Human beings have lived in what is today South Dakota for at least
several thousand years. French and other European explorers in the 1700s
encountered a variety of groups including the Omaha, but by the early
1800s the Sioux --Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota were dominant.
In 1743, the LaVerendrye brothers buried a plate near the modern capital
Pierre (pronounced as "peer") claiming the region for France as part of
greater Louisiana.
In 1803, the United States purchased Louisiana from
Napoleon, though the native peoples inhabiting most of this area were
not aware of the transaction. President Thomas Jefferson organized a
group called the Corps of Discovery, led by Meriwether Lewis and William
Clark ("Lewis and Clark"), to explore the newly-acquired region.
In 1817, an American fur trading post was set up at present-day Fort
Pierre, and this was the beginning of 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. Settlement by Americans and
Europeans was, by this time, increasing rapidly, and in 1858 the Yankton
Dakota Sioux resigned to signing 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 and Yankton, in 1856 and 1859,
respectively, and 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 A. Custer.
This expedition took place despite the fact that all of Dakota Territory
west of the Missouri River (along with much of Nebraska, Montana, and
Wyoming) had been granted to the Sioux by the Treaty of 1868 as part of
the Great Sioux Nation. 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. Sitting Bull and
Crazy Horse were major resistance leaders, but with greater numbers and
superior weaponry, and with the sharp decline in numbers of the buffalo
(a major food source of the Sioux), the Americans were unstoppable. The
last major incident in this struggle occurred on December 29, 1890 at
Wounded Knee Creek in present-day western South Dakota when U.S.
soldiers massacred as many as 300 Sioux, mostly women and children.
Just over a year earlier, on November 2, 1889, Dakota Territory had
become the modern states of North Dakota and South Dakota after a
dispute between settlers in northern and southern regions over the
location of the state capital ( Yankton or Bismarck, North Dakota).
