
The Wapiti Indian Reservation was a Native American reservation in Dewey and Corson Counties, South Dakota, which was created for the Wapiti tribe during the 1890s. The Wapiti tribe was relocated from the Heartlands of the American Midwest to the reservation by westward-bound white settlers and by the American government, despite the reservation lands being less suitable for farming than the prairies where the Wapiti had once lived. In 1899, rumors of oil beneath the surface of the reservation led to US Army Colonel Henry Favours - at the behest of the businessman Leviticus Cornwall - ordering the further relocation of the Wapiti tribe, resulting in the bloody Wapiti War. The Wapiti chief Rains Fall, who wanted nothing to do with his militant son Eagle Flies' violent acts against the government, was forced to relocate the tribe north to Canada rather than face retaliation for his son's actions. However, once oil drilling began, negligible amounts of oil were found on the reservation's lands, and drilling ceased shortly after; as the United States government could not find another tribe to move to the reservation, the land was abandoned and ultimately subsumed by the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River reservations.