Medicine Knoll River

One line on this bronze covers an expulsion. The Ho-Chunk had stayed out of the Dakota War of 1862, yet Minnesota settlers demanded them gone, and Congress ordered their removal on February 21, 1863. That May, 1,945 people were taken under guard from Mankato to Crow Creek, a barren reach downriver whose west line, the bronze says, this creek drew. More than 550 died in the removal. Starving survivors slipped south to the Omaha, who ceded land in 1865 for the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska.

What the plaque says

Medicine Knoll River On September 22, 1804 Lewis & Clark passed by this river and camped a couple of miles up the Missouri. They called it Reuben River for Reuben Fields, one of their hunters. In 1839 however this was called Medicine Knoll River by Nicollett & Fremont, who held a 4th of July pyrotechnic display on the Medicine Knoll 12 miles up the creek. In 1855 Lt. G. K. Warren, noted western topographer camped here while mapping this area. The same year Paul Narcelle quit the American Fur Company and started a ranch just South of here near the creek where he raised cattle, the first settler in this area. In 1857 the Yankton Sioux by treaty ceded the area of SE. South Dakota to the Government and this creek was part of the Northern line of the lands so ceded. In 1863 the U. S. A. moved the Winnebagoes from Minnesota and Wisconsin to Dakota and this Creek was the west line of a Reservation that extended down to Ft. Thompson, created that same year. By 1876 the Narcelle ranch was a stage stop on the Yankton - Ft. Randall - Ft. Thompson - Ft. Pierre stage line. In 1955 the Reclamation service plans a huge Reservoir, north of Blunt on its Headwaters. Erected 1955 by Vilas Drug Company and State Highway Commission

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• South Dakota State Capitol — 14 mi
  A copper-domed capitol built to end three elections' worth of fighting over where the capital belonged, beside a lake fed by an artesian well with a gas flame burning in it.
• Verendrye Monument — 16 mi
  The hilltop above Fort Pierre where three children found a lead plate in 1913 that two French brothers had buried in 1743 to claim the West for their king.
• Oahe Dam — 19 mi
  One of the largest rolled-earth dams in the world, dedicated by President Kennedy in 1962, holding back a reservoir that reaches more than 230 miles to Bismarck.

More markers nearby

• Ancient Indian Fortress — 7.0 mi
• First Permanent Fur Post — 8.6 mi
• Civilian Conservation Corps Camp - Farm Island — 10 mi
• Site of Old Fort Sully — 10 mi