SIOUX (Dakota, Lakota, Nakota)

Horse-mounted Indians, wearing long eagle-feathered warbonnets and fringed leather clothing with colorful beadwork, ride across the grasslands of the Great Plains. They hunt buffalo. They fight the cavalry. They sit in council inside painted tipis, wearing buffalo robes and smoking long-stemmed peace pipes. These images of Indians have been shown to us again and again, in books, movies and television shows about the West. These images, more likely than not, depict the Sioux, more properly referred to by the Native name Dakota, Lakota, or Nakota.


Two of the most famous incidents in Indian and American history—Custer’s Last Stand (also called the Battle of Little Bighorn) and Wounded Knee—involved the Sioux. The numerous Sioux fought many other battles against the U.S. army on the northern plains. Some of the most famous Indian fighters in history, such as Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse, were Sioux. And one of the most famous incidents in recent Indian history occurred on a Sioux reservation, again at Wounded Knee.

Branches of Sioux


The Sioux are really made up of different groups with varying histories and customs. In studying the Sioux, the first challenge is to learn the various names and locations of the different bands.


Siouan was a widespread Indian language family. Tribes in many parts of North America spoke Siouan dialects. The tribal name Sioux, pronounced SUE, is applied only to a specific division of Siouan-speaking people, however. The name is derived from the French version of a CHIPPEWA (OJIBWAY) word in the Algonquian language. The Chippewa tribe called their enemies Nadouessioux for “adders,” a kind of snake. The Sioux also are known collectively (especially in Canada) as the Dakota (pronounced da-KO-tah), from which has come the names of two U.S. states, North and South Dakota. In the Siouan language, Dakota (or Lakota or Nakota) means “allies.”


There were four ancestral branches of Sioux, with different bands in each. The largest branch was the Teton (or Titonwan), with the following bands: (1) Oglala; (2) Brulé (Sicangu); (3) Hunkpapa; (4)Miniconjou; (5) Oohenonpa (Two Kettle); (6) Itazipco (Sans Arcs); and (7) Sihasapa.


A second branch was the Santee, with the following bands: (1) Sisseton; (2) Wahpeton: (3) Wahpekute; and (4) Mdewakanton. (The term Santee used historically more accurately applies to just the Wahpekute and Mdewakan-ton groups, not Sisseton and Wahpeton as well. In any case, all four are considered distinct dialect groups.)


A third branch was the Yankton (or Ihanktonwan), with only one band, the Yankton.


A fourth branch was the Yanktonai (or Ihanktonwanna), with the following bands: (1) Yanktonai; (2) Hunkpatina; and (3) Assiniboine. The ASSINIBOINE separated from their relatives and are discussed under their own entry.


The Teton use the Lakota version of the tribal name; the Santee say Dakota; and the Yankton and Yanktonai use Nakota.


The Teton, Yankton, Yanktonai, and four Santee groups also called themselves the Oceti Sakowin, or“Seven Council Fixes.”


The Sioux originally lived as Woodland Indians along the upper Mississippi River. It is known from early records of Jesuit explorers of the 1600s that the Sioux once dominated territory that now comprises the southern two-thirds of Minnesota, as well as nearby parts of Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota. By the mid-1700s, some Sioux were migrating westward toward and across the Missouri River. The reason: Their traditional enemies, the Chippewa, were now armed with French guns, making warfare with them much more dangerous. Moreover, with the European demand for furs, game in the Sioux’s prairie country was becoming scarcer.


The Teton Lakota migrated the farthest west to the Black Hills region of what is now western South Dakota, eastern Wyoming, and eastern Montana. They sometimes also are called the Western Sioux. The Yankton Nakota settled along the Missouri River in what is now southeastern South Dakota, as well as in southwestern Minnesota and northwestern Iowa. The Yanktonai Nakota settled to their north along the Missouri in what is now eastern North and South Dakota. The Yankton and Yanktonai are sometimes referred to together as the Middle Sioux. The Santee Dakota stayed along the Minnesota River in what is now Minnesota. They therefore are referred to as the Eastern Sioux.

Lifeways


The Sioux as a whole are classified as PLAINS INDIANS, part of the Great Plains Culture Area. But because of their different locations, the lifeways of the four branches varied. The Teton acquired horses, followed the great buffalo herds, and lived in tipis.


The way of life of the Yankton and Yanktonai became like that of other Missouri River tribes, such as the MANDAN and HIDATSA, other Siouan-speaking peoples. TheYankton and Yanktonai began using horses in the 1700s and also hunted buffalo like the Teton, but they lived most of the time in permanent villages of earth lodges. They also continued to cultivate crops. As a result, the Yankton and Yanktonai can also be described as PRAIRIE INDIANS.


