The Sitting Bull Crystal Cavern Dance Pavilion is a historic event venue on the south side of U.S. Highway 16 northeast of Rockerville, South Dakota, near the Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns.

Venue: Sitting Bull Crystal Cavern Dance Pavilion
Town: Pennington County, US

The Sitting Bull Crystal Cavern Dance Pavilion is a historic event venue on the south side of U.S. Highway 16 northeast of Rockerville, South Dakota, near the Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns. Built in 1934, it hosted the Duhamel Sioux Indian Pageant, a Lakota tourist performance created by Black Elk in 1927. The pageant ran every summer until its discontinuation in 1957. A major attraction in the 1930s, its purpose was to not only profit off of tourism to the nearby Black Hills and Mount Rushmore but also-according to Black Elk-to represent Lakota traditions in a respectful, authentic way. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995 as a venue of enduring cultural and religious significance, and for its association with Black Elk. Black Elk, a local Lakota medicine man and community leader, established the Duhamel Sioux Indian Pageant around 1927; this was the first public Native American-created dance pageant in the United States, as those preceding it had been established by non-Native-owned Wild West shows. Black Elk himself had toured internationally with Buffalo Bill in the late 19th century. Black Elk aimed to preserve Lakota culture "and, at the same time, to teach non-Indian tourists that the Lakota were not savages and that their culture was a thing of beauty which deserved respect". Black Elk had a close friendship with the Duhamel family from nearby Rapid City, and in its early years, the pageant was held at the Duhamels' general store. Alex Duhamel, the patriarch of the family, had moved to Rapid City in 1879 and traded with the local Lakota, with whom he had formed a good relationship. In 1929, the Duhamels purchased the land on which the Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns are located, just off South Dakota Highway 16; tourists traveling from Rapid City to Mount Rushmore had to drive past it, and the caverns themselves thus became a popular tourist stop. For the same reason, Black Elk deemed the entry road to the caverns as a good location f