The earliest Sioux village known to Europeans was Isanti, evidently a large settlement on the shore of Lake Mille Lacs in modern Minnesota, probably wholly or largely populated by Mdewakanton Sioux. By about 1700 or a little later migration of various groups from the region had left Isanti exposed to attacks from French traders and the incursions of the Ojibwa (Chippewa). From about 1735 Mdewakantons retreated down to the Mississippi and established a new settlement called Tintatonwan, perhaps in recognition of the former inhabitants – the Teton, who were already moving westwards. After the French and Indian War of 1754-63 the Sioux were exposed to contacts with the British victors. In 1766 they were visited by British explorer Jonathan Carver, and in 1773-75 by Peter Pond, who have left us descriptions of Sioux customs of that time. The most important leader we hear about after 1770 from Tintatonwan was Wapasha or ‘Red Head-dress’, who helped the British during the American Revolution. After 1783 the settlement gradually lost its importance, becoming dependent upon its more powerful neighbours; many moved west to join the Yanktonai in the upper Minnesota Valley and reinforced the emerging Western Sioux beyond.
Lost Medicine (Wakantaninsni), Hunkpapa Sioux, 1872, holding a sabre and tobacco bag. He wears a short ‘hairpipe’ breastplate – this is one of the earliest known photographs of Sioux wearing ‘hairpipes’. Photographed in Washington, DC, by Alexander Gardner.
By 1800 considerable changes had taken place in Sioux culture, particularly amongst the Eastern division. These are evident from a dependence on the trade system with British and American fur companies, and the adoption of tools, weapons and utensils; even the use of skin clothes had partially given way to traded cloth and blankets. Some Eastern Sioux still had permanent villages of bark houses, and used skin tipis when moving in search of game. Food still consisted of deer, elk and bison in the west; wild rice was collected in the east, and some corn was still planted.
With the transfer of the West to the United States following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the Santees’ first official relations with the US began with Zebulon Pike’s expedition of 1805-06, which established sovereignty over the area where British traders had continued to operate since the Revolution. In the West, Lewis and Clark obtained information from traders and Indians along the Missouri River, where a large portion of Sioux were now centred – the Brulé and Oglala west of the river, the Saone on both sides. The diaspora from Tintatonwan and other eastern Sioux villages was increasing the population of the emerging Teton, whose camp circles incorporated these immigrants. Links between the Yanktonai and Teton were maintained through trading; a great annual trade fair was held on the James River, bringing goods down from British Canada. Individuals and small bands could pass freely from sub-tribe to sub-tribe – e.g. Mdewakantons amongst the Yanktonais and Oglalas, and the Blackfoot Sioux, who were probably originally Yanktons.
Many of the leading figures of the mid- to late 19th century will be found among the accompanying photographs. Others include the following:
Crazy Horse, Oglala Born in 1841 or 1842, of a holy man of the same name and a sister of the Brulé warrior Spotted Tail – see caption, page 19. He was present at a number of fights at an early age, and many more in his maturity; he led the decoys in the Fetterman battle and was at the Wagon Box Fight. He proved himself a bold and adventurous war leader on the Yellowstone and in the Black Hills during the early 1870s. Surprised by Crook in the winter of 1875, he confronted him again on the Rosebud River, Montana, on 17 June 1876, and decisively halted his advance. He subsequently joined Sitting Bull and Gall on the Little Bighorn, and after fighting against Reno’s battalion helped to annihilate Custer’s column. His camp was destroyed by Col Mackenzie’s 4th Cavalry near the Tongue River, and he finally brought in 900 followers to the Red Cloud Agency in May 1877. On 5 September he was placed under arrest by fellow Oglalas, and was stabbed and killed while allegedly trying to escape.
John Grass or Charging Bear, Blackfoot Important leader of the Sioux on the Standing Rock Reservation. He supported the agent Maj McLaughlin in his attempts to limit the influence of Sitting Bull during the 1880s. Government agents built large frame houses for the reservation chiefs to live in, including such a home for John Grass.
