South Dakota History Trivia Quiz

Answer: the Mound Builders

Too easy? Unfortunately, when archaeologists don't know much about a people, one has to go with what one knows. They built mounds, probably around 500 to 800 AD, when their culture disappeared. There are similar mounds found in many states, a thousand or more miles away, so we know they had a flourishing civilization with trade networks, perhaps many overlapping ones, but we just don't know much more about them or why they disappeared.

Answer: camels

Wouldn't it have been a sight? Along with mammoths, giant ground sloths and saber-toothed cats, camels (Camelops hesternus) roamed in South Dakota. They died out about 11,000 years ago with other megafauna just as humans arrived, but there's no definite proof that humans killed them off, or how they interacted at all, but it's certainly possible that humans saw them.

Answer: France

French fur trappers were already exploring the area in the 1600s, and by the early 1700s were regularly using the rivers as roads for travel. Water was so much easier for travel that the Verendreye brothers even passed through the state circa 1742-43, on their way back from trying (unsuccessfully) to find a water route to the Pacific Ocean.

Answer: Spain

Spain's ownership really didn't have much effect on the upper part of the "Louisiana Territory," which wasn't settled, like farther south. Everybody still wanted to keep good relations with local native tribes and find a water route to the Pacific Ocean. It seemed so much within reach, except they kept running into these mountains...

Answer: Thomas Jefferson

The Louisiana purchase included all of what would become South Dakota, except for a little section in the northeast corner. Jefferson paid eleven million dollars to Napoleon, and then set about organizing the Lewis and Cark Expediton or Corps of Discovery, to find out what he'd bought.

Answer: fur

Fur trapping was a major source of income, and even Astor's American Fur Company took part. The periods of boom alternated with busts, though, and the heyday of the 1830s passed into a decline in the 1840s.

Answer: General George Custer

Custer announced the discovery of gold on French Creek. He was sent to protect a railroad survey party against the Sioux, and had been making various forays into the area. The relationship between the army and the Sioux was becoming increasingly hostile. Custer's death two years later in 1876 at his "Last Stand" against the Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho is well known.

Answer: signed them in random order

We still don't know which state was born first, if the legend is true. Harrison ordered his secretary of state, James G. Blaine, to shuffle the papers and hide all but the area he needed to see to sign. He signed them both at 3:40 pm. on Nov. 2, 1889, one immediately after the other. One had to be first, but Harrison never knew and Blaine may not even have known himself.

In a move that would be politically incorrect today but was quite fitting then, the president used a quill from an eagle shot over northern Dakota Territory to sign the act.

Answer: flood and dam failure

As much as 15 inches of rain fell steadily in some places, causing a 500-year rarity of a disaster. Rapid Creek as well as Battle, Bear Butte, Boxelder and Spring Creeks became swollen with water and debris, and Canyon Lake Dam also failed in the night, adding to the water.

The floodplain has been enlarged and turned into golf courses, parks and other green space, in the hopes that the next 500-year flood will be less disastrous.

Answer: Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura Ingalls Wilder's family traveled around several upper midwest states, but she or her family spent time near De Smet, South Dakota, and several of her books are about life in Dakota Territory.