troops at Wounded Knee, 25 miles to the south. The last Ghost Dance took place in 1890 on Stronghold Table just a few days before more than 150 followers of Big Foot, chief of the Miniconjou Sioux, were massacred by U.S. government, but for many years the Sioux danced without interference in the Badlands. The Ghost Dance ceremony, which could take days to perform, promised that the white farmers and ranchers would disappear and that the buffalo would return. Other Indian tribes, such as the once-feared Comanche, who were making a last stand against encroaching white settlers on the southern plains, also embraced these beliefs. ![]() In the late 1880s, the Sioux adopted a mystical religious movement that incorporated what became know as the Ghost Dance. During the last years of their wars with the United States, they used the remote Badlands as their stronghold against the U.S. ![]() In more recent times, the Dakota Indians, more commonly known as the Sioux, were masters of the northern plains. These people were probably nomadic hunters and gatherers who may have been among the early arrivals from Asia across the Bering land bridge. Within Badlands National Park, more than 80 archeological sites have been discovered, indicating that the first humans arrived in the area as long as 11,000 years ago. History of the Badlands: Inhabitants and ExplorationĮarly pioneers avoided the Badlands, but people have lived among these strange formations for millennia. Measurements by geologists confirm that the Wall's surface is wearing away at an almost unbelievably fast pace in some places, an inch or more is removed from the surface each year. Photographs taken just 50 years ago show different formations than those seen today this is the result of unusually rapid erosion. An annual cycle of freeze and thaw also contributes to the ongoing creation of the Wall, which is occurring at a phenomenal rate, geologically speaking. ![]() In the Badlands, water is the force that sculpts the earth, but this powerful element is assisted by winds that "sandblast" the stone with airborne grit and dust. One of the park's most monumental geological formations is the Wall. Then the balance changed, and wind and water went to work to create the geological wonderland we see today. For a few more million years, the land built up faster than it was eroded away.
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