Badlands or Pitifullands

Nakota horses survey the landscape of Charred Wood River Country (Little Missouri River Country), also known as the Badlands, at Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
The Badlands Or The Pitifullands
Place Name Of Little Missouri River Country
By Dakota Wind
Medora, N.D. (TFS) – Theodore Roosevelt National Park has been a part of the National Park Service since 1947. A site or park was in talks to honor the late president since 1921, and two units of the park were set aside to remember Roosevelt, despite a superintendent’s report findings that this park was unjustified.

The western part of the state, along the Little Missouri River is scenic. Some even say it’s majestic and open, inspiring a sense of smallness, wonder, and even isolation. The character of the landscape left a lasting impression on a president, and continues to do the same to millions of visitors today.

Roosevelt split his time between Little Missouri River country and New York from 1884 to 1887. In 1887, after a hard cold winter in which Roosevelt lost half his stock, he sold what remained so that his managers wouldn’t suffer a loss. He did not spend one continuous year in Dakota Territory.

Both units of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park reside in the North Dakota Badlands. The Badlands (one word). 

The Charred Wood River runs through the Pitiful Landscape. 

The Little Missouri River is known to the Lakȟóta as Čhaŋšótka Wakpá, or “Charred Wood.” The Lakȟóta call a landscape by the name of the water or stream that runs through it, so Little Missouri River country is called Čhaŋšótka Wakpá Makȟóčhe, or “Charred Wood River Country.”

The landscape through which the Charred Wood River runs, is known as the Badlands. The Theodore Roosevelt National Park brochure cites the Lakȟóta word Makȟóšiča, which is “Badlands.” Makȟá means “Earth.” Šíča means “Bad.” When these two words are compounded it becomes one word: Makȟóšiča. 

The visitor center proudly displays the name of the country as the Lakota know it, "Mako Shika." 

The visitor center at TRNP differs in word usage from the info it publishes. The museum showcases a panel which instead tells visitors in loud orange words “Mako Shika.” Using the new LLC standard, Mako Shika becomes Makȟóšhika. Makȟóšhika comes from the words Makȟá meaning “Earth,” and Úŋšika meaning “Poor,” or “Pitiful.”

Badlands or Pitifullands? 

Dakota Wind is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. He is currently a university student working on a degree in History with a focus on American Indian and Western History. He maintains the history website The First Scout.

Badlands Or Bad Lands

A view of Painted Canyon at the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Badlands Or Bad Lands
Little Missouri Country
By Dakota Wind
Great Plains, ND (TFS) – The landscape is beautiful. Beautiful in the sense that the renaissance poet might say it was beautiful because it required a balance of placement, light, color, and time. It’s beautiful in the sense that the Lakȟóta looked at it and saw that it was inherently good, because good is beautiful. Creation is good.

Over at The Prairie Blog, author and moderator, Mr. Jim Fuglie, features a breakdown about the Badlands, or Bad Lands, if you prefer. There are readers, North Dakota citizens, and out-of-state people who are drawn to one way it's written or the other. In his article, Mr. Fuglie draws on the Lakȟóta place name for the Badlands National Park about this kind of landscape:

Why is it called the Badlands?

The Lakota people were the first to call this place “mako sica” or “land bad.” Extreme temperatures, lack of water, and the exposed rugged terrain led to this name. In the early 1900’s, French-Canadian fur trappers called it “les mauvais terres pour traverse,” or “bad lands to travel through.”

“Today, the term badlands has a more geologic definition. Badlands form when soft sedimentary rock is extensively eroded in a dry climate. The park’s typical scenery of sharp spires, gullies, and ridges is a premier example of badlands topography.”

The Lakȟóta word for land, country, or earth, is Makȟá. The Lakȟóta word for bad is ŠíčA. When the word Makȟá is compounded with ŠíčA, it becomes Makȟóšica. It would seem then, that the written proper name if one needs proper, is Badlands. ŠíčA doesn’t mean bad in the sense that the land isn’t productive, the land was/is quite good for hunting deer, elk, bison, and at one time the bighorn sheep, and might serve as a descriptor of how the landscape appeared, but the land itself wasn’t “bad.” There was something there that was malevolent and dark.

A Tyrannosaurus Rex, as featured at Dinopedia. 

The erosion of the landscape in the various badland formations tends to reveal fossilized dinosaur remains. The Lakȟóta refer to the great serpents as Uŋktéǧi, a twisted creation of Uŋčí Makȟá (Grandmother Earth). In the early days, after creation, they say these Uŋktéǧi ate people or caused people to mysteriously disappear. Íŋyaŋ, Stone, created WakÍŋyaŋ, the Flying Ones, to do battle with the Uŋktéǧi. WakÍŋyaŋ fly in from the west, terrible lightning flashes from their eyes, and wind gusts from each stroke of their wings, as they cleanse Makȟóčhe Wašté, the Beautiful Country (Great Plains; North America).