The Santee retained many of the cultural traits of the western Great Lakes Indians. Their culture was something like that of the WINNEBAGO (HO-CHUNK), another Siouan-speaking people. They lived in wooded river valleys and made bark-covered houses. They hunted buffalo in the tall grassland country of the Mississippi River. They eventually began to use the horse, but they did not keep as many mounts as their more westerly relatives did. The Santee can be thought of as a cross between Woodland and Prairie peoples.


It should be remembered that the typical way of life on the Great Plains did not evolve until long after contact with non-Indians, when Native Americans acquired the horse. Although most tribes on the plains became equestrian nomads who lived in tipis year-round, not all the tribes gave up their villages, their farming, and their pottery after having acquired horses.


As indicated, of the branches of Sioux, the Teton are the closest to the Native Americans so prevalent in the popular imagination. Teton lifeways—tipis, warbonnets, buffalo robes, medicine bundles, sacred shields, horsemanship, horse gear, military societies, buffalo-hunting, sign language, coup-counting, Sun Dances, and Vision Quests—are summarized under the entry PLAINS INDIANS. See also PRAIRIE INDIANS to help understand themore sedentary way of life of the Yankton, Yanktonai, and Santee branches of the Sioux people.

The Sioux Wars


The Sioux, because of their stubborn resistance to non- Indian expansion, were the most famous of Plains warriors. The various conflicts involving the Sioux have been given names by historians (sometimes more than one name). Nevertheless, the conflicts did not always have distinct beginnings and endings, but were part of an ongoing pattern of raids and counterraids lasting from about 1850 to 1890 and collectively known as the Sioux Wars.


The different phases of the Sioux Wars are: the Grattan Affair in 1854–55; the Minnesota Uprising (or Little Crow’s War) in 1862–64; the War for the Bozeman Trail (or Red Cloud’s War) in 1866–68; the War for the Black Hills (or Sitting Bull’s and Crazy Horse’s War) in 1876–77; and the Massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.

The Grattan Affair


In 1851, U.S. officials negotiated a treaty at Fort Laramie in Wyoming with the Sioux and their allies, the northern branches of CHEYENNE and ARAPAHO, in order to assure safe passage for travelers along the Oregon Trail, running from Missouri to Oregon. It only took three years after the signing of the treaty for violence to erupt, however.


A party of Mormons traveling west lost one of their cows, which wandered into a camp of the Brulé band of Teton Lakota. The Mormons reported to troops at Fort Laramie that Indians had stolen the cow. In the meantime,a Sioux named High Forehead killed the cow for food.


Although the Brulé offered to pay for the cow, an overeager lieutenant from the fort, named John Grattan, insisted on the arrest of High Forehead and rode to the Indian camp with a force of about 30 men. When High Forehead refused to turn himself in, Grattan ordered an attack. A Brulé chief named Conquering Bear was killed in the first volley. The Indians counterattacked and wiped out the detachment. The army sent in more troops. In 1855, at Blue Water in Nebraska, a force under General William Harney attacked another Brulé camp and killed 85.


War had been brought to the Sioux. They would not forget this treatment at the hands of the whites. In fact, a young warrior of the Oglala band of Teton Lakota— Crazy Horse—personally witnessed the killing of Conquering Bear. He would later become one of the most effective guerrilla fighters in history.

The Minnesota Uprising


Another outbreak of violence involving the Sioux occurred far to the east, in Minnesota, among the Santee Dakota bands. The central issue that caused the Minnesota Uprising (or Little Crow’s War) was land, as more and more non-Indians settled along the rich farmlands of the Minnesota River. Some of the young Santee braves wanted war against the people who were appropriating their land. The Santee chief Little Crow argued for peace. But young militants forced the issue by killing five settlers. Little Crow then helped the other Santee chiefs organize a rebellion.


In August 1862, Santee war parties carried out surprise raids on settlements and trading posts, killing as many as 400 people. Little Crow himself led assaults on Fort Ridgely. The fort’s cannon repelled the Indians, killing many. Another group of Santee stormed the village of New Ulm. The settlers drove the attackers away, but then evacuated the village.


General Henry Sibley led a large force into the field. At Birch Coulee in September, the warriors attacked an army burial party, killing 23. But Sibley engaged the Santee at Wood Lake later that month and routed them with heavy artillery. Many warriors fled northwestward into the wilderness, Little Crow among them. Many others surrendered, claiming innocence in the slaying of the settlers.