Inkpaduta (Red-on-Top), Wahpekute Chief of a band of Wahpekute openly hostile to whites from the early 1850s, he had made the prairies of eastern South Dakota his home. He led an attack on settlers at Spirit Lake on the Iowa-Minnesota border in 1857. He later joined the Western Sioux, and his band was present at the battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876.
Red Thunder, Yanktonai Chief of the Yanktonai Pabaska band, he met Lt Zebulon Pike at a great council at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, in 1806; Pike said he was the most finely dressed of the attending chiefs. Fought with his son Wanata – see below – alongside the British in the War of 1812 under Col Robert Dickson, who married Red Thunder’s sister. He was killed fighting the Chippewa in 1823.
Joseph Renville, mixed-blood Mdewakanton Born 1779 in Kapozha; died at Lac qui Parle, 1846. After fighting on the side of the British in the War of 1812, he later became attached to American interests. He employed former Hudson’s Bay traders in the commercial Columbia Fur Company around Lake Traverse. Engaged by Dr S.R.Riggs in the translation of the Bible into Dakota, the Eastern Sioux language. Succeeded by his nephew Gabriel Renville, who was chief of the Sisseton and Wahpeton at Lake Traverse Reservation, South Dakota, after its establishment.
Standing Buffalo, Sisseton-Wahpeton Moved to Canada after the Minnesota uprising in 1862, and settled around the Portage La Prairie and Fort Garry districts. He later moved with his band to a reserve in the Qu’Appelle valley, Saskatchewan, which still bears his name. His son White Cap obtained a separate reserve near Saskatoon.
Wabasha, Mdewakanton A succession of chiefs from the Kiyuksa villages in Minnesota bore this name. The ‘Great Wabasha’ served the British during the American Revolution, visited Mackinaw, and was welcomed by the commandant Col De Peyser. Wabasha II came to notice when he met Lt Zebulon Pike in 1806, but nominally supported British interests during the War of 1812; he died c1855. Wabasha III signed the Laramie Treaty of 1868.
Wanata (Wanatan), Yanktonai Important Pabaska chief, son of Red Thunder, born about 1795 and served with his father on the British side – with the rank of captain – during the War of 1812. His name Wanata, ‘The Charger’, was given after he charged the Americans at the battle of Fort Sandusky, where he was wounded. After 1820 he supported American interests, and was involved in development of trade on the Missouri after leaving the Lake Traverse and James River areas. His influence later waned, however, and he was murdered by disaffected tribesmen c1848. Several other Wanatas appear subsequently, probably descendants, at Devil’s Lake, North Dakota.
Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses, Oglala A lieutenant of Red Cloud during the war in the Powder River buffalo country in 1866, when the US military built forts for the protection of white prospectors following the Bozeman Trail. After 1868 he settled at the agencies, and died at Pine Ridge, where he has descendants to this day.
Red Cloud, Oglala Sioux, 1897. Born near the forks of the Platte River, Nebraska, in 1822, he died on the Pine Ridge Agency in December 1909. The principal war chief in the Powder River country, he led the attacks on the chain of forts (C.F.Smith, Phil Kearney and Reno) built to protect the Montana gold prospectors’ route along the Bozeman Trail in the 1860s. His warriors destroyed Capt Fetterman’s detachment in 1866, but he later lost many men in the Wagon Box Fight. He finally agreed to sign the 1868 Laramie Treaty after the garrisons had been abandoned, and subsequently lived at peace on the Pine Ridge Agency, taking no part in the Sioux war of 1876 and making several visits to Washington. He is seen here wearing a ‘hairpipe’ breastplate and eagle feather war bonnet. Photograph by D.F.Barry.
