The two Dakota states could accurately be characterized as demographically rural, ever since the settling by Europeans going back to the 17th Century.
I read a book about that region not too long ago that was written, for lack of a better description, by a university educated humantarian.
The Dakota region is a truly difficult region, climatically speaking, to fall in love with.
It would be a good place for Buddhist monks to establish their own particular versions of monasteries.
It is that kind of region, from a spiritual standpoint, wherein one can belong to nothing and achieve that special sense of belonging to everything.
Of course the typical Dakotan would have absolutely nothing to do with Buddihism, much less spiritualism. And yet at the same time these people would think of themselves as devotely religious. Which, in their own way, they are.