The Dakota Sioux History and Description

The western water-shed of the Mississippi river was largely in the possession of the Dakota or Sioux stock. Its various tribes extended in an unbroken line from the Arkansas river on the south to the Saskatchewan on the north, populating the whole of the Missouri valley as far up as the Yellowstone. Their principal tribes in the south were the Quapaws, Kansas and Osages; in the central region the Poncas, Omahas and Mandans; to the north were the Sioux, Assiniboine and Crows; while about Green Bay on Lake Michigan lived the Winnebagoes.

The opinion was formerly entertained that this great family moved to the locations where they were first met from some western home; but the researches of modern students have refuted this. Mr. Dorsey has shown by an analysis of their most ancient traditions that they unanimously point to an eastern origin, and that the central and southern bands did not probably cross the Mississippi much before the fourteenth century. This is singularly supported by the discovery of Mr. Horatio Hale that the Tuteloes of Virginia were a branch of the Dakotas; and further, the investigations of Catlin among the Mandans resulted in showing that this nation reached the Missouri Valley by traveling down the Ohio. They therefore formed a part of the great easterly migration of the North Atlantic tribes which seem to have been going on for many centuries before the discovery
. In the extreme south, almost on the gulf coast of Louisiana, lived some small bands of Dakotas, known as Biloxis, Opelousas, Pascagoulas, etc. They were long supposed to speak an independent tongue, and only of late years has their proper position been defined.

Their frames are powerful, and the warriors of the Sioux have long enjoyed a celebrity for their hardihood and daring. The massacre of General Custer’s command, which they executed in 1876, was the severest blow the army of the United States ever experienced at the hands of the red man. With reference to cranial form they are dolichocephalic, sixteen out of twenty-three skulls in the collection of the Academy offering a cephalic index under 80.

The northern Dakotas do not seem to have had the same system of gentes which prevailed in most of the eastern tribes. Mr. Morgan was of the opinion that it had existed, but had been lost; this, however, requires further proof. There are many societies among them, but not of the nature of clans. Their chiefs hold their position by hereditary descent in the male line, though among the Winnebagoes the early traveller, Carver found the anomaly of a woman presiding over the tribe. The central bands, the Mandans and Minnetarees, recognized gentes with descent in the female line; while among the Poncas and Omahas there were also gentes, but with descent in the male line. The condition in this respect, of the members of this family, as also of that of the Athabascan, seems to prove that the gentile
 system is by no means a fixed stadium of even American ancient society, but is variable, and present or absent as circumstances may dictate.

A few members of this family, notably the Mandans, attained a respectable degree of culture, becoming partly agricultural, and dwelling most of the year in permanent abodes; but the majority of them preferred depending on the bounties of nature, pursuing the herds of buffaloes over the boundless pastures of the plains, or snaring the abundant fish in the myriad streams which traversed their country.

The mythology of the Dakotas is concerned with the doings of giants in whom we recognize personifications of the winds and storms. One of these is Haokah, to whom the warrior sends up an invocation when about to undertake some perilous exploit. The thunder is caused by huge birds who flap their wings angrily and thus produce the portentous reverberations. The waters are the home of Unktahe, a mighty spirit who lurks in their depths. Indeed, to the Dakotas, and not to them alone, but to man in their stage of thought, “All nature is alive with gods. Every mountain, every tree is worshipped, and the commonest animals are the objects of adoration.”

DAKOTA LINGUISTIC STOCK.

• Arkansas, on lower Arkansas river.
• Assiniboins, on Saskatchewan and Assiniboin rivers.
• Biloxis, in Rapides Parish, Louisiana.
• 
  Crows, on Yellowstone river.
• Iowas, on the Iowa river.
• Kansas, on the Kansas river.
• Mandans, on the middle Missouri river.
• Minetarees, on the Yellowstone river.
• Ogallalas, sub-tribe of Sioux.
• Omahas, on the Elkhorn river.
• Osages, on Arkansas and Osage rivers.
• Ottoes, on the Platte river.
• Poncas, on the middle Missouri river.
• Quapaws, on lower Arkansas river.
• Sioux, on upper Mississippi and affluents.
• Tetons, sub-tribe of Sioux.
• Tuteloes, on upper Roanoke river, Va.
• Winnebagoes, western shore of Lake Michigan.
• Yanktons, on upper Iowa river.

The Dakota Sioux History and Description

The western watershed of the Mississippi River was largely in the possession of the Dakota or Sioux stock. Its various tribes extended in an unbroken line from the Arkansas River on the south to the Saskatchewan on the north, populating the whole of the Missouri valley as far up as the Yellowstone. Their principal tribes in the south were the Quapaws, Kansas and Osages; in the central region the Poncas, Omahas and Mandans; to the north were the Sioux, Assiniboine and Crows; while about Green Bay on Lake Michigan lived the Winnebagoes.

