While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Of the great
Siouan family of tribes found
along the upper reaches of the Mississippi when the curtain
of history lifted, those to whom we give the name of Sioux
were by far the most numerous and the most powerful. Dakota,
or "allies," they called themselves; and their own name has
been preserved in the two states in which the greater
portion of these people now live. But the name by which we
call them is a reminder of their age-long feud with the
Chippewa or Ojibwa, north and east of them. Through the
Canadian-French the Chippewa word has come to us as
Nadowessioux, a diminutive of the word meaning "snakes," or,
figuratively, "enemies." Enemies the two nations were,
through all the years of which we have either record or
tradition.
The Chippewa folk-story tells of
finding the Sioux first where the three
Great Lakes meet at Sault Ste. Marie. But
the pressure of their constant warfare drove
the bands westward before the white man
penetrated to this far inland country. In
the Jesuit Relations for 1640 we have our
first authentic account of the Nadowessioux,
and at that time they were eighteen days'
journey farther to the west. They were no
less brave and no less powerful than the
Chippewa, but the latter were nearer they
received from the white man enabled them to
drive their enemies before them. Farther
back the Dakota retreated into the
fastnesses where the European penetrated
only at great intervals and with most
serious difficulty.
So it is that at first we
get no more than an occasional glimpse of
these remote warlike folk. The long history
of wandering and warfare remains forever
untold. The
Chippewa from whom they fled and
the
Cheyenne and
Kiowa and many other tribes
that fled before them, leave us but a scanty
tradition. But from 1700 on they have an
important though vaguely define part in the
history of the northwest.
It was about 1750 that they crossed the
Missouri, and still later when they drove
off other tribes and took possession of the
Black Hills, to which they attached a
mysterious and religious significance. In
1763 the French lost their hold upon the
land, and the Dakota, or at least some
portions of them, entered into friendly
relations with the English. That fact was to
color their whole later history. They were
leagued with the English throughout the War
of the Revolution and the War of 1812; and
the tradition of enmity to the American
stayed with them many a year, though they
made a treaty of peace and friendship when
the second war with England was over in
1815.
In the period between
the two wars with England the United States
had begun its unparalleled history of
expansion. There was no authority in the
Constitution for the addition of this wide
Louisiana Territory which had never been
connected in any way with the domain of the
thirteen original states; but necessity
superseded the Constitution. The alternative
to purchase would have been the growth of a
foreign and quite probably unfriendly power,
facing the new nation across the
Mississippi, and controlling the
all-important shipping along that stream by
its command of the port at New Orleans. To
this main purpose and need the disposition
of the unknown land that stretched to the
north and west was probably quite
subsidiary; no realization of the future
development of the region could have come to
the negotiators of 1803.
To learn something of our
vast new possessions, the Lewis and Clark
expedition set forth to follow the Missouri
to its source; and from its headwaters they
crossed the mountains to the valleys of the
Pacific slope. From St. Louis to the
northern Rockies they encountered many a
tribe of Indians, linguistically of several
different stocks, but in their culture all
"Plains Indians," warriors and hunters of
the buffalo. Of them all, the Sioux were the
most widespread and the most warlike,
roaming over the northern expanse of the
great plains.
"Almost the
whole of that vast tract of territory
comprised between the Mississippi, the Red
River of Lake Winnipeg, the Saskaskawan and
the Missouri," the journal of the expedition
reads, "is loosely occupied by a great
nation whose primitive name is Darcota, but
who are called Sioux by the French, Sues by
the English. Their original seats were on
the Mississippi, but they have gradually
spread themselves abroad and became
subdivided into numerous tribes."
These different tribes were
grouped by the Indians themselves into
"seven council fires." Four of these, the
Mdewakanton,
Wahpeton,
Wahpekute and
Sisseton, constitute the Santee or eastern
division of the Sioux, and were located
along the upper banks of the Mississippi
until the days of the Civil War. Two more,
the Yankton and
Yanktonai the latter divided
into Upper and Lower Yanktonai-lived above
the Missouri in what is now the eastern part
of the Dakotas. The last great division, the
variously subdivided Teton, were west of the
Missouri. These Teton were more than half
the Sioux Nation in numbers and far more
than that portion in menace and disturbance.
