The name "Sioux" is a French rendering of the Ojibwa word nadewisou, meaning "treacherous snakes." The name was never meant to be a compliment since the French were at war with us at the time. Only recently have our people started using the name Sioux as an identity. Before we had always referred to ourselves as "An Alliance of Friends."
In the Santee dialect, “alliance of friends�?is spelled and pronounced, "Dakhota," in the Yankton dialect it is "Nakhota," and in the Teton dialect, it is "Lakhota."
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.
In 1990 there were more than 100,000 Sioux in the United States and more than 10,000 in Canada.
To the Lakota the concept of value ie; material worth - personal wealth, is not measured in personal material possessions. Unlike the dominant society, for a Lakota individual to consider themselves "wealthy" or "rich", one measured such a concept in "How many relatives you had!"
Contrary to the belief that our personal wealth was measured in how many horses a person possessed, the Lakota considered themselves wealthy if they could claim "family" relationships with as many people as possible. Horses were looked upon as wealth to be sure, but they were a source of disposable wealth that a person used in order to obtain the virtue of generosity. To "give away" ones possessions showed the people that a person was generous and thus deserving of respect and honor. In the traditional manner a "poor" man was someone who had very few relatives and perhaps the worst state any person could ever find themselves in was if he or she actually grew up as a wablenica-(orphan); someone with no relatives whatsoever! Our kinship system insured that children would always benefit from having "someone" they could call Ate and Ina. Our family relationships provided much more security and support for people than does the dominant societies nuclear family system.
He who is our Grandfather and Father has established a relationship with my people the Sioux. It is our duty to make a rite which should extend this relationship to the different people of different nations. May that which we do here be an example to others!
Through these rites a three-fold peace is established: The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere. It is within each of us. This is the real Peace, and the others are but reflections of this.
The second peace is that which is made between two individuals. And the third is that which is made between two nations.
But above all, you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men.
�?Hehaka Sapa (Black Elk), Oglala Lakota Holy Man,
speaking on the Hunkapi (Making of Relatives Ritual).
Adapted from various sources and
"Sioux," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. 
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