Crossing America by car with camera, part 3
Montana to Bismarck, North Dakota
The next day, we continue east into North Dakota. Once again, we drive through the wide prairie, passing abandoned farms and emptying landscapes littered with crumbling infrastructure.
US President Theodore Roosevelt, a kind of American Winston Churchill, denounced as an imperialist yet revered as a naturalist and environmentalist, spent time in this prairie during his youth. He squandered an inheritance trying to establish a cattle ranch, losing a great deal of money, but discovering his passion for the Wild West, the wild animals, the vastness of the prairie, and his love of nature. We owe Teddy the Wildlife Refuges, many National Parks, and the National Forest Service. In his honor, we call our cute stuffed bears Teddy Bears. Because Roosevelt refused to shoot a tethered bear, and a cartoon of him appeared in the Washington Post, the name Teddy Bear was coined.
In Medora, the town at the entrance to the Roosevelt National Park, I find a teddy bear in my hotel room, wearing a hat and glasses, that looks just like the 16th president of the United States. This quintessentially American bear was made in China.
“We’re not here for pleasure,” says one of the group, and so we drive into the park in the afternoon. To the north, storm clouds are gathering, cumulus clouds like works of art, lying across the horizon as we drive onto the high plateau above the Badlands. A herd of wild horses appears on the horizon, like something out of a Maynard Dixon painting, and we photograph the Wild West scene with our telephoto lenses. A kilometer further on, bison are grazing, and down in the river valley, we see large colonies of prairie dogs and several wild turkey. Our Swiss friends are fascinated by this arid world, and I, the seasoned USA expert, am itching to take pictures. So they do still exist, these magnificent landscapes and the animals that lured me to the country back then.
Later, in the golden evening light, we photograph a grazing herd of bison as they slowly make their way across the grasslands. A natural stillness reigns, broken only occasionally by a snort and the sound of the animals’ hooves. It is a scene that has played out millions of times over thousands of years. The bison, an immigrant from Eurasia, found ideal conditions in North America. At the end of the Ice Age, its numbers multiplied by the millions on the vast expanses of the Great Plains. The giant bison, Bison latifrons, which was considerably larger than today’s bison, became extinct along with the horses and the megafauna. Its demise is placed at the end of the Ice Age, around 20,000 years ago. The extent of human influence in this is debated, although the ancestors of Native Americans likely had a significant impact on its decline. For the bison, deer, and antelopes, the Great Plains were a paradise until the Native Americans acquired horses thanks to the Spanish. This marked the beginning of the decline of the large herds, as they were now pursued by mounted hunters.The industrial slaughter of the last large herds was then carried out by professional hunters.
Northeast of the Missouri River once lay the villages of the Mandan Indians. Other tribes, such as the Arikara and the Hidatsa, also settled in permanent communities along the river, living in earth lodges and cultivating corn and vegetables. The Dakota and the Cheyenne were farmers before migrating to the Great Plains and becoming bison hunters at the end of the 18th century. Our prototypes of nomadic horse-riding Indians were once farmers and hunters. This completely disrupts our understanding of Native Americans – as seen in the movie Dances with Wolves.
The Mandan were particularly interesting. Lewis and Clark spent a winter with them. George Catlin, the chronist, was clearly impressed by Mato-Tope, Four Bears, the great war chief, and Prince Maximilian zu Wied and his painter, the Swiss Karl Bodmer, documented the tribe in words and pictures in 1833. Mandan women were considered easy accessible to white men. The tribe lived well from agriculture, hunting, and trade with white fur traders.
Catlin noted that the Mandan language sounded different from any other Native American language he had encountered. Many travelers recognized its similarity to Welsh, and there was speculation as to whether the Mandan were Welsh. The people were fair-skinned, and many had blue eyes. Catlin and other ethnologists believe that the Mandan people actually trace their lineage back to the Welsh Prince Madoc, who sailed to America in 1117 and established a colony in what is now Tennessee, which was later destroyed by the Cherokee. Cherokee traditions point to a major battle against these white giants, who were driven out by their ancestors. Finds of copper tools suggest a European colony.
The Welsh survivors, who intermingled with the native population, are believed to have fled to the Missouri River and built villages there. These are the Mandan. Another interesting theory concerns the Mandan religion, which traces its lineage back to the first man (Madoc) and features the Sun Dance, a bloody self-multilation ceremony—O-Kee-pa—as a kind of Christian reenactment of the crucifixion of Christ. The Sioux, who were migrating westward at the same time, appear to have adopted and modified this ceremony along the Missouri River. Historical writer James Alexander Thom dedicated a great book to the topic, titled: The Children of First Man.
The thought that the Lakota Sun Dance has Christian origins makes me chuckle. The Lakota medicine man Leonard Crow Dog had allowed white participants in his Sun Dances. The circle closes, and humanity’s ever-evolving delusions seem endless.
