Sioux
Santee (Dakota)
The
Santee people migrated north and westward from the south and east into
Ohio then to
Minnesota. The Santee were a woodland people who thrived on hunting, fishing and subsistence farming. Migrations of
Anishinaabe/
Chippewa people from the east in the 17th and 18th centuries, with rifles supplied by the French and English, pushed the Santee further into Minnesota and west and southward, giving the name "Dakota Territory" to the northern expanse west of the Mississippi and up to its headwaters. The western Santee obtained horses, probably in the 17th century (although some historians date the arrival of horses in South Dakota to 1720), and moved further west, onto the
Great Plains, becoming the Titonwan tribe, subsisting on the
buffalo herds and corn-trade with their linguistic cousins, the
Mandan and
Hidatsa along the
Missouri.
Teton (Lakota)
See
LakotaThe Appearance of the Sioux from the Eyes of a White Explorer of the Nineteenth CenturyAccording to the journal kept by
Jedediah Strong Smith, the fur-trapper, hunter and explorer who effectively opened up the West for later white settlement and
gold prospecting, as reported by author Maurice Sullivan: "...When he first saw the proud Sioux... who as Diah observed, were rovers... their intelligence, superior morals, stature and manner of living...[were such] that here, in the Sioux nation, aboriginal life was most attractive." (pp. 16, 17)"The distant appearance of these lodges, when many Indians are encamped together, cannot fail of pleasing. Clustered together with their yellow sides and painted tops, the children playing around in the intervals between them, the men going out or coming in from hunting, the horses feeding on the neighboring prairie, the dogs sleeping or playing in the sun or shade, the squaws at their several labors, and the boys at their several sports--these, taken in conjunction with a beautiful mingling of prairie and woodland, or some undulation of the land, or some bend of the great River that brings them all at once to view, and above all, eyes that are not accustomed to such a sight, would almost persuade a man to renounce the world, take the lodge, and live the careless, lazy life of an Indian!" (p. 16) "The lodges of the Sioux, he recorded, were gaudily decorated with paintings of the buffalo hunt, battles and other events of historical importance to the occupants. Outside a warrior's lodge, on a tripod made of decorated poles, was hung the medicine sack of the owner, and over the sack a piece of scarlet blanket or the skin of a white wolf.Within, the squaw was busy with her household labors, while the master of the lodge was seated, 'leaning back, with no borrowed dignity', against a mat made of peeled willows supported by a tripod of sticks....In the moral scale, as their appearance would indicate, they rank above the mass of Indians." (p. 17) (see Bibliography below) Such was the approving opinion of at least one white
mountain man of the time and indeed, many of these mountain men attempted to live in some fashion among the 'Indians'.
Forced Relocation of the Sioux by the United States Government Later in the 18th century, as the railroads hired hunters to exterminate the buffalo herds, the Indians' primary food supply, in order to force all tribes into sedentary habitations, the Santee and Lakota were forced to accept white-defined reservations in exchange for the rest of their lands, and domestic cattle and corn in exchange for buffalo, becoming dependent upon annual federal payments guaranteed by treaty.
The 1862 Sioux Uprising In 1862, after a failed crop the year before and a winter starvation, the federal payment was late to arrive. The local traders would not issue any more credit to the Santee and the local federal agent told the Santee that they were 'free to eat grass'. As a result, on
August 17,
1862 the
Sioux Uprising began when a few Santee men murdered a white farmer and most of his family, igniting further attacks on white settlements along the
Minnesota River. No one knows the exact number but between 500 to 1000 civilian men, women, and children, mostly German immigrants, were massacred until state and federal forces put down the revolt .
Courts-martial tried and condemned 303 Santee for 'war crimes'. Numerous first-hand accounts describe rapes and murders of the whites by the Santee. (Relatively recently published are the first hand accounts of two German-American women who describe the murders they observed of family and friends.)On
November 5,
1862 in Minnesota, in
courts-martial, 303 Santee Sioux were found guilty of
rape and
murder of hundreds of white farmers and were sentenced to hang. President
Abraham Lincoln remanded the death sentence of 285 of the warriors, signing off on the execution of 38 Santee men by hanging on December 29, 1862 in Mankato, Minnesota, the largest mass-execution in US history.
During and after the revolt, many Santee and their kin fled Minnesota and Eastern Dakota, joining their relatives in the West, or settling in the James River Valley in a short-lived reservation before being forced to move to Crow Creek Reservation on the east bank of the Missouri. Others were able to remain in Minnesota and the east, in small reservations existing into the 21st Century, including Sisseton-Wahpeton, Flandreau, and Devils Lake (Spirit Lake or Fort Totten) Reservations in the Dakotas. Some ended up eventually in Nebraska, where the Santee Sioux Tribe today has a reservation on the south bank of the Missouri.
The sioux are divided into tribes, the larger of which are divided into sub-tribes, and further branched into bands.
*
Santee division**
Mdewakantonwan
** Sisitonwan (Sisseton)
** Wahpekute
** Wahpetonwan
*
Yankton-Yanktonai** Ihanktonwan (Yankton, "End Village")
** Ihanktonwana (Yanktonai, "Little End Village")
*** Stoney (Canada)
***
Assiniboine (Canada)
*
Lakota (Teton)**
Oglala ("Those who Scatter their own")
**: notable persons:
Tasunka witko,
Mahpyia-luta,
Hehaka Sapa and
Billy Mills (Olympian)
**
Hunkpapa (meaning "Those who Camp by the Door" or "Wanderers")
**: notable persons:
Tatanka Iyotake (aka Sitting Bull)** Sihasapa ("
Blackfoot")
**
Minniconjou ("Those who Plant by the Stream")
** Sićangu (
French:
Brulé) ("Burnt Thighs")
** Itazipacola (French:
Sans Arcs "Without Bows")
** Oohenonpa ("
Two Kettles" or "Two Boilings")
Today, one half of all Enrolled Sioux live off the
Reservation.
Lakota reservations established by the US government include:
*
Oglala (
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation)
*
Sićangu (
Rosebud Indian Reservation)
*
Hunkpapa (
Standing Rock/Cheyenne River)
*
Minniconjou (
Cheyenne River)
*
Sans Arc (
Cheyenne River)
*
Two Kettles (
Cheyenne River)
*
Santee*
Yanktonai (
Yankton)
*
Flandreau*
Sisseton-Wahpehton*
Lower Sioux*
Upper Sioux*
Shakopee-Mdewakanton*
Prairie IslandThe U.S. states of
North Dakota and
South Dakota are named after the
Dakota tribe. Two other U.S. states have names of Siouan origin:
Minnesota is named from
mni ("water") plus
sota ("hazy/smoky, not clear"), while
Nebraska is named from a language close to Santee, in which
mni plus
blaska ("flat") refers to the Platte (French for "flat") River. Also, the states
Kansas,
Iowa, and
Missouri are named for cousin Siouan tribes, the Kansa, Iowa, and Missouri, respectively, as are the cities
Omaha, Nebraska and
Ponca City, Oklahoma. The names vividly demonstrate the wide dispersion of the Siouan peoples across the
Midwest U.S.More directly, several Midwestern municipalities utilize Sioux in their names, including
Sioux City (IA), Sioux Center (IA) and
Sioux Falls (SD). Midwestern rivers include the
Little Sioux River in Iowa and
Big Sioux River along the Iowa/South Dakota border.
Many smaller towns and geographic features in the Northern Plains retain their Sioux names or bear English translations of those names, including Wasta, Owanka, Oacoma, Hot Springs (Minnelusa), Minnehaha County, Belle Fourche (Mniwasta, or "Good water"), Inyan Kara, and others.
*The film
Dances With Wolves contains depictions of the Sioux Indians
*
Vine Deloria, Jr. - Activist and essayist.
*
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn - Activist, academic and writer.
*
Sioux language*
Great Sioux Nation*
Sioux Uprising*
Sioux Wars*
The Yanktonai (Edward S. Curtis)
*
Lakota Language Consortium*
Winter Counts a Smithsonian exhibit of the annual icon chosen to represent the major event of the past year
*
Rosebud Indian Reservation Land of the Sicangu Lakota Oyate
*
Dakota Language and Culture Encyclopedia* Albers, Patricia C. (2001). Santee. In R. J. DeMallie (Ed.),
Handbook of North American Indians: Plains (Vol. 13, Part 2, pp. 761-776). W. C. Sturtevant (Gen. Ed.). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. ISBN 0-16-050400-7.
* Christafferson, Dennis M. (2001). Sioux, 1930-2000. In
Handbook of North American Indians: Plains (Vol. 13, Part 2, pp. 821-839). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
* DeMallie, Raymond J. (2001a). Sioux until 1850. In
Handbook of North American Indians: Plains (Vol. 13, Part 2, pp. 718-760). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
* DeMallie, Raymond J. (2001b). Teton. In
Handbook of North American Indians: Plains (Vol. 13, Part 2, pp. 794-820). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
* DeMallie, Raymond J. (2001c). Yankton and Yanktonai. In
Handbook of North American Indians: Plains (Vol. 13, Part 2, pp. 777-793). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
* DeMallie, Raymond J.; & Miller, David R. (2001). Assiniboine. In
Handbook of North American Indians: Plains (Vol. 13, Part 1, pp. 572-595). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
* Getty, Ian A. L.; & Gooding, Erik D. (2001). Stoney. In
Handbook of North American Indians: Plains (Vol. 13, Part 1, pp. 596-603). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
* Hein, David (Advent 2002). "Episcopalianism among the Lakota / Dakota Indians of South Dakota."
The Historiographer, vol. 40, pp. 14-16. [
The Historiographer is a publication of the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church and the National Episcopal Historians and Archivists.]
* Hein, David (1997). "Christianity and Traditional Lakota / Dakota Spirituality: A Jamesian Interpretation."
The McNeese Review, vol. 35, pp. 128-38.
* Parks, Douglas R.; & Rankin, Robert L. (2001). The Siouan languages. In
Handbook of North American Indians: Plains (Vol. 13, Part 1, pp. 94-114). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
* Sullivan, Maurice S.: "Jedediah Smith, Trader and Trail Breaker", New York Press of the Pioneers (1936) contains 'politically incorrect' white man's terminology and stereotypical attitudes toward the 'Indians'.
