region. Progress was slow on construction, but he commissioned a bison sculpture that was to be in the lobby area of the hotel. Even during the increasing delays, he commissioned more sculptures, 17 in all.
The hotel construction fell through, and the sculptures were kept in storage for several years. Kevin never lost his dream to honor the region... Tatanka emerges. A big portion of the museum grounds are dedicated to the bison sculptures. But let's go back inside.
Beginning a walk through you can read Crazy Horses' sentiment about white man coming to their lands.
Crazy Horse had valid concerns. During Custer's expedition in 1874, gold was discovered in the Black Hills, treaties were made with the Indians that were broken, the very buffalo they hunted were hunted to near extinction by the white man.
In a three year timeframe, 1872 to 1874 over 10 million POUNDS... 10 million pounds of dried, bleached bison bones were shipped from the prairie lands. Imagine how many buffalo comprised all those bones. That much devastation is what caused a native culture to starve.
Before the Europeans arrived after Columbus' discovery, the native American Indian population was estimated over 5 million, by 1900 their population was estimated at approximately 237,000, the decline mainly due to disease, genocide, slavery, and starvation. After walking through the museum, we took a walk to the sculptures.
After our stroll through the sculptures we headed back to the museum gift shop and spent a couple of dollars before taking a drive up to Roosevelt Friendship Tower.
The tower was a memorial to a friendship between Bullock and Roosevelt, if you remember. The tower itself is not a massive tower, only 30 feet high, 12 feet in diameter, with steep stairs to the lookout. The view was a 360 degree look over the valleys below.
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