July 5, 1998 - Lame Deer - Rest Day

DISTANCE TRAVELED: 0 Miles

TIME: 0 Hours

AVERAGE SPEED: 0 Miles/Hour

TRAVEL CONDITIONS: Cool and clear skies in the early morning turning to a very hot midday. The late afternoon and evening turned to a cool period of time with thunderstorms and a little hail.

ROAD CONDITIONS: N/A

TERRAIN/DIFFICULTY LEVEL: N/A

DAILY JOURNAL COMMENTS:
We woke up at an unusually early time of 4:30 in the morning so that we could learn about the Indian culture. We all loaded onto the bus or the van and went to a private piece of land where there was a set of rocks that were standing out of the ground where Sitting Bull camped during Custer's Last Stand and had his visions of the battle to come. We started out with a medicine man giving a prayer in his native Indian language. After the prayer he brought out his peace pipe and passed it among his four friends that he brought with him. Next we saw the carvings that described his visions showing that the white people would die and the Indians would be victorious. The most amazing thing is that on one part of the rock there is a single white line going down the face. This is a place where a lightening bolt hit the rock sterilizing the rock and making it perfectly white.(Picture55) After seeing all of the carvings and getting a description of what had happened, we left the area after signing a guest book and seeing a few artifacts that the owner had collected including bullet shells, belt buckles and many other things from the war times. Also we were able to see a variety of tools that the Indians had made. Around 8:00 we went back to the teepees and I slept until 11:00 after eating a cheeseburger since I had only had about 3 hours of sleep the previous night. Finally when I woke up I was sweating greatly since the sun had heated up the teepee so much. I went outside and to my relief the air was cool under the shade especially with the wind blowing. Around 1:00 we went out again to see more Indian places. We went out onto some back dirt roads that I thought we would never get off of. We were able to see numerous places where there were lookout towers and a few places where they would signal other tribes. We later went to a few buffalo jumps(Picture56) where the Indians would herd the buffalo off of the cliffs to their deaths making easy food. At the last jump, we were able to look on the ground for arrowheads since the Indians would shoot the wounded animals that didn't die immediately. Richard's father found one and a few people including me found scrapers that were used to clean the hide from all of the flesh. At one time 200-2000 animals would be killed at once! As we were looking for artifacts, lightening started to come down and we quickly ran to the cars to escape the rain. We went up to the top of a hill where we waited since the valleys can flood easily. Not only did we get rain but we also had some hail while we waited out the short storm. Finally when it was over we started again and almost got stuck in some of the slippery mud that had formed. We slid around in a yellow school bus that didn't exactly belong on the dirt roads. We got back onto the road and started our trip back to the Pow Wow to have dinner. We ate around 10:00 and had couscoos with a sweet and sour sauce that had peanuts, red and green peppers and many other things in it. It tasted good and was very filling. Everyone was tired and Katie, Matt and I went to bed very soon after talking for a while at 12:30.

TRIP ROUTE:
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