Celebrate: South Dakota, Bison, Picture Books!

Today is South Dakota's 125th Birthday. (North Dakota's, too, for that matter, but that's not what this post is about.) Yesterday was National Bison Day, and November is National Picture Book Month. That's a lot to celebrate!

South Dakota's best-known icon is probably Mount Rushmore, pictured above, in western South Dakota. South Dakota author Jean Patrick has written several books for the Mount Rushmore Society, including the picture books
Four Famous Faces (brand new) and Who Carved the Mountain? , both illustrated by Renee Graef.

     

Nearby, another mountain turned memorial stands as tribute to the first people who lived here. The work on Crazy Horse Memorial continues (pictured above), though carver Korczak Ziolkowski died in 1982. The grounds themselves provide The Indian Museum of North America,  the Native American Educational and Cultural Center,the carver's studio and home, a gift shop, and more.

The picture book Crazy Horse's Vision by Joseph Bruchac, illustrated by South Dakota-born S.D. Nelson, tells the story of how Crazy Horse becomes a brave warrior.

Though South Dakota's official state animal is the coyote, the mighty bison has long played a part in state history. Once nearly extinct because of over-hunting, bison herds now thrive across the state, including at ranches that raise them to sell for meat. 

One large herd that attracts tourists lives in Custer State Park in the Black Hills. We once found ourselves amid a herd of buffalo trying to cross the road we were on. Believe me, there's nothing to do but wait, and you do not want to get between a mother and baby!

South Dakota artist Donald F. Montileaux's picture book, Tatanka and the Lakota People, tells part of a traditional creation story with the buffalo (tatanka) as hero. The story is told in illustrations, English, and Lakota.

This post is just a brushstroke of everything that is South Dakota. South Dakota is proud of its history and its resources and is ready to meet the next 125 years. Come and visit! In the meantime, find out more facts about South Dakota here.

(photographs copyright Jane Heitman Healy, 2012, all rights reserved)

Still Flower-Fed

Custer State Park, in South Dakota's Black Hills, is home to a managed wild buffalo herd of approximately 1,500 head. Rounding a bend just off the Wildlife Loop, we saw this bull grazing.

Once these creatures roamed the plains by the hundreds of thousands. From 1800-1900, commercial hunting took its toll until the herds were nearly gone. Fortunately, a few men had foresight to save and raise some calves from the wild herds. Their descendents live in Custer State Park today.

Also known as American bison, these animals can run 35 mph and can jump 6 feet in the air from a dead stop. Their strong legs and massive skulls are weapons against predators.

Our vehicle was so close we could hear the bull rip the grass from the ground and chew it. I could have reached out and touched him, but I knew better!


Vachel Lindsay's poem, "The Flower-Fed Buffaloes," came to mind:

The flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
In the days of long ago,
Ranged where the locomotives sing
And the prarie flowers lie low:
The tossing, blooming, perfumed grass
Is swept away by wheat,
Wheels and wheels and wheels spin by
In the spring that still is sweet.
But the flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
Left us long ago,
They gore no more, they bellow no more
They trundle around the hills no more: --
With the Blackfeet lying low,
With the Pawnee lying low,
Lying low.

Lindsay was known as a "singing poet." He performed his poems, chanting, percussing, emoting, inflecting, and infecting his listeners with sound. Hear the regret in his voice as he gives tribute to this mammoth of the plains by clicking on the poem's title here.

At Custer State Park, the buffalo are still flower-fed and bellowing. I think Lindsay would be pleased.