SOUTH DAKOTA

SOUTH DAKOTA entered the union during 2 November 1889 as the fortieth state, and ranks sixteenth in size among the fifty states. Approximately 77,047 square

miles of land form a rectangle that tilts from northwest to southeast and contains elevations above sea level between 1,100 feet in the southeast corner and 7,242 in the Black Hills at Harney Peak, the highest elevation in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. A varied terrain contains the geographical center of North America—located near the middle of the state, close to Pierre—and the only true continental divide. From the northeast corner, water flows through the Red River to Hudson's Bay, and down the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers to the Gulf of Mexico.

The most distinctive natural feature is the Missouri River, which forms the southeastern boundary and dissects the state. South Dakotans created the term "West River" (meaning west of the river) to identify an area—comprising about three-fifths of the land—from which five principal streams drain into the Missouri River from the west. The term "East River" is used to identify the other two-fifths, from which two principal streams drain into the Missouri near the state's southeastern corner. In West River, rough and porous land with annual rainfall as low as fourteen inches has supported mainly livestock, mineral, and tourist industries. In East River, glacial chernozem soils with annual rainfall as great as twenty-six inches have supported subsistence farming, cash crop production, and livestock feeding industries.

The fertile Missouri River valley sustained a succession of five Native American cultures over nearly 14,000 years before it attracted the first non-Indian settlers as a "Steamboat Society" during the fur trade era. Beginning in the 1860s, white homesteaders and gold seekers used the river for transportation, and settled as rapidly as modern Sioux tribes ceded acreage to the U.S. Government.

The population that gathered over the next sixty years was as varied as the terrain. Thirteen of fourteen ancestral tribes of Sioux formed nine modern reservation societies that gained recognition by the U.S. Government as "domestic dependent nations." Due to the Sioux's gradual relinquishment of land over more than half a century, South Dakota's first generation of immigrants included representations from most European nations. Immigration records reveal that they included—in order of diminishing numbers—Norwegians, Germans (including Polish), Russians (including Germans from Russia and Finns), Swedes, Danes, Anglo Canadians, Dutch, English and Welsh, Irish, Austrians and Czechs (including Bohemians, Moravians, and Slovakians), Scots, Swiss, and French Canadians. Briefly, Chinese worked in the Black Hills, while both African and Jewish Americans founded agricultural colonies, bringing the total number of enclaves to thirty-six.

Ethnic variety spawned diversity in religious persuasion: the state was home to Lutheran, Catholic, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Congregational, Mennonite, Hutterite, Dutch Reformed, Baptist, Methodist, and Jewish denominations, as well as practitioners of traditional Native American religions. Despite the efforts of Christian missionaries, the tribes preserved the traditional belief system of the Sacred Pipe, and added to it the practices of the Native American (Peyote) Church. Within ten years of statehood, immigrant South Dakotans supported sixteen higher educational institutions and a greater number of academies—an array of choices that encouraged the preservation of cultural variety. When the immigrant population peaked in 1930, there existed no "typical South Dakotans."

Rugged terrain, inhospitable climatic conditions, and economic colonialism have restricted population growth. At the founding of Dakota Territory in 1861, more than 20,000 Sioux and approximately 1,000 non-Indians lived in what is now South Dakota. The white citizen population grew to about 348,600 by the time of statehood and by 1930 it had, through gradual increase, become the major part of a total population of 692,849 (a total that, because of the National Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, included Indians). Severe conditions during the Great Depression and the demands of World War II lowered the population to approximately 590,000 by 1945. Following this, a gradual increase brought the census total to 754,844 by the year 2000, at which time at least 10 percent of the population was Native American. A majority of the population was rural until 1960, after which South Dakotans became urban residents by ever-increasing numbers.

In the imaginations of European imperialists, four flags were successively a loft over South Dakota before its purchase by the United States as the center of Upper Louisiana Territory: the flags of Hapsburg Spain, which controlled the territory from 1494 to 1702; Bourbon France, the dominant power from 1702 to 1762; Bourbon Spain, which reasserted Spanish dominion from 1762 to 1800; and Napoleonic France, briefly ascendant from 1800 to 1803. After Congress acquired the Louisiana Territory in 1803, present-day South Dakota divided politically as well as geographically at the Missouri River into its West River and East River components, each independent of the other and marginally attached to surrounding territorial governments. In the absence of effective territorial administration, federal officials created the Upper Missouri Indian Agency jurisdiction, which remained in place from 1819 to 1868. The Fur Trade Act of 1824 delegated powers to the official in charge that were equivalent to those of a territorial governor. This desultory administration seemed adequate because the only outside economic interest affecting the region was the fur trade, which from 1827 to the end of the 1850s was mainly dominated by St. Louis magnate Pierre Chouteau Jr.

