Site of Old Fort Sully

The fort this stone names was built by troops returning from Whitestone Hill, in present North Dakota, where on September 3, 1863, Alfred Sully's cavalry attacked a camp of Yanktonai, Dakota, Hunkpapa and Sihasapa families, most of them at peace with the United States. Somewhere between 100 and 300 people were killed and many more captured, and the troops destroyed the camp's lodges and winter food. North Dakota's historic site now presents it as a massacre. The granite shaft, set on a boulder in the field, carries only a name and a year.

What the plaque says

Site of Old Fort Sully 1863

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• South Dakota State Capitol — 3.9 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 — 5.4 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 — 9.5 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

• Civilian Conservation Corps Camp - Farm Island — 0.2 mi
• Old Fort Sully — 0.2 mi
• Ancient Indian Fortress — 3.2 mi
• Coe Crawford, 6th Governor of South Dakota — 3.5 mi