Spirit Mound Historic Prairie

Spirit Mound rises alone out of the glacial plain a few miles north of Vermillion, a low cone that can be seen for miles. The peoples of the Missouri, among them the Yankton, the Omaha and the Otoe, told of small spirits with large heads and sharp arrows who lived on it and killed anyone who came near. The Lakota call it Can O'ti la Paha, for little beings of the woods who are part of its stories, and Mandan tradition holds that their sacred turtle drums were made here.

Lewis and Clark heard the stories as they came upriver, and on August 25, 1804, the two captains and nine of their men left the boats and walked north across the prairie to see for themselves. The day was stiflingly hot, and the walk wore them down. They found no spirits. From the top Clark looked out over plains without a tree, covered with buffalo, and wrote that it was a most beautiful landscape.

Nearly every place the expedition camped along this stretch of the Missouri is now under the reservoirs, which makes the mound one of the few spots where a visitor can stand exactly where the captains stood. For most of the twentieth century it was farmland with a cattle feedlot at its foot. A local trust formed in 1986 to save it, the state took it on in the early 2000s, and the feedlot, buildings and trees were cleared and the ground replanted with native grasses and flowers beginning in 2001. A trail climbs to the summit through the young prairie, which will take decades to look the way Clark saw it.