South Dakota sits in the north central United States and is divided by the Missouri River running north to south through the state. The Black Hills in the southwestern region of the state was famous as a spiritual land for the Sioux nation and today is famous for Mount Rushmore National Park.
In 1803, the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory, an area that included most of South Dakota, from Napoleon Bonaparte, emporer of France. President Thomas Jefferson then organized the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore area. From that time until the mid 1800s, the territory grew in population first from trappers and frontiersmen trading with the Indians to gold prospecting and then into rural ranching communities. This territory was actually what is North and South Dakota today.
Many Native American tribes have reservation land in South Dakota which has the third highest proportion of Native Americans of any state, behind Alaska and New Mexico. Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Sioux are major tribes in the state along with the Crow Creek Indian Reservation.
On November 2, 1889 a bill in Congress called The Enabling Act of 1889 caused the territory to be divided into North Dakota and South Dakota and they were proclaimed individual states as the 39 th and 40 th states of the Union of the United States of America.