Fort Yates, North Dakota vs. Mobridge, South Dakota
Sitting Bull was a pain-in-the-butt to the 19th century White Man. Neither North nor South Dakota wanted him while he was alive. However, attitudes have changed, and SB's progeny have acquired property and clout. Now Sitting Bull is prime real estate in the Dakotas, 110 years too late for him to appreciate it.
Two towns on either side of the Dakota border claim to have Sitting Bull's bones. Which to believe?
Burial Site of Sitting Bull, Fort Yates, North Dakota.
Fort Yates, North Dakota, has the sickle of history on their side. In 1890, Sitting Bull was "accidentally" shot in Fort Yates and he was buried near the spot. However, Fort Yates loses points for presentation. The dirt road leading to the grave site is marked by a sad, hand-painted sign nailed to a wooden post. It lists precariously toward a gully. The grave itself is at the far end of a small, dusty parking area. It's covered by a thick slab of concrete and a big rock. You will be the only one here, guaranteed -- if you can find it.
Is Sitting Bull still in this grave? Not according to the folks downriver in Mobridge, South Dakota.
Mobridge freely admits that they drove to Ft. Yates in 1953 and stole Sitting Bull's bones. They dug up the grave with a backhoe and scurried back across the border before Ft. Yates had finished breakfast. Ft. Yates snorts that all Mobridge got were some horse bones, or maybe the bones of a White Man (chuckle) who was buried on top (Sitting Bull, they say, was buried deep in quicklime so that he would rot quickly). Ft. Yates installed the slab of concrete and the big rock afterward, to ward off any other bonesnatching 'burgs.
Mobridge could care less. Whatever bones they got they encased in a steel vault embedded in a 20-ton block of concrete, then buried the whole thing on top of a very visible bluff overlooking the Missouri River. They built billboards directing tourists to the site and erected a granite pillar over it, topped by a seven-ton bust of Sitting Bull, executed by Mr. Designer Of South Dakota's Big But Will Never Be Finished Crazy Horse Mountain Face Statue Out By Mount Rushmore, Korczak Zoilkowski. Nyah-nyah, North Dakota.
The reason for this squabbling eludes us, since the Mobridge site is just as empty as the one in Fort Yates. But a dead celebrity is a dead celebrity. And the Dakotas ain't Hollywood.
