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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
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.[19]
In 1803, the United States purchased the
Louisiana Territory
from Napoleon.
President
Thomas Jefferson organized a
group called the Corps of Discovery, led by
Meriwether Lewis and
William Clark, 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. 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 established 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 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 and a
bill for
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. Harrison directed
his Secretary of
State James G. Blaine to
shuffle the papers and obscure from him which he was signing
first and the actual order went unrecorded.
On
December 29, 1890,
the Wounded Knee Massacre
occurred on the
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. 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. 25
U.S. soldiers were also killed in the conflict.
During the
1930s, several economic and climatic conditions combined
with disastrous results for South Dakota. A lack of
rainfall, extremely high temperatures and over-cultivation
of farmland produced what was known as the
Dust Bowl in South Dakota and
several other plains states. Fertile
topsoil was blown away in massive dust storms, and
several harvests were completely ruined. The experiences of
the Dust Bowl, coupled with local bank
foreclosures and the general
economic effects of the Great
Depression resulted in many South Dakotans leaving the
state. The population of South Dakota declined by more than
seven percent between 1930 and 1940.
Economic
stability returned with the U.S. entry into
World War II in 1941, when
demand for the state's agricultural and industrial products
grew as the nation mobilized for war. In 1944, the
Pick-Sloan Plan was passed as
part of the Flood
Control Act of 1944 by the U.S. Congress, resulting in
the construction of six large dams on the
Missouri River, four of which are at least partially located
in South Dakota. Flood control,
hydroelectricity and recreational opportunities such as
boating and fishing are provided by the dams and their
reservoirs.
In recent
decades, South Dakota has transformed from a state dominated
by agriculture to one with a more diversified economy. The
tourism industry has grown considerably since the completion
of the interstate system in the 1960s, with the Black Hills
being especially impacted. The financial service industry
began to grow in the state as well, with
Citibank moving its credit card operations from New York
to Sioux Falls in 1981, a move that has since been followed
by several other financial companies. In 2007, the site of
the recently-closed
Homestake gold mine near
Lead was chosen as the location of a new underground
research facility. Despite a growing state population and
recent economic development, many rural areas have been
struggling over the past 50 years with locally declining
populations and the emigration of educated young adults to
larger South Dakota cities, such as Rapid City or Sioux
Falls, or to other states.
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