Eroded formations fill the view, with the tall group called the Castle off past the valley and the White River country below. This is a good place to consider the Fort Laramie Treaty lands and the Pine Ridge Reservation, which lies beyond the river and includes the park's South Unit.
A long valley opens on your right at White River Valley Overlook. It runs down to the White River, Makizita Wakpa. Past the river is the Pine Ridge Reservation, home of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, more than fifty-two thousand strong. Every mile of this drive lay inside the Great Sioux Reservation, which the Fort Laramie Treaty set apart in eighteen sixty-eight. It was for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Lakota. By eighteen eighty-nine that reservation had been broken up into smaller ones. The South Unit is Pine Ridge land held in trust. The tribe owns it, and the Park Service manages it under an agreement. In the hungry fall of eighteen ninety, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Lakota people went to a high tableland called the Stronghold for refuge. Twelve years later the river was a working line. The grass was better on the reservation side, so settlers' cattle kept crossing it. In nineteen oh two the reservation held a roundup, and every unbranded animal went to a volunteer Lakota crew. Then the Lakota fenced the reservation line themselves, and hired Lakota riders to keep it up. From eighteen eighty-five to nineteen twelve, their herds quadrupled. The Oglala Lakota are still here, and that valley is still home.
Photo: NPS / Ed Welsh, public domain · Public domain