How far these early official American contacts succeeded in gaining the allegiance of the Sioux is unknown; many Santees fought on the side of the British in the War of 1812. The British trader Robert Dickson attracted several chiefs to the British cause, including the renowned Wanata (‘Charger’), who after the close of the war supported American interests, however. The Tetons continued to restrict the American enterprises until 1823, when Yanktons and Tetons aided the Leavenworth Expedition against the Arikaras, with whom the Sioux were always willing to fight.
At this time the Americans began to establish fur trade posts on the middle Missouri and the focal point of the trade system moved from the James River to the Missouri River; with it went the Yanktonais under Wanata, but, importantly, direct American trade also began with the Teton Sioux. With direct contact came the first treaty, by which the Indians were to recognise that they lived within the territorial limits of the United States, acknowledge their supremacy and claim their protection – the Atkinson-O’Fallon Treaty of 1825. The period 1804-25 was a time of expansion and consolidation of the Oglala and other western Sioux bands as they incorporated camps of immigrant Sioux. However, the Treaty of 1825 apparently opened up divisions between friendly and anti-American groups, until by 1850 the Oglala had divided into two factions, only to be reunited after 1870 through the establishment of the Red Cloud Agency.
After 1825 the revival of the Indian trade and competition between rival fur companies for buffalo robes began to make serious demands on the region’s herds, and the migration of the Hunkpapa and Blackfoot Sioux west of the Missouri after 1830 resulted in the numbers of buffalo becoming increasingly erratic. As the Tetons moved south in the 1830s to the North Platte country, the Sioux challenged the Pawnee, killing, burning lodges, destroying crops and stealing horses. During the early 1840s there were clashes with the Shoshoni and Crow in the Bighorn Mountains region, and also with white and Indian mountain men; and by 1845 wagons with west-bound immigrants were passing up the North Platte, thinning the buffalo herds. By 1846 the US government had appointed former mountain man Thomas Fitzpatrick as Indian agent, and he helped to stop white traders bringing whisky into the Indian camps; but the summer of 1849 saw thousands of white immigrants moving along the Platte Road en route for Oregon and the California gold fields. With the white wagons came cholera, which the Indians recognised came from the white man and which they believed was spread deliberately. Teton independence was coming to an end as the US Army purchased Fort John from the American Fur Company in 1849 and installed a permanent garrison, renaming the post Fort Laramie.
The 50 years following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 had brought some changes to the life and culture of the Western Sioux, through contacts with explorers, traders, trappers and artists and the development of the Missouri River fur trade. However, their independent, nomadic, equestrian lifestyle remained largely intact, as it did among their closest allies the Cheyenne and Arapaho.
The events of 1849 saw a huge increase in the numbers of white settlers travelling the California Trail. This started at Independence, Missouri, swinging north-west across Kansas and Nebraska to the Platte River, then west along the North Platte to Fort Laramie, then west again over the Continental Divide. Despite the thousands who travelled the route by wagon no serious Indian attacks took place, although the slaughter of game and occasional shootings on either side of the trail caused much tension.
In 1851 the government authorised Superintendent Mitchell and the agent Fitzpatrick as commissioners in treaty negotiations which took place at Fort Laramie in late summer with the Sioux and other tribes whose lands were being traversed by hordes of gold-seekers. The treaty subsequently defined tribal boundaries; in return the Indians were to abstain from all depredations against whites passing through their country. The government promised presents and annuities. The council lasted 18 days, and was attended by thousands of Indians; harmony reigned, even between groups who were hereditary enemies.
Friction continued, however, and in 1855 following the ‘Grattan massacre’ – see caption, page 19 – Gen Harney was assigned to command a campaign to enforce order along the California Trail from Fort Leavenworth via old Fort Kearney on the Platte. He reached the Blue River at Ash Hollow, Nebraska, where he attacked a camp of Brulé under Little Thunder whilst engaging the chief in a parley, killing over 130 Indians and destroying the village. Harney proceeded to Laramie and thence to Fort Pierre on the Missouri.