The Lakȟóta also name the regions of Makȟóčhe Wašté by the name of the stream which flows through it. The Little Missouri River is known to the Lakȟóta as Čhaŋšótka Wakpá, or Charred Woods River. The Badlands, by this place name method, is called Čhaŋšótka Wakpá Makȟóčhe, meaning Charred Wood River Country. They might call it this if born in that country. In everyday speech, however, the Lakȟóta would call it Makȟóšica.

Mr. Fuglie knows that it isn’t worth the energy to argue about the semantics of Badlands vs. Bad Lands (he prefers two separate words). The better question to ask, and perhaps argue over, would be, “what does the Badlands mean to you?”

Dakota Wind is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. He is currently a university student working on a degree in History with a focus on American Indian and Western History. He maintains the history website The First Scout.

See also:
The Sheyenne River Or The Cheyenne River

How To Pronounce Oahe

Visit:

The Prairie Blog 

Theodore Roosevelt National Park
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Glossary:

Čhaŋšótka Wakpá (chahn-SHOHT-kah wahk-PAH): Charred Woods River

Íŋyaŋ (EEN-yahn): Stone

Lakȟóta (lah-KHOH-tah): lit. “Affection.” Friend or Ally

Makȟá (mah-KHAH): Earth

Makȟóčhe Wašté (mah-KHOH-chay wash-TAY): The Beautiful Country, Great Plains, North America

Makȟóšica (mah-KHOH-shee-chah): Badlands

ŠíčA (SHEE-chah): Bad

Uŋčí (oon-CHEE): Grandmother

Uŋktéǧi (oonk-TAY-ghee): Serpents, or Dinosaurs

WakÍŋyaŋ (wah-KEEN-yah): Winged Ones, Thunder

Wakpá (wahk-PAH): River

Theodore Roosevelt's Two Wives Of The Badlands

Roosevelt, pictured here in 1884. 

Theodore Roosevelt's Native Wives

Left Behind To Pursue Politics
By Dakota Wind
BADLANDS, N.D. - On November 6, 1934, an Arikara named Sand Hill Crane (a former US Scout too) gave an interview to Colonel Alfred Welch about Theodore Roosevelt and his two native wives. Here's what he said:

“Yes, I know about Roosevelt and the Gros Ventre [Hidatsa] woman he took. He got her. That was the way we did it then. He gave some horses for her. Her name was Brown Head. She was Hidatsa. She’s dead now," said Sand Hill Crane. After Roosevelt left Brown Head, she became the wife of Foolish Woman, a member of the Hidatsa and Sand Hill Crane's cousin, but shortly after their marriage, Brown Head died. 

Then Sand Hill Crane went on to explain, “He got another one. Her name was See The Woman. She was one-half French and one-half Hidatsa. She’s alive yet up at Shell Creek. Yes, I knew him well. He was all right. When he went away he gave the women some horses and things." After Roosevelt's convalescent stay in the Badlands, he returned to the east and entered the political arena. Of Roosevelt's relationship with the two women, Sand Hill Crane shared this, "So he went away. Then he became a big man. We never said anything about these women to anyone. That’s the way the white men did then in the country."

Roosevelt believed that the American Indians had no claim to the land, and had no desire to hold property. It is evident too, that he didn't think his marriages to Brown Head and See The Woman were valid either, as he left them behind when he sufficiently recovered from the loss of his wife, Alice Lee Roosevelt, and his mother, Mittie Roosevelt. 

A Visit To Elk River Country

Hehaka TaWakpa Makoche 

(Elk River Country)
AKA Theodore Roosevelt National Park
A Photo Essay by Dakota Wind
MEDORA, N.D. - Anytime I visit a place with my sons, if the Lakota people have a name and a story about it, I tell them about it as the Lakota know it. The above image was taken at the Painted Canyon Visitor Center. There, I quietly shared the story of General Sully's punitive campaign against the Lakota that started at Killdeer Mountain and led the soldiers to the Badlands, Makoche Sica.

This was taken about a mile south of Wind Canyon. My youngest son wanted to pick flowers so we walked about and found some. When we came upon some, I told him that we must never pick the first ones we see, that we want the flowers to return, so we can pick the second flower we come across.

Any trees of big size grow on the Elk River floodplain. This little shrub was growing between broken sandstones on a hillside.

There it is. Elk River. Today the river is known by its contemporary name, the Little Missouri River. It was a favored place of the Lakota, Cheyenne, Mandan and Hidatsa to hunt elk.

Here's a feral herd of horses within the park. The horses descend from horses which were removed from the Lakota in the late 1800s. My youngest son knows that the horses aren't "ours" as in ownership, but he calls them "ours," as in "our friends."

A gange of bison roam the park too. These bison are pure blooded bison from the gange at Yellowstone National Park. By the turn of 1900 there were only about 300 pure blood bison that could be accounted for there. They were close to extinction, but have made a return.

There were several colts among the haras (one of those fancy collective nouns for horses) in the park. Several other visitors had gotten out of their cars and trucks to take pictures, but we didn't. My youngest rolled down his window and called out to them. 

It was windy, but then it always is on the Great Plains. The wind has been here since creation and still blows strong. The wind blew and carried the wonderful scent of sage across the endless rolling miles. Here's a little valley of sage. Last year my youngest son picked sage for my mother here because her house smells like this.