Medicine man and a leader of the Sioux Indians, Sitting BullÕs forces annihilated the troops of General George Custer at the battle of The Little Big Horn. The battle was in response to the breaking of a signed treaty by the United States. Birthplace: northern part of state.
Pierre Chouteau was an astute businessman and fur trader. He headed the western department for John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company. The city of Pierre in South Dakota is named after him. Birthplace: St. Louis, Missouri.
Chief of the Oglala Sioux tribe, he led the attack against General George Crook in the Rosebud area of the state. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were victorious at the battle of The Little Big Horn. Birthplace: unknown.
Calamity Jane is another frontier figure of whom more fiction has been written than fact. She did set up in Deadwood, South Dakota for some time during the gold boom, and she was prone to put on shooting exhibitions with her rifle, but much of the stories written about her are presumed legendary. Birthplace: Princeton, Missouri.
A US representative from South Dakota, George McGovern ran against Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election. Able to win only one state nationally, he returned to state politics. Birthplace: Avon.
Born in Wisconsin, Laura Ingalls Wilder moved with her husband in 1879 to the town of De Smet, South Dakota. Her book, "Little House in the Big Woods", was first published in 1932 when Wilder was 65 years old. This book and others that followed were adapted for a popular television series called "Little House on the Prairie." Birthplace: Lake Pepin, Wisconsin.
