Historical Marker · No. 240
Medicine or Prayer Rock
Edmunds County · South Dakota
Erected by Ipswich Commercial Club, 1962
The rock carries two plaques, and neither speaks for the people who held it sacred. One, set into the boulder, dedicates the Marcus P. Beebe Memorial Library, built behind it in 1930 and 1931. The other, cast for the Ipswich Commercial Club in 1962, calls the carving a would-be medicine man's self-promotion and offers no evidence for it. Its own borrowed word answers it: wakan is the Lakota word for sacred or holy, and the Great Spirit it glosses is Wakan Tanka. The state register lists a 1958 marker here with a different text.
What the plaque says
Medicine or Prayer Rock Found near Mobridge, the im- pression was tediously incised by some old Indian intent on building himself up as a medicine man. Once formed it was a symbol of great power and was venerated by the Indians who believed it the work of the "Wakan" or Great Spirit. Erected 1962 Ipswich Commercial Club
Where it stands
45.44515, -99.02770 · Directions
More markers nearby
- Welcome to Ipswich Arch — 0.4 mi
- Welsh Colony at Powell — 11 mi
- Colon Campbell Fur Post — 31 mi