# A Brief History of South Dakota/Chapter 2

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.