Creation stories There are a number of
creation stories within the tribes. One widely noted creation story for
Dakota people is at
Bdóte, the area where the
Minnesota and
Mississippi Rivers meet.
Lakota people relate to
Wind Cave in South Dakota as their site of emergence.
Ancestral Sioux The ancestral Sioux most likely lived in the Central Mississippi Valley region and later in Minnesota for at least two or three thousand years. The ancestors of the Sioux arrived in the northwoods of central Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin from the Central Mississippi River shortly before 800 AD. They were dispersed west in 1659 due to warfare with the
Iroquois. During the 1600s, the Lakota began their expansion westward into the Plains, taking with them the bulk of people of the .
French trade and intertribal warfare 1846 Late in the 17th century, the Dakota entered into an alliance with French merchants. The French were trying to gain advantage in the struggle for the
North American fur trade against the English, who had recently established the
Hudson's Bay Company.
Algonquian peoples such as the
Ojibwe,
Potawatomi and
Odawa were among the first to trade with the French as they migrated into the Great Lakes region. The Dakota began to resent the Ojibwe trading with the hereditary enemies of the Sioux, the
Cree and
Assiniboine. However, trade with the French continued until the French gave up North America in 1763. Europeans repeatedly tried to make truce between the warring tribes in order to protect their interests. The Sioux were the former enemies of the Meskwaki and were enlisted to make a joint attack against the Ojibwe.
Treaties and reservation period beginnings In 1805, the Dakota signed their
first treaty with the American government.
Zebulon Pike negotiated for 100,000 acres of land at the confluence of the
St. Croix River about what now is
Hastings, Minnesota and the confluence of the
Minnesota River and
Mississippi River about what now is
Saint Paul, Minnesota. The Americans wanted to establish military outposts and the Dakota wanted a new source of trading. An American military post was not established at the confluence of the St. Croix with the Mississippi, but
Fort Snelling was established in 1819 along the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. as seen by
George Catlin in 1836 In an attempt to stop intertribal warfare and to better able to negotiate with tribes, the American government signed the
1825 Treaty of Prairie du Chien with the Dakota, Ojibwe, Menominee, Ho-Chunk, Sac and Fox, Iowa, Potawatomi, and Odawa tribes. Despite ceding their lands, the treaty allowed the Western Dakota to maintain their traditional role in the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ as the caretakers of the
Pipestone Quarry, which is the cultural center of the Sioux people. The Treaty of Mendota was signed near Pilot Knob on the south bank of the
Minnesota River and within sight of
Fort Snelling. The treaty stipulated that the Mdewakanton and Wahpekute bands were to receive US$1,410,000 in return for relocating to the
Lower Sioux Agency on the
Minnesota River near present-day
Morton, Minnesota along with giving up their rights to a significant portion of southern Minnesota. On August 16, 1862, the treaty payments to the eastern Dakota arrived in
Saint Paul, Minnesota, and were brought to
Fort Ridgely the next day. However, they arrived too late to prevent the war. On August 17, 1862, the Dakota War began when a few Santee men murdered a white farmer and most of his family. They inspired further attacks on white settlements along the
Minnesota River. On August 18, 1862,
Little Crow of the Mdewakanton band led a group that attacked the
Lower Sioux Agency (or Redwood Agency) and trading post located there. Later, settlers found Myrick among the dead with his mouth stuffed full of grass. Many of the upper Dakota (Sisseton and Wahpeton) wanted no part in the attacks with the majority of the 4,000 members of the Sisseton and Wahpeton opposed to the war. Thus their bands did not participate in the early killings. Historian Mary Wingerd has stated that it is "a complete myth that all the Dakota people went to war against the United States" and that it was rather "a faction that went on the offensive". President
Abraham Lincoln commuted the death sentences of 284 of the warriors, while signing off on the hanging of 38 Santee men on December 26, 1862, in
Mankato, Minnesota. It was the largest mass-execution in US history, on US soil. The men remanded by order of President Lincoln were sent to a prison in
Iowa, where more than half died. Those who fled to Canada throughout the 1870s now have descendants residing on nine small Dakota Reserves, five of which are located in
Manitoba (
Sioux Valley,
Dakota Plain,
