The land around here was known to the Lakota as Paha ska, or white hills, a place of bountiful hunting that was historically used for transitory camps, while Paha ska and its western counterpart, Paha sapa, or black hills, lay in the heart of Lakota treaty lands set aside in 1868. In the mid-1700s, French trappers, frustrated by the area's sharp peaks and crumbling rock, called it les mauvaises terres, or bad lands. The Lakota also came to call this place Mako sica, meaning land bad.