Day 19-Vermillion, SD to Springfield, SD (76/866 miles)

I am now entering an especially sparsely populated area of South Dakota, which requires careful planning in regard to supplies and daily destinations.  There are a lot of Native Americans in this region, just as there were when Lewis and Clark passed through in the late summer and early fall of 1804.

 

In 2003, a descendent of a chief of the Oto tribe donated to the Oklahoma historical society an 11 page manuscript purporting to be Clark's handwritten script of the speech that Lewis gave to a band of Yankton Sioux Indians at a council that took place at Calumet Bluff  on August 30, 1804. 

I obtained a copy of the manuscript from the Army Corps of Engineers visitor center in Yankton.  I have no way of authenticating this, but the fact that The pamphlet in which it was contained was produced and circulated by the National Park Service would seem to lend credibility.  The text of the speech was as patronizing as my earlier research has led me to believe.  As the following excerpt indicate, the tone of the speech was both promising and threatening:

"Do these things which the great Chief of the Seventeen great nations of America has commanded and you will be happy…"

"… one false step you should bring upon you the displeasure of your great father who could destroy you and your nation as the fire destroys and consumes the grass of the plains."

These guys apparently did not subscribe to the tenets later set forth in the Carnegie classic, "How to Make Friends and Influence People"!

To some extent, history repeated itself 200 years later when some Corps of Discovery reenactors came up the Missouri River to celebrate the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition.  They were not received at all well by the Native Americans in these parts.  

 

According to some guys I met here in Springfield with first-hand knowledge of the reenactment, it was a disaster. Apparently the ringleader, a teacher from Illinois, wanted to meet with as many Native Americans as possible along the way to educate them about solutions to their modern day problems.

By the time the reenactors arrived in Chamberlain, SD, a bit upstream from here, a mob of about 200 enraged Native Americans set out to burn the reenactors' replica of the keelboat.  They likely would have succeeded had they not been restrained by numerous law enforcement personnel.  

Eventually even the other reenactors reached the point where they had had enough of this guy. There was a mutiny and the crew of reenactors overthrew and dismissed their leader.

So, armed with all this information, I will be humbly and respectfully riding through several large Indian reservations over the next few days.