“Sherman Park Indian Burial Mounds”

In these mounds were buried the physical remains of Indians who lived in eastern South Dakota 1600 years ago. Radiocarbon testing established the time of the burials. Known to archeologists as the Woodland Indians, they moved westward from the eastern forests, changing from deer hunting to the pursuit of buffalo on the vast Dakota grasslands.

As hunters they lived in temporary shelters but left these mounds as permanent monuments to their dead. Later, Dacotah and other Indians roamed this area, also burying their dead in these same mounds.

In 1962 the University of South Dakota excavated the second mound from the east. In it were found the skeletons of four Woodland Indians and a later adult burial. Also found was the skeleton of a horse, probably scattered among the remains of the Woodland Indians.

Only the skulls and large bones of the Woodland Indians were buried. As was the custom with many of the Plains Indians, the dead were first laid on scaffolds and at a later date the largest bones were buried in the earth.

Minnehaha County, 22nd & Kiwanis in Sherman Park (2006)