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Sioux Falls History, South Dakota

What is interesting is that Sioux Falls also happens to be the regional center for the rural and urban interaction.

Sioux Falls has a very interesting history behind its evolution and development through the years. The very history of the place revolves around the great cascades of Big Sioux River. These falls were actually created about fourteen thousand years back towards the end of the ice age. The very allure of these falls made an incredible influence over the entire land. The Ioway, Ho- Chunk, Otoe, Omaha, Missouri, Dakota, Arikira, Kansa, Osage, Quapaw, Cheyenne and Nakota people were the ones who inhabited the place before the European descendents came and settled. A great agricultural society was operated by these people and they built well fortified villages over numerous sites as well.

The initially documented visits by the Europeans to this land are believed to have been made by explorers/ voyagers from France in the very early 1700s. They mapped the entire area and thus took the census counts regarding indigenous communities’ that were prevalent at that time. Then, the first American exploration of the place is documented to be conducted by Philander Prescott. He was the one who had camped overnight in December 1832 at the Sioux Falls. Then, a great military expedition was led by Captain James Allen out of the Fort Des Moines. In the book written in 1856 by Jacob Ferris” The States and the Territories of the Great West” the falls are vividly described.

Two very separate groups, Western Town Company, Dubuque and Dakota Land Company, St. Paul organized in the year of 1856 claimed for the land that surrounded the falls as they considered it as a very promising town site owing to its spectacular beauty and immense access to water power. They worked together as they looked for some mutual protection that lay over 320 acres of claim land each. To resist the threatening hostilities from the native tribes, they built over a temporary turf barricade as well.

The 1862 Dakota War between white settlers and Native Americans engulfed the nearby south western Minnesota and the town was emptied in the month of August. Fort Dakota, which is a great military reservation, was established in the month of May of 1856. Settlers that had been evacuated from their lands began returning and after some time the land was inhabited again and development began taking place. Sioux Falls was then incorporated in the year of 1876 and city charter was granted on 3 March 1883 by Dakota Territorial legislature.

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