During the years 1858 to 1868, the Upper Missouri Indian Agency collapsed into several smaller Indian agency jurisdictions. The 1861 founding of its replacement, Dakota Territory, created to serve no more than 1,000 citizens, occurred due to an extraordinary combination of circumstances. Extralegal "squatter governments" devised by speculators from Dubuque and St. Paul had started a political movement at present-day Sioux Falls, and began agitating for the creation of a new territory. At the same time, the prospect of secession by southern states after the 1860 presidential election removed an obstacle to political change. Lame duck Democrats in Congress and defeated president James Buchanan claimed a final legacy by extending legal authority to create territorial governments.

Even after the founding of Dakota Territory, political machinations continued. The new town of Yankton on the Missouri River became the territorial capital not only because of its access to steamboat transportation, but also because it was the preference of John B. S. Todd, the cousin of Abraham Lincoln's wife and the first U.S. Delegate to Congress. President Lincoln personally approved the appointments of "Indian Ring" leaders, who collaborated to steal Yankton Sioux tribal assets: these included William Jayne, Lincoln's personal physician, who became governor; and Walter Burleigh and his father-in-law Andrew Faulk, who had stumped western Pennsylvania for Republican votes before Lincoln's election and were now named U.S. Indian Agent and Licensed Trader on the new Yankton Sioux Reservation. Jayne left the territory in 1863 following his defeat by Todd in the second congressional election of 1862. After investigators representing the U.S. Senate exposed fraud and dissolved the Indian Ring, Burleigh twice won election as U.S. Delegate to Congress and Faulk gained appointment as territorial governor. Their escape from retribution set the tone for territorial governance. In 1883, after the seventh territorial governor, Nehemiah Ordway, met his match in Delegate to Congress Richard Pettigrew, the territorial capital was moved to Bismarck (in present North Dakota) to buttress Ordway's fading political career and enhance his personal economic opportunities.

Largely because Governor Ordway's choice of Bismarck had been based on narrow self-interest, in 1889—after statehood was finally achieved—South Dakotans selected a new capital: Pierre (named after Pierre Chouteau Jr., and his principal trading post, but pronounced "peer"). Its selection not only circumvented competition from population centers at Yankton, Sioux Falls, and Rapid City, but also placed the new political headquarters near the center of the state, within 200 miles of most citizens. Moreover, Pierre was located on a central commercial avenue opened during territorial years by the Dakota Central Railroad across East River, and by the Fort Pierre-to-Deadwood Wagon Road in West River.

Statehood had been so long in coming mainly because of resistance by the Sioux, who refused to relinquish land and bested non-Indian forces during several confrontations outside the borders of Dakota Territory. In two months during the Minnesota Sioux War of 1862, eastern Sioux killed nearly 600 and drove 2,500 whites into flight. At the Grattan Affair in Nebraska (1854), the Fetterman Massacre in Wyoming (1866), and the Battle of the Little Big Horn in Montana (1876), western and middle Sioux claimed decisive victories. Then, whether it was an accident or an ambush by U.S. Army troops, the tragedy at Wounded Knee in South Dakota (1890) broke the will of the Sioux to resist. Their previous victories were fruitful, however: the tribes retained more than 10 percent of their ancestral land, compared to an average 3.5 percent for thirty-seven Great Plains tribes overall. In South Dakota, the Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Cheyenne River, Standing Rock (partly in North Dakota), Lower Brule, and Crow Creek reservations alone contained 12,681,911 acres in 1889 when Congress defined their boundaries (within which tribal groups later sold land, though by 1950 they still retained ownership of 6,114,502 acres). On these reservations, plus those occupied by Yanktons, Sissetons and Wahpetons, and Flandreau Santees in East River, there remained ample space for the survival of tribalism and traditional cultures.

