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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
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FORT MEADE
South Dakota
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Location: Meade County, on S. Dak. 34, about 2
miles east of Sturgis.
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Control of the Sioux and protection of the Black
Hills mining district were the responsibilities of this fort
(1878-1944), founded about 14 miles northeast of Deadwood, S. Dak. It
replaced a temporary camp known as Camp Sturgis, established 2 months
earlier about 5 miles to the northeast. In 1890-91 Fort Meade was a key
headquarters during the Sioux unrest that culminated in the Battle of
Wounded Knee, in which the fort's troops participated.
Fort Meade has been a Veterans' Administration
Hospital since 1944. Most of the original buildings have given way to
modern ones, but the officers' quarters, dating from the late 1880's,
are basically unchanged. Comanche, the horse that survived the Custer
battle, was quartered at the stables from 1879 to 1887, when the 7th
Cavalry made up the garrison. A military cemetery overlooks the site
from an adjacent hill. All that remains of Camp Sturgis, on S. Dak. 79,
are slight indentations along Spring Creek marking the site of huts dug
under canvas tops. A highway marker identifies the site.
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Officers' row, Fort Meade, in
1889. (photo John C. H. Grabill, Library of
Congress) |
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FORT RANDALL
South Dakota
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Location: Gregory County, just off U.S. 18, on the
west bank of the Missouri River, below the southwestern corner of the
Fort Randall Dam, across from Pickstown.
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This strategic Missouri River fort (1856-92), almost
astride the South Dakota-Nebraska boundary and not far west of Iowa and
Minnesota, played an outstanding role in many of the events on the
northern Plains in the last half of the 19th century. Its activities ran
a broad gamut: Indian control and protection of settlers, keeping the
peace between warring tribes and factions occupying the various
reservations in the area, and the supply of posts on and policing of the
upper Missouri River. The fort hosted such prominent Indian fighters as
Custer, Sheridan, Sully, Sherman, and Terry. It was also a base for
Brig. Gen. Alfred Sully's expeditions in 1863-65 against the Sioux in
the Dakotas following the 1862 uprising in Minnesota. And in the years
1881-83 Sitting Bull was imprisoned at the fort, to which he was
transported by steamer from Fort Yates following his surrender at Fort
Buford, N. Dak.
The wide-ranging activities of the garrison reflected
the fort's diverse responsibilities and involved participation in such
endeavors as: the reprisals against Chief Inkpaduta following the Spirit
Lake Massacre, Iowa (1857); the Mormon Expedition (1857-58), to Utah;
the Corps of Engineers expedition (1859), under Capt. William F.
Raynolds, that explored the Yellowstone River and its tributaries; the
Yellowstone Survey Expeditions of 1872 and 1873, surveying the route of
the Northern Pacific Railroad; the attempts to exclude miners from the
Black Hills after Custer's reconnaissance in 1874; the warfare that
subsequently broke out with the Sioux and Cheyennes because of the
illegal violation by miners of the Great Sioux Reservation; and, with
the remaining units of the 7th Cavalry, the disarming of the Hunkpapa
Sioux at the Standing Rock Reservation, N. Dak.-S. Dak., in September
1876 after the Custer disaster.
Fort Randall, whose site is under the jurisdiction of
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is one of the few of the large number
of prehistoric and historic sites in the area running upriver along the
Missouri to Big Bend spared by the waters of the Fort Randall Reservoir.
The only surviving remain above ground is the roofless and windowless
cross-shaped chapel, Christ Church (1875), which also served as a
library and lodge meeting hall. Its unstabilized and still-impressive
cut-stone native masonry ruins, of interesting architectural design,
have somehow survived vandalism and years of exposure to the elements. A
few ancient and battered cottonwood trees grow along the parade ground,
which is outlined by crumbling and brush-covered masonry foundations and
cellar walls. The post cemetery, on a nearby hillside, today contains
only a few civilian burials.
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Sitting Bull, with two of his
wives and some of his children, while imprisoned at Fort Randall.
(Smithsonian Institution) |
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FORT SISSETON
South Dakota
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Location: Marshall County, on an unimproved road,
about 6 miles northwest of Eden.
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Founded in 1864 by Wisconsin and Minnesota Volunteers
during the Civil War not far west of the Minnesota boundary in the
northeastern corner of South Dakota, this fort was known as Fort
Wadsworth until 1876. The Army established it to assure settlers,
fearful even though the campaigns of Sibley and Sully in 1863-64 had
pacified most of the Sioux in the region. The local Sisseton and
Wahpeton Sioux were friendly; and on the basis of an 1867 treaty
agreement, in the 1870's they were placed on a reservation adjacent to
the fort. Besides controlling the Indians, it protected emigrants
traveling the wagon routes to the Idaho and Montana goldfields; aided
railroad surveyors; and, a hub of civilization on the frontier and a
policing agency before the establishment of civil courts, was a
stabilizing influence on settlement. In 1889 the Army transferred the
fort to the State.
