Day 6: Chamberlain SD - Bismarck ND

The Highway Authoritahs of the Dakotas have thoughtfully numbered the roads nearest the Mighty Missouri as 1804 on the east side and 1806 on the west.  There are two problems with this.  The first is that, like all TwatNavs, Kate takes a long time to realise that you want to get from A to B on 1804 rather than the logical route which will have traffic.  On it.  We will come to the second problem shortly.  1804 northbound was practically empty all the way to Pierre, wot is the State Capital of South Dakota innit.  As the name suggests, the French got here first, as indeed they did to much of the Missouri valley all the way into present-day North Dakota, which makes the Lewis & Clark Expedition a little less intrepid than might have been suggested.  The Frenchies actually rocked up a what is now Fort Pierre on the west side of the river, where Lewis, Clark et al met with the Teton Sioux, who had a habit of making folks cough up to use their river and who were apparently dissatisfied with the quantity and/or quality of the gifts they were offered.  The language barrier didn't help and things nearly kicked off, but fortunately wiser heads, in the form of Chief Black Buffalo, prevailed and no-one got killed utterly to DETH.  Today the meeting place, at the confluence of the Bad and Missouri rivers, is marked with a rock.  Wowsa!

As usual you are encouraged to go look at the pretty pictures on Flickr, on a Proper Computer rather than a phone or a fondleslab.

Back across the river and continue to follow 1804 north.  Herein the second problem, viz. routes 1804 and 1806 are not continuous.  While they don't just stop in the middle of a field they do terminate and throw the unwary traveller into a bewildering grid of gravel roads.  They had a bunch of signs reading "To 1804" as far as Akaska, at which point I gave up and got back on the tarmac of US-83 and US-12 to Mobridge.  A town whose name must have taken literally seconds to devise.

Bridge(s) on the River MO

Sorry, it was rather hazy today...

If you cross the river here and turn south on 1806 you'll come to a monument to Sacagawea and the grave site of Sitting Bull - seems the old boy was moved here from Fort Yates upriver in 1953.

Sitting Bull wondering what the US Army Corps of Engineers have done to his river

Sacagawea monument

Detail thereof

The bairn is Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, born in February 1805, who accompanied his parents from Fort Mandan to the Pacific and back.  Clark was much taken with the lad, nicknaming him "Pompey".  I do not think this was due to his being a supporter of Portsmouth FC, not least because they didn't exist in 1805.  He did, however, name a rock formation in the Yellowstone River valley "Pompey's Pillar" when he passed that way on the return journey.  Not to mention carving his name on it - the only physical evidence of the Expedition that still survives.  The great oik.  He did adopt the boy after his mother's death in 1812, thobut.

Sacagawea and her "husband", French trader and interpreter Toussaint Charbonneau, moved to nearby Kenel after their return from the Pacific Coast.  The area is part of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, site of much pagga during the ultimately unsuccessful protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline a few years back.

Cool water tower, mind...

[...] on February 3, 2017, 39-year-old American Indian activist Chase Iron Eyes and more than 70 peaceably assembled protesters were arrested in a police raid ordered by the Trump administration, on charges of "inciting a riot" which is considered a felony and carries up to 5 years in prison [...]

Who else connected with the Trump regime have we heard apparently inciting a riot, I wonder?

The Standing Rock itself is located in Fort Yates and is, frankly, unimpressive:

though the Reservation's administration building is quite praiseworthy

The reason there are so few sights visited today is because the US Army Corps of Engineers never saw a river without wanting to fuck it up by building a dam or six on it.  Anyway. getting to Bismarck nice and early means I can have an early night too, which hopefully will help send my clod scurrying back whence it came¹.

1. Most likely American Airlines' Boeing 787.