The opinion was formerly entertained that this great family moved to the locations where they were first met from some western home; but the researches of modern students have refuted this. Mr. Dorsey has shown by an analysis of their most ancient traditions that they unanimously point to an eastern origin, and that the central and southern bands did not probably cross the Mississippi much before the fourteenth century. This is singularly supported by the discovery of Mr. Horatio Hale that the Tuteloes of Virginia were a branch of the Dakotas; and further, the investigations of Catlin among the Mandans resulted in showing that this nation reached the Missouri Valley by traveling down the Ohio. They therefore formed a part of the great easterly migration of the North Atlantic tribes which seem to have been going on for many centuries before the discovery
. In the extreme south, almost on the gulf coast of Louisiana, lived some small bands of Dakotas, known as Biloxis, Opelousas, Pascagoulas, etc. They were long supposed to speak an independent tongue, and only of late years has their proper position been defined.

Their frames are powerful, and the warriors of the Sioux have long enjoyed a celebrity for their hardihood and daring. The massacre of General Custer’s command, which they executed in 1876, was the severest blow the army of the United States ever experienced at the hands of the red man. With reference to cranial form they are dolichocephalic, sixteen out of twenty-three skulls in the collection of the Academy offering a cephalic index under 80.

The northern Dakotas do not seem to have had the same system of gentes which prevailed in most of the eastern tribes. Mr. Morgan was of the opinion that it had existed, but had been lost; this, however, requires further proof. There are many societies among them, but not of the nature of clans. Their chiefs hold their position by hereditary descent in the male line, though among the Winnebagoes the early traveller, Carver found the anomaly of a woman presiding over the tribe. The central bands, the Mandans and Minnetarees, recognized gentes with descent in the female line; while among the Poncas and Omahas there were also gentes, but with descent in the male line. The condition in this respect, of the members of this family, as also of that of the Athabascan, seems to prove that the gentile
 system is by no means a fixed stadium of even American ancient society, but is variable, and present or absent as circumstances may dictate.

A few members of this family, notably the Mandans, attained a respectable degree of culture, becoming partly agricultural, and dwelling most of the year in permanent abodes; but the majority of them preferred depending on the bounties of nature, pursuing the herds of buffaloes over the boundless pastures of the plains, or snaring the abundant fish in the myriad streams which traversed their country.

The mythology of the Dakotas is concerned with the doings of giants in whom we recognize personifications of the winds and storms. One of these is Haokah, to whom the warrior sends up an invocation when about to undertake some perilous exploit. The thunder is caused by huge birds who flap their wings angrily and thus produce the portentous reverberations. The waters are the home of Unktahe, a mighty spirit who lurks in their depths. Indeed, to the Dakotas, and not to them alone, but to man in their stage of thought, “All nature is alive with gods. Every mountain, every tree is worshipped, and the commonest animals are the objects of adoration.”

DAKOTA LINGUISTIC STOCK.

• Arkansas, on lower Arkansas river.
• Assiniboins, on Saskatchewan and Assiniboin rivers.
• Biloxis, in Rapides Parish, Louisiana.
• 
  Crows, on Yellowstone river.
• Iowas, on the Iowa river.
• Kansas, on the Kansas river.
• Mandans, on the middle Missouri river.
• Minetarees, on the Yellowstone river.
• Ogallalas, sub-tribe of Sioux.
• Omahas, on the Elkhorn river.
• Osages, on Arkansas and Osage rivers.
• Ottoes, on the Platte river.
• Poncas, on the middle Missouri river.
• Quapaws, on lower Arkansas river.
• Sioux, on upper Mississippi and affluents.
• Tetons, sub-tribe of Sioux.
• Tuteloes, on upper Roanoke river, Va.
• Winnebagoes, western shore of Lake Michigan.
• Yanktons, on upper Iowa river.

 

 About the Iroquois Indians

When the French first explored the St. Lawrence River, they found both its banks, in the vicinity where the cities of Montreal and Quebec now stand, peopled by the Iroquois. This tribe also occupied all the area of New York state (except the valley of the lower Hudson), where it was known as the Five Nations. West of these were the Hurons and Neutral Nation in Canada, and the Eries south of Lake Erie, while to the south of the Five Nations, in the valley of the Susquehanna and pushing their outposts along the western shore of Chesapeake Bay to the Potomac, were the Andastes and Conestogas, called also Susquehannocks. Still further south, about the head-waters of the Roanoke River, dwelt the Tuscaroras, who afterwards returned north and formed the sixth nation in the league. West of the Apalachians, on the upper waters of the Tennessee River, lived the Cherokees who, by their tradition, had moved down from the upper Ohio, and who, if they were not a branch of the same family, were affiliated to it by many ancient ties of blood and language. The latest investigations of the Bureau of Ethnology result in favor of considering them a branch, though a distant one, of the Iroquois line.

