<P> The history of Sioux Falls revolves around the cascades of the Big Sioux River . The falls were created about 14,000 years ago during the last ice age . The lure of the falls has been a powerful influence . Ho - Chunk, Ioway, Otoe, Missouri, Omaha (and Ponca at the time), Quapaw, Kansa, Osage, Arikira, Dakota, and Cheyenne people inhabited and settled the region previous to Europeans and European descendants . Numerous burial mounds still exist on the high bluffs near the river and are spread throughout the general vicinity . Indigenous people maintained an agricultural society with fortified villages, and the later arrivals rebuilt on many of the same sites that were previously settled . Lakota populate urban and reservation communities in the contemporary state and many Lakota, Dakota, and numerous other Indigenous Americans reside in Sioux Falls today . </P> <P> French voyagers / explorers visited the area in the early 18th century . The first documented visit by an American (of European descent) was by Philander Prescott, who camped overnight at the falls in December 1832 . Captain James Allen led a military expedition out of Fort Des Moines in 1844 . Jacob Ferris described the Falls in his 1856 book "The States and Territories of the Great West". </P> <P> Two separate groups, the Dakota Land Company of St. Paul and the Western Town Company of Dubuque, Iowa organized in 1856 to claim the land around the falls, considered a promising townsite for its beauty and water power . Each laid out 320 - acre (1.3 km) claims, but worked together for mutual protection . They built a temporary barricade of turf which they dubbed "Fort Sod", in response to hostilities threatened by native tribes . Seventeen men then spent "the first winter" in Sioux Falls . The following year the population grew to near 40 . </P> <P> Although conflicts in Minnehaha County between Native Americans and white settlers were few, the Dakota War of 1862 engulfed nearby southwestern Minnesota . The town was evacuated in August of that year when two local settlers were killed as a result of the conflict . The settlers and soldiers stationed here traveled to Yankton in late August 1862 . The abandoned townsite was pillaged and burned . </P>

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