Medicine Rock

This bronze now stands outside the building that took its rock indoors. Dakota people tied bags of herb medicine on poles around the boulder, trusting the marks of the Great Spirit to strengthen them; Elizabeth Custer saw the bundles in 1873. Settlers chipped at it anyway, and in 1889 the Interior Secretary asked a neighbor, Mrs. R. M. Springer, to watch over it unpaid. Gettysburg firemen hauled the forty-ton stone to Highway 212 in November 1953, ahead of Lake Oahe. In 1989 it moved again, into the Dakota Sunset Museum, built around it.

What the plaque says

Medicine Rock Originally located near mouth of Little Cheyenne River 15 miles west it was to be inundated by the Oahe Dam and so moved here. White men, ascending the Missouri, observed this huge rock on a hillside and were told by the Indians it was a Sacred Rock, because of the deeply incised foot prints. In 1863 when Sully's Expedition against the hostile Sioux was nearby, Capt. John Fielner rode alone to see the rock, was ambushed by Indians and killed. On August 17, 1889 casts of these prints, believed by the Indians to have been made by the Great Spirit were taken. These prints then taken are cast in concrete alongside the rock. The natural wear over 65 years is thus illustrated. Erected 1954 by Potter County and South Dakota Historical Societies

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Original Site Medicine Rock — 13 mi
• African American Homesteader Community in Sully County — 22 mi
• Fort Sully — 22 mi