Archival Research Results to Relocate Sitting Bull’s Campsites at Fort Randall, Dakota Territory, September 1881 to April 1883

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

From September 1881 to April 1883, Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake) and approximately 160 followers were imprisoned at Fort Randall, Dakota Territory, following Sitting Bull’s highly publicized defeat of Lt. General Custer at the Battle of Greasy Grass (Little Bighorn) in 1876, their defiant sojourn in Canada, and the group’s surrender to the US government. Sitting Bull and his band were allowed to establish their own camp outside the fort on the adjacent plains and wooded bottoms of the Missouri River. These historic camp locations are now within federally owned land in Gregory County, South Dakota. In 2022, the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Omaha District, contracted the South Dakota State Historical Society’s Archaeological Research Center (ARC) to identify the high-probability locations of these encampment areas near historic Fort Randall. This poster illustrates the results of that research through the utilization of historic photos, previous archaeological investigations, LiDAR imagery, and archival research. The two probable locations of Sitting Bull’s historic prisoner-of-war camps are discussed as well as the potential material culture associated with those locations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52184