USA South Dakota - The History : USA  

USA South Dakota - The History - Travel guide

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USA South Dakota - The History

The History

When Lewis and Clark passed through South Dakota in 1804-06, the region was inhabited by the agricultural Arikara and the nomadic Sioux (Dakota). By the 1830s, the Sioux had driven the Arikara away. By then, the Sioux were bracing for an assault by white explorers and settlers. When whites violated an 1868 treaty by invading the sacred Black Hills in search of gold, war broke out. Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Gall were among the famous Sioux warriors who fought the U.S. Army in present South Dakota and neighboring areas.

The Indians' greatest victory was at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana. However, their lot quickly worsened after that, and many Native Americans were killed or confined to reservations. Hope renewed by a new "Ghost Dance" religion was dashed with Sitting Bull's death in 1890 and the subsequent Wounded Knee Massacre. Tribal organization was weakened by the Dawes Act of 1887, and Native Americans have increasingly moved to the cities despite the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.

Today, almost one third of the region west of the Missouri River belongs to Native Americans. Most of them live on reservations such as Rosebud, Pine Ridge, Cheyenne River, and Standing Rock. The last of the Plains Indians were the focus of the popular movie Dances With Wolves, which was filmed in South Dakota. An enormous Crazy Horse Memorial is being sculpted in the Black Hills.

The 1st Europeans where Louis-Joseph and François Verendrye who explored the area in 1743 while searching for a route to the Pacific. After the United States purchased the vast Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark followed the Missouri River across the Dakotas in 1804-06. The fur trade inspired the founding of Fort Pierre, the first permanent settlement, in 1817. The first Missouri River steamboat reached the fort in 1831.

What is now South Dakota was once claimed by France.

The lands that make up South Dakota were purchased from France in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase. and became the Dakota Territory (North & South Dakota, eastern Wyoming & eastern Montana).

South Dakota became the 40th State to Unite under America on November 2, 1889.