Dakota-Assiniboin Group

The following data is extracted from Villages of the Algonquian, Siouan, and Caddoan Tribes West of the Mississippi.

     The Dakota constitute the largest division of the great Siouan linguistic family. To quote from the Handbook, this group includes the following tribes, a classification which is recognized by the people themselves:
1. Mdewakanton
2. Wahpeton
3. Wahpekute
4. Sisseton
5. Yankton
6. Yanktonai
7. Teton
each of which is again subdivided into bands and subbands." These seven principal divisions are often referred to as the Seven Council Fires of the Dakota. The first four groups as given in this classification formed the eastern division, and their home, when first encountered by Europeans, was in the densely forested region about the headwaters of the Mississippi. The others lived westward, reaching far into the plains. The Assiniboin, in historic times a separate tribe, was originally a part of the Yanktonai, from whom they separated and became closely allied with the Algonquian Cree. Thus some of the Dakota as first known to history were a timber people, others lived where the forest and prairie joined, with a mingling of the fauna and flora of the two regions, and in later years the Oglala, the principal division of the Teton, extended their wanderings to and beyond the Black Hills, crossing the great buffalo range.
     As will be shown in the sketches of the dwellings and other structures of the Dakota tribes, those who lived in the timbered region, occupying much of the present State of Minnesota, erected the type of habitation characteristic of the region, but in the villages along the Minnesota both bark and skin covered lodges were in use, and the more western villages were formed exclusively of the latter type, the conical skin tipi of the plains. There appears to have been very little variation in the form of structure as erected by the widely scattered bands.

Source: Villages of the Algonquian, Siouan, and Caddoan Tribes West of the Mississippi

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