South Dakota

Discover adventure and cowboy history in the West River cattle country.

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West River South Dakota is cattle country. The Missouri River bisects the state from north to south, the eastern portion is called East River, and the western, the West River. Ancient glaciers forced the Missouri south along their western edges while West River’s streams and rivers, untouched by glaciers, continued cutting through the prairie from west to east. The Black Hills rise from the prairie to the west, while to the south, badlands stretch from west to east.

Rolling prairie, rich in grama and wheat grass, supported herds of bison, pronghorn, mule deer and elk. Cheyenne and Lakota tribes inhabited the land, and, after acquiring horses, metal spearpoints and arrowheads as well as firearms, they flourished.

The cattle industry got a late start in West River. The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty established the Great Sioux Reservation which included most of West River. In 1877, the federal government removed from the reservation, the Black Hills and a 50-mile stretch of land along Dakota Territory’s western border. By 1886, professional hunters had decimated the West River bison herds. In 1889, the federal government diminished, then broke up, the Great Sioux Reservation into five smaller reservations, as Dakota Territory became the states of North and South Dakota. Most of West River became public domain—open range.

Through its treaty with the Lakota tribes, the federal government promised to provide them beef. Herders drove cattle from the east to the Lakota agencies, Standing Rock and Cheyenne River along the Missouri River, and after agencies were established at Rosebud and Pine Ridge, and along South Dakota’s southern border, Nebraska and Texas cattlemen drove herds to those agencies.