Substandard housing painfully typical of Indian communities dots the surrounding countryside and weaves Wounded Knee into the continuing history of colonization that the Lakotas have suffered. The trek continued north to the small community of Manderson, the home of Lakota Holy Man Black Elk, through Rocky Ford, and west towards the Black Hills. After a rough 60-mile drive across the rolling prairie on a dirt road, the Buffalo Gap emerged. The dirt road is said to have been cut over the freshly torn sod of the original buffalo trails. The gap, in its magical splendor, came and went with little fanfare for its ecological or cultural significance.
Tourists have yet to find it.
Traffic in nearby Wind Cave National Park was unconditionally halted and dwarfed by a herd of more than a thousand head of buffalo crossing Route 79. Continuing north, the next stops were at the Crazy Horse monument in Custer, Mt. Rushmore and Rapid City. Route 44 emptied southward out of the hills through the badlands to the reservation-border town of Scenic. A fellow member of the Santa Fe Native American study group photographed Petrush at the Pueblo Alto ruins at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, in September. My weekend adventure through the rising buttes and historical valleys of the Black Hills was just one of many trips during an internship at the tribal courthouse on the adjacent Rosebud Reservation, home of the Sichangu Lakota.