Father Pierre-Jean de Smet called the White River Mankizita-Watpa. This Indian word commonly means “white earth river,” or more literally, “smoking land river.” The priest attributed the name to the river water which he wrote was “impregnated with a whitish slime.”[8]
Early American trappers and traders called the attention of the world to the unusual geological features and extensive fossil deposits of the Badlands along the White River. The earliest known description of the region, believed to be the White River Badlands, is that of James Clyman, a member of Jedediah Smith’s 11-man party, who passed through the area in 1823. Clyman described it as
... a tract of county whare no vegetation of any kind existed beeing worn into knobs and gullies and extremely uneven ... a loose grayish coloured soil verry soluble in water running thick as it could move of a pale whitish coular and remarkably adhesive ... there [came] on a misty rain while we were in this pile of ashes [bad-lands west of the South Fork of the Cheyenne River] and it loded down our horses feet (feet) in great lumps it looked a little remarkable that not a foot of level land could be found the narrow revines going in all manner of directions and the cobble mound
of a regular taper from top to bottom all of them of the percise same angle and the tops sharp ... the whole of this region is moveing to the Misourie River as fast as rain and thawing of Snow can carry it....[9]
When Maximilian, Prince of Wied, returned to Fort Pierre in 1834 after making his historic journey up the Missouri with Charles Bodmer, William Laidlaw, the trader of the fort, gave him a description of the Badlands. The German prince wrote:
... I much regretted that I could not remain long enough to visit the interesting tract of the Mauvaises Terres, which is some days’ journey from hence. Mr. Laidlow [sic], who had been there in the winter, gave me a description of it. It is two days’ journey, he said, south-west of Fort Pierre, and forms, in the level prairie, an accumulation of hills of most remarkable forms, looking like fortresses, churches, villages and ruins, and doubtless consisting of the same sand-stone as the conformations near the Stone Walls. He further stated that the bighorn abounds in that tract.[10]
Father de Smet visited the Badlands region in 1848. He described it as
... the most extraordinary of any I have met in my journeys through the wilderness.... Viewed at a distance, these lands exhibit the appearance of extensive villages and ancient castles, but under forms so extraordinary, and so capricious a style of architecture, that we might consider them as appertaining to some new world, or ages far remote.[11]
The Jesuit noted further, “The industry of the settler will never succeed in cultivating and planting this fluctuating and sterile soil....” However, he believed that the fossil deposits in the region would be of interest to the geologist and the naturalist.[12]
Figure 2 OREODONT SKELETON