Travel
South
Dakota
By
Alan Wilkinson
Dolores
thought it was the funniest thing she'd heard all week. "Listen
to this guy," she told the customers as they drifted one at a time into
the little trading post at Kenel. "Came
onto the rez to talk to the Natives, and all he meets is white people.
"I'd
crossed the river at Mobridge, named for the old telegraphic
shorthand-Bridge over the Missouri-and driven north
through the Standing Rock Reservation. Maybe it was
pure coincidence, but everyone I met that morning was
white. One or two were running cattle on land their
grandparents had bought a hundred years ago. One or
two were married to Natives or leased their land. And
when at last I met a full-blooded Lakota, she confessed
that she too was an incomer of sorts.
"Left
here with my Mom when I was just a kid," she said. "Went
to Rapid City. Qualified as an optometrist and went
to the Twin Cities." That was 50 years ago, and
now she was back, helping her son run the store and
seek out his roots.
Kenel
has moved up in the world-literally. "When I was
a kid we were down on the riverbank. Used to go in
the woods and gather wild plums, grapes. Then they
started on the dam, Oahe.
My Dad helped build it, worked for the Corps of Engineers.
Once it was done the river backed up, and they moved
the whole village up here-houses, store, church, even
the graveyards." She looked around at the neat
bungalows perched on the bare hilltops. "It's
not the way it was, but it's a decent place. New school
going up. Good place to retire to."
Earlier
that day I'd followed the river north from the capital,
Pierre, and stopped off at Oahe to see the dam her
father helped build. They'd been working on it 14 years
when President Kennedy opened it in 1962. At 245 feet
high and almost two miles across, the earthen bank
created the fourth largest man-made reservoir in the
United States. The lake behind it extends almost to
Bismarck, N.D., close to 200 miles, and has a longer
shoreline than the entire state of California.
"You
got room for me in your car?" Dolores asked. "You
should come see the ranch."
The ranch headquarters was a smart timber and glass building tucked away in
a green valley beside a loading chute and a corral. "Everyone runs a few
head of cattle, and in the spring we round 'em up and see who the calves belong
to." She was laughing again. "How'd you like that? Injuns playing
cowboys!"
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