Full Text of "A Brief History of South Dakota", pages 14-16

	This file contains part of a full transcription of "A Brief 
	History of South Dakota", by Doane Robinson, Secretary of the 
	State Historical Society of South Dakota. Originally published 
	in 1905, it was republished many times through the 1930's. This 
	transcription is from the 1919 Edition.

	The Table of Contents for this book is at:

	http://www.usgwarchives.net/sd/histories/brief.htm

	Scanning and OCR by Barbara Pierce, barbjp48@3rivers.net  This file 
	may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations 
	for their private use. All other rights reserved.

	Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval 
	system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other 
	means requires the written approval of the file's author.

	This file is part of the SDGENWEB Archives. If you arrived here inside
	a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at

	http://www.usgwarchives.net/sd/sdfiles.htm

 

                                     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 who made the memorial.

   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.