Dakota Tipi,
Birdtail Creek, and
Canupawakpa Dakota) and the remaining four (
Standing Buffalo,
White Cap, Round Plain , and Wood Mountain) in
Saskatchewan. A few Dakota joined the Yanktonai and moved further west to join with the Lakota bands to continue their struggle against the United States military, later settling on the
Fort Peck Reservation in Montana. and living on the fringes of the prairies and woods of the prairies of southern Minnesota and the eastern Dakotas by at least 1680. They began to dominate the prairies east of the Missouri river by the 1720s. At the same time, the Lakota branch split into two major sects, the Saône who moved to the
Lake Traverse area on the South Dakota–North Dakota–Minnesota border, and the Oglála-Sičháŋǧu who occupied the
James River valley. However, by about 1750 the Saône had moved to the east bank of the
Missouri River, followed 10 years later by the Oglála and Sičháŋǧu (Brulé). By 1750, they had crossed the Missouri River and encountered Lewis and Clark in 1804. Initial United States contact with the Lakota during the
Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804–1806 was marked by a standoff. Lakota bands refused to allow the explorers to continue upstream, and the expedition prepared for battle, which never came. In 1776, the Lakota defeated the Cheyenne for the
Black Hills, who had earlier taken the region from the
Kiowa. and 30 years later, the Lakota again inflicted a blow so severe on the Pawnee during the
Massacre Canyon battle near Republican River. By the 1850s, the Lakota were known as the most powerful tribe on the Plains. The United States acknowledged that all the land covered by the treaty was Indian territory and did not claim any part of it. The boundaries agreed to in the Fort Laramie treaty of 1851 were used to settle a number of claims cases in the 20th century. The tribes guaranteed safe passage for
settlers on the
Oregon Trail and allowed roads and forts to be built in their territories in return for promises of an annuity in the amount of fifty thousand dollars for fifty years. The treaty should also "make an effective and lasting peace" among the eight tribes, each of them often at odds with a number of the others. The treaty was broken almost immediately after its inception by the Lakota and Cheyenne attacking the Crow over the next two years. In 1858, the failure of the United States to prevent the mass immigration of miners and settlers into Colorado during the
Pike's Peak Gold Rush, also did not help matters. They took over Indian lands in order to mine them, "against the protests of the Indians," The situation escalated with the
Grattan affair in 1854 when a detachment of US soldiers illegally entered a Sioux encampment to arrest those accused of stealing a cow, and in the process sparked a battle in which Chief Conquering Bear was killed. Though intertribal fighting had existed before the arrival of white settlers, some of the post-treaty intertribal fighting can be attributed to mass killings of bison by white settlers and government agents. The US Army did not enforce treaty regulations and allowed hunters onto Native land to slaughter buffalo, providing protection and sometimes ammunition. One hundred thousand buffalo were killed each year until they were on the verge of extinction, which threatened the tribes' subsistence. These mass killings affected all tribes thus the tribes were forced onto each other's hunting grounds, where fighting broke out. On July 20, 1867, an
act of Congress created the
Indian Peace Commission "to establish peace with certain hostile Indian tribes". The Indian Peace Commission was generally seen as a failure, and violence had reignited even before it was disbanded in October 1868. Two official reports were submitted to the federal government, ultimately recommending that the US cease recognizing tribes as sovereign nations, refrain from making treaties with them, employ military force against those who refused to relocate to reservations, and move the
Bureau of Indian Affairs from the
Department of the Interior to the
Department of War. The system of treaties eventually deteriorated to the point of collapse, and a decade of war followed the commission's work. It was the last major commission of its kind. From 1866 to 1868, the Lakota fought the
United States Army in the
Wyoming Territory and the
Montana Territory in what is known as
Red Cloud's War (also referred to as the Bozeman War). The war is named after
Red Cloud, a prominent Lakota chief who led the war against the United States following encroachment into the area by the
US military. The Sioux victory in the war led to their temporarily preserving their control of the Powder River country. The war ended with the
Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868.
Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 , along with major treaty boundaries. During Red Cloud's War, the Sioux defeated the
US Army on the same plains on which they previously defeated the
Crow The Treaty of Fort Laramie (also the Sioux Treaty of 1868) was an agreement between the US and the
Oglala,
Miniconjou, and
Sicangu bands of
Lakota people,
Yanktonai Dakota and
Arapaho Nation, following the failure of the first Fort Laramie treaty, signed in 1851. It established the
Great Sioux Reservation including ownership of the
Black Hills, and set aside additional lands as "unceded Indian territory" in areas of
South Dakota,
Wyoming, and
Nebraska, and possibly
Montana. It established that the US government would hold the authority to punish not only white settlers who committed crimes against the tribes but also tribe members who committed crimes and who were to be delivered to the government rather than face charges in tribal courts. It stipulated that the government would abandon forts along the
Bozeman Trail, and included a number of provisions designed to encourage a transition to farming, and move the tribes "closer to the white man's way of life." The treaty protected specified rights of third parties not partaking in the negotiations, and effectively ended
Red Cloud's War. The treaty overall, and in comparison with the 1851 agreement, represented a departure from earlier considerations of tribal customs, and demonstrated instead the government's "more heavy-handed position with regard to tribal nations, and ... desire to assimilate the Sioux into American property arrangements and social customs." According to one source, "animosities over the treaty arose almost immediately" when a group of Miniconjou were informed they were no longer welcome to trade at Fort Laramie, being south of their newly established territory. This was notwithstanding that the treaty did not make any stipulation that the tribes could not travel outside their land, only that they would not permanently occupy outside land. The only travel expressly forbidden by the treaty was that of white settlers onto the reservation. The government eventually broke the terms of the treaty following the
Black Hills Gold Rush and an
expedition into the area by
George Armstrong Custer in 1874 and failed to prevent white settlers from moving onto tribal lands. Rising tensions eventually lead again to open conflict in the
Great Sioux War of 1876. The 1868 treaty was modified three times by the
US Congress between 1876 and 1889, each time taking more land originally granted, including unilaterally seizing the Black Hills in 1877. The earliest engagement was the
Battle of Powder River, and the final battle was the
Wolf Mountain. Included are the
Battle of the Rosebud,
Battle of Warbonnet Creek,
Battle of Slim Buttes,
Battle of Cedar Creek, and the
Dull Knife Fight. Among the many battles and skirmishes of the war was the
Battle of the Little Bighorn, often known as Custer's Last Stand, the most storied of the many encounters between the US army and mounted
Plains tribes. The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to the
Lakota as the Battle of the Greasy Grass and also commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota,
Northern Cheyenne, and
Arapaho tribes and the
7th Cavalry Regiment of the
United States Army. The battle, which resulted in the defeat of US forces, was the most significant action of the Great Sioux War of 1876. It took place on June 25–26, 1876, along the
Little Bighorn River in the
Crow Indian Reservation in southeastern
Montana Territory. The fight was an overwhelming victory for the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho, who were led by several major war leaders, including
Crazy Horse and
Chief Gall, and had been inspired by the visions of
Sitting Bull. The US 7th Cavalry, a force of 700 men, suffered a major defeat while under the command of
Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. Five of the 7th Cavalry's twelve companies were annihilated and Custer was killed. The total US casualty count included 268 dead and 55 severely wounded (six died later from their wounds), including four
Crow scouts and at least two
Arikara scouts. The
Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument honors those who fought on both sides. That victory notwithstanding, the US leveraged national resources to force the tribes to surrender, primarily by attacking and destroying their encampments and property. The Great Sioux War took place under the presidencies of
Ulysses S. Grant and
Rutherford B. Hayes. The Agreement of 1877 (, enacted February 28, 1877) officially
annexed Sioux land and permanently established Indian reservations. The
Wounded Knee Massacre was the last major armed conflict between the Lakota and the United States. It was described as a
massacre by General
Nelson A. Miles in a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. On December 29, 1890, five hundred troops of the
7th Cavalry Regiment, supported by four
Hotchkiss guns (a lightweight
artillery piece capable of rapid fire), surrounded an encampment of the Lakota bands of the Miniconjou and Hunkpapa with orders to escort them to the railroad for transport to
Omaha, Nebraska. By the time it was over, 25 troopers and more than 150 Lakota Sioux lay dead, including men, women, and children. It remains unknown which side was responsible for the first shot; some of the soldiers are believed to have been the victims of "
friendly fire" because the shooting took place at point-blank range in chaotic conditions. Around 150 Lakota are believed to have fled the chaos, many of whom may have died from
hypothermia. Following a three-day blizzard, the military hired civilians to bury the dead Lakota. The burial party found the deceased frozen; they were gathered up and placed in a mass grave on a hill overlooking the encampment from which some of the fire from the Hotchkiss guns originated. It was reported that four infants were found alive, wrapped in their deceased mothers' shawls. In all, 84 men, 44 women, and 18 children reportedly died on the field, while at least seven Lakota were mortally wounded. For this 1890 offensive, the American army awarded twenty
Medals of Honor, its highest commendation. Contemporary Native American activists have urged the medals to be withdrawn, calling them "medals of dishonor". According to Lakota William Thunder Hawk, "The Medal of Honor is meant to reward soldiers who act heroically. But at Wounded Knee, they didn't show heroism; they showed cruelty". In 2001, the
National Congress of American Indians passed two resolutions condemning the Medals of Honor awards and called on the US government to rescind them.