Of those who stayed behind, 303 were sentenced to be hanged. President Abraham Lincoln took time out from his concerns with the Civil War to review the trial records, and he pardoned the large majority. Still, 33 Santee, proclaiming their innocence to the end, werehanged the day after Christmas in 1862, the largest mass execution in American history.


Of those Santee Dakota that fled, many settled among Teton Lakota and Yanktonai Nakota in Dakota Territory (the northern part that was soon to become North Dakota). General Henry Sibley and General Alfred Sully engaged Sioux from various bands at Big Mound, Dead Buffalo Lake, and Stoney Lake in 1863, and at Whitestone Hill and Killdeer Mountain in 1864. The Santee and the other Sioux who helped them paid a high price in suffering for their Minnesota Uprising. Little Crow himself died in 1863 on a horse-stealing expedition out of Canada into Minnesota. Settlers shot him and turned in his scalp for the bounty.

The War for the Bozeman Trail

The War for the Bozeman Trail (or Red Cloud’s War) began soon after the Minnesota Uprising ended. Land was again the central issue of this conflict, but it was the mining fever that brought increased traffic to the lands of the Teton Lakota in what is now Montana and Wyoming.


In 1862, after having traveled to Montana’s goldfields, the explorer John Bozeman followed a direct route through Teton lands back to the Oregon Trail in Wyoming rather than travel a longer way around to the east or west. Other migrants and miners followed along this new route. The various Teton bands—the Oglala under Red Cloud, the Hunkpapa under Sitting Bull, and the Brulé under Spotted Tail—resented the trespassing.So did their allies, the Northern Cheyenne under Dull Knife and the Northern Arapaho under Black Bear.


In 1865, the Indians began attacking military patrols and wagon trains as well as other travelers along both the Bozeman and the Oregon Trails. General Patrick Connor sent in three different columns that year to punish the militant bands. Their only success against the elusive warriors, who attacked swiftly and then disappeared into the wilderness, was the destruction of a camp of Northern Arapaho under Black Bear.


Some of the chiefs rode into Fort Laramie in 1866 to sign a treaty. Red Cloud insisted that no forts be built along the Bozeman, however. When the army refused to comply, the chief rode off with his warriors to make preparations for war.


Troops under Colonel Henry Carrington reinforced Fort Reno and built two new posts in northern Wyoming and southern Montana to keep the Bozeman Trail open. The Indian guerrillas used hit-and-run tactics to harass the soldiers. Crazy Horse, the young Oglala, began establishing his reputation as a fearless fighter and master strategist at this time. In 1866, he used a decoy tactic to trap an entire cavalry outfit. He had several warriors attack a woodcutting party and flee. When Captain William Fetterman led an 80-man cavalry unit after them, 1,500 concealed warriors attacked them, wiping them out.


After the Fetterman Fight, the army sent in fresh troops with new breech-loading rifles. In two battles in 1866, the Hayfield Fight and the Wagon Box Fight, the Teton lost many warriors to these modern weapons, but they succeeded in driving the soldiers back to their posts.


The insurgents kept up their raids. The federal government, realizing the high cost of maintaining the Bozeman forts, yielded to Red Cloud’s demands. In the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the government agreed to abandon the posts if the Indians would cease their raids. When the army evacuated the region, the Indians celebrated by burning down the Bozeman forts. The Sioux and their allies had won this round of warfare on the Great Plains. But the whites would keep entering their domain. In the meantime, the southern and central Plains tribes—the COMANCHE, KIOWA, Southern Cheyenne, and Southern Arapaho—had forced concessions out of the whites in the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867.

The War for the Black Hills


The discovery of gold in the Black Hills of Wyoming and South Dakota in the year 1874 led to the next phase of the Sioux Wars: the War for the Black Hills (or SittingCloud and Spotted Tail had settled on reservations. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse now led the allied hunting bands that refused to give up the traditional nomadic way of life. Opposing them were two generals who had become famous as Union commanders in the Civil War, General William Tecumseh Sherman, overall commander of the army, and General Philip Henry Sheridan, commander of the Division of the Missouri. In the field, the generals had various officers, including General George Crook, who had previously fought APACHE and PAIUTE, and Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, who had earlier campaigned against the Cheyenne.


War broke out when the military ordered the hunting bands onto the reservation. When the bands failed to report, the army went after them in the winter of 1876. During that year, some of the most famous battles on the Great Plains took place. The first three were great Indian victories. The final five were victories for the army and brought the resistance of the Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Northern Arapaho to a virtual close.


