Track.7: Hands of Time
Music by Chris Fisher. Lyrics by Andrew Hogarth.

What is often forgotten is that the history of the American West is so very recent. There is a tendency to relegate people and their stories to the confines of a static past but history really becomes more interesting when the distinctions between the oral tradition and the written word are blurred. One of the greatest pleasures in travelling the Great Plains is to visit with people who continue to link the past with the present. It makes history real.

In 1930 Nebraska author and rancher, Caroline Sandoz Pifer travelled with her sister Mari Sandoz, also an author, to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to talk with Lakota Chief He Dog. He Dog was a close friend of Crazy Horse. He was ninety years of age while Caroline was just sixteen.

During a trip to the Dakota Badlands with his parents Charles and Leota Cochran in 1947, historian and trader Chuck Cochran met and was photographed with Dewey Beard, a survivor of the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Wounded Knee Massacre. This is one of his many stories.

Apprentice photographer Bill Groethe photographed the last nine survivors of the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn in the Black Hills, South Dakota in 1948. Black Elk, John Sitting Bull and Dewey Beard are among the survivors. Today Bill Groethe continues to photograph the uniqueness of the Great Plains.

In 1989 I had the opportunity to hear Lakota Ceremonial Chief Frank Fools Crow address a small audience at Cedar Lodge, South Dakota. Fools Crow, a tireless advocate for his peoples rights, was born around the time of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre. It was an honour to be able to shake his hand.

Andrew Hogarth.