A Brief History of South Dakota - Doane Robinson

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of the elephant or rhinoceros family, and the eleotheres were giant pigs. While remains of these animals are most common in the Bad Lands, they are found in many other localities, showing that they roamed generally throughout the state. At this time we can be very sure, from the signs which are left, that South Dakota was a great swampy, tropical plain which sloped gently down from the Black Hills on the west to the great central river flowing through the ​present James River valley, and from this river sloped up to the top of the coteau at the east line of the state.

      By this time several agencies were at work which resulted in a great change in the climate of the region. The uplifting of the Black Hills and the Rocky Mountains had cut off the warm breezes from the Pacific Ocean, and in the far north vast heaps of ice were being piled up by the almost continual freezing of the frigid climate. These heaps of ice had become so deep that they could not support their own weight, and so began to run or spread out as you may have seen a large lump of dough spread when turned from the kneading pan to the table. When we examine a piece of ice, it seems to be so hard and brittle that it does not seem possible for ice to spread in this way; nevertheless, scientific men have shown beyond doubt that ice does spread when placed under a great weight.

      The spreading of this ice sent it down from the north-east until it had run far down into the South Dakota country. It was so thick and heavy that it completely dammed up the valley of the great river, so that its waters became a great lake, lying north of the ice and extending far back into the Rocky Mountains. The ice pushed along until its western edge had traveled as far as the line now occupied by the Missouri River, when it began to melt away. The waters which were dammed up in the upper part of the great valley began to seep about the western edge of the ice, until they ran entirely around it and reached the old bed of the stream below Yankton.

      Thus the ice quite changed the surface of South Dakota. Before it came the Grand River extended east from its

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A Pass in the Badlands (Washington County).png

      A Pass in the Badlands (Washington County)

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      present course until it reached the great river near where Aberdeen now is. The Cheyenne ran down to Redfield, the Teton or Bad River to Huron, and the White to Mitchell. The great animals, the titanotheres, mastodons, and eleotheres, were destroyed by the ice, and when it had melted away, it left new conditions in climate, soil, and river courses, not greatly different from what exist to-day.

      Of the Bad Lands from which much of this story is learned Professor Charles E. Holmes, a poet whom all South Dakotans delight to honor, has written the following verses:—

      The Bad Lands

      A stillness sleeps on the broken plain,

       And the sun beats down, with a fiery rain,

       On the crust that covers the sand that is rife

       With the bleaching bones of the old world life.

       'Tis a sea of sand, and over the waves

       Are the wind-blown tops of the Cyclops' caves;

       And the mountain-sheep and the antelopes

       Graze cautiously over the sun-burnt slopes.

       And here in the sport of the wild wind's play

       A thousand years are as yesterday,

       And a million more in these barren lands

       Have run themselves in the shifting sands.

       Oh, the struggle and strife and the passion and pain

       Since the bones lay bleached on the sandy plain,

       And a stillness fell on the shifting sea,

       And a silence that tells of eternity!

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      THE STORY OF THE MOUNDS

       Table of Contents

      CHAPTER II

      THE STORY OF THE MOUNDS

      When human beings first came to live in the South Dakota country, is now unknown. Whether or not other men lived here before the Indian tribes is not certain. Those who have studied the subject most carefully believe there was no one here before the Indians came. In various localities there are a number of mounds evidently the work of man, but it is believed that they were all built by Indians.

      All along the Missouri River, at the best points for defense, and for the control of the passage of the stream, are mounds that are the remains of fortresses. Their builders must have labored industriously to construct them. It is believed they were built by the ancestors of the Ree Indians, who still occupied the section when white men first came to it. The most important of these mounds are in the vicinity of Pierre, where it is known the Rees had a very large settlement which they abandoned a little more than a century ago. Here are the remains of four very important forts, two on each shore of the river, completely protecting the approach, from above and below, to the extensive region between, which was occupied by the Rees for their homes and gardens.

      ​Along the Big Sioux River, especially in the vicinity of Sioux Falls, and about the lakes on the coteau in Roberts and Marshall counties, are many mounds which chiefly were burial places. From them have been taken many curious stone implements which were used by the Indians in hunting and for domestic purposes before white men brought them implements of iron and steel. Some of these implements are very similar to those used by the Chickasaws and other tribes of the southern United States, and are not at all like the implements of the Ree and Sioux Indians; and this fact leads scientific men to suppose that those southern tribes may at one time have occupied the Dakota country.

      The Sioux Indians, too, made many small earthworks, and light stone works, usually on prominent hills and along the streams, but these are chiefly memorials of some striking tribal event. Some of the more important ones are at the hill known as Big Tom, near Big Stone Lake; at Snake Butte, near Pierre; at Medicine Knoll, near Blunt; at Turtle Peak, near Wessington Springs; at Punished Woman's Lake in Codington County; and near Armadale Grove, Ashton, and Huron, on the James River. Almost invariably as a feature of these memorials the image of some bird, animal, or reptile has been made out of small bowlders to indicate the lodge or cult of the person whose deeds are commemorated.

      Lewis and Clark, the explorers, found at Bon Homme Island, near Yankton, a very extensive embankment of earth which they measured carefully and described very fully, and which for eighty years afterward was supposed ​to be proof that the region had been occupied by a prehistoric people. It is now known, however, that this embankment was produced by the action of wind and water.

      The South Dakota mounds that were erected by Indians are of less importance than similar mounds found in some other parts of the great Mississippi valley; but they are of great interest as the oldest works of man in our state.

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      THE ABORIGINAL INDIANS

       Table of Contents

      CHAPTER III

      THE ABORIGINAL INDIANS

      The Ree, or Aricara, Indians were possibly the first human inhabitants of South Dakota. These Indians

Ree Indian Lodge.png

      Ree Indian Lodge

      built permanent villages, of earth lodges, and lived by agriculture and the chase. Their homes were always near ​the Missouri River or some other large stream. Their

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