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Settlements reflecting a semi sedentary lifeway involving horticulture appear about AD 1000 and spread rapidly along major waterways - the Big and Little Sioux Rivers, the James River and the Missouri River.
Archeologists call these horticultural villages the Plains Village pattern, and see influences or actual movements of peoples from the Mississippian traditions of the south and east.
The Great Oasis culture is an important local group reflecting incipient horticulture in the Sioux Falls vicinity. The Heath Site, a Great Oasis village, is located just a few miles to the south in Lincoln County, while another site lies adjacent to the Split Rock Creek mounds.
Slightly later villages include the fortified Brandon Village near Brandon, the Lauer Village in the vicinity of the Minnehaha Country Club, and Sherman Park Village reported to be in the area of the Great Plains Zoo. These villagers, whom archeologists term the Initial Middle Missouri variant, brought improved corn varieties, new storage methods, earthlodge houses, and a complex social organization. Bison, however, continued to be a very significant resource for meat, hides, and Bison bones were shaped into tools such as scapula hoes.
The Mitchell Prehistoric Indian Village located 70 miles west of Sioux Falls, is an interpreted Initial Middle Missouri site (click here for plan of one of the excavated lodges; and here for an overall plan of the excavations at the Mitchell site), and the recently constructed Archeodome serves as a window into the world of the archeologist. Archeologists continue to research the relationships between these Plains Village groups and the historic cultures of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara.