Mission: Heart of the Rosebud

Mission is the largest town in Todd County, which is coextensive with the Rosebud Indian Reservation, homeland of the Sicangu Lakota, the Burnt Thigh Nation. The reservation was carved out in eighteen eighty-nine when the federal government broke up the Great Sioux Reservation that had once covered all of present South Dakota west of the Missouri. The town's name comes from the Christian missions established here in the late eighteen hundreds to serve and educate the Lakota.

Today Mission is home to Sinte Gleska University, founded in nineteen seventy by the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and named for the spotted-tail chief Sinte Gleska. It is one of the older tribally controlled colleges in the United States.