“Flandreau Christian Indian Community”

For a quarter of century, before 1862 and its War of the Indian Outbreak in Minnesota, Santee Sioux had been accepting Christianity. With the killing of over 500 whites by a truculent minority, the Government hung 38, imprisoned over 300 at Davenport and the remaining 1,300 old men, women, and children were transported by steamboat to the bleak and drought stricken Crow Creek Agency, set up in May 1863 at Ft. Thompson. Longfellow’s Evangeline is a parallel to this saga of separation, heartbreak and tragedy. Despite relief expeditions from

Minnesota over 300 Santee died of malnutrition and exposure at Ft. Thompson that winter of 1863-64 and over 100 died at Davenport.

The next two years were ones of continued tragedy. In 1866 the Ft. Thompson and Davenport groups were re-united at Santee Agency at the mouth of Niobrara. The one third Christians had constant difficulty with the backward non-Christian brethren and in 1869 twenty-five families gave up tribal rights, annuities, everything to become citizens, and acquire homesteads along the Sioux at Flandreau.

They soon built their little Presbyterian Church in what was to become Flandreau and that fall were joined by 15 additional families. Among those making the break with tradition were Old Flute, All Over Red, Iron Dog, Big Eagle signers of the 1868 Treaty and Iron Old Man their acting pastor, who perished in a blizzard enroute from Santee to Flandreau. John P. Williamson of that Missionary family of preachers and teachers was their early guide, counselor and protector at Ft. Thompson and Flandreau.

This Church, built 1873, is one of the oldest continuously used Churches in South Dakota. The grave yard memorializes many of those early Christian names who shared in this hegira from Mankato to Ft. Snelling, Ft. Thompson, Santee Agency terminating here.

Moody County, route 13 one-third mile north of Flandreau (1988)