1890–1920s: Assimilation era Land allotment By the 1880s, the Dakota and Lakota tribes were fragmented onto reservations which diminished in size over time. They lost hundreds of thousands of acres by the 1920s. In 1887, the
United States Congress passed the
General Allotment Act (Dawes Act), which began the
assimilation of Dakota and Lakota people by forcing them to give up their traditional way of life. The Dawes Act ended traditional systems of
land tenure, forcing tribes to adapt government-imposed systems of
private property and to "assume a
capitalist and proprietary relationship with property" that did not previously exist. In 1889, North Dakota and South Dakota were holding statehood conventions and demanded reduction of the
Great Sioux Reservation, which was established by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. Just months before those states were admitted to the
Union in November 1889, Congress had passed an act which partitioned the Great Sioux Reservation into five smaller reservations,. Much of the area was not homesteaded until the 1910s, after the
Enlarged Homestead Act increased allocations to for "semi-arid land".
Boarding schools basketball team, Standing Rock Agency (1947) Besides the loss of land, the Dawes Act also "outlawed Native American culture and established a code of Indian offenses regulating individual behavior according to Euro-American norms of conduct." Any violations of this code were to be "tried in a Court of Indian Offenses on each reservation." Included with the Dawes Act were "funds to instruct Native Americans in Euro-American patterns of thought and behavior through Indian Service schools" which forced many of the tribes into sending their children to
boarding schools. Boarding schools were intended to "kill the Indian to save the man", which meant the destruction of Dakota and Lakota societies: children were taken away from their families, their traditional culture and kinship roles. They were dressed in Eurocentric clothing, given English names, had their hair cut and were forbidden to speak their languages. Their religions and ceremonies were also outlawed and forbidden. Between 1934 and 1945, the tribes voted on their government constitutions. The
Yankton Sioux Tribe is the only tribe in South Dakota that did not comply with the IRA and chose to keep its traditional government, whose constitution was ratified in 1891. The
Spirit Lake Tribe and
Standing Rock Tribe also voted against the IRA. Because their constitution are not written under the authority of the IRA, they had to established tribal corporations which are managed separately from the tribal government in order to apply for loans. One visitor to the reservations later asked why there were so few older Indians on the reservations and was told that "the old people had died of heartache" after the construction of the dam and the loss of the reservations' land. As of 2015, poverty remains a problem for the displaced populations in the Dakotas, who are still seeking compensation for the loss of the towns submerged under Lake Oahe, and the loss of their traditional ways of life. The
Indian Relocation Act of 1956 encouraged many tribal members to leave their reservation homes for cities. Some tribes had a dramatic loss of population: the
Yankton Sioux Tribe fell to only 1,000 members living on the reservation in the 1950s; the
Santee Sioux Reservation lost 60 percent of its population (by 1962, only 2,999, mostly elderly people remained). The accusations of corruption by tribal leaders would lead to the
Wounded Knee incident which began on February 27, 1973, when the town of
Wounded Knee, South Dakota was seized by followers of the
American Indian Movement (AIM). The occupiers controlled the town for 71 days while various state and federal law enforcement agencies such as the
Federal Bureau of Investigation and the
United States Marshals Service laid siege. The members of AIM were protesting what they said was the local corrupt government, along with federal issues affecting Indian reservation communities, as well as the lack of justice from border counties. Native Americans from many other communities, primarily urban areas, mobilized to come and join the occupation. The FBI dispatched agents and
US Marshals to cordon off the site. Later a higher-ranking DOJ representative took control of the government's response. Through the resulting siege that lasted for 71 days, twelve people were wounded, including an FBI agent left paralyzed. In April at least two people died of gunfire, after which the Oglala Lakota called an end to the occupation). Additionally, two other people, one of them an African American civil rights activist,
Ray Robinson, went missing, and are believed to have been killed during the occupation, though their bodies have never been found. Afterward, 1200 American Indians were arrested. Wounded Knee drew international attention to the plight of American Indians and AIM leaders were tried in a Minnesota federal court. The court dismissed their case on the basis of governmental prosecutorial misconduct. However,
Leonard Peltier was convicted of murdering two FBI agents in a June 26, 1975, shooting on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
1980s–present: Self-determination After the Wounded Knee Incident, the Dakota and Lakota continued to push for their tribal rights and
self-determination.
