Long before South Dakota entered the Union on November 2, 1889, the land between the Missouri River and the Black Hills belonged to some of the most resilient nations in North America. The Oceti Sakowin—the Seven Council Fires—and the Sahnish (Arikara) peoples built societies along the Missouri River valley sustained by agriculture, trade, and the sacred bison herds of the plains. The story of South Dakota is inseparable from the story of these nations: from the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the arrival of European fur traders to the seizure of the Black Hills (He Sapa) during the gold rush, and the tragic Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. Understanding this history—its treaties, betrayals, and enduring cultural vitality—is essential to understanding both South Dakota and the broader Native history of the United States.
South Dakota’s First People: The Arikara and the Oceti Sakowin
Humans have inhabited the region of present-day South Dakota for more than 11,000 years. Among the earliest established peoples were the Sahnish, or Arikara, a Caddoan-speaking nation whose ancestors migrated northward along the Missouri River corridor over many centuries. By the time of European contact, the Arikara lived in earth-lodge villages stretching from Nebraska up to North Dakota, practicing intensive agriculture alongside bison hunting.
The Oceti Sakowin, or Seven Council Fires, is a confederacy of bands whose homelands spread across the Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Montana. Europeans came to know them through a chain of mistranslation—French colonists rendered an Ojibwe (Chippewa) term as “Sioux”—but the people’s own names endured. The confederacy comprises three nations distinguished by dialect: the Dakota (Santee), the Nakota (Yankton), and the Lakota (Teton). Each nation maintained distinct traditions within a shared culture and kinship framework. The Lakota migrated west and south during the 1700s, eventually making the Black Hills—He Sapa, a place of profound sacred meaning—the center of their world.
Today, nine federally recognized tribes in South Dakota descend from these nations, carrying forward languages, ceremonies, and governance systems that predate the American state by centuries. For broader context on the diversity of Native American cultures, South Dakota’s tribal nations represent one of the most continuously documented Indigenous presences in North America.
European Exploration and the Erosion of Homelands
In 1742, French brothers Louis-Joseph and François Sieur de la Vérendrye became the first documented Europeans to enter the region, claiming the territory for France. After the French and Indian War, France ceded its lands west of the Mississippi to Spain in 1763; Spain returned them in 1800, and the United States purchased the entire Louisiana territory in 1803 for $15 million. The Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804 produced the first American accounts of the region, and Fort Pierre, established as a fur trading outpost in 1817, became the oldest continuously occupied American settlement in South Dakota.
Colonization brought catastrophe. Smallpox epidemics in 1837 and 1856 devastated the Arikara, who in 1862 relocated north to join the Mandan and Hidatsa as the Three Affiliated Tribes. Meanwhile, commercial hide hunting collapsed the bison herds—from an estimated 60 million animals in the early 1800s to roughly 500 by 1890. For the Lakota, the bison was sacred and provided food, clothing, shelter, tools, and trade goods; its destruction was both an ecological and a spiritual assault.
Broken Treaties and the Black Hills War
In 1851, the Dakota sold nearly 24 million acres across Minnesota, Iowa, and South Dakota under the Treaties of Mendota and Traverse des Sioux. Promised payments largely failed to materialize, and settlers encroached on reserved lands—conditions that ignited the Dakota Uprising of 1862 and the forcible removal of most Native people then living in Minnesota.
The landmark Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) followed. Negotiated between the Lakota and a U.S. peace commission that included General William T. Sherman, the treaty established the Great Sioux Reservation and guaranteed Lakota rights to the Black Hills. Yet in 1874, an expedition led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer confirmed the presence of gold in the Black Hills, and the treaty collapsed under a flood of miners. When the U.S. government ordered all Lakota onto reservations by January 31, 1876, leaders like Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse refused. The resulting Black Hills War of 1876 included the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where Lakota and Northern Cheyenne forces won what historians regard as the most decisive Native American victory of the Indian Wars. Readers can explore the Battle of the Little Bighorn in greater depth—yet the victory was short-lived. In 1877, the United States confiscated the Black Hills outright, and the Dawes Act of 1887 further fragmented remaining tribal lands.
The Wounded Knee Massacre and the Ghost Dance
On December 29, 1890, 470 U.S. Cavalry troops surrounded a Lakota encampment at Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The soldiers claimed they sought to suppress the Ghost Dance, an ecstatic spiritual movement that spread among the Lakota in the late 1880s. The Ghost Dance promised renewal and reunion with ancestors—a reclamation of culture amid dispossession—yet officials misread it as a prelude to war. When gunfire erupted, more than 250 Lakota men, women, and children were killed. Scholars widely regard Wounded Knee as the tragic closing episode of the nineteenth-century Indian Wars, and Lakota communities continue to memorialize the site as sacred ground.
