The East River portion of

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state, state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Dakota people, Dakota Sioux ...

refers to the section of the state lying east of the

Missouri River The Missouri River is a river in the Central United States, Central and Mountain states, Mountain West regions of the United States. The nation's longest, it rises in the eastern Centennial Mountains of the Bitterroot Range of the Rocky Moun ...

. Geographical distinctions between the eastern and western sections of the state were reinforced by differing patterns of European-American settlement and Native American resettlement during the 19th and 20th centuries. The eastern half of South Dakota was heavily

glaciated A glacier (; or ) is a persistent body of dense ice, a form of rock, that is constantly moving downhill under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires d ...

and is largely covered by

glacial till image:Geschiebemergel.JPG, Closeup of glacial till. Note that the larger grains (pebbles and gravel) in the till are completely surrounded by the matrix of finer material (silt and sand), and this characteristic, known as ''matrix support'', is d ...

and

loam Loam (in geology and soil science) is soil composed mostly of sand (particle size > ), silt (particle size > ), and a smaller amount of clay (particle size < ). By weight, its mineral composition is about 40–40–20% concentration of sand–si ...

y soil, which has lent itself to agricultural uses. The Missouri River roughly follows the 100th meridian in the state, and areas to the west of the meridian receive less rainfall. From 1849 to 1858, this was the now-South Dakota portion of the Minnesota Territory. The East River region was generally capable of supporting homesteaders on the standard 160-

acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...

plots of the era during the wetter-than average years between 1879 and 1885; prolonged droughts between 1886 and 1897, however, severely affected the region's farmers. In 1889, this land became part of the new state of South Dakota. During the second half of the 19th century, about 350,000 immigrants from western and northern Europe settled to the east of the Missouri. The later European immigrants, however, predominantly from southern and eastern Europe, settled in the West River region after 1889, when the federal government made some 9 million acres of former Lakota land available for purchase after breaking up the

Great Sioux Reservation The Great Sioux Reservation was an Indian reservation created by the United States through treaty with the Sioux, principally the Lakota, who dominated the territory before its establishment. In the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the reservation ...

, established under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. It reassigned Native Americans to five smaller reservations in West River, and two in East River. About 70% of South Dakota's population in the 1990s was located in the East River region, which includes major businesses, industries and state government. This area includes the state's largest city,

Sioux Falls Sioux Falls ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of South Dakota and the 117th-most populous city in the United States. It is the county seat of Minnehaha County and also extends into northern Lincoln County. The population was 192 ...

, and Pierre, the state capital, located on the east bank of the Missouri River.

Footnotes

References

* ''The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia''. Richard Sisson, Christian K. Zacher, Andrew Robert Lee Cayton.

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a state university system, system of Public university, public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. The system has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration o ...

Press, 2006.

{{South Dakota Regions of South Dakota Missouri River