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The Amidon Tragedy BY WAYNE FANEBUST
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uch of early Sioux Falls and Dakota Territory history is shrouded in mystery. Names appear in the record and our curiosity is aroused. Those of us who seek to uncloak the mystery, instinctively react and research; we ask questions. We wonder: who were these people and why did they come here? Did the pioneers look at the raw land and see city as we may look about us and try to see the land as it once was in its natural
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HISTORY
state? Was their forward looking vision more creative than ours as we look back and try to recapture some of that which has been lost over the span of time? Is our desire to interpret and write about the past and its people as great, or greater, than the desire of our ancestors to tame the wilderness and put to work for mankind? In 1857, a party of speculators from St. Paul, calling themselves the Dakota
Land Company, arrived at the falls of the Big Sioux River with the intent to claim it and use the landmark as a centerpiece for their town. But they found that the falls had been claimed the year before by a rival company from Dubuque, Iowa. The name selected for their town site was “Sioux Falls.” Undaunted, the St. Paul men claimed 320 acres of land next to the claim of the Iowa men and called their
