Broken Hoop E-Book

Nils Sandrisser

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 450

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

The Lakota and Dakota are among the most famous indigenous peoples of North America. Known as "Sioux", they were feared for their fierce resistance to the advance of white Americans. Today, they are no longer fighting the U.S. Cavalry, but poverty, alcoholism, racism, and pipelines. "Broken Hoop" describes their history from the first contact with Europeans until today - their wanderings, their development from horticulture farmers to nomads on horseback, their fight for their land and their way of life, and their dealing with the modern world.

Leseprobe

Table of contents

nav

Title and legal disclosure

Preface

1. Westward

1.1 In the land of the smoking water

1.2 Mysterious dogs

1.3 The common culture of the Plains nations

1.4 The society of the Lakota and Dakota

2. Rising tensions

2.1 Alternating relations

2.2 Treaty at the Horse Creek

2.3 Grattan doesn't listen

3. "Eat dung": Uprising of the Santee

3.1 Predictable disaster

3.2 Rage and terror

3.3 On the run

4. The Teton are in the way

4.1 A road through the Powder River country

4.2 Victory

4.3 Another victory

5. Desired mountains

5.1 Custer seeks and shall find

5.2 War again

5.3 A useless success

5.4 Hunger subjugates the Teton

6. At point zero

6.1 Meager life at the Missouri

6.2 The hoop is breaking

6.2 Hope from the spirit world destroyed

7. Poverty and new start

7.1 Less and less land

7.2 Another policy

7.3 New consciousness

8. The Lakota and Dakota today

8.1 Gloomy heritage

8.2 Steps forward

8.3 Petroleum and water

Epilogue

Chronological table

Glossary

Literature

Title and legal disclosure

Nils Sandrisser

Broken Hoop

The History of the Lakota and Dakota Nations

For Victoria, Nikita and Arne

LEGAL DISCLOSURE:

Nils Sandrisser

Niederurseler Landstraße 55

60439 Frankfurt/Main, Germany

"X", former "Twitter": @NilsSandrisser

© 2018

5th, updated and extended edition, © 2023

Transparency notice: To improve his style in the English translation, the author used the artificial intelligence program "DeepL Write"

About the author: Nils Sandrisser is a journalist working for the news agency epd in Frankfurt/Main in Germany. He covers mainly historic, medicinal and health policy topics. He has studied history, journalism, political science and Spanish. Before becoming a journalist, he worked as a paramedic.

Preface

Preface to the English edition

For most of us, the word "Indian" conjures up an image from Western movies. In our mind's eye, fierce warriors appear, colorfully painted, their pitch-black hair braided and adorned with feathers, wearing breechcloth and moccasins. A typical scene: Indigenous braves on pinto horses charge a wagon box and circle around it, brandishing tomahawks and drawing bows. A faceless, screaming mass of wild riders, shot from their saddles by the white occupants of the wagons.

In the original German edition of this book, I used the word "Indianer", which translates to "Indian", and I still do. Of course, I am aware that there has been, and still is, a lot of discussion about the term "Indian". It has a history of devaluing the people it refers to. The U.S. Constitution refers to the natives as "merciless Indian savages". And there are more negative images associated with the term than that of a fierce and unsympathetic warrior. There is also the cliché of a miserable figure, poor, unwilling to work, begging for whiskey without any dignity.

But the implications of the German word "Indianer" is very different from the English word "Indian". From a German point of view, a North American aboriginal is a person with a great sense of justice, a brave person who doesn't know fear or pain, with a spiritual connection to the nature that surrounds him. And most important, he is the good guy, the victim, while the bad guys are clearly the whites who steal his land, betray him for his rights, and kill him and his children. To a large extent, this image goes back to the time of Karl May, a writer of the late 19th century, largely unknown outside the German-speaking world, but one of the most successful German writers to this day. He wrote that he had been to the West, befriended an Apache "chief" named Winnetou, and had many dangerous adventures with him.

Of course, all of this was completely made up by Karl May, although he claimed it was true. And although it was soon discovered that he was lying, his readers believed him at first. And the image of the natives that May had painted was deeply ingrained in the minds of the German public and is still operative today. In this image, the "Indians" are noble, innocent, but quite capable people.

As human beings, we tend to organize our world into categories for better understanding. These categories are imaginations of what reality is like in each of our minds. And these imaginations are transported by language images. So these words carry stereotypes: We ascribe certain qualities to them, and we do so without thinking. Almost every name for a group of people carries a stereotype. Even the words "German" or "British" carry associations of how the people they refer to think, feel, and behave.

But when we evaluate a stereotype, whether positive or negative, it becomes a prejudice. And at least now it should be clear that it is a no-go to call people by terms that carry negative prejudices. It makes no difference that some natives today seem to have no problem with the term "Indian" and that the term "American Indian" is widely accepted. The German word "Indianer" was never intended to conjure up the image of a subhuman, but the English word "Indian" was. It will therefore no longer appear in the English version of this book, except in direct quotations and set expressions.

When considering the meaning of the terms, it is also necessary to think about the term "Sioux". It originated in the Ojibwa language and is pejorative. In the English language, the term does not have a good reputation either. This is not surprising, since the Lakota – or "Teton Sioux" – would be fierce opponents of the United States in several wars. In the 1860s and 1870s, the Lakota and Dakota killed many Euro-Americans. Three times in all, the U.S. Army suffered defeat without a single soldier surviving in wars against native peoples, and all three times the Lakota were the enemy. In 1868, they even managed to win a war against the U.S., what was unprecedented, and the devastating defeat of the U.S. Cavalry at the Little Bighorn River by a coalition of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho remains a kind of trauma in the collective memory of the United States. Whoever is the enemy in such historical events automatically and forever bears the stamp of the bad guy.

Needless to say, the natives were only able to stop the expansion of the United States for a short time. A few years later, their defeat was sealed. Their story is so interesting and instructive because it reveals, as if under a magnifying glass, many of the factors that so adversely affected all North American aboriginals.

The seven nations collectively known as the "Sioux" called themselves the Lakota or Dakota. Today, many of them have adopted "Sioux" as a self-designation, at least when they describe themselves in English. For example, they speak of themselves as the "Standing Rock Sioux Tribe" or the "Yankton Sioux Tribe". But they haven't forgotten the names for themselves in their ancestral language. Even though most of them no longer speak it, they prefer to call themselves Dakota or Lakota. There is absolutely no reason not to call them by these names – again, except in direct quotations and set expressions. An author should have at least that much respect for the people he writes about.

But this principle is not absolute. At least not if the result is to be an enjoyable read, which is especially important for a journalist. If the Cheyenne were called "Tsetsêhestâhese", the Arapaho "Hinono'eino" and the Ojibwa "Anishinabe", the result would be an unreadable, unwieldy mess. But fortunately, the foreign designations Cheyenne, Ojibwa, Arapaho, Shoshone, and Crow do not have the disrespectful undertone of the word Sioux. So the neighboring peoples of the Lakota and Dakota can keep the names in this book through which the world came to know them.

Maps

The map shows most of the current reservations and the approximate territories of the Lakota and Dakota around the year 1800. After that, the four Santee nations and the Yankton lost much land