A picnic area and overlook mark this break in the Wall, with tables, an accessible vault toilet and no water. The National Park Service identifies the area as a historic place on the December 1890 journey of the Minneconjou leader Spotted Elk and his people.
The Park Service says this pass marks the route of Chief Spotted Elk, also called Big Foot, of the Minneconjou. The plan written with the tribe says Red Cloud asked him to come and negotiate a truce. He was sick, and on December twenty-fourth, eighteen ninety, his people came down the Wall here, one wagon at a time. Five days later, at Wounded Knee, the Army massacred hundreds of them. They were families. Elders, women and children, the same people who came down this Wall in those wagons.
Photo: NPS Photo / Ed Welsh, public domain · Public domain