Cultural History of Theodore Roosevelt National Park

I wrote the following article for the park website.  I'm posting my original version of it here, which varies slightly from the park's final version.

When Theodore Roosevelt came to Dakota Territory in 1883, the Little Missouri badlands were a place where no one legally owned the land, the prairie was fenceless and like an ocean, and the game was plentiful. In the few years he spent here, Roosevelt saw the society and the land change dramatically as ranches, homes, businesses, roads, and government were developed. However, this was not the first society to make a home in the badlands. Echoes of a more distant past still ring in Theodore Roosevelt National Park: a bison processing camp, an arrowhead placed ceremonially on a cliff ledge, a ring of rocks, the skeleton of a lodge. Who were the people who inhabited this forbidding land long before Roosevelt? Why did they come here?

The North Dakota Badlands present many challenges and opportunities, certainly reasons why Roosevelt connected with the land so deeply. The badlands with their ecological diversity and geology provided the means for ancient peoples to gather plant materials, to procure clays for making paints, to find water, and to hunt animals for subsistence. However, the steep terrain and the slickness of the clay soil made travel as exceedingly difficult then as it still is now. The badlands were hardly an inviting place to live, and the archaeological record suggests that long term occupation was impractical. Modern interpretations of prehistoric cultures by tribal elders inform us that the difficulty of life in the badlands and the inspiring landforms made the site spiritually significant in many ways. People considered the buttes as the homes of many animal spirits and sought the badlands for vision questing and other rituals in addition to hunting and gathering plant materials.

Our current knowledge of the prehistoric past of the badlands region is very limited because only a handful of artifacts have been found. These few items, though, indicate that the badlands region has been inhabited for thousands of years. Archaeologists have dated artifacts found elsewhere in North Dakota back to 11,000 B.C., but so far no objects of that age have been found in Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Ancient artifacts have not been found in the park either because the land was not inhabited or because rapid erosional processes have altered the landscape and obliterated or obscured these ancient artifacts. Artifacts from the Archaic Tradition (5,500 B.C. – A.D. 500) have been identified in the park, however, including a spearpoint made of Knife River flint dating to the Early Archaic and seven Middle Archaic projectile points found in six locations within the park. Projectile points and cord-roughened potshards indicate the presence of people of the Plains Woodland Tradition (1 – 1,200 A.D.). More recently the pre-Columbian peoples in the Late Prehistoric / Plains Village Tradition also appear in the archaeological record in the form of a wide variety of projectile points, potshards of several designs, and remains of a bison processing camp. Presumably, the people who used these tools for thousands of years in the badlands region came to hunt and perhaps gather other materials, but there is yet no firm evidence of any permanent or long-term occupation.

Several sites from the Historic Period (1742 – 1880s A.D.) that coincide with oral tradition are in the park today including stone rings, a rock cairn, and four conical, timbered lodges. Two of the lodges, presumably used by men engaged in seasonal eagle trapping, are still standing today. These structures are astonishing reminders of how recently traditional societies used this land as their ancestors had done for untold generations. One archaeological interpretation indicated that the use of the badlands for hunting, gathering, and spiritual pursuits, though undertaken by numerous cultures and groups over millennia, had not significantly changed over that entire time span.

A rich diversity of cultures utilized the badlands region in the historic time frame. Perhaps the most significant groups in this most recent period were the Mandan and the Hidatsa, whose traditional bison hunting grounds included the Little Missouri River basin even though their lifestyle was primarily sedentary and agrarian. To the west of the badlands, the Hidatsa’s close relatives, the Crow, also utilized the badlands at the eastern edge of their territory. In the historic period, a great number of other peoples including the Blackfeet, Gros Ventre, Chippewa, Cree, Sioux, and Rocky Boy tribes came to western North Dakota mainly for hunting and trading, often at Fort Union Trading Post in the early 19th century, and these peoples did not necessarily seek out the badlands in the way the Mandan, Hidatsa, or Crow might. The Assiniboine occupied a large area of the Northern Great Plains north of the Missouri River. The Arikara entered western and central North Dakota and several bands of the Lakota (Sioux) expanded their range into western North Dakota in the 19th century. Each group has its own history, traditions, spirituality, stories, and uses associated with the badlands in Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Eagle trapping, bison hunting, and other spiritual purposes were among the traditional peoples’ uses.

Eagle trapping was an important Mandan and Hidatsa land use in Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The process of eagle trapping was intensely spiritual, following certain social, spiritual, and astrological protocols. Even today, many of the specifics of the ritual are known only to those who have the rights to the knowledge within the tribes. Traditionally, only men with rights to perform eagle trapping were allowed to perform the ritual, and then only during specific times of the year as determined by astrology and presumably to coincide with eagle migration. Preparation including fasting and prayer were essential prerequisites to the act of trapping an eagle. To trap an eagle, a man built a pit in a location of his choosing and covered it with a lattice of brush and grass. Atop the covering, he placed a skinned rabbit as bait. The man waited inside the pit for an eagle to come upon the rabbit, and then sprang up to grab the eagle by its feet. Typically, he would take select feathers from the wings and/or tail and then release the eagle relatively unharmed. If eagles were abundant, he might kill one to make use of an entire wing or the tail.

Bison were another critically important resource for traditional societies, and the badlands offered opportunities to hunt them effectively. The steep badlands terrain made it possible to hunt bison without firing a shot. All that was required of the hunters was to cause the bison to stampede down a steep drop-off. Ideally, a few of the bison would get killed in the stampede, and those injured could be easily finished off by the hunters. A handful of sites within the park are known to have been used for precisely this purpose, including the remains of a bison processing area. Plains peoples had uses for every part of the bison, but arguably the most important parts were the meat for food and the hide for clothing, blankets, and tipi coverings. Other parts of the animal could be used for tools, medicine, toys, decoration, rituals, and more.

People sought the badlands for a wide variety of spiritual pursuits. The buttes throughout western North Dakota served as waypoints for traveling plains peoples, and these striking points on the landscape were important in many tribes’ spirituality. For many, the buttes were the homes of animal spirits, and a journey to a specific butte might entail medicine-making rituals specific to that bluff’s animal spirit. The badlands, too, were spiritually significant. Isolated bluffs with their steep slopes were excellent vision quest sites. Vision quests took many forms, but generally involved isolation, prayer, abstinence from food and water, and awaiting a vision given by the spirit world to the vision-seeker. Springs were preferred places to collect colored clays used to make paints for warriors’ faces, horses, and homes; the paint was considered medicine and was thus powerful. Oral tradition tells us that some springs were used for very specific purposes: for drinking, to collect a certain material, or to perform a specific ritual or ceremony. Evidence from these activities is scarce, and our knowledge of them is largely based on oral tradition kept alive by today’s tribal members.

Today, Theodore Roosevelt National Park remains a significant place for many American Indians, whose association with the land is rooted deeply in the past. A modern visitor experiencing the park might look upon the landscape with the same sense of fascination, wonderment, and reverence that these traditional peoples did, even though their spiritual beliefs and values may vary. On a visit to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, you enter more than a landscape of unique scenery and abundant wildlife – you enter an ancient home filled with legends, lore, and sacred places.

Source:

Zedeño, M. N. Cultural Affiliation Statement and Ethnographic Resource Assessment Study for Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site, and Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota.
Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology. The University of Arizona, Tucson. 2006.

Suggested Websites:

Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site – An extraordinarily important trading post for Northern Great Plains tribes at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers.

Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site – The center of Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara cultures near the confluence of the Heart and Knife Rivers.