Nebraska, Into the West

Leaving Kansas, we spent a day at Scotts Bluff National Monument in western Nebraska. Starting in the 1830s, this is the spot where settlers heading west along the Oregon Trail first started to encounter mountain topography after their already arduous journey across the plains. The area is characterized by by distinctive rock formations which marked the first pass through the mountains. The rock formations are visually stunning and offer a view for many miles over the prairie. They look distinctly western, unlike anything in the eastern United States.

We then spent time in the north western corner of Nebraska at the Agate Fossil Beds National Monument and the Toadstool Geologic Park in the Oglala  National Grassland. These are important fossil sites for extinct large mammals such as rhinoceroses and giant bears and mammoths and horses. Apparently there  is no longer active digging going on as the world’s museums and universities have already quarried enough material that hasn’t yet been processed or studied to keep them busy for several decades. Our untrained eyes didn’t see any bones, although we did learn to recognize fossilized animal foot prints. We did see vast grasslands with interesting rock formations, an occasional ranch, deer and antelope and prairie dogs, and gorgeous night skies.

We spent a night at Fort Robinson State Historic Park. It’s a beautiful park with miles of trails for hiking and bicycling and horseback riding, a golf course, a swimming pool, and lodging and meeting facilities. Apparently it’s a popular place for family reunions.  It’s also unfortunately the site of a former concentration camp. Fort Robinson was the main outpost from which the United States government’s war of removal against Plains Indians was conducted from about 1870 to 1890. Tribes and bands that would not voluntarily relocate were concentrated in the camp to facilitate being forcibly transported or starved into submission.  In one particularly egregious episode in 1877, a  band of Cheyenne, mostly women and children, were locked in a barracks for five days in the winter without food, water, or fuel for heat. When they tried to escape many of them were shot.  I was  disconcerted to discover when I walked around in the morning that our campsite was about 50 yards from the spot where Crazy Horse was murdered. He was the Lakota war chief who defeated Custer. He had submitted to the custody of the US military and had entered Fort Robinson voluntarily. There are conflicting accounts of what then happened but he was promptly killed once inside the fort. The historical sign says he was “mortally wounded while resisting arrest.”

I suppose it’s appropriate to ask, “Can’t you enjoy the swimming pool at the state park without thinking about dead Indians?”.  How often do I think about the Cherokee people who were brutally expelled from the area I now call home in western North Carolina? It seems to me a central task of being American is to appreciate the  wonderful things about our  country while still understanding and acknowledging the historical wrongs that are inseparable from our current prosperity and privilege. What to do about these wrongs is a far more difficult proposition, but certainly being honest about our history is an essential step. It seems to me the Fort Robinson authorities could make  more effort to honestly present the history and significance of their site. They do mention its role in the Indian wars, although they do not use the term concentration camp.   The Indian wars receive about as much attention in their museum and signage as does the latter use of the camp as a facility for providing horses, mules and dogs for the military, and as a World War II German prisoner of war camp. Apparently the German POWs generally liked Fort Robinson. They were saved from further combat service, they were no longer at risk of being executed by the Soviets or their own government’ and there was plenty of food and heat. They even had a theater troupe. The Plains Indians did not fare as well.