At Powder River in Montana in March 1876, Oglala and Northern Cheyenne warriors under Crazy Horse repelled a cavalry attack led by Colonel Joseph Reynolds. At Rosebud Creek in June, Crazy Horse’s warriors routed General George Crook’s huge force of soldiers and their CROW and SHOSHONE allies. Then also in June, along the Little Bighorn River, Oglala under Crazy Horse and Hunkpapa under Sitting Bull and Gall, plus their Cheyenne allies, wiped out Custer’s Seventh Cavalry.


The Battle of Little Bighorn is the most famous battle in all the Indian wars. It is also called Custer’s Last Stand or the Battle of Greasy Grass. George Armstrong Custer was a vain, ambitious, and impulsive young cavalry officer, called “Long Hair” by the Indians because of his long blond locks. He was trying to use the Indian wars as a means to further his own career. Although he had had success as a Union officer in the Civil War, his only victory to date in the Indian wars had been against Black Kettle’s peaceful band of Southern Cheyenne in the Indian Territory (presentday Oklahoma) in 1868. He brashly underestimated his opponents.


When his scouts spotted the Indian camp along the Little Bighorn, rather than wait for reinforcements under General Alfred Terry and Colonel John Gibbon, Custer divided his men into four groups and ordered an attack. In a series of separate actions against the divided force, the Indians managed to kill at least 250 soldiers,including Custer’s entire detachment and the lieutenant colonel himself.


This was the last great Indian victory on the Plains. The following battles proved disastrous for the Sioux and their allies. In July 1876, at War Bonnet Creek in Nebraska, a force under Colonel Wesley Merritt intercepted and defeated about 1,000 Northern Cheyenne, who were on their way to join up with Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. In September 1876, at Slim Buttes in South Dakota, General Crook’s advance guard captured American Horse’s combined Oglala and Miniconjou band. In November 1876, in the Battle of Dull Knife in Wyoming, Colonel Ranald Mackenzie’s troops routed Dull Knife’s band of Northern Cheyenne. In January 1877, at Wolf Mountain in Montana, General Nelson Miles’s soldiers defeated Crazy Horse’s warriors. Then in May 1877, in the Battle of Lame Deer, General Miles’s men defeated Lame Deer’s Miniconjou band.


Crazy Horse died in 1877, stabbed with a bayonet while trying to escape from prison. Although photographs exist of other Native American from this period of history, there are none of Crazy Horse. He refused to pose for photographers, saying, “Why would you wish to shorten my life by taking my shadow from me.” Sitting Bull and some of his followers hid out in Canada until 1881, when he returned to the United States to surren-der. He went on to play a role in events leading up to the famous Wounded Knee incident.


The power of the northern plains tribes had been broken. The southern and central Plains Indians—the Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne, and Southern Arapaho—had previously yielded. Other Indian tribes to the west of the Rocky Mountains—such as the Apache, NEZ PERCE, UTE, and BANNOCK—would continue their resistance for some years, but the Indian wars were winding down. The final Apache rebellion, under Geronimo, ended in 1886.

Wounded Knee


One more incident shook the plains as late as 1890. Because it was so unnecessary, the Wounded Knee Massacre has come to symbolize the many massacres of Indians throughout American history.


The events of Wounded Knee sprung out of a new religion, started among the PAIUTE. In 1888, a Northern Paiute named Wovoka started the Ghost Dance Religion. He claimed that the world would soon end, then come to be again. All Native Americans, including the dead from past ages, would inherit the new earth, whichwould be filled with lush prairie grasses and huge herds of buffalo. To earn this new life, Indians had to live in harmony and avoid the ways of whites, especially alcohol. Rituals in what became known as the Ghost Dance Religion included meditation, prayers, chanting, and especially dancing. While dancing the Ghost Dance, participants could supposedly catch a glimpse of this world-to-be.


Many western Indians began practicing the Ghost Dance. Its teachings offered hope to once free and proud peoples now living in poverty and depression on reservations in the midst of their conquerors. But Sioux medicine men—Kicking Bear and Short Bull of the Miniconjou band of Teton Lakota—gave the religion their own interpretation. They claimed that special Ghost Shirts could stop the white man’s bullets.


U.S. officials became alarmed at the size of Indian gatherings and the renewed Indian militancy. As a result, they banned the Ghost Dance on Sioux reservations. But the Indians continued to hold the forbidden ceremonies. Troops rode into the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations in South Dakota to enforce the new rule. In defiance, Ghost Dancers planned a huge gathering on a cliff in the northwest corner of the Pine

Ridge Reservation known as the Stronghold. They even sent word to Sitting Bull, now on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, to join them. The general in charge, Nelson Miles, who feared Sitting Bull’s influence, ordered the chief ’s arrest. In the fight that resulted, Sitting Bull and seven of his warriors were slain, similar to the way that Crazy Horse had lost his life 13 years before.


