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Fort Bennett to Fort Pierre
Fort Bennett
By John Duffy
The Cheyenne River Agency was established in 1869 on the west bank of the Missouri River below the mouth of the Big Cheyenne River. Its primary responsibility was administration of the Sans Arcs, Miniconjou, Two Kettle and Blackfeet Bands of Sioux Indians. The area was rich, high bottom-land used for centuries by native peoples.
The agency headquarters was comprised of store houses, lodging quarters, schools, and other buildings. In 1873, the Episcopalians established St. John’s Mission and Catholic priests ministered the area from nearby Fort Pierre. In 1878, military headquarters were established on the flat and the 17th Infantry occupied the newly-named Fort Bennett, including barracks, military grounds, officers quarters, blacksmith shop, post office, and cottages.
In 1889, the federal government negotiated to open parts of the Great Sioux Reservation to white settlement and South Dakota became a state. The Sioux were forced to cede 9,000,000 acres of western South Dakota and to agree to remain within seven smaller reservations. 15,000 acres south of the confluence of the Missouri and Cheyenne Rivers remained part of the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, however. The agency headquarters at Fort Bennett were closed and relocated north of the Cheyenne River, opposite the Little Cheyenne. The military abandoned Fort Bennett in 1891.
St. John’s Mission at Fort Bennett continued to operate on 160 acres at old Fort Bennett until 1904. The Surplus Lands Acts of 1908 and 1910 reduced the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation by another 1.6 million acres by opening land to white homesteaders, including the Fort Bennett bottom and Mission Ridge area. The area saw an influx of settlers.
Just like the rest of South Dakota, the 1930s depopulated the settlement around old Fort Bennett and the Mission Ridge area. Water, not dust, however, was to be the ultimate end of old Fort Bennett. In 1944, Congress passed the Flood Control Act and subsequent Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program which proposed damming the Missouri River and submerging its vibrant river bottoms. Construction of Oahe Dam began in 1948, was finished in 1958, and the flat was submerged by 1962.
