SIDE TOUR 8C
Mandan—Cannonball—Fort Yates—South Dakota Line. ND 6, 21, & 24.
Mandan to South Dakota Line, 85 m.
Graveled roadbed except 15 m. unimproved dry-weather roadbed on ND 21.
Accommodations at Fort Yates only.
This route traverses the North Dakota section of the Standing Rock Indian Agency (for history of the agency see Indians and Their Predecessors) where Sitting Bull, Rain-in-the-Face, and Chief Gall, Father Pierre De Smet, and Maj. James McLaughlin made early history in the Dakotas. When organized in 1868 the reservation contained four million acres. The treaty with the Sioux in 1887, however, provided for white settlement, and when the area was opened for homesteading in 1910 the reservation was reduced to 1,343,000 acres. Today all of Sioux County constitutes the North Dakota portion of the agency. Here 1,600 members of the upper and lower bands of the Yanktonai Sioux make their homes in an area of rugged brown hills, smooth grasslands, and rugged, distorted, gray-blue buttes. On the South Dakota side of the agency live 1,100 Hunkpapa and Blackfoot Sioux.
ND 6 branches S. from its junction with US 10 at MANDAN (see Tour 8), crosses the Heart River, and passes the U. S. NORTHERN GREAT PLAINS FIELD STATION (guides available at office). At 4 m. is the U. S. NORTHERN GREAT PLAINS DAIRY STATION (R). Various crops, plants, trees, shrubs, methods of farming, breeds of cattle, and even buildings are tried, tested, and adapted to the dry farming of the Missouri Slope country at these two Government experimental stations.
As the highway gradually ascends from the river valley to the flowing prairies, high hills and buttes are outlined in a blue haze against the southwestern horizon. At 9 m. (R) is the CESKY ZAKOPNIK (pronounced Chesky za kop' neek) or retreat of the Western Czechoslovakian Fraternal Organization, a social, benevolent, and protective society. The Cesky Zakopnik is a lodge hall and social center for the Czechs of Mandan and the vicinity. These people are thoroughly Americanized. Their dances (public), quite American in all other respects, have one unusual feature, the dancing of Sala Naninka De Zeli (Annie Went to the Cabbage Patch), a folk dance with intricate steps. It is usually performed once or twice during the evening, and the older people particularly enjoy it.
The sharp, high-pointed peak (L) of LITTLE HEART BUTTE (Sioux name, Ta canta wakpa cikala paha), an early-day landmark, is visible from a distance before the road passes it at 11 m. The Bismarck Weather Bureau uses the peak several times daily for observations of visibility.