The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1888-12-12
BAD LANDS OF DAKOTA.
THE GREAT PLAIN REGION AND ITS
GEOLOGICAL FORMATION

GEOLOGICAL FORMATION.
The home of Powerful Indian Tribes and
Countless Herds of Buffalo, Origin of
the Term 'Bad Lands'-what Science
Teaches.
Imagine if you will, vast aud seemingly
endless plains, over which you may travel
even by rail for days without leaving them,
and If by stage or wagon for weeks. Gently
undulating, like tidal swells upon a quiet
ocean, without tree or bush, the surface
greenish yellow, or golden brown, or dull
purple with sun cured grasses. The cool
air, a cloudless sky Gn September) and you
have Dakota-at least four-flfth of the whole
surface of il. And this description applies not
only to Dakota but to the by far the largest
portion of our northwestern territory out
side the mountain regions. This boundless
prairie averages above the sea about q 600
feet. Its drainage and that of the mountains
behind it is by the Missouri, which flows
southeasterly fully 1000 miles within Da-
kota. The Big Cheyenne, made up of two
forks, one taking the water shed of the Black
Hills of the north and west and the other
from the south and east, forms the principal
afiiuent of the Missouri river In Dakota. All
these waters are clay colored and roily from
fine clays held in suspension
This great plain region OF Dakota is wholly
made up of level strata of vast deposits of
the chalk and other periods, formed when a
great inland sea covered this and other like
regions of the northwest. After the drainage
OF this sea its bed has since been cut through
by the Missouri, the Cheyenne and other
rivers, deep into the level strata, showing,
where you look from the top of the bluffs
bounding the rivers, a thread of dull yellow
water, finding its winding way, perhaps a
hundred feet OF more below you, through a
flood plain of shifting sand and clay, which
varies from half a mile to five miles wide be-
tween the bluffs. This flood plain at high
water is covered many feet deep, but at this
season is dry and irregularly covered with
cottonwood poplars, aspen like in their silver
and bright green leaves. The descent to the
food plains may be bold or gently sloping
Here and there at frequent intervals the
water shed of the plains finds its way to the
rivers by gentle sloping valley or draw, as
1t is called, down which teams and loaded
wagons can easily follow.
BELIEVED TO BE WORTHLESS.
1t is curious to note that these great plains
were believed until very recently to be worth
less for any purpose of agriculture that they
were arid and desert like and that no crops
could be raised upon them except by costly
irrigation. This, however, was the home of
the powerful Lacotahs Dakotas) and here
roamed the countless herds of buffalo, an ami
NAL without which the Indian could not live;
whose skin gave him shelter and clothing; its
body food.
An animal that reckless slaughter has made
extinct; an animal whose extinction has made
the red man dependent upon the whites for
support; an animal which could have been
doubtless easily domesticated and which
would have formed a source of food and labor
service of great value to this region, in which
it was indigenous; an animal slaughtered for
the mere pleasure Of killing; its meat and its
hide Abandoned its extinction is a blot upon
the-prevention of cruelty to animals--ciVili-
cation or upon the legislation of a people
which permitted 1t.
Notwithstanding the belief that these plains
were worthless, they were and are covered
with hardy wild grasses, these including the
buffalo or gramma grass, consisting of low
tufts OF curling blades, holding up here and
there seed stem, looking for all the world
like an ordinary brstle counter brush in
miniature. As stated before, these grasses
euro ON the ground, and furnish food more
nutritious than tame hay, and one which
cattle can be turned out upon the winter
through and come out in the spring fatter
than they were in the beginning of winter
These wild grasses are now cut by the farm
ers, stacked the same day as cut, and viii
keep good in stack for seven or eight years
This hay crop forms source of cash income
to the settlers until such time as they can in
rIoca fbair In nda and yof ofbar, f1.nro
WHY CALLED 'sBAD LANDsn
The Bad Lands are so called, not because
they were useless or sterile, but because they
were "bad lands to travel through" accord |
ing to the accounts of the early French yoy- |
ageurs up fine Missouri. The Bad Lands form |
a prehistoric cemetery in which the remains |
of extinct animals are abundant, and many
of which wero giants in their way--repbiles
from ten to seventy feet long, sea animals |
reaching eighty feet In length, turtles whose
flippers reached fifteen feet, and brd-like
whose wings spread twenty-five
feet
These plastic clays, smoothly leveled, the
streaks of differing strata clearly defined, be-
long to the later cretaceous deposits, and are
700 feet thick and stretch from Pierre, ON the
Missouri, westward along the Cheyenne and
White river regions, The geologic age
which produced this deposit was the
age of mammals, and Is splendidly de-
veloped in this region. Quantities of re-
mains exist OF extinct creatures typical Of
the elephant, rhinoceros, camel, lion, tiger,
etc. Nowhere does the erosion of the ancient
rocks by ice and flood seem more wonderful
such vast accumulation Of drift material,
clays, sands and gravel, in places hundreds
Of feet in depth and covering hundreds of
of equare miles In area.
Science shows conclusively that our conti-
nent is one of the Oldest in its uplift-that
many portions of it were prepared for the
existence of man at time when Europe and
the east was slowly forming under the sea.
The extent OF the fossil remains Of gigantic
but extinct animals shows that the region of
5he Bad Lands was densely crowded by
living creatures, which, though now extinct,
existed long before the allied types now found
n the newer regions of Africa and ASIA
da,.iol, Ssfao,.,,s In, nafraff E,oa Droro