The stock was wholly an inland one, at no point reaching the ocean. According to its most ancient traditions we are justified in locating its priscan home in the district between the lower St. Lawrence and Hudson Bay. If we may judge from its cranial forms, its purest representatives were toward the east. The skulls of the Five Nations, as well as those of the Tuscaroras and Cherokees, are distinctly
 dolichocephalic, and much alike in other respects, while those of the Hurons are brachycephalic. Physically the stock is most superior, unsurpassed by any other on the continent, and I may even say by any other people in the world; for it stands on record that the five companies (500 men) recruited from the Iroquois of New York and Canada during our civil war stood first on the list among all the recruits of our army for height, vigor and corporeal symmetry.

In intelligence also their position must be placed among the highest. It was manifested less in their culture than in their system of government. About the middle of the fifteenth century the Onondaga chief, Hiawatha, succeeded in completing the famous league which bound together his nation with the Mohawks, Oneidas, Senecas, and Cayugas into one federation of offense and defense. “The system he devised was to be not a loose and transitory league, but a permanent government. While each nation was to retain its own council and management of local affairs, the general control was to be lodged in a federal senate, composed of representatives to be elected by each nation, holding office during good behavior and acknowledged as ruling chiefs throughout the whole confederacy. Still further, and more remarkably, the federation was not to be a limited one. It was to be indefinitely expansible. The avowed design of its proposer was to abolish war
 altogether.”

Certainly, this scheme was one of the most far-sighted, and in its aim beneficent, which any statesman has ever designed for man. With the Iroquois it worked well. They included in the league portions of the Neutral Nation and the Tuscaroras, and for centuries it gave them the supremacy among all their neighbors. The league was primarily based upon or at least drew much of its strength from the system of gentes; this prevailed both among the Iroquois and Cherokees, descent being traced in the female line. Indeed, it was from a study of the Iroquois system that the late Mr. Morgan formed his theory that ancient society everywhere passed through a similar stage in attaining civilization.

It is consonant with their advanced sentiments that among the Iroquois women had more than ordinary respect. They were represented by a special speaker in the councils of the tribe, and were authorized to conduct negotiations looking towards making peace with an enemy. Among the Conestogas we have the instance of a woman being the recognized “Queen” of the tribe. With the Wyandots, the council of each gens was composed exclusively of women. They alone elected the chief of the gens, who represented its interests in the council of the tribe.

In sundry other respects they displayed an intelligent activity. In many localities they were agricultural, cultivating maize, beans and tobacco, building large communal houses of logs, fortifying their villages with palisades, and making excellent large canoes of birch bark. According to traditions, which are supported by recent archæological researches, the Cherokees when they were upon the Kanawha and Ohio had large fields under cultivation, and erected mounds as sites for their houses and for burial purposes. When first encountered in East Tennessee they constructed long communal houses like the Five Nations, had large fields of corn, built excellent canoes and manufactured pottery of superior style and finish. Although no method of recording thought had acquired any development among the Iroquois, they had many legends, myths and formal harangues which they handed down with great minuteness from generation to generation. In remembering them they were aided by the wampum belts and strings, which served by the arrangement and design of the beads to fix certain facts and expressions in their minds. One of the most remarkable of these ancient chants has been edited with a translation and copious notes by Horatio Hale. The Cherokees had a similar national song which was repeated solemnly each year at the period of the green corn dance. Fragments of it have been obtained quite recently.

The Iroquois myths refer to the struggle of the first two brothers, the dark twin and the white, a familiar symbolism in which we see the personification of the light and darkness, and the struggle of day and
 night.

IROQUOIS LINGUISTIC STOCK.

• Andastes, see Conestogas.
• Cayugas, south of Lake Ontario.
• Cherokees, on upper Tennessee river.
• Conestogas, on lower Susquehanna.
• Eries, south of Lake Erie.
• Hurons, see Wyandots.
• Mohawks, on Lakes George and Champlain.
• Neutral Nation, west of the Niagara river.
• Oneidas, south of Lake Ontario.
• Onondagas, south of Lake Ontario.
• Senecas, south of Lake Ontario.
• Susquehannocks, on lower Susquehanna.
• Tuscaroras, in Virginia.
• Wyandots, between Lakes Ontario and Huron.

Maps of the Location of American Indian Tribes

Maps of the Location of American Indian Tribes

Map showing the locations of Americans in Canada and Northern America

Map showing the Location of Indian Tribes in the Southern U. S. and Mexico