Sioux and Cheyenne chiefs at Fort Laramie for the council which concluded the treaty of 1868. They met the peace commissioners to negotiate the closing of the Bozeman Trail, the abandonment of Forts Reno, Phil Kearney and C.F.Smith, and the creation of The Great Sioux Reservation.
(Left to right) Spotted Tail, Roman Nose, Old-Man-Afraid-of-his-Horses, Lone Horn, Whistling Elk, Pipe, and Slow Bull. Photograph by Alexander Gardner.
Four Bears, chief of the Two Kettle Sioux (top), and White Swan, chief of the Minneconjou Sioux – part of a delegation of Minneconjous, Sans Arcs and Two Kettles from Fort Bennett to Washington, DC, in May-June 1870, which also included Red Feather and Running Bull. Photographed by Gurnsey & Illingworth. (Author’s collection)
In 1861 gold was discovered in Montana and the flow of gold-seekers, instead of continuing west, turned north from Laramie, crossing the Powder River – the heart of Sioux buffalo country. Government obligations were left unfulfilled during the American Civil War, and none of the treaties hastily cobbled together at its close were ratified. The US Army took over protection of the Powder River Road (Bozeman Trail), building Forts Reno, Phil Kearney and C.F.Smith to keep the trail open for the gold-seekers.
Fort Phil Kearney was built in 1866 under command of Col H.B. Carrington with 2,000 men, but was constantly harassed by Oglalas and Minneconjous. In December 1866 the Indians successfully ambushed a relief force for a wood train and escort from Fort Phil Kearney under the impetuous Capt Fetterman, and in less than two hours all 90 men (from the 18th Infantry and 2nd Cavalry) were killed. When the bodies were found they had been stripped, scalped and mutilated.
The following summer, at the so-called Wagon Box Fight, another wood train from Fort Phil Kearney under Maj J.W.Powell corralled in a strong position, with wagon bodies reinforced with logs and grain sacks and manned by 40 men armed with modified Springfield breech-loading rifles. Despite several charges many hundreds of warriors failed to overrun the defensive position, and scores were swept away by the new long range firearms.
While fighting along the trail continued the Treaty Commission and the Sioux met again at Laramie, producing the Second Laramie Treaty of 1868. Red Cloud, the Oglala war leader in the Powder River country, refused to sign the treaty until the three forts were abandoned – whereupon he moved in and burned them before going on to Laramie and signing as he had promised. The abandonment of the Bozeman Trail forts constituted a kind of victory for Red Cloud. The 1868 treaty defined The Great Sioux Reservation between the 104th meridian on the west, the Missouri River on the east (plus some Santee lands on the east side of the Missouri), the 46th parallel on the north and the 43rd parallel on the south. Amongst those who signed were representatives of the Oglala, Brulé, Minneconjou, Blackfoot Sioux, Two Kettle, Sans Arcs, Hunkpapa, Yanktonai and Santee.
By 1870 around half the entire Sioux people were on reservations and drawing provisions from agencies. The Yanktons lived peaceably on their reservation in Charles Mix County, South Dakota; the Yanktonais were at Devil’s Lake and Fort Yates (Upper Yanktonai) and Fort Thompson (Lower Yanktonai); the Sissetons and Wahpetons, under the Renvilles and Red Iron, were at Lake Traverse and Devil’s Lake; the Minneconjous, Sans Arcs, and Two Kettles at Cheyenne River Agency (Fort Bennett); the Hunkpapas and Blackfoot Sioux at Grand River (Fort Yates); the Oglalas and Brulés under the Whetstone Agency (Fort Randall); and the Lower Brulés at Fort Thompson. A mixed group of Santees were now at Niobrara, Nebraska, and a colony of the latter group at Flandreau. In 1869-70 peace returned to Western Sioux country, and Chiefs Red Cloud and Spotted Tail made their first visits to Washington.