The wide-open spaces of the Great Plains roll away to infinity to either side of I-90 in SOUTH DAKOTA . Though the land is more green and fertile east of the Missouri River, vast numbers of high-season visitors speed straight on through to the spectacular southwest, site of the Badlands and the adjacent Black Hills - two of the most dramatic, mysterious and legend-impacted tracts of land in the US. For whites, they encapsulate a wagonload of American notions about heritage and the taming of the West. To Native Americans they are ancient, spiritually resonant places.

The science-fiction severity of the Badlands resists fitting into easy tourist tastes. The bigger, more user-friendly Black Hills, home of that most patriotic of icons, Mount Rushmore , have been subjected to greater exploitation (dozens of physical, historical and downright commercial attractions, and the mining of gold and other metals), but encourage more active exploration (via hiking trails, mountain lakes and streams, and scenic highways).

Time and Hollywood have mythologized the larger-than-life personalities for whom the Dakota Territory served as a stomping ground: Custer and Crazy Horse battled here for supremacy over the plains, while Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane were denizens of the once-notorious Gold Rush town of Deadwood . On a more contemporary note, Kevin Costner's award-winning Dances with Wolves (1990), shot in the state, boosted South Dakota's tourism image, though Costner's own ambitious development plans for the Black Hills have meant that he himself has fallen foul of the Sioux.

Sioux tribes dominated the plains from the eighteenth century, having gradually been pushed westwards from the Great Lakes by the encroaching whites. To these nomadic hunters, unlike the gun-toting Christian settlers and federal politicians, the concept of owning the earth was utterly alien. They fought hard to stay free: the Sioux are the only Indian nation to have defeated the United States in war and forced it to sign a treaty (in 1868) favorable to them. Even so, they were compelled, in the face of a gung-ho gold rush, to relinquish the sacred Black Hills, and ultimately the choice lay between death or confinement on reservations. For decades their history and culture were outlawed; until the 1940s it was illegal to teach or even speak their language, Lakota. More Sioux live on South Dakota's six reservations now than dwelled in the whole state during pioneer days, but their prospects are often grim. Nowhere is the leg-acy of injustice better symbolized than at Wounded Knee , on the Oglala Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation - scene of the infamous 1890 massacre by the US Army, and also of a prolonged "civil disturbance" by the radical American Indian Movement in 1973.

Today Native American traditions are celebrated by music, dance and socializing at powwows , held in summer on the reservations; the state tourist office can supply dates and locations. Apart from powwows, South Dakota summers are taken up with historical celebrations, volksmarches (a friendly sort of community walking exercise), ethnic festivals and rodeos. The 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition will be celebrated between 2003 and 2006; check for event details. The state has 170 parks and recreation areas for hikers and campers. In winter, downhill skiing is limited to Terry Peak and Deer Mountain outside Lead in the Black Hills; cross-country skiing and snowmobiling are more prevalent.  TOP

Badlands
The White River BADLANDS could be considered a pocket-sized cousin to Arizona's Grand Canyon. Beyond the family resemblance, what's most impressive about the "Badlandscape" is not its scale, as at the Canyon, but rather its sheer strangeness. More than 35 million years ago this area of southwest South Dakota was a saltwater sea; later it became a marsh, into which sank the remains of such prehistoric mammals as sabre-toothed cats and three-toed horses, to be covered with white volcanic ash. Drying as it evolved, the terrain became unable to support the deep-rooted shrubs or trees that might have preserved it, and over the last few million years erosion has slowly eaten away layers of sand, silt, ash, mud and gravel, to reveal rippling gradations of earth tones and pastel colors. The crumbly earth is carved into all manner of shapes: pinnacles, precipices, pyramids, knobs, cones, ridges, gorges or, if you're feeling poetic, lunar sandcastles and cathedrals. The Sioux dubbed these incredible contortions of nature Mako Sica , literally "land bad"; early French trappers echoed that with Mauvaises Terres à Traverser , or "bad lands to travel across"; they have also been aptly described as "hell with the fires out." Despite this daunting reputation, animals such as bighorn sheep, mule deer and prairie dogs are at home here, while on average a million visitors pass through each year.

