OldWestNewWest.Com

     You might not expect South Dakota to be a setting for controversy, but that’s exactly what’s happening these days as American Indian religion and culture clash with property rights advocates and motorcycle enthusiasts.
     Now South Dakota’s Governor Mike Rounds has entered the fray by announcing his intention to earmark public and private money to slow further biker bar development near Bear Mountain, a place held sacred by many American Indians and the focus of the controversy.

     Located just six miles northeast of the City of Sturgis off Highway 79, Bear Mountain is revered by the  Lakota and Cheyenne as a place chosen by the Creator to communicate with them through fasting, prayer and spiritual visions. Many American Indians make pilgrimages to Bear Mountain, or Bear Butte as some call it, leaving behind prayer cloths and pouches of tobacco hanging from the trees.
     Because Indians hold the mountain as sacred, many want the area to remain in a natural setting and free from further development, especially the noisy, rowdy businesses and events that ripple out from the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, a week-long event that has brought as many as 600,000 bikers to the area.
     To put that in perspective, Sturgis has a regular population of 6,400 citizens, while the entire state of South Dakota has a population of about 718,000 persons.
     Now in its 67th year, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally’s popularity has helped push land prices in recent years as well as development.
     In his Dec. 4, 2007 budget address to the South Dakota state legislature, Gov. Rounds said he is asking for “$250,000, which would match another $343,000 in private funds and $593,000 in federal funds for a total of $1,187,000 to further protect the beauty and the peace of the Bear Butte Mountain.”
     According to an aide of the governor, the $1.1 million would be used to buy a perpetual easement on private property on the west side of Bear Mountain, one of the more critical areas according to Rounds, that would prevent any commercial or residential development.
     “Between the area where our state park is located near Bear Butte, and where the actual mountain is located … the landowners are negotiating with us in good faith to allow us to participate in an easement that would keep that land in agricultural use in perpetuity,” Rounds told the legislature.
     “It would stay on the tax rolls but it may very well be a very good move to assist in calming some of the concerns about encroachment on the Bear Butte Mountain and I think this is one way in which we can offer [a solution],” he added.

     Called Mato Paha by the Lakota, translating as Bear Mountain, the Indians gave it that name because to them it looked like a bear sleeping on its side.
     According to the South Dakota Division of Parks and Recreation, artifacts dating back 10,000 years have been found near Bear Butte. Notable Indian leaders including Red Cloud, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull visited the mountain.
     Gen. George A. Custer camped near the mountain, and in the late 1870s Bear Butte served as a landmark to help guide the rush of prospectors and settlers into the Black Hills.

     In addition to being a state park, Bear Butte is also in the National Register of Historic Places, a National Natural Landmark, and a National Historic Landmark. Additionally, the Summit Trail is a designated a National Recreation Trail.
     “This is an issue that the governor cares deeply about,” Mitch Krebs, the governor’s press secretary, told OldWestNewWest.Com. “Bear Butte is not only a sacred site for native people, it’s also a National Historic Site and a South Dakota State Park. We have an obligation to protect the integrity of the area for all of those reasons, and all are of equal importance.”
     The state legislature is expected to take up Round’s budget requests starting in January.
     For more information about Bear Butte State Park, visit the park’s Web site at www.sdgfp.info/Parks/Regions/NorthernHills/BearButte.htm

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