The State has carried on the restoration and repair
program inaugurated in 1932 by a local citizens' group to replace
buildings that had been torn down or fallen into ruins during the
previous four decades, when it had been leased to ranchers and
sportsmen. In the years 1935-39, utilizing Works Progress Administration
(WPA) labor, the National Park Service continued the project. As a
result of all these efforts, Fort Sisseton State Park contains an
extensive and architecturally interesting complex of 16 major stone and
brick buildings, which over the years had replaced the original log
structures. Now in varying stages of restoration and repair, they suffer
from few modern intrusions.
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Modern appearance of Fort
Sisseton. Clockwise, adjutant's office, commanding officer's quarters,
doctor's quarters, and hospital. (South Dakota Division of Parks and
Recreation) |
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PINE RIDGE AGENCY
South Dakota
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Location: Shannon County, town of Pine
Ridge.
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This agency was the focal point of the Sioux Ghost
Dance rebellion in 1890 and the ensuing military operations. These
culminated in the Battle of Wounded Knee, in which the Army crushed the
Sioux. Following the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the Army launched a
series of drives in Wyoming and Montana and in 1876-77 forced
practically all the hostile Sioux onto the Great Sioux Reservation. In
1876 their more peaceful reservation brethren, in the Black Hills
Treaty, had ceded to the United States the Powder River hunting grounds
of Wyoming and Montana; the Black Hills; and the rest of the western
part of the Great Sioux Reservation, which under the Fort Laramie Treaty
(1868) had embraced roughly the entire western half of South Dakota. The
Indians also agreed to relinquish all land outside the Great Sioux
Reservation; included were their two agencies in Nebraska.
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Troops from Camp Cheyenne, S.
Dak., mingling with Miniconjou Ghost Dancers in the autumn of 1890.
(photo John C. H. Grabill, Library of Congress) |
As a result, in 1877 the Indian Bureau relocated the
Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies from northwestern Nebraska to sites
along the Missouri River in South Dakota, the Red Cloud Agency a few
miles north of its junction with the White River and the Spotted Tail
Agency just north of the Nebraska boundary. About 800 of the 13,000
Indians on the march escaped to Canada and the rest refused to travel as
far as the new agencies. The Oglalas of the Red Cloud Agency chose to
settle along White Clay Creek, S. Dak., and the Upper Brules of Spotted
Tail Agency just to the east along the east fork of the White River. The
next year, 1878, the Indian Bureau bowed to Indian intransigence and
relocated the agencies westward to the area in which the tribes resided
and renamed them, respectively, Pine Ridge and Rosebud. As part of the
same overall consolidation of the Sioux in 1876-78, the Miniconjous were
settled on the Cheyenne River Reservation, S. Dak.; and the Hunkpapa,
Yankton, and Blackfeet Sioux at the Standing Rock Reservation, N.
Dak.-S. Dak., adjoining the Cheyenne River Reservation on the north.
All the Sioux, nomadic tribes who found adjustment to
an alien civilization in the harsh reservation system exceedingly
difficult, began to dream of a miraculous return to their former way of
life. They were thus receptive to the Ghost Dance religion of the Nevada
Paiute Wovoka. In the winter of 1889-90, 11 Sioux delegateseight
from Pine Ridge; two from Rosebud, one of whom was Short Bull; and one,
Kicking Bear, from the Cheyenne River Reservationvisited Wovoka in
the Mason Valley of Nevada. They returned to their reservation in the
spring with glowing reports of the new religion. But the Indian agents
at Pine Ridge and Rosebud repressed their attempts to introduce it among
their tribesmen, and those at the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River
Reservations at the time evinced slight interest in Wovoka's
doctrines.
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General Miles and staff viewing
Indian encampment near Pine Ridge Agency in January 1891. (photo John
C. H. Grabill, Library of Congress) |
By summer, conditions at the reservations had so
worsened that they presented a fertile environment for the religion's
spread. Indian grievances included a large reduction in the Great Sioux
Reservation in 1889; hunger, resulting from a curtailment of Government
rations caused by a cut in appropriations; a drought in the summer of
1890; the onslaught of measles and other diseases highly fatal among the
children; and the corruption or ineffectiveness of some Indian agents,
who had continual jurisdictional disputes with the Army.
Thus, in itself the Sioux adoption of the essentially
pacifistic Ghost Dance religion would probably not have generated the
conflagration that ensued. The problem was that it was in reality a
symptom of profound unrest stemming from tangible complaints. In their
bitterness, the Sioux added to it militance and hatred of the whites.
The displays of unbridled emotions expressed in the wild dance, which
climaxed in ecstatic illusionary trances, alarmed the Indian agents and
settlers in the region. The Sioux responded to the repressive measures
of the agents by arming themselves against possible intervention and
launching a vigorous defense of the religion that turned into a virtual
holy crusade. Religious fanaticism made peaceful control of the restless
warriors difficult and a few clashes resulted. By September and October
many Indians on the Cheyenne River, Standing Rock, Rosebud, and Pine
Ridge Reservations were in a state of wild excitement and
rebelliousness. The apprehensive Indian agents and settlers in the
region began to request military aid.
