Figure 6
Jim Hart of Scenic, South Dakota, displays a trophy of an Audubon Bighorn Sheep shot on Sheep Mountain in 1903 by Charley Jones. These animals were last recorded on Sheep Mountain Table about 1910 and are now extinct.[48]
Predatory animals such as coyotes, wolves, and black and grizzly bears were likewise common. Bears were exterminated early. It was during the second decade of this century that coyotes and wolves disappeared from the Badlands, largely as a result of the work of the Biological Survey in its predatory-animal extermination program.[49]
Figure 7 GRAY WOLF
Adult animals weigh between 70 and 120 pounds and are the largest of the wild dogs. They were last seen in the present Badlands National Monument around 1913.[50]
The region which comprises western Dakota was a part of the Great Sioux Reservation recognized as such by the Fort Laramie treaties of 1851 and 1868. In the late nineteenth century the tide of white settlement had been steadily pushing westward. By an agreement on September 26, 1876, later formalized by U.S. Statute, the Black Hills region was opened to white settlement. An Act of Congress approved on March 2, 1889 (the same year South Dakota became a state), and proclaimed by President Harrison on February 10, 1890, restored to public domain the area between the White and Cheyenne Rivers. This included the present area of Badlands National Monument.[51]
On December 24, 1890, after escaping from military surveillance at Camp Cheyenne on the Cheyenne River, Chief Big Foot and his band of Miniconjous Sioux fled through what is now Big Foot Pass in Badlands National Monument to the White River where they camped. When the Indians reached Pine Creek on December 28, they were intercepted by the army. In attempting to disarm them the next day, the military precipitated the infamous “Wounded Knee Massacre” of December 29, 1890, when more than 150 Indians and 39 whites were killed. This was the last major clash between Indians and the United States Army.[52]
The famous western artist Frederic Remington was attached to a scouting party which went into the Badlands in search of Big Foot and his band. The first camp Remington made with the soldiers was on Christmas night with the thermometer well below zero. In an article written for Harper’s Weekly, January 21, 1891, he described his trip into the region: