The Sioux Empire Podcast

On This Episode, casualties mount in the early space race as the United States and other nations struggle to regain the record for the highest altitude reached from the fledgling Soviet Union.  But the US finds a secret weapon, a canyon in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  And then, The Empire of the Rising Sun attempts to reign fire and death from above on the Sioux Empire.

Voice Actors:  Adam Wells, Brett Stolz, Amanda Mehling, Leah Simmons, Levi Hanson, Luke Johnson, Malia Lukomski, and Nathan Hults.

Produced and Written by Robert Mehling

In this episode, four documented stories of strangeness and tragedy.  The gruesome death of a mysterious foreign woman and subsequent haunting make her the first ghost report ever recorded in Deadwood. The Sisseton tell a tale of a valley where the earth bleeds and cries. A lady card shark plays her final hand. Still, she doesn’t seem to know it yet, and a man on the frontier kills his treacherous business partner, five years after his own death. 

A special thank you to the Siouxland Libraries of Sioux Falls.

Also to Betty Jean Mertens and the Kennebec Public Library.

And Pioneer Historian Lonis Wendt of Vivian.

Voice Actors:  Levi Hanson, Brett Stolz, Malia Lukomski, and Adam Wells

Produced and Written by Robert Mehling

Yankton Sioux Elders told a story of a group of these Potawatomi (Potawanami) and Miami, who made their way west to find new land.  The Potawatomi tried to claim the hills and great spring of the hills for their own, but the Yankton were a proud warrior people and would not allow their territory to be taken without a fight.  Near the sight of the Big Spring, a great and terrible battle ensued.  The Potawatomi were led by a war chief with a legendary name, Little Turtle.  Chief Little Turtle may have wielded the pistols and sword personally gifted to his family by George Washington into the battle.  But the Yanktons were great warriors, fighting on their own land, and in the end, the Potawatomi were defeated.  Little Turtle died bravely and was honored by the Yankton.  They buried him on the highest nearby point overlooking the land Little Turtle had hoped would be a new promised land for his people.  The Yankton marked his grave with two stone turtle mosaics on the ground.

On this episode, we tell the story of a place where pioneers tell stories about terrible killings and forgotten lore.  Where horse thieves and night riders ruled cast a shadow over the entire eastern half of Dakota Territory and legendary Deadwood lawmen fear to tread.  A place called the Wessington Hills.

This episode features an interview with Dr. Armik Mirzayan Associate Professor of

Modern Languages and Linguistics at the University of South Dakota.  An expert on American Indian languages.

I really hope you enjoy this episode.  If you want to do your own research or dig deeper into the sources used in this episode, the full works cited for each episode are available to Patreon supporters.  Your donations help me access more books, research databases, and other resources that I couldn't access otherwise, and that helps keep the show going.   Donations are accepted through Venmo and Patreon.

If you like the show but don't want to donate anything that's totally cool, not everyone can do that, but you'd be doing me a huge favor if you shared the show on social media, left a five-star review, or just told a friend about the show.  That costs you nothing, and it means the world to me.

Thank you, Sioux Empire!

In 2019 South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem vetoed a popular bill in South Dakota to legalize the cultivation of industrial hemp.  At the time she famously said that South Dakota was “not ready.”  But just over one hundred years ago, a South Dakota Governor would beg Washington and the private sector for help getting an emergency hemp industry started in the state.  The Story of how hemp went from commodity, to odity, to war hero, to menace to children, to war hero again, to menace, to a cash crop of the future is next.