The preference of the Sioux for the British,
according to the judgment of Captain Lewis,
was due to the fact that the
English-speaking traders gave them better
prices for their furs and skins than did the
Spanish merchants who dwelt with them. The
mild rule of the United States permitted
these foreign dealers to continue their
relations with the Indians; and to this fact
is due some measure at least of the
hostility the country had later to meet. But
more of it was inherent in the natural
situation, the continued warfare of all the
Plains tribes and their resentment at the
approach of the invader.
The
early treaties with the Sioux involved no
land cessions, but carried the usual
assurance of perpetual peace and amity. By
1825 the United States thought to continue
the creation of perpetual peace and amity by
extending it to all the warring and roving
tribes. Hence the treaty of Prairie du
Chien, defining limits among the various
tribal parties, and embodying the promise of
the Sioux and Chippewa to desist from their
immemorial warfare. It was a thing more
easily said than done.
Five years later came the first cession of
land on the part of the Sioux. Four of their
bands, with a half-dozen other tribes of the
plains, in a treaty at Prairie du Chien in
1830, ceded to the United States a tract of
land between the Des Moines and the
Mississippi. And although up to this time
the Sioux had been in contact only with the
farthest roving whites, traders and
trappers, largely the French or British from
the north, yet the half-breeds in their
tribes were already of sufficient number to
justify setting aside a special tract of
land for their occupancy. They refused to
live upon it, however, and twenty years
later the United States bought it back from
them for a hundred and fifty thousand
dollars.
With this 1830
treaty began the regular payment of moneys
to these bands; to each an annual
appropriation of two or three thousand
dollars, to be continued for ten years. A
treaty with the Mdewakanton in 1837 went
even further, providing that $300,000, a
portion of the purchase price of their lands
west of the Mississippi, should be deposited
in the Treasury of the United States. Here
it would draw five per cent interest, which
should be distributed among the members of
the tribe yearly forever after.
We see the system in its beginning-the
cession of lands presages the limitation of
the tribes to other sections of territory.
The appointment of commissioners to make
treaties, then of agents to carry out the
provisions of the treaties and distribute to
the Indians the Moneys, implements and goods
promised to them, leads the race step by
step away from its independence. From the
savage warrior of the plains the Sioux is
already on his way to becoming the
dissatisfied recalcitrant of the
reservation.
Roughly, each decade marks a change in the
status of the prairie people; so rapidly are
events moving in their great panorama. The
early years of the century saw only the
adventurous trapper and the occasional
exploring party. Through the Twenties the
trader was supreme; and his rule reflects no
great credit on the dominant race. Guns,
knives and whisky are the first fruits of
the new civilization. There are a dozen
traveling with a keg for one Jedediah Smith,
who carries a Bible. The Thirties bring a
gentler aspect of the white man's rule; the
missionary has found his way to these far
off folk and is beginning to introduce a
different idea of life and death, to try to
establish schools, to reduce the language of
the Dakota to writing and to educate these
wild folk in their own tongue.
The Forties that marvelous decade! bring to
the Indian prophetic glimpse of the changes
the future has in store for him. It is the
era when the caravans roll across the
prairie to find a resting place in distant
Oregon. It is the day that sees the army of
Mormons toiling across to their promised
land beside the Great Salt Lake set in the
desert waste. It is the time when the great
southwest falls from Mexico's feeble hand
into the eager grasp of the stronger
neighbor, and the old Santa Fe Trail is now
on American soil all the way. And the
incredible story ends with the even more
incredible climax of the gold discoveries in
California, and the mad, ruthless horde of
gold-seekers making their way across the
plains, heedless of obstacles, unthinking of
danger, indifferent to everything but the
gleaming fortune ahead.
But
with the less expansive Fifties the fate of
the Indian came closer. Destiny had drawn a
circle about the borders of the country, a
circle that held within its circumference
the Indian tribes of the prairie. Now these
tribes were to see that circle filling,
filling with men and women of the white
race. They were coming, by this time, not
merely to press madly across the plains in
search of treasure or empire, but to find an
abiding place. The plow was writing upon the
wide expanse the message that spelled the
doom of the buffalo.
And so
we come to the bloody years of the Sixties.
For the white man, the irrepressible
conflict that had been brewing between North
and South broke forth. In the west, no less
irrepressible was the conflict between the
white man and the red.
This site
includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes
reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These
items are presented as part of the historical record and should not be
interpreted to mean that the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes
implied .