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Lt. John J. ("Black Jack")
Pershing and troop of Oglala scouts at Pine Ridge Reservation in 1891.
Pershing later won fame in World War I. (Denver Public Library,
Western Collection) |
At Pine Ridge, particularly, conditions were chaotic.
There the lot of the Sioux had long been especially unhappy and
relations with the Indian Bureau had been characterized by dissension
and animosity. In the years 1879-86 Indian Agent Valentine T.
McGillicuddy and the Oglala Chief Red Cloud had clashed regularly. The
chief strenuously resisted the educational program in farming, attempts
to diminish the paramount position of tribal chiefs, and the imposition
of the scores of other social and religious changes that spelled doom to
the old way of life. Relations were smoother during Hugh D. Gallagher's
regime (1886-90), but resentment continued, and in 1890 the reservation
became a center of the Ghost Dance religion. On October 9, at a time
when the religious frenzy of the Oglalas and Brules was at a peak, a new
and inexperienced agent, Daniel F. Royer, replaced Gallagher. Royer
proved to be the catalyst. Frightened and completely unable to cope with
the situation, 4 days after his arrival he dispatched a frantic plea for
military protection.
On November 20 the first contingents of troops, from
Omaha and Forts Robinson and Niobrara, Nebr., arrived at the Pine Ridge
and Rosebud Reservations. By the end of the month thousands more from
all the surrounding States had arrived on the scenenearly half the
Army's infantry and cavalry and some artillery, the largest
concentration of troops anywhere in the United States between the Civil
War and the Spanish-American War and one of the largest ever assembled
in one place to confront Indians. At Pine Ridge, Maj. Gen. Nelson A.
Miles, commanding the operation, converged his greatest force, which
totaled about 3,000 and included the entire 7th Cavalry Regiment, under
Col. James W. Forsyth.
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These infantrymen at Pine Ridge
were part of the force that massed in the region prior to the Battle of
Wounded Knee. (Denver Public Library, Western
Collection) |
At the appearance of the troops, Kicking Bear and
Short Bull and 3,000 Ghost Dancers fled to the badlands about 50 miles
northwest of the Pine Ridge Agency, at the northwest corner of the Pine
Ridge Reservation. Although this action was not hostile, General Miles
decided to remove from the reservations and incarcerate the most
conspicuous agitators. Prominent among them was Sitting Bull, Custer's
nemesis, who allegedly was fomenting a rebellion at his camp on the
Standing Rock Reservation. His death while resisting arrest on December
15, and the flight of his followers southward contributed to the events
that led, 2 weeks later, to the Battle of Wounded Knee.
Pine Ridge is still the agency of the Oglalas.
Although a few of the buildings date from the turn of the century, most
are of recent origin.
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Part of the artillery detachment
that took part in the Battle of Wounded Knee at Pine Ridge in January
1891, a month after the battle. The Hotchkiss guns had rained deadly
fire on the Indians. (photo John C. H. Grabill, Library of
Congress) |
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ROSEBUD AGENCY
South Dakota
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Location: Todd County, town of Rosebud.
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The successor of Spotted Tail Agency in controlling
the Brule Sioux, this agency originated at the same time and for the
same reasons as Pine Ridge, which adjoined it on the west. Although
conditions on the Rosebud Reservation were not much better than at the
other Sioux reservations, Rosebud experienced less strife than most of
them and certainly less than Pine Ridge. The main reason was that the
Brules had no strong leader; in 1881 an other Indian had killed Chief
Spotted Tail. But the competition among those who sought to succeed him
sometimes resulted in near-anarchy. Many of the Brules became Ghost
Dancers in 1890, but they participated chiefly at the Pine Ridge
Reservation, the center of the religion and the scene of its subsequent
military repression.
The Brule agency is still headquartered in the town
of Rosebud, whose buildings are nearly all of 20th-century origin.
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SLIM BUTTES BATTLEFIELD
South Dakota
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Location: Harding County, on S. Dak. 20, about 2
miles west of Reva.
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At this site north of the Black Hills the Sioux
suffered one of their first setbacks in the wake of their defeat of
Custer in June 1876. Brig. Gen. George Crook's force, after separating
from Terry's command in August, was en route to the hills to obtain
supplies. On September 8 Capt. Anson Mills, leading the advance guard,
came upon a band of Sioux under American Horse camped at Rabbit Creek
near Slim Buttes. Although greatly outnumbered, the troops charged,
captured the village, and held out until the main body came to their
aid. Crazy Horse and his braves, not far away, tried to help American
Horse, but they arrived too late. American Horse and several of his men,
trapped in a cave, surrendered when the chief received mortal wounds.
Casualties were not great on either side. But the Army continued its
pursuit of the survivors and other fugitives. In the autumn many of
them, tired of the pursuit and facing the rigors of winter, slipped back
to the agencies to surrender. The others were to endure months of
insecurity as soldiers braved winter perils to pursue them.
The site is located on an unbroken prairie surrounded
by pine-dotted hills. A monument and several markers stand on a small
hill near the highway.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/sitec15.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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