“The Oahe Dam and Lake”

This huge structure and its lake, 200 miles long, will cover a multitude of Historic Sites. Oahe is a Dacotah (Sioux) Indian word meaning “Something to stand upon,” a foundation, and so it was that in 1875 Thomas L. Riggs, Congregational Missionary, named his Mission 9 miles upstream. The vast Bottom, upstream on the east, was called Peoria Bottom for the Peoria Belle,

a supply steamer for General Alfred Sully’s troops who camped there in 1863 enroute to fight the hostile Santee Sioux farther north. In 1855-56 when General W.S. Harney came to Ft. Pierre Chouteau, across the river, his pre-fab barracks were too flimsy and this bottom, the unnamed, was an ideal winter camp site, supplying logs for the crude huts where many of his troops wintered. In 1867, Harney located a new Agency site upriver about 9 miles, many of the buildings later being used by Christian Indians, including Yellow Hawk (Cetangi) and Spotted Bear (Mato-Gleska) and several other who took homesteads in the bottom. In the 14 century it was the abiding place of an Indian culture that predated the Aricara and in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was the site of a score of Indian villages and a large moated and palisaded fortress, 11 miles upstream. It was also the site of the ‘Big Hut,' an Indian gathering place for ceremonials called by the Dacotah Ti-tanka-ohe.

Hughes County, at scenic overlook just south of Oahe Dam (2006)