The Story of the Sioux Indians

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 … Read more

So read the treaty of 1868, made at fort Laramie, Dakota, with a dozen or more tribes of Sioux who had been at war continuously for a half dozen years. For between the nine treaties of 1865 and this new agreement warfare had been going on unceasingly, the annihilation of Fetterman’s command near Fort Phil Kearney being one of the outstanding events of this officially peaceful period.

The manifestations of a new religious idea always have about them something of the mysterious. We who have noted the sudden waves of religious fervor which spread over our own race only to subside as quickly as they come, need not wonder at the rapid growth of the Messiah craze of 1890 among the Sioux Indians. After their five lean years in the Canadian forests, Sitting Bull and his people chose surrender to starvation, and returned to the United States where rations awaited them. Held as prisoners of war for a year and a half at Fort Randall, Dakota, they … Read more

So though the tepee still stands beside the house of wood, though incantations are still heard where the sick man lies, we can only be surprised that so much of the old life has vanished that so much of the new has taken its place; that so many steps have already been taken by these sturdy people on their strange way, the “white man’s road.”