Statehood for South Dakota—achieved through an omnibus act of 1889 that also created North Dakota, Montana, and Washington—was a product of sterling performances by able politicians who made up for the likes of Jayne, Burleigh, Faulk, and Ordway. General William Henry Harrison Beadle accommodated immigrants by organizing an effective survey of rough terrain, then inspired resistance to real estate prospectors (who hoped to purchase federally donated school lands at bargain basement prices) in order to ensure land-sale proceeds sufficient to establish a suitable elementary educational system. Congregational minister Joseph Ward organized a political caucus in Yankton that unified territorial politicians during a succession of constitutional conventions. The leader of this group of politicians, Arthur Mellette, became the primary architect of the constitution and, for his efforts, gained recognition as both the last territorial governor and the first governor of the state of South Dakota. The constitution gave expression to Mellette's suspicions about politicians, with salutary consequences. It preserved a school-land fund under Beadle's plan to accept no less than $10 per acre, and placed a limit of $100,000 on state indebtedness. At times the latter feature stifled the growth of infrastructure, but it also kept South Dakota free from debt, except on one occasion. Fiscal conservatism fostered a tradition among legislators of carrying surplus funds in the state treasury, and relying on U.S. senators for maximum congressional assistance. The most telling evidence of this tradition came in 2000, when the state received federally funded programs worth $1.7 billion more than South Dakotans had paid in federal taxes that year.

Because of the constitutional restriction on indebtedness, inhospitable natural conditions, and economic colonialism, South Dakotans learned to elect tight-fisted officials to state and local government, but to send liberal spenders to the U.S. Senate. For service within the state, South Dakotans have elected only four Democrats to the office of governor, and have on only two occasions allowed Democrats to control the state legislature. To improve efficiency as well as performance, voters in the 1970s supported referendums that facilitated the consolidation of 160 overlapping state agencies into 16 executive departments and streamlined the judicial system. As far as service in Washington, D.C., was concerned, the long line of fundraisers elected to the U.S. Senate included Richard Pettigrew, Peter Norbeck, William McMaster, Francis Case, Karl Mundt, George McGovern, James Abouresk, and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle—all of them charged with the responsibility to bring maximum benefit to a state with limited economic prospects.

South Dakota's economic mainstays have been farming and ranching, which during the banner year of 1991 together contributed $13.2 billion to the economy, enhanced by $436 million in federal subsidies. The livestock industry had taken root before statehood because of insatiable markets that existed in Indian agency jurisdictions, where tribal funds were used to pay market prices for enough livestock to provide about eight pounds of fresh meat per month for more than 20,000 tribal members. Both Indian agencies and U.S. Army installations consumed hay, grain, fruits, and vegetables; contracted for transportation services; and provided part-time jobs for settlers. Because of reliable markets and steady employment through territorial times, farming and ranching fast became the main feature in South Dakota's economic life.

Next in importance has been tourism, which originated when passengers boarded Pierre Chouteau's steamboat Yellowstone in 1831 for a ride up the Missouri River. Their primary interests included catching glimpses of Native Americans, exposure to unsullied frontier terrain, and escape from the monotony of workaday life—touristic interests that have never changed. Railroads replaced steamboats by the outset of the twentieth century, and automobiles and buses replaced rail cars for tourist travel during the 1920s. South Dakotans secured federal funds to install five bridges across the Missouri River during the years 1924–1927 at a cost of$3.1 million, and matched federal funds to build networks of roads during the years 1919–1941 at a cost of$60.4 million. After World War II this transportation system was refined by the completion of 680 miles of freeways running south to north and east to west, at the advantageous funding ratio of 9 to 1. The completion of four earthen dams across the Missouri by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during the years 1954–1966 not only stabilized connections between East River and West River, but also added tourist facilities with hunting and fishing opportunities at four large reservoirs behind the dams.

Although Native Americans and untarnished landscapes remained favorite features for tourists, with federal assistance South Dakotans added many other attractions. U.S. Park Service personnel manage the magnificent Badlands and the majestic Mount Rushmore, each of which attracts several million visitors every year. State employees accommodate tourists at serene lodging places named Sylvan Lake and the Game Lodge. Every year Rapid City houses as many as 15,000 in hotels and motels. Local entrepreneurs lure visitors: in East River, Mitchell—with its nineteenth century agricultural exhibition hall, the Corn Palace—is the main destination, while in West River attractions include a snake pit, the Homes take Gold Mine (closed in the year 2000), and exhilarating climbs on Harney Peak and Bear Butte. Since 1935 residents of Sturgis have attracted motorcycle riders to an annual rally that lasts for a week at a cost that sustains the economy of the city the year round. Scenic roads embellished by "pig-tail bridges" slow Black Hills traffic prior to entry into Custer State Park, which contains a herd of buffalo along with countless other species.

