Good Earth State Park at Blood Run
Good Earth State Park was home to the Oneota people for hundreds of years. The park's visitor center and trails allow one to imagine what life was like in the region 500 years ago.
Located a ten-minute drive from Sioux Falls is Good Earth State Park, where you can find more than just hiking trails. Good Earth is located at the Blood Run National Historic Landmark, the ancestral home of the Omaha and Ponca tribes. The name “Blood Run” came from the reddish color of the Big Sioux River due to iron ore siltation in the water. The Omaha and Ponca inhabited the area from 1500 CE until the beginning of the eighteenth century; though by this time it was also occupied by the Ioway and Oto tribes. Blood Run located at Good Earth is the largest documented and recorded Oneota (Oneota Tradition Peoples include Omaha, Ponca, Ioway, and Otoe) site in the upper Midwest region. Two other significant Oneota sites exist in southwest Iowa and central Missouri. The site represents one of the oldest long-term human habitation sites in the United States. The area was an important gathering place for ceremonies and also a significant trading center for many of the tribal people in the area. At its peak, the population of the site was thought to be over 6,000 people.
During the habitation of the Blood Run site, the land was predominantly tall grass prairie. What attracted people was abundant wildlife, a steady supply of water from both the Big Sioux River and the Blood Run Creek, their fertile floodplains, and the added availability of pipestone for making ceremonial pipes. Before European contact, Indigenous peoples used frequent prairie fires that kept the encroaching forest at bay. Today, the site is occupied by shrubs and trees, like chokecherries, linden, and oak, that have replaced previous prairie vegetation.
Early written accounts of the Blood Run site have documented earthen enclosures, stone circles by the hundred, a serpent effigy built in the earth, pitted boulders, and as well as over 275 mounds. Mound construction in the Oneota culture is very rare, but at this site it is prevalent. Historians and archeologists have suggested that these mounds were a return to “ancestral Late Woodland burial patterns,” where they bury their dead in the mounds instead of burying them and covering them with rocks as many other tribes did.
The Office of the State Archaeologist, Luther College, the Iowa Archeological Society, the South Dakota Archeological Society, and Augustana College conducted excavations of the sites in 1985 and 1986 following damage and disturbances caused by gravel operations. While conducting these archaeological investigations, cache pits and other features were unearthed.
Since 2013, the site has been managed by the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks as an official state park encompassing approximately 588 acres of the Blood Run area. The visitor center located at Good Earth has a vast amount of information on the area's past inhabitants, as well as a recreation of one of the houses built by the Oneota people of the area. The park’s visitor center features permanent exhibits on the people who lived at Blood Run; the park also offers interpretive programs on the site’s cultural and historical importance. The state park now has a variety of activities for people to enjoy while visiting the area, including hiking, fishing, canoeing, and snowshoeing in the winter months. This area is rich with the history of the past inhabitants as well as current tribes, which can be explored with the addition of many outdoor activities, available to everyone who cares to visit.
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