South Dakota
South Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States of America. It is named after the Lakota and Dakota (Sioux) American Indian tribes. South Dakota was admitted to the Union on November 2, 1889, as was North Dakota.
Located in the north-central United States, South Dakota is bisected by the Missouri River, dividing the state into two socially and economically distinct halves, known to residents as "East River" and "West River." In the southwestern portion of the state rise the Black Hills, a group of low, pine-covered mountains. A region of great religious importance to local American Indians as well as a major draw for the state tourism industry, the Black Hills are also the location of Mt. Rushmore, probably the best-known location in the state and a widely-used unofficial symbol of South Dakota.
Historically dominated by an agricultural economy and a rural lifestyle, South Dakota has recently sought to diversify its economy in an effort to attract and retain residents. The state is still largely rural, though, with one of the lowest population densities in the United States. It is considered to have an attractive business climate, offering one of the best economic environments for entrepreneurship in the nation. The state has no income tax, personal or corporate, and boasts the second lowest crime rate in the nation.
South Dakota, historically and currently, is home to the Great Sioux Nation.
History
What is now South Dakota has been inhabited for at least several thousand years. French and other European explorers in the 1700s encountered a variety of groups including the Omaha and Arikara (Ree), but by the early 1800s the Sioux (Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota) were dominant. In 1743, the LaVerendrye brothers buried a plate near the site of modern day Pierre, claiming the region for France as part of greater Louisiana. In 1803, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon.
Exploration and settlement
President Thomas Jefferson organized a group called the Corps of Discovery, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (commonly referred to as "Lewis and Clark Expedition"), to explore the newly-acquired region. In 1817, an American fur trading post was set up at present-day Fort Pierre, beginning continuous American settlement of the area. Through much of the 19th century, exploratory expeditions such as those of Lewis and Clark and Joseph Nicollet coincided with an increasing presence of the U.S. Army. In 1855, the U.S. Army bought Fort Pierre but abandoned it the following year in favor of Fort Randall to the south. Settlement by Americans and Europeans was, by this time, increasing rapidly, and in 1858, the Yankton Sioux signed the 1858 Treaty, ceding most of present-day eastern South Dakota to the United States.
Land speculators founded two of eastern South Dakota's largest present-day cities: Sioux Falls in 1856 and Yankton in 1859. In 1861, Dakota Territory was recognized by the United States government (this initially included North Dakota, South Dakota, and parts of Montana and Wyoming).
Settlers from Scandinavia, Germany, Ireland, and Russia, as well as elsewhere in Europe and from the eastern U.S. states, increased from a trickle to a flood, especially after the completion of an eastern railway link to the territorial capital of Yankton in 1872, and the discovery of gold in the Black Hills in 1874 during a military expedition led by George Armstrong Custer. This expedition took place despite the fact that the western half of present day South Dakota had been granted to the Sioux by the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. The Sioux declined to grant mining rights or land in the Black Hills, and war broke out after the U.S. failed to stop white miners and settlers from entering the region. The Sioux were eventually defeated and settled on Reservations within South Dakota and North Dakota.
An increasing population in Dakota Territory caused the territory to be divided in half. A bill proposing statehood for North Dakota and South Dakota (as well as Montana and Washington) titled the Enabling Act of 1889 was passed on February 22, 1889 during the Administration of Grover Cleveland. It was left to his successor, Benjamin Harrison, to sign proclamations formally admitting North and South Dakota to the Union on November 2, 1889.
Wounded Knee massacre
The flood of white settlers into the area of the Dakotas overwhelmed the Lakota. The 1870s gold rush in the Black Hills brought hordes of prospectors and settlers. The Black Hills formed a part of the land assigned to the Lakota by the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty and they considered it sacred. The tribe was pressured to give up the Hills but they refused, knowing that if they did so the area would be destroyed by mining. Frustrated by the refusal of the Lakota to give up the Black Hills, the government ordered the Lakota confined to their reservation in 1876. Indians found off their reservations were returned forcefully. By 1889, the situation on the reservations was getting desperate.
In February 1890 the government broke treaty by adjusting the Great Sioux Reservation, which had encompassed the majority of the state, into five relatively smaller reservations.
The Sioux, who were traditionally a hunter-gatherer society, were expected to farm their allotted land. However, the semi-arid region of South Dakota did not support agriculture well. The Sioux, deprived of their culture and traditional ways of life, soon also found themselves without food or means of procuring it.
To help support the Sioux during the period of transition, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was delegated the responsibility of supplying them with food. By the end of the 1890 growing season, a time of intense heat and low rainfall, it was clear that the land was unable to produce substantial agricultural yields. Unfortunately, this was also the time when the government decided to cut the rations in half. With the bison virtually eradicated from the plains a few years earlier, the Sioux began to starve.
Increased performances of the Ghost Dance religious ceremony ensued, frightening the supervising agents of the BIA, who requested and were granted thousands more troops deployed to the reservation. Although Ghost Dancing was a spiritual ceremony, the agents may have misinterpreted it as a war dance. In any case, fearing that the ghost dance philosophy signaled an Indian uprising, many agents outlawed it. In October 1890, believing that a renewal of the earth would take place in the coming spring, the Lakota of Pine Ridge and Rosebud defied their agents and continued to hold dance rituals. Devotees were dancing to pitches of excitement that frightened the government employees, setting off a panic among white settlers. Pine Ridge agent Daniel F. Royer then called for military help to restore order and subdue the frenzy among white settlers.
On December 15, an event occurred that set off a chain reaction ending in the massacre at Wounded Knee. Chief Sitting Bull had been killed at his cabin on the Standing Rock Reservation by Indian police who were trying to arrest him on government orders. Sitting Bull was one of the Lakota’s tribal leaders, and after his death, refugees from Sitting Bull’s tribe fled in fear. They joined Sitting Bull's half brother, Big Foot, at a reservation at Cheyenne River. Unaware that Big Foot had renounced the Ghost Dance, General Nelson A. Miles ordered him to move his people to a nearby fort. By December 28, Big Foot was seriously ill with pneumonia. His tribe then set off to seek shelter with Chief Red Cloud at the Pine Ridge reservation.
Big Foot’s band was intercepted by Major Samuel Whitside and his battalion of the Seventh Cavalry Regiment and were escorted five miles westward to Wounded Knee Creek. There, through confusion due to misunderstanding of culture and poor translation of the language, scuffles ensued, culminating in what was to become known as the Wounded Knee Massacre.
Commonly cited as the last major armed conflict between the United States and the Sioux Nation, the massacre resulted in the deaths of an estimated 300 Sioux, many of them women and children. Twenty-five U.S. soldiers were also killed in the conflict.