Sioux Indian Mosaic

The bronze's story reached print through Thomas Riggs, the Oahe missionary, who in 1904 passed on what he said a Dakota elder had told him thirty years before; the state historian Doane Robinson then read the turtle as the band's signature. Archaeologists are less sure who laid the stones or why. More than a hundred stone effigies are recorded in South Dakota, most on private ground. This turtle lies on private land atop Snake Butte inside a fence, and many of the blood-trail stones the bronze counts on have gone.

What the plaque says

Sioux Indian Mosaic .9 of a mile An Aricara lookout surprised by a Sioux War party and badly wounded, took flight to warn his kinsmen. He ran about one-half mile and keeled over dead. The Sioux, ad- miring his bravery, placed a rock for each drop of his blood and a cairn where he died. They signed it with a tribal band insignia of a turtle. The turtle, many of the trail stones remain in place. Erected by William Williamson 1954

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Oahe Dam — 2.1 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.
• South Dakota State Capitol — 4.7 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 — 5.5 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.

More markers nearby

• The Oahe Dam and Lake — 0.9 mi
• Lindbergh Landing Site — 1.5 mi
• Oahe Mission School and Chapel — 2.0 mi
• Center of Missouri Valley History — 2.8 mi