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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.
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