It stormed again last night. Michael slept through it but I was awake. Dumped buckets on us for awhile. This morning it rained as well. Not quite as hard though but still hard enough to nix cooking breakfast outside. We headed off to Deadwood first. We saw a reenactment of the murder of Wild Bill and walked around some of the shops. All of the casinos gave away free popcorn which I loved. The celebrity hotel had movie memorabilia. Michael really enjoyed that as there was lots of James Bond stuff.
We then headed up to the cemetery where Wild Bill and Calamity Jane are buried. They are buried right next to each other which I have read was a joke on Wild Bill. Calamity was infatuated with him while they were alive and reportedly her last words were “bury me next to Wild Bill.” Apparently his friends thought this would be a great final joke on him. The cemetery was huge and you could climb up to the top and see for miles. It was a steep climb but beautiful at the top.
Next we traveled to Tatanka which is the museum built but Kevin Costner to teach about the Sioux people and their relationship with tatanka (bison). There was a brief film by Costner explaining why he decided to build it. We then were given a lesson by a Native woman (who we found out later is actually Cherokee…but her husband is Lakota) on the Sioux tribes of the Lakota and Dakota. I learned a lot about the tribe that I can use with my students and they handed out worksheets which I will use as well. They had actual teepees set up and we were able to go inside them. We then went out and saw the bronze statues of the bison being driven over a cliff that Costner had commissioned from a local artist. Before we left we talked to the manager who knows Costner personally and asked about sites for the movie. She gave us a few and we were off in that direction.
We first headed up to the river where the Indian village was set up. Unfortunately, due to there being no markers we couldn’t figure out exactly where it was but we may have driven by it. Then we were off to where they filmed the winter scene. Once again not marked but we had a few guesses and know we were in the right area. It was too late to make it home to cook dinner so we went back to Deadwood and ate at Kevin Costner Presents the Midnight Casino. It was decorate with his movie memorabilia and the food in the restaurant was good. Of course each meal was named after a character from one of his movies.
Unfortunately, I Googled Costner on the trip and found that what he is advertising might not truly what he is really selling. The film at Tatanka talked about how white man hasn’t respected the land and that is why he set out to do what he did. We found online in multiple places that the Sioux tribe gave him land after filming Dances with Wolves and he promptly turned it into a golf course. He also went on and on about how he wanted to build a hotel at the site to bring people to the Black Hills and teach them the true history but couldn’t get the money from people to support it. We they found out he recently purchased a 17.8 million dollar ranch in California on top of the 20 million dollar ranch he owns in Colorado. He can’t be that hard up for money….not hating just saying!
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