The story of the Mandan ended tragically. A merchant ship of the American Fur Company carried the smallpox virus. Although the trading post’s agent warned the Native Americans against visiting the ship, the temptation was too great, and people went anyway to trade goods. The ensuing epidemic decimated the tribe. Only 30 of the approximately 1,600 Mandan survived. Mato Tope, who had refused to have his tribe vaccinated, is said to have thrown himself to his death from a cliff after the death of his family. William Clark, who became the Indian agent in St. Louis after the expedition with Meriwether Lewis, was tasked with vaccinating the Mandan, but this was refused.
Interstate 94 runs straight east. To the left and right, nothing but farmland and sky. Suddenly, a gigantic metal grasshopper appears. It’s one of the large sculptures along the so-called Enchanted Highway near Gladstone. There are several of these large metal sculptures. It’s called Roadside America and is particularly common in the flyover states, where there’s nothing particularly exciting. It seems people need landmarks. I can imagine the farmer out there, on the grid of dirt roads, saying to his cousin, “Turn left at the big grasshopper, then go straight for 30 kilometers, and turn left again at the metal soldiers. My farm is the one that looks like all the others, but has a mailbox shaped like a cow.”
On top of that, people like to leave their mark. They have to prove they were there. They build cairns, carve their names into rocks, make spray-painted tags, write their names in the sand, or hang padlocks on bridges. When I see things like that, I want to scream: “No, you are nothing, just a speck of dust without meaning, and you will soon be nothing but dust again.” It wouldn’t do any good, because that would just bring us even more Andy Goldsworthys.
People who, like him, stack stones, drape leaves, weave branches, and ornament shells. It looks great as long as only one person does it, but it’s stupid when every idiot takes over nature.
You just can’t leave nature as it is. My goodness, there’s a weed growing in the garden that I didn’t give permission to exist. Some bushes don’t grow the way they’re supposed to. You have to trim, bend, cut, and, if necessary, remove them. Humans are the measure of all things.
The West bids farewell with a gigantic thunderstorm that hits us right in Bismarck. Interstate 94 is barely visible as we drive through the storm. Rain lashes the windshield of the Suburban, and the Subaru behind us is completely obscured. It grows gloomy, the sky an inky black. The radio warns of tornadoes. In Bismarck, we actually plan to drive straight through to Fargo, but someone calls for a restroom and food, and someone else has run out of water. So we pull into a supermarket, and everyone disappears into the gigantic interior of this gigantic store.
The capital of North Dakota, named after Otto von Bismarck, boasts a state capitol in the form of a banal Art Deco high-rise and a few reconstructed Mandan lodges. The name Bismarck was intended to attract German settlers, but these days, it only manages to get us Swiss and German tourists to stop, and only because we need food. To make a pit stop, as the Americans say.
My fedora almost blows off my head as I hurry toward the supermarket. The sky looks threatening. The rain is thundering sideways, and I get soaked.
Inside the store, it looks like any other American supermarket. It seems to have everything, but it doesn’t have anything, at least nothing I want. There’s a wall full of cereals, all loaded with sugar. Only the colorful labels are different. I don’t want anything but to look. The group has disappeared; they’re probably buying huge quantities of food they don’t actually need, and tiny bottles containing thimblefuls of water, all wrapped in plastic.
I stroll through this consumer hell like the tourist I am. I pull out my phone and photograph a display of refrigerated coffee creamer. Nestlé is in the lead, followed by Chobani. Starbucks is lagging far behind, next to Silk. As a Swiss person, I feel a kind of national pride. My father was always proud that Nestlé is a Swiss company. It feels good to know that we’re making the world sick and are at the forefront of plastic waste. Swiss chemicals, Swiss banks, Swiss watches and cheese, and Swiss highly processed foods.
At the motel breakfast buffet, I always look for the right milk and avoid the creamers. Especially the vanilla and hazelnut creamers, whose artificial flavor can ruin my day. Today, however, I’m learning that there are far more monstrosities than the motels inflict upon us. There’s a Harry Potter Cauldron Creamer. A cauldron is a large pot where wizards brew their potions. That somehow fits with what Nestlé brews up in its factories. It probably has too much sugar in it, I think, but then I see that right next to it is a Peppermint Toad Creamer, and even without sugar. “Zero Sugar” is emblazoned on it in huge letters. I recently read an article in the Daily Express that said studies prove artificial sweeteners can trigger dementia. An alarming study proves the link between dementia and six popular artificial sweeteners. So, no peppermint toad for me today.
In the produce section, there are individually wrapped potatoes shrink-wrapped in clear plastic and refrigerators full of washed salads in plastic bags. It’s almost as nice here as in the shop in Switzerland.
