History of the Sioux

Sioux, important confederacy of North American tribes of the Siouan language family and of the Plains culture area. The Ojibwa word for the group, rendered into French by early explorers and traders as Nadouessioux, was shortened to Sioux and passed into English. The Sioux generally call themselves Lakota or Dakota, meaning “allies.” The seven tribes fall into three major divisions: the sedentary and agricultural Santee; the Nakota; and the warrior and buffalo-hunter Teton.

The Sioux were first noted historically in the Jesuit Relation of 1640, when they were living in what is now Minnesota. Their traditions indicate that they had moved there some time before from the northeast. They were noted in 1678 by the French explorer Daniel Duluth and in 1680 by Father Louis Hennepin in the Mille Lacs region in Minnesota.  They lived on small game, deer, and wild rice, and were surrounded by large rival tribes. Conflict with their enemy, the Ojibwa people, forced the Sioux to move to the buffalo ranges of the Great Plains.

In the mid-18th cent., having driven the Cheyenne and Kiowa out of the Black Hills, the Sioux inhabited the Northern Great Plains and the western prairies-mainly in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and up into the bordering provinces of Canada.  As they became adept buffalo hunters, the tribes grew and prospered. By 1750 the Sioux comprised some 30,000 people firmly established in the heartland of the northern Great Plains. The Tetons, numbering some 15,000, were the most populous of the seven tribes, and the Oglala Sioux, the largest group of the Teton, numbered some 3,000.  They dominated this region for the next century.


II. The Struggle Against U.S. Encroachment

The Sioux fought on the side of the British during the American Revolution and the War of 1812. In 1815, however, the eastern groups made treaties of friendship with the United States, and in 1825 another treaty confirmed Sioux possession of an immense territory that included much of present-day Minnesota, the Dakotas, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Wyoming. In 1837 the Sioux sold all their territory east of the Mississippi River to the United States; additional territory was sold in 1851.

At this time a pattern of assault and counterassault developed as settlers pushed forward onto Sioux lands. The first clash was in 1854 near Fort Laramie, Wyoming, when 19 U.S. soldiers were killed. In retaliation, in 1855 U.S. troops killed about 100 Sioux at their encampment in Nebraska and imprisoned their chief. Red Cloud's War (1866-1867), named after a Sioux chief, ended in a treaty granting the Black Hills in perpetuity to the Sioux. The treaty, however, was not honored by the United States; gold prospectors and miners flooded the region in the 1870s. In the ensuing conflict, General George Armstrong Custer and 300 troops were killed at Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, by the Sioux chief Sitting Bull and his warriors. After that battle the Sioux separated. The massacre by U.S. troops of about 150 to 370 Sioux men, women, and children at Wounded Knee in December 1890 marked the end of Sioux resistance until modern times.


III. Way of Life

The basic social unit of the Sioux was the tiyospe, an extended family group that traveled together in search of game. The Sioux nature leaned toward extremes. For example, infidelity in marriage was punished by disfigurement; an infraction of hunting regulations led to destruction of tepee and property; mourners inflicted slashes on themselves during burial ceremonies. The Sioux believed in one all-pervasive omnipotent god, Wakan Tanka, or the Great Mystery. Religious visions were cultivated, as in the frenzied ceremony of the ghost dance.

Of the 103,255 Sioux in the United States and Canada in 1990, most lived on reservations in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Nebraska. They retain their language and its three principle dialects.

The Sioux have been active in the modern Native American civil rights movement, seeking restoration of their land base and the institution of a modernized form of traditional life. They have been particularly involved in the American Indian Movement (AIM), a civil rights group that has actively protested government treatment of Native Americans since the late 1960s. In 1973 AIM, in concert with a group of Oglala Sioux who were angered by reservation abuses, seized the town of Wounded Knee for 71 days and demanded a United States Senate investigation into Native American living conditions.  The occupation lasted 70 days, during which about 300 persons were arrested by federal agents. In 1979 the Sioux were awarded $105 million for the taking of their lands, resolving a legal action begun in 1923, although the money was never accepted as a land subsitute.

Today they constitute one of the largest Native American groups, living mainly on reservations in Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana; the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota is the second largest in the United States. Many are engaged in farming and ranching, including the raising of bison. The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux have a large casino on their reservation in Minnesota, but Oglala efforts to establish one at impoverished Pine Ridge have met with only partial success. Indian Country Today, a successful Native American newspaper, was started at Pine Ridge in 1981; it is now based in Rapid City, S.Dak. In 1990 there were more than 100,000 Sioux in the United States and more than 10,000 in Canada.


"Sioux," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001
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