SOUTH DAKOTA 



5463 



SOUTH DAKOTA 



conditions in the state had had time for read- 

 justment. The institution was organized in 

 1880 as a college, and in 1887 as the University 

 of South Carolina. Since the last reorganiza- 

 tion in 1906, the growth of the school has been 

 rapid. It now has schools of arts and sciences, 



law and engineering, a school for teachers and 

 a graduate school. The university conducts 

 extension courses by lectures and by corre- 

 spondence. There are over forty faculty mem- 

 bers, and the student registration is nearly 600. 

 There are 50,000 volumes in the library. 



OUTH DAKOTA, popularly known as 

 the SUNSHINE STATE, one of the north-central 

 states of the American Union. It lies partly 

 within the great central prairies of the United 

 States and contains a region of noted beauty 

 and mineral wealth in the famous Black Hills. 

 The name Dakota is the North American In- 

 dian word meaning allies, and refers to the 

 allied Indian tribes, or Sioux Confederation, 

 which occupied that territory. The flower em- 

 blem of the state is the pasque flower, an 

 anemone. 



. Size and Location. The state lies between 

 North Dakota and Nebraska, and covers a 

 rectangular area of 77,615 square miles, of which 

 747 square miles are water. It is larger than 

 all of the New England States together, or as 

 large as Ohio and Indiana combined, and 

 among the states of the Union ranks fourteenth 

 in size. 



The People. In 1910 South Dakota, with 

 583,888 inhabitants, ranked thirty-sixth in popu- 

 lation among the states. About one-sixth of the 

 inhabitants are of foreign birth, chiefly Ger- 

 man, Scandinavian, Russian and Irish. There 

 are over 20,000 Indians confined upon the six 

 state reservations Standing Rock and Chey- 

 enne River reservations in the north, Crow 

 Creek and Lower Brule River reserves in the 

 central section, and the Rosebud and Pine 

 Ridge districts in the south. On January 1, 

 1917, the population of the state was estimated 

 to be 707,740. Fewer than one-fifth of the 

 inhabitants live in towns and cities; the only 

 cities with a population of more than 10,000 

 are Sioux Falls and Aberdeen. Other impor- 

 tant towns are Lead, Watertown, Huron, 

 Mitchell, Yankton and Pierre, the capital. See 

 Related Subjects, at end of article. 



The largest of the religious bodies is the 

 Roman Catholic, other denominations of im- 

 portance being the Lutherans, Methodists, Con- 

 gregationalists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and 

 Baptists. 



Education. A well-organized system of rural 

 and city elementary and high schools is super- 

 vised by the state superintendent of public in- 

 struction and a board of five regents appointed 

 by the governor. Under their direction are 

 county superintendents and district boards of 

 education. A large, permanent school fund is 

 derived from the sale of land, two sections of 

 which are set aside in each township for school 

 purposes. 



School attendance is compulsory for a speci- 

 fied number of weeks each year for all between 

 the ages of eight and fourteen years, Indians 

 included. The low illiteracy of the state, av- 

 eraging 2.9, is the same as the general average 

 for the west north-central states. Normal 

 schools at Spearfish, Madison, Aberdeen and 

 Springfield; the state university at Vermilion, 

 an agricultural college at Brookings, and a 

 school of mines at Rapid City are maintained 

 by the state.. 



A board of five members, appointed by the 

 governor, controls state institutions of charity 

 and correction, which include a tuberculosis 

 sanitarium at Custer; a school for the blind at 

 Gary; an insane asylum at Yankton, where 

 there is also a Federal hospital for insane In- 

 dians; an institution for the feeble-minded at 

 Redfield; a reformatory at Plankinton; a sol- 

 diers' home at Hot Springs; the penitentiary 

 and schools for the blind, deaf and dumb at 

 Sioux Falls. The honor system is in force in 

 the penitentiary and about forty per cent of 

 the prisoners work outside of the prison. Free- 