A shift in population from farms and ranches to urban centers since the 1960s has required the addition of new industries, though these have not been allowed to encroach on agribusiness or blemish landscapes that sustain tourism. One has been banking, which took off following a 1980 application by representatives from the credit card division of Citibank, which established bank office facilities in Sioux Falls. For banks, the state's special attractions already included the absence of corporate or personal income taxation—and after 1980 a new law promised a guarantee of freedom from legal constraint on usury rates. South Dakotans, as victims of bankers who charged interest rates as high as 24 percent in territorial times, had gradually reduced the usury limit to 8 percent during the Great Depression and had sustained it at that level until the year 1970. Subsequently, however, due to an inflationary economy, state legislators raised the rate to 12 percent and, in 1980, with House Bill 1046 they proposed to eliminate the usury rate altogether to enhance credit opportunities.

While House Bill 1046 awaited the governor's signature, Citicorp, the second largest bank in the world (and Citibank's parent company), faced a dilemma due to the inflationary economy and a legal restriction in New York that held interest rates on credit balances above $500 at 12 percent. Its managers selected South Dakota as the new location for Citibank's back offices in preference to four other states that allowed interest rate charges at 22 percent or greater. After South Dakota's governor signed House Bill 1046, Citibank brought 2,500 jobs to the Sioux Falls business community. Soon other lending institutions relocated to gain the same benefits at urban locations across the state.

More advantageous even than banking to urban economies has been spectacular growth in the health care industry—rendered secure by Medicare/Medicaid support, state employee medical benefits, and private insurance. Its evolution was typical for states in the West. Pioneering country doctors founded makeshift hospitals while officials opened a two-year Medical School at the University of South Dakota (1907) and appointed a State Board of Nursing (1917). Scientific advancements during World War II brought improvements in patient care. The Medical School expanded to offer a four-year degree program (1975). Following national trends, three health management organizations (HMOs) with sprawling networks of hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes came into place. In East River, Sioux Falls became the center of both the Avera managed care and the Sioux Valley Hospital systems. In West River, Rapid City became the center of the Rapid City Regional Hospital network. Although alternative treatment remained available at independent medical and chiropractic clinics, most South Dakotans became customers of the three HMO networks, which could offer easy referral to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Another flourishing urban industry has been education. After state-mandated consolidation during the 1960s, rural elementary schools nearly disappeared. The academic year 1999–2000 opened with the operation of 176 public school district K-12 systems, 26 Alternative Education units, 46 private or parochial academies, 12 public and private colleges and universities, and a suitable array of public and private vocational training institutions. Tradition, ethnic variety, and the realities of urban economics all sustain resistance to change in this complex, costly system.

An additional factor in creating economic stability has been improving living conditions and broadening business opportunities for nine federally recognized Indian tribes on as many reservations. The key to this economic success has been the U.S. government's carrying out of trust responsibilities established by treaties and statutes during the nineteenth century in return for Indian land. One such responsibility was health care, which for Sioux people began with the federal employment of two physicians during the 1840s. The Snyder Act of 1921 and the Indian Health Care Development Act of 1976 stabilized and enlarged this benefit. In 1997, at an annual operational cost of nearly $2 million, U.S. Indian Health Service personnel operated five hospitals and numerous clinics in South Dakota to provide free health care for tribal members. Another responsibility was the provision of housing, which began in the nineteenth century and was formalized by the federal Housing Act of 1937. On the basis of several additional acts, Congress spent at least $30 million a year on South Dakota reservations throughout the final years of the twentieth century.

The freedom from taxation on Indian land under federal trust, or on business profits generated on that land, has led to success in many tribal enterprises, including high-stakes casinos—established on all but one reservation in the state under terms in the National Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. The Indian Self Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 invited tribes to contract for congressional funds to carry out trust responsibilities previously realized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and other federal agencies. In 1998, the Yankton Sioux tribe (the tribe is about average size—some 7,500 enrolled, half in residence) managed more than $2 million in its business budget (these funds derive from both federal contributions and profits from tribal enterprises), and members have enjoyed congressionally mandated "Indian preference" (affirmative action) regarding all jobs funded by Congress or the tribe for the benefit of Indians. Newly flourishing tribal economies sustain not only enrolled members, but also surrounding non-Indian towns, communities, and infrastructures.