Black Hills Land claims : The Sioux never accepted the legitimacy of the forced deprivation of their Black Hills reservation. Throughout the 1920s–1950s, they pushed their
Black Hills land claim into federal court. After 60 years of litigation in the Court of Claims, the Indian Claims Commission, the US Congress, the Supreme Court heard the case in 1980 and ruled that the federal government had illegally taken the Black Hills and awarded more than $100 million in reparations to the tribes. Stating that the land was never for sale, the tribes have refused to accept the money which is now over one billion dollars.
Republic of Lakotah : After the Wounded Knee Incident in 1973, the
International Indian Treaty Council was formed to support grassroots Indigenous struggles for human rights, self-determination and environmental justice through information dissemination, networking, coalition building, advocacy and technical assistance. This influenced activists who declared that they had founded the
Republic of Lakotah in 2007. The Lakota Freedom Delegation, a group of controversial Native American activists, declared on December 19, 2007, the Lakota were withdrawing from all treaties signed with the United States to regain sovereignty over their nation. One of the activists,
Russell Means, claimed that the action was legal and cites
natural,
international and
US law. The group considers Lakota to be a
sovereign nation, although as yet the state is
generally unrecognized. The proposed borders reclaim thousands of square kilometres of North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska and Montana. Not all leaders of the Lakota Tribal Governments support or recognize the declaration.
Foster care system Throughout the decades, thousands of Native American children were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to
boarding schools with a primary objective of assimilating Native American children and youth into Euro-American culture, while at the same time providing a basic education in Euro-American subject matters. Many children lost knowledge of their culture and languages, as well as faced physical and sexual abuse at these schools. In 1978, the government tried to put an end to these boarding schools (and placement into foster families) with the
Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), which says except in the rarest circumstances, Native American children must be placed with their relatives or tribes. It also says states must do everything it can to keep Native families together. In 2011, the
Lakota made national news when
NPR's investigative series called
Lost Children, Shattered Families aired. It exposed what many critics consider to be the "kidnapping" of Lakota children from their homes by the state of South Dakota's Department of Social Services. They are currently working to redirect federal funding away from the state of South Dakota's Department of Social Systems to a new tribal foster care programs. The new guidelines also not only prevent courts from taking children away based on socioeconomic status but give a strict definition of what is to be considered harmful living conditions. The
pipeline travels only half a mile north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation and is designed to pass underneath the
Missouri River and upstream of the reservation, causing many concerns over the tribe's drinking water safety, environmental protection, and harmful impacts on culture. The pipeline company claims that the pipeline will provide jobs, reduce American dependence on foreign oil and reduce the price of gas. The conflict sparked a nationwide debate and much news media coverage. Thousands of Indigenous and non-Indigenous supporters joined the protest, and several camp sites were set up south of the construction zone. The protest was peaceful, and alcohol, drugs and firearms were not allowed at the campsite or the protest site. On August 23, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe released a list of 87 tribal governments who wrote resolutions, proclamations and letters of support stating their solidarity with Standing Rock and the Sioux people. Since then, many more Native American organizations, environmental groups and civil rights groups have joined the effort in North Dakota, including the
Black Lives Matter movement, Vermont Senator
Bernie Sanders, the 2016
Green Party presidential candidate
Jill Stein and her running mate
Ajamu Baraka, and many more.
The Washington Post called it a "National movement for Native Americans."
Return of artifacts In November 2022, 150 sacred artifacts were repatriated to the Lakota Sioux peoples. ==Language==