Verendrye Tablet – Art on the Land
Visited on site: [10/01/2025]
Location & Moment
The Verendrye Tablet sits high above the Missouri River in Fort Pierre, South Dakota — a quiet hill where wind and time have preserved one of North America’s earliest European claims. Here in 1743, French explorers Louis-Joseph and François de La Vérendrye buried a lead plate to mark this land for King Louis XV. For nearly two centuries it lay hidden, unearthed in 1913 by local schoolchildren — a fragment of empire rediscovered by chance.
Historical Background — France, Empire & the Purchase
The tablet symbolized France’s claim to the northern plains — the seed of what would become the vast Louisiana Territory. From these early marks of possession, France built a map that would one day allow Napoleon Bonaparte to sell this land to the United States in 1803. Without claims like this, there would have been no Louisiana Purchase — no legal fiction for the transfer of millions of acres that had long belonged to Indigenous nations.
Doctrine of Discovery & Native Lands
For the Lakota, Dakota, and other Native peoples, this was no discovery — it was intrusion. The Doctrine of Discovery gave France and other empires the power to claim lands already known, named, and lived upon. What was buried here wasn’t just metal — it marked the beginning of a new chapter between worlds. And even now, the wind above the Missouri still carries the older names, spoken long before history was written in lead.
Artist’s Reflection
A tablet in the soil — a claim without consent.
France called it discovery; the people called it home.
From a lead plate to a continent sold,
this hill remembers what history forgets.