Badlands Painting

A painting of two adult buffalo play fighting on the valley floor of the Badlands. Hidden from the outside world under the blue moon... free.. at home. A very unique beautiful vibrant painting.For centuries the Badlands have been met with a mix of dread and fascination, beginning with nomadic tribes who migrated into the area more than 10,000 years ago. Using the area as their hunting grounds, the first known inhabitants were the Paleo Indians, the mammoth hunters who were present at the end of the ice age. These were followed by the Arikara (or Ree) Indians in about 1500. The Cheyenne, Kiowa, Pawnee, Crow, and Sioux (or Lakota) migrated to the area around the 1700s. Following the buffalo that roamed the grasslands of the Great Plains, they survived the occasional harsh weather and difficult terrain by relying on the bison for their almost every need. About a century and a half ago, the Great Sioux Nation had displaced the other tribes from the northern prairie, commanding more than 80 million acres, the center of which is present-day South Dakota The Lakota Sioux called the place “mako sica,” and early French trappers called it “les mauvaises terres a traverser,” both meaning “badlands.” Those very same French trappers would be the first of many Europeans who would, in time, supplant the Sioux, as they were soon followed by soldiers, miners, cattlemen, farmers, and homesteaders.