South Dakota belongs to the Midwest of the United States. The Missouri River divides the state into two halves, called "East River" and "West River". While the majority of the approximately 919 thousand residents live in East River, the western part of the state is characterized by a more rugged natural landscape dominated by the Great Plains, the Black Hills mountain range and the South Dakota Badlands.

The Native Americans who inhabited the region when the Europeans arrived included the Crow, Cheyenne, Mandan, Arikara, Hidatsa, Omaha, Ponca and Dakota. The Arikara were the dominant tribe at this time, but were replaced by Sioux groups such as the Dakota in the following centuries. In 1743, French-Canadian fur traders explored the area, and it became part of the colony of Louisiana, which was ceded to Spain in 1762 during the Seven Years' War. After Napoleon Bonaparte regained it in exchange for Tuscany in 1800, he sold Louisiana to the U.S. in 1803, and the Dakota Territory was established in 1861. The Black Hills gold rush led to increasing numbers of whites settlers, and war broke out with the Sioux, to whom the land had previously been granted and who still consider the Black Hills sacred today. Until its closure in 2002, the Homestake Mine in the town of Lead was the deepest gold mine in North America.

Dissatisfaction among the population in North and South Dakota led to general elections on the division of the territory into two halves. After this was approved, the admission to the Union was also decided. To conceal the order in which North and South Dakota joined, President Benjamin Harrison shuffled the documents before signing, but after the alphabet South Dakota was announced as the 40^th state. The state motto is "Under God the People Rule".

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