The wound remained open. On February 27, 1973, members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied the site of Wounded Knee for 71 days, protesting conditions on Pine Ridge and federal Indian policy. The standoff drew national and international attention to Native American rights. Those interested in this era of activism may also find the history of Native American solidarity at Alcatraz illuminating, as it reflects the same movement for sovereignty and self-determination.
Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, and the Contested Black Hills
Both of South Dakota’s famous monuments are carved into the Black Hills—land still contested between the United States and the Sioux Nation. In 1923, state historian Doane Robinson proposed the sculptural project that became Mount Rushmore National Memorial. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum, working with roughly 400 workers from 1927 onward, carved the 60-foot faces of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln; funding ended in 1941 after Borglum’s death as the nation entered World War II. For many Lakota people, the memorial represents a desecration of He Sapa, land promised by the 1868 treaty and seized in 1877.
A different vision emerged in 1939 when Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear invited sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to create a monument honoring Native Americans. The Crazy Horse Memorial, dedicated on June 3, 1948, will upon completion stretch 563 feet high and 641 feet long; the 87-foot head was finished in 1998. Standing Bear famously wrote that the project would show that Native peoples, too, had heroes worth memorializing in stone.
Historical Context & Key Cultural Takeaways
- Deep Indigenous antiquity: Human presence in South Dakota spans more than 11,000 years, anchored by the Arikara and the Oceti Sakowin confederacy of Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota nations.
- Treaty as the central legal record: The 1851 land cessions, the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, and the 1877 confiscation of the Black Hills form the documented legal backbone of ongoing Lakota land claims.
- Ecological warfare through the bison: The near-extermination of the bison—from 60 million to roughly 500—was a deliberate and devastating instrument of dispossession against Plains peoples.
- Wounded Knee as historical trauma and symbol: The 1890 massacre and the 1973 AIM occupation transformed Wounded Knee into an enduring symbol of both injustice and Indigenous resistance, from Ghost Dance spirituality to modern sovereignty movements.
- Living cultures, not vanished peoples: Nine federally recognized tribes in South Dakota sustain languages, ceremonies, and governments today—continuity that monuments like Crazy Horse Memorial were built to honor.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who were the first peoples of South Dakota?
The region’s earliest established nations include the Sahnish (Arikara), who farmed along the Missouri River, and the Oceti Sakowin—the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota peoples—whose Lakota bands made the Black Hills the heart of their homelands in the 1700s. Human habitation dates back more than 11,000 years.
Why is the Black Hills sacred to the Lakota?
The Black Hills (He Sapa) were guaranteed to the Lakota by the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie and hold deep spiritual significance in Lakota cosmology. The U.S. seizure of the hills after the 1874 gold discovery violated that treaty, and the land remains legally and spiritually contested today.
What was the Ghost Dance, and why did it lead to Wounded Knee?
The Ghost Dance was a spiritual movement of renewal practiced by many Native nations in the late 1880s. U.S. officials, fearing it signaled rebellion, attempted to suppress it. On December 29, 1890, cavalry troops killed more than 250 Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee Creek in one of the darkest episodes of American history.
Is the Crazy Horse Memorial finished?
Not yet. Begun in 1948 at the invitation of Chief Henry Standing Bear, the mountain carving is designed to reach 563 feet high and 641 feet long. Crazy Horse’s 87-foot head was completed in 1998, and work continues under the Ziolkowski family’s nonprofit organization.
What happened during the 1973 Occupation of Wounded Knee?
Members of the American Indian Movement occupied the site for 71 days starting February 27, 1973, protesting conditions on the Pine Ridge Reservation and broader federal Indian policy. The protest claimed two lives but permanently elevated the national conversation on tribal sovereignty.
Cultural Legacy and Modern Preservation
South Dakota’s Native history did not end at Wounded Knee. The nine federally recognized tribes of the state—the Oglala, Sicangu (Brulé), Hunkpapa, Miniconjou, Sans Arc, Two Kettle, and other Lakota bands, along with Dakota nations such as the Sisseton Wahpeton and the Yankton Sioux—continue to govern, teach, and celebrate their heritage. Institutions such as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the Akta Lakota Museum, and the cultural programs of the Crazy Horse Memorial preserve treaty documents, regalia, oral histories, and language resources. Meanwhile, the unresolved question of the Black Hills stands as a living testament that treaties, land, and memory remain at the center of Native American history in the twenty-first century—reminding every visitor to Mount Rushmore or Pine Ridge that this land carries stories far older and deeper than the faces carved into its stone.