The American Indian Renaissance of the 1970s, which brought cultural traditions from the underground into open use, has affected the economy by making Native American culture a star feature of tourism. This economic mainstay flourishes due to demands for facilities to accommodate visiting scholars and journalists, professional conventions, and Indian arts and crafts displays, as well as recreational travel. For economic as well as cultural reasons, both tribal and non-Indian ethnic heritages are preserved in archives and explained at the Augustana College Center for Western Studies in Sioux Falls, and at the South Dakota Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cash, Joseph H., and Herbert T. Hoover, eds. To Be an Indian: An Oral History. 2d ed. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1995. The original edition appeared in 1971. Contains excerpts from reminiscences by tribal elders.

Hoover, Herbert T. The Yankton Sioux. New York: Chelsea House, 1988. The only volume that traces the entire history of a tribe in South Dakota. (Video production available.)

Hoover, Herbert T., and Carol Goss Hoover. Sioux Country: A History of Indian-White Relations. Sioux Falls, S.D.: Augustana College Center for Western Studies, 2000. Contains profiles for the histories of seventeen modern tribes on the northern Great Plains.

Hoover, Herbert T., and Karen P. Zimmerman. South Dakota History: An Annotated Bibliography and The Sioux and Other Native American Cultures of the Dakotas. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993. Two substantial volumes contain a common index.

Hoover, Herbert T., and Larry J. Zimmerman. South Dakota Leaders: From Pierre Chouteau, Jr., to Oscar Howe. Lanham, Md.: University Publishing Associates; Vermillion: University of South Dakota Press, 1989. Contains biographies of more than fifty individuals who have affected the history of the state.

Schell, Herbert S. History of South Dakota. 3d ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975. The best single volume on the subject emphasizes political and economic histories.

Herbert T.Hoover

See alsoSioux Wars ; Wounded Knee Massacre .

SOUTH DAKOTA

Pierre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533

Rapid City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543

Sioux Falls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555

The State in Brief

Nickname: Coyote State; Mount Rushmore State

Motto: Under God the people rule

Flower: Pasque flower

Bird: Ringnecked pheasant

Area: 77,116 square miles (2000; U.S. rank: 17th)

Elevation: 966 feet to 7,242 feet above sea level

Climate: Continental, characterized by seasonal extremes of temperature as well as persistent winds, low humidity, and scant rainfall

Admitted to Union: November 2, 1889

Capital: Pierre

Head Official: Governor Mike Rounds (R) (until 2007)

Population

1980: 691,000

1990: 696,004

2000: 754,844

2004 estimate: 770,883

Percent change, 1990–2000: 8.5%

U.S. rank in 2004: 46th

Percent of residents born in state: 68.1% (2000)

Density: 9.9 people per square mile (2000)

2002 FBI Crime Index Total: 17,342

Racial and Ethnic Characteristics (2000)

White: 669,404

Black or African American: 4,685

American Indian and Alaska Native: 62,283

Asian: 4,378

Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander: 261

Hispanic or Latino (may be of any race): 10,903

Other: 3,677

Age Characteristics (2000)

Population under 5 years old: 51,069

Population 5 to 19 years old: 176,412

Percent of population 65 years and over: 14.3%

Median age: 35.6 years (2000)

Vital Statistics

Total number of births (2003): 11,254

Total number of deaths (2003): 7,142 (infant deaths, 80)

AIDS cases reported through 2003: 105

Economy

Major industries: Finance, insurance, and real estate; agriculture; tourism; wholesale and retail trade; services

Unemployment rate: 3.7% (April 2005)

Per capita income: $28,299 (2003; U.S. rank: 38)

Median household income: $39,829 (3-year average, 2001-2003)

Percentage of persons below poverty level: 10.9% (3-year average, 2001-2003)

Income tax rate: None

Sales tax rate: 4.0%

S.Dak. • abbr. South Dakota.

Coyote State an informal name for South Dakota.

South Dakota, USA See Dakota.