The town of Sundance was named for nearby Sundance Mountain where the Lakota and their allies held a religious ceremony each summer.  Festivities lasted several weeks and centered around a four-day period in which young men fasted, prayed, blew whistles made of eagle bones, waited for visions, and danced around a ceremonial altar pole adorned with an eagle nest and a buffalo skull.  They intensified their suffering by cutting small pieces of flesh off themselves or by running thongs through their back or chest muscles, then attaching the thongs to the central pole or to buffalo skulls that dragged behind.  They would continue to dance until the thongs tore through their flesh.  The sun dance was an important communal and religious event, and forms of it are still practiced by some Plains Indian groups.

Sundance is also the town where Harry Longabaugh received his outlaw title the Sundance Kid.  He was convicted of horse theft and served out his term in the local county jail, since the state penitentiary was full.  The county museum has some interesting memorabilia highlighting the celebrated outlaw's career.

Between Four Corners and Sundance lies Inyan Kara Mountain, a sacred place to the Lakota.  In July 1874, it was the setting for a rather bizarre episode of Wyoming history, in which General George Custer presided over a sort of military flower-power celebration in the heart of Lakota territory.  Custer and his huge expedition (10 cavalry companies, plus 100 Indian scouts, a full military band, and 300 head of cattle) were on a scientific mission to determine once and for all whether there was gold to be found in the Black Hills.

Apparently the Lakota were willing to let them do their thing, and the whole expedition took on overtones of a summer vacation.  Custer indulged himself with a climb to the top of Inyan Kara where he carved his name into a rock.  (His graffiti is still there, but the land is privately owned and access is restricted.)  The expedition camped along Spring Creek in an area that Custer christened "Floral Valley" where they held a May Day celebration a few months late.  The soldiers decorated themselves and their mounts with wild flower wreaths and the military band situated itself on a high ledge and played party music including "The Blue Danube," "The Mocking Bird," and selections from Il Trovatore.

The expedition’s discovery of gold started the Black Hills gold rush and the resulting Indian conflicts led to Custer's spectacular defeat at the hands of the Lakota at the Battle of the Little Big Horn just two years and nearly two hundred miles away.

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