Treasuredude -- Devil's Tower

Although not located in South Dakota I am including Devil's Tower here. It is located in the far western Black Hills area of Wyoming. Most known for it's ominous appearance in the 1977 sci-fi blockbuster Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it was and still is very important to the Native American tradition. It is through Native American culture that we get this legend...

An Indian tribe was camped beside a river and seven small girls were playing at a distance. The region had a large bear population and a bear began to chase the girls. They ran back toward their village, but the bear was about to catch them. The girls jumped upon a rock about three feet high and began to pray to the rock, "Rock, take pity on us; Rock, save us." The rock heard the pleas of the young girls and began to elongate itself upwards, pushing them higher and higher out of reach of the bear. The bear clawed and jumped at the sides of the rock, and broke its claws and fell to the ground. The bear continued to jump at the rock until the girls were pushed up into the sky, where they are to this day in a group of seven little stars (the Pleides). The marks of the bear claws are there yet.