General Miles also ordered the arrest of a Miniconjou chief named Big Foot who had formerly advocated the Ghost Dance. But Big Foot, ill with pneumonia, only wanted peace now. He supported Red Cloud and other proponents of peace. He led his band of about 350— 230 of them women and children—to Pine Ridge to join up with Red Cloud, not with the Ghost Dancers Kicking Bear and Short Bull. Nevertheless, a detachment of the army under Major S. M. Whitside intercepted Big Foot’s band and ordered them to set up camp at Wounded Knee Creek. Then Colonel James Forsyth arrived to take command of the prisoners. He ordered his men to place four Hotchkiss cannon in position around the camp.


The next morning, Forsyth sent in troops to collect all Indian firearms. A medicine man named Yellow Bird called for resistance, saying that the Ghost Shirts would protect the warriors. Big Foot advocated peace. When the soldiers tried to disarm a deaf Indian named Black Coyote, his rifle reportedly discharging in the air. The soldiers shot back in response. At first the fighting was at close quarters. But then the heavy artillery opened fire, cutting down men, women, and children alike. Others were killed as they tried to flee.


At least 150—possibly as many as 300—Indians died at Wounded Knee, with others injured. Once again the spirit of the Sioux had been crushed. The Ghost Dancers soon gave up their dancing. Wounded Knee marked the end of the Indian wars. That same year, 1890, the Census Bureau of the federal government announced that there was no longer a line of frontier on the census maps. That is to say, other than scattered Indian reservations, no large Indian wilderness area remained free of white settlements.


Sioux in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries


Starting in 1927, the federal government sponsored the 14-year carving of four of the presidents’ faces on Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota, which insulted the Sioux. To the Indians, the act was like carving up a church, since the hills were sacred in their religion. In 1998, 15 miles away from Mt. Rushmore, near Crazy Horse, South Dakota, another carving in the Black Hills was unveiled. Begun in 1939, the one head covers an area greater than the four heads of Mt. Rushmore. The image is of Crazy Horse. Various Sioux bands have sought to have a greater voice in the use of the Black Hills and, in 2003, organized the Black Hills Inter-Tribal Advisory Committee to the National Forest Service regarding the protection and preservation of sacred lands.


During the 20th century, the Sioux have rebuilt their lives. Many Native American writers and philosophers have been Sioux. A Sioux writer, educator, and physician by the name of Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa) helped found the Boy Scouts of America. The shaman Black Elk helped communicate Sioux religious beliefs in Black Elk Speaks: The Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. Vine Deloria, Jr., wrote Custer Died for Your Sins and many other books. Philip Deloria, his son, is a professor of history and a writer.


Some Sioux have devoted themselves to pan-Indian causes, joining organizations such as AIM, the American Indian Movement, formed in 1968. In honor of their ancestors and in protest of the treaties broken by the federal government and the lack of opportunity for Native Americans, members of AIM staged an occupation at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1973. The incident ended in violence with two Indians, Frank Clearwater, a CHEROKEE, and Buddy Lamont, a Sioux, killed by federal agents.


Today, there are Sioux reservations in many different states: South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Montana. In Wyoming, some of which also was part of the vast Sioux homeland, no lands are held in trust for the tribe. There also are Sioux bands in Canada with reserves in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Leasing of lands to outside interests provides income for some tribes. Others, especially those groups in Minnesota, have turned to gaming, with newly built casinos, for revenue. Many Sioux now live in urban areas, such as Minneapolis–St. Paul and Denver. Many Sioux Indians practice traditional ceremonies and traditional arts and crafts.


There is a concerted effort among many of the tribes to encourage traditional values among Sioux youths. In 1999, the Billy Mills Youth Center opened in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, in conjunction with the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Billy Mills was a Lakota who in 1964 won the Gold Medal in the 10,000-meter run at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.

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Here are some links to keep you busy while I populate the blog.

Participation is key.
http://www.sioux.org/

http://www.native-languages.org/dakota.htm

http://language.nativeweb.org/

http://www.lakotadictionary.org/nldo.php

http://southdakotamagazine.com/lakota-saving-their-language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sioux

Flute

Seven Spiritual Laws

10 Commandments

Lakota Prayers

Aaron Huey

If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies in yourself.

- Minquass