The most spectacular formations can be found within the Badlands National Park , particularly its northern sector, while the southern stretches are encompassed by the poverty-stricken Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Clean-cut Wall , just a few miles north of the park boundaries, is the most visited commercial center in the region.

Black Hills
Our people knew there was yellow metal in little chunks up there, but they did not bother with it, because it was not good for anything .
- Black Elk, Oglala Sioux holy man

The timbered, rocky BLACK HILLS rise like an island from a sea of rolling hills and flat, grain-growing plains, stretching for a hundred miles between the Belle Fourche River in the north and the Cheyenne to the south, and varying in width from forty to sixty miles. For many generations of Sioux, their value was and still is immeasurable. The Hills are "the heart of everything that is," a kind of spiritual safe, a place of gods and holy mountains where warriors went to speak with Wakan Tanka (the Great Spirit) and await visions. They were dubbed Paha Sapa, or Black Hills, even though they are actually mountains (the highest, Harney Peak, rises 7242ft), and the blue spruce and Norway pine trees that cover them only appear to be black from a distance.

Imagining the Hills to be worthless, the United States government drew up a treaty in the mid-nineteenth century that gave them and most of the land west of the Missouri River to the Indians. All such treaties were destined to be broken when the discovery of gold turned the Indians' Eden into the white explorers' El Dorado, and fortune-hunters came pouring in. The story has an incomplete postscript: in 1980, the US Supreme Court ordered the federal government to pay the Sioux $105 million in compensation for the illegal seizure of the Hills in 1877. After heated debate among Native American representatives, this settlement was rejected and a steering committee subsequently formed to campaign for the return of the Hills themselves to the tribes. The legal battle continues, often hindered by a lack of consensus among the tribes.

The Hills these days are a major tourist destination, albeit attracting more Midwesterners, driven stir-crazy by the endless plains, than international travelers for whom forested hills may be less of a novelty. As yet, however, despite the real danger of the entire area becoming an ersatz Western theme park - as evidenced by its T-shirt stores, pseudo-historical wax museums, cowboy supper shows and water slides - marketing and merchandising aren't so extensive as to rob the Hills of all their beauty or dignity.

The more thickly wooded north is noted more for urban activities, with the casino town of Deadwood its busiest spot. No place in the Hills is much more than ninety minutes from the four presidential heads carved into Mount Rushmore , but even more remarkable is Crazy Horse Mountain , the world's most ambitious work-in-progress. In the shade of these great monuments, the less spoiled southern hills are home to the bison of Custer State Park and Wind Cave National Park, along with the town of Hot Springs.

Finally, a word about gold . Numerous outlets sell gold pendants of the area's distinctive grape-leaf design. The Hills variety has a frosted finish and comes in three shades - yellow, green and pink; the last two are alloys, made by mixing gold with silver and copper or zinc.

East of the Missouri
For tourists, little in eastern or central South Dakota can be considered essential. Sioux Falls , the state's biggest city, is faceless but handy. As one of the country's quietest and smallest capitals, Pierre has its charms. Mitchell has a few curiosities, while Yankton , comfortably ensconced beside the Missouri across from Nebraska, is a gem-like historic town draped with parks and picket fences, with the excellent Lewis and Clark Recreation Area on its doorstep. The town marks the start of an alternative cross-state route to I-90, trundling through nearby Vermillion , home to the exceptional Shrine to Music Museum (where the collection of musical instruments from all over the world now includes one of Bill Clinton's saxophones), plus the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations. About sixty miles northwest of Sioux Falls, De Smet is known as "Little Town on the Prairie" thanks to the autobiographical books of Laura Ingalls Wilder. You can tour eighteen sites she mentions for smatterings of history, pretty scenery and homely pride. Chamberlain , where I-90 shoots down a steep bluff and over the Missouri River, provides the most spectacular vistas in the eastern part of the state and is home to the worthwhile Akta Lakota Museum and Cultural Center.   TOP