Figure 1.--Here is a detail from a a work by the the Swiss artist Karl Bodmer (1809-1893) showing a Sioux camp (about 1834). Bodmer had a trip in the American West and painted many Native American subjects. We can see a mother with a baby on their shoulder and an other child. |
The Sioux, also called the Dakotas, were the most powerful tribe of the notthern plains. Sioux life came to center on the bufalo after they were able to capture and tame wild horses. The Sioux followed the migrations of the bufolo. They lived in bufalo hide tepes whjich could be easily put up and taken down. The poles needed for tepes could be pulled by the Sioux horses.
The Sioux dominated the northern Plains, including the modern American states of North and South Dakota, northern Nebraska, eastern Wyoming, and southeastern Montana. This was an area bounded in the south by the Arkansas River, in the north by the western tributary of Lake Winnipeg, and in the west by the rising slopes of the Rocky Mountsins.
The Sioux were made up of four different groups linked by cultural and linguistic similarities. There was not political organization.
Winnebagoes: The Winnebagoes were found in the area between between Lake Michigan amd the Mississippi. This was the same area inhabited by the Algonquians.
Assiniboines: The Assiniboines or often referred to as the Sioux proper which is the most northerly of the Sioux tribes.
Minnetaree : The Minnetaree group was found in Minnesota.
Southern Sioux: The Southern Sioux inhabited the land between the Arkansas and Platte rivers and who hunted as far west as the Rocky Mountains.
There are three native Sioux dialects: Dakota, Nakota and Lakota.
Sioux life came to center on the bufalo after they were able to capture and tame wild horses. The Sioux followed the migrations of the bufolo. They lived in bufalo hide tepes whjich could be easily put up and taken down. The poles needed for tepes could be pulled by the Sioux horses.
The Sioux located in the interior vastness of the norther Plains were at first only indirectly affected by the comong of Europeans to the Americas. The major impact was the heards of wild horses which developed from esacped Spanish horses. They prolifferated on grasslands of the Great Planes and transformed the lives of the Plains tribes like the Sioux.
The first encounter with Europeans was with French fur traders around the headwaters of the Mississippi River (1640). The Algonquiens, a neighboring tribe used the term Nadowessioux leading to the French adopting the term Sioux.
The French established a military presence in Sioux Territory (1679). Jean Duluth, a French military officer, camped near Lake St. Peter. The following year he rescued explorer Father Hennepin who the Sioux had captured. The French moved to sestanlish a degree of political control (1685). A series of wars with the French and other tribes allied with the French pushed the Sioux south. The Sioux in turn displaced other tribes that had inhabited the territory. Some sioux remjained in the north around St. Peter. Others moved into wht is now western Missouri and there joined the Southern Sioux. The tribes displaced by the Sioux did not have European allies and thus sources of modern weapons. The French and French allied tribes with French supplied weapons were a formidable military challenge, but French settlers did not follow in the wake of fur trappers and priests.
France transferred the Louisana Territory to the Spanish as a result of the French and Indian War in which the French also lost Canada to Britain. The northern regions of the Territory included the lands inhabited by the Sioux. The Spanish had little real control over the Terruitory other than taking possession of New Orleans. As a result of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, the French regained control of the Territory.
While the French and Spanish did not settle the Great Plains in any number this was to change with the Americans. The Americans with the American Revolution (1776-83) displaced the British from North America, except for Canada. The new American Republic purchased the Louisana Territory from the French (1803). The War of 1812 like the Revolutionary War divided Native American peoples. The Sioux sided with the British realizing that the Americans were a greater danger. Gradually Americans entered the area, at first trappers and prospectors, but settlers soon followed, especially in Sioux lands east of the Mississippi. These encounters lead to conflicts. The Sioux in their first treaty with the Americans ceded all land east of the Mississippi (1837). The Sioux then ceeded 35 million acres west of the Mississippi for $3 million (1851).
The Sioux were marvelous horsemen and a formidable light calvalry. The development of repeating pistols and rifles doomed the Plains tribes.
The Sioux were frustated by the failure of the Americans to honor the terms of these treaties. Sioux warriors strick out at some settlers. A military forced commanded by General Harney supressed the hostiles and another treaty was signed (1855). Again the Americans failed to comply with the terms of the Treaty and prospectors and settlers entered the shrinking teritory of the Sioux. The Upper Sioux tribes joined by some of the Southern Sioux launched a general rising during the Civil War (1862). As many as 1,000 settlers were killed.
A military expedition subdued the hostiles tribes. About 1,000 wattiors were arrested. Eventually 39 warriors were hanged.
After the Civil War, the Americans built the Trans-Continental Railroad. The once inexhaustible heards of bufalos on which Siox culture and livlihood was based were depleted by bufalo hunters to feed the railway gangs and to fill the Eastern demand for hides. The conflict revitalized the Ghost Dance, a ceremony calling back the buffalo and driving away white settlers and soldiers.
The Sioux depened on the bufalo for both food and shelter and this include clothing. The children untill about 7 years of age went naked most of the time, especially during the summer. This might also be the case during the Winter when they were in the teepees. An old Sioux Woman reported that the younger children tended to view clothing as something disturbing. [Hassrick]
Hassrick, Royal B. The Sioux. Life and Customs of a Warrior Society (University of Oklahoma Press. 1964).
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