Those cliffs at Running Water

 

These magnificent sandstone cliffs along the Missouri are stunning, even gorgeous. To find something like like this in the middle of endless miles of treeless prairie must have seemed a miracle. And in a way, I suppose, it was. This sculpted row of cliffs stand almost militarily above the confluence of the Niobrara and Missouri Rivers, just a bit north and east of Niobrara, NE.

Over on the east side of the river, there used to be a town here, a place called Running Water, which happens to be the English translation of the word "Niobrara," which is Native--Ponca maybe, or Sioux. There still are some homes along the river here, still something of a community. My guess is you could find a half-dozen families who would be more than happy to tell you that you're doggone right there's a community here, been so for years.

But once upon a time, there was almost a port here, more life certainly than you can roust even on a Fourth of July weekend--fishermen, you know. Once upon a time lots and lots of Poncas were around. This is Standing Bear country, after all, the place he stubbornly returned to twice, the second time battling white man's laws to stay (and he won!). 

A bunch of Mormons were here one winter, on their way to Zion, wherever that was going to be. They had real troubles. It was deathly cold. In a story that should be told over and over and over, the Ponca dropped in at the meager winter quarters of those Mormon families and likely saved their lives.

A chap named Albertus Kuypers stepped off a steamer here--in the old days, when steamships still attempted to squeeze up and down the Missouri--and when he did, he motioned to the others, several dozen immigrant Hollanders, who had made a deal on land they must have been anxious to find, just a few more miles up river. He motioned to them and they all shouldered their burdens and walked north and a bit east to a place they eventually called "Friesland." No surprise there. Friesland was where they came from.

They were, in the 1880s, only one of thousands of European immigrant families who wanted out of the old world and a place of their own in the new one. These Hollanders were Dutch Reformed, a particularly righteous bunch; but they also were men and women of some standing in Holland, so, well, dignified that when they began to gather their cows, their men milked in white shirts and ties beneath their bibs, and the women wore some unlikely dresses.

For a time. Then, like all the rest, they got acculturated. The frontier wouldn't stand much pretense. 

But farming in those early years was no picnic, and the weather didn't cooperate--too many years of too little rain. When Kuypers' Hollanders grew weary, they talked of moving to northwest Washington, where, people said, good Dutch people grew watermelons you could lift only with both hands. 

So Kuypers went exploring, took the train up to Whatcom County, Washington, right up there on the Canadian border, where people showed him produce left him slack-jawed. All that ballyhoo back in Dakota wasn't wrong. Abundance was understatement.

When he went back to Friesland, South Dakota, he thought about leaving the place they'd come to when they'd immigrated, thought about it long and hard. When the people looked to him for their futures, he told them he'd decided after much prayer and deep consideration, that they were going to stay in Dakota. They were going to raise more pigs and cattle, rely less on row crops, but they were going to stay.

Friesland, South Dakota, today, is long gone; but I'm sure if you would ask around in Platte or New Holland, you could find a name or two from the bunch that came up from Running Water, looking, like those Mormons, for their own version of Zion.  Some, by the way, parted company with Kuypers and went to Washington anyway.

There are enough old stories here to fill up those gorgeous yellow cliffs, but who'd want to? Those cliffs are here, just as they always have been, even longer than the Ponca, the Yankton, the Frisians, or the Mormons have been. Those beautiful cliffs up over the river have outlived them all,, even though they wear no buffalo coats, even though they're sandstone and change, subtly, but change, every year. 

And the picture?--it doesn't even come close to capturing the beauty. You can't get that kind of immensity in a lens, on a canvas, or a page. Stand there for awhile and it makes you want to dress up like those old Hollanders, makes you want to wear a tie.