SOUTH DAKOTA
IT’S HARD TO ARGUE ABOUT SOUTH DAKOTA’S beauty, with its the pastoral prairies (childhood home of Laura Ingalls Wilder of Little House on the Prairie fame) and monumental mountains (both Mount Rushmore and the in-progress Crazy Horse Memorial). Discover your ancestor’s story there with the following tips and resources for researching your family in the Mount Rushmore State.
MOUNTAINS (AND PRAIRIES) OF HISTORY
Prior to European or American settlement, Native groups (notably the Arikara, Mandan and Hidatsa) had lived in the area for centuries. The state’s namesake, the Dakota/Lakota/Nakota Sioux, originated in neighboring Minnesota, but moved westward into the modern Dakotas by the mid-18th century.
After Frenchman René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur da La Salle’s expedition to the Great Lakes in 1682, France claimed the whole of “Upper Louisiana,” including modern South Dakota. Throughout the 18th century and up to 1803, South Dakota was part of this Louisiana Territory, which changed hands from France to Spain in the
