Yankton Sioux Elders told a story of a group of these Potawatomi (Potawanami) and Miami, who made their way west to find new land.  The Potawatomi tried to claim the hills and great spring of the hills for their own, but the Yankton were a proud warrior people and would not allow their territory to be taken without a fight.  Near the sight of the Big Spring, a great and terrible battle ensued.  The Potawatomi were led by a war chief with a legendary name, Little Turtle.  Chief Little Turtle may have wielded the pistols and sword personally gifted to his family by George Washington into the battle.  But the Yanktons were great warriors, fighting on their own land, and in the end, the Potawatomi were defeated.  Little Turtle died bravely and was honored by the Yankton.  They buried him on the highest nearby point overlooking the land Little Turtle had hoped would be a new promised land for his people.  The Yankton marked his grave with two stone turtle mosaics on the ground.

On this episode, we tell the story of a place where pioneers tell stories about terrible killings and forgotten lore.  Where horse thieves and night riders ruled cast a shadow over the entire eastern half of Dakota Territory and legendary Deadwood lawmen fear to tread.  A place called the Wessington Hills.

This episode features an interview with Dr. Armik Mirzayan Associate Professor of

Modern Languages and Linguistics at the University of South Dakota.  An expert on American Indian languages.

I really hope you enjoy this episode.  If you want to do your own research or dig deeper into the sources used in this episode, the full works cited for each episode are available to Patreon supporters.  Your donations help me access more books, research databases, and other resources that I couldn't access otherwise, and that helps keep the show going.   Donations are accepted through Venmo and Patreon.

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The Sioux Empire Podcast

2020

Wessington Hills

There are hundreds of ghost towns and forgotten settlements in South Dakota.  Some of these abandoned structures still stand as silent monuments to the ambitions of men long dead.  A few are now grassy fields with perhaps, only a graveyard to mark the name of a community long dead and buried with its deceased residents.  Each of these places once thronged with noises of life and generated thousands of stories, the byproduct of the dramas of life on a frontier.  Those stories are for another time.  For it is October, and the grass is browning, the crops drying, and the earth is slowly dying.  A ghost story is in order.  But which ghost story?  South Dakota has so many. 

In this episode, four documented stories of strangeness and tragedy.  The gruesome death of a mysterious foreign woman and subsequent haunting make her the first ghost report ever recorded in Deadwood. The Sisseton tell a tale of a valley where the earth bleeds and cries. A lady card shark plays her final hand. Still, she doesn’t seem to know it yet, and a man on the frontier kills his treacherous business partner, five years after his own death. 

A special thank you to the Siouxland Libraries of Sioux Falls.
Also to Betty Jean Mertens and the Kennebec Public Library.
And Pioneer Historian Lonis Wendt of Vivian.

Voice Actors:  Levi Hanson, Brett Stolz, Malia Lukomski, and Adam Wells
Produced and Written by Robert Mehling

Drone Footage for Intro Provided By
YouTuber WyomingAdventures

Motion Timelapse Footage Provided By 
Dakotalapse

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Stories about the Sioux Empire, you’ve never heard in the Sioux Empire.
A podcast about Sioux Empire and South Dakota History.

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