This is my bud King who rode with me awhile as I was leaving Fort Thompson . He soon got bored becuse I was going too slow for him and he sped off back to town. The song that stuck in my head for awhile afterwards was that Peter, Paul, Mary classic "Puff the Magic Dragon" which is about a dragon (me) who has a little friend named Jackie Paper (King) who have a great time until Jackie got into other stuff and did not show up anymore. I was not really sad like Puff because I had a 10 mile per hour tail wind and the rest of the world just did not matter. I was rollin baby!!!
There are a bunch of these along the roads and I wonder if they affect me more because I am riding by at 12 mph and so have a lot more time to dwell on the meaning than somebody in a car whipping by at 65-70 and very little time to think about what happened on that spot.
Although it hurt me to stop because I was enjoying that westerly tail wind so much I had to do the 10 mile pee thing. As I was doing my business I saw a stone with a metal plaque about 30 feet up in a field , so I climbed over gate to check it out.
This is what I found and I did not kinow enough to understand full meaning. What I did see and almost step on was several cacti which are the first I have seen on trip so far, but then I have not been looking very hard for them. Anyway , you can kinda see them in pic above, to the right of the stone.
Looked interesting so I looked it up. Here is the data below. Looks like a pretty bad deal for this indians on that area, like many others.
ReplyDeleteThe Crow Creek massacre occurred in the early 14th century between American Indian groups in the South Dakota area. Crow Creek Site, the site of the massacre near Chamberlain, is an archaeological site and a U.S. National Historic Landmark. It is thought that either Middle Missou or Initial Coalescent Indians moved into the area. The overcrowding grew to a point that both sides conducted raids on each other's camps and mass graves produced the Crow Creek massacre.
There is evidence that one group knew of the impending attacks on its village. The village, with around 50 houses, were on top of a bluff and were in the process of building a ditch and a new wall in order to try to prevent, or at least slow down, the attack from the other camp. They were far too late in building these structures.
The attacking group slaughtered the people on the bluff. Anthropologists, led by Thomas Emerson, found the remains of 486 people from the attack. Many of these remains had signs of torture and mutilation. These included tongues being cut out, scalping, teeth broken, heads cut off, and other forms of dismemberment.