Killdeer Mountain.

This is coolbert:

ONLY while traveling through Dakota Territory [North Dakota] last week came across this item in the local newspaper.

Killdeer Mountain Battlefield and the effort to preserve the area as a national historic site.

Preservation efforts evidently now NOT coming to fruition, the site to be "desecrated" with modern development.

Killdeer Mountain another engagement of what is termed the American Indian Wars. Primarily fought against the American Indians of the Great Plains.

A regimental sized unit under the command of Alfred Sully encountering a large and well organized band of Lakota Indians in significant numbers, successful engagement by the U.S. Army somewhat less than desired, inconclusive, the scorched earth policy subsequent to the battle harsh and unremitting.

"Soldiers burned between 1,500 and 1,800 lodges, 200 tons of buffalo meat and dried berries, clothes and household utensils, tipi poles, travois, and piles of tanned hides. With bayonets, they punctured camp kettles, buckets, and pails. They also shot abandoned dogs."

Please be aware that the battlefield site is in one of the remotest and most isolated and desolate areas of the United States. Population density LESS than that of Greenland in some instances!!

NONETHELESS an effort afoot to preserve this historic site in as pristine a condition as possible, and NOW to NO avail. Modern development related to energy production prevailing.

Pylons with high-power electrical transmission lines to run through the area. A DESECRATION!!

THAT DECISION AGREED SEEMINGLY WITH FINALITY, A DONE DEAL AS THEY SAY. SO AS REPORTED IN THE LOCAL NEWSPAPER.

"the battlefield study has become entangled with Basin Electric Power Cooperative's plans to build a new 345-kilovolt transmission line through the battlefield study area."

"The planned line from Basin's Antelope Valley Station near Beulah to the oil patch region is under environmental review by the federal Rural Utilities Service and the state Public Service Commission."

That "oil patch region" of course the Williston Basin, Bakken Formation. Five hundred billion barrels of oil the extraction of which will make the United States not only self-sufficient in oil but also an energy exporter.

Such as in the movie "Avatar" is the cost of progress, that rather pristine and unspoiled environment so bucolic now given way to industrial development.

In that movie "Avatar" that hero the man without legs who leads the indigenous tribe of aliens to victory over the mining interests also named SULLY! Such is the intended irony!

coolbert.