Deadwood (original) (raw)
The famous and the infamous have called Deadwood and theBlack Hills home over the last several centuries. Lewis and Clark, Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, George Armstrong Custer, Poker Alice, the Sundance Kid, Calamity Jane, and many others have all passed through here in search of fortune and adventure.
But, long before the arrival of the white man, the land was home to the Cheyenne, Kiowa, Pawnee Crow and Sioux (orLakota ) Indians. The Sioux, who migrated from Minnesota in the 1700's, dominated a tract of land large enough to support the buffalo herds on which they subsisted.
At about the same time as the Lakota migration, French Canadian explorers began mapping the Missouri River and trading with the Indians for pelts and hides to be shipped back East. Adventurers Francois and Joseph La Verendrye claimed the region for King Louis XV in 1743 by placing an engraved lead plate on the bank of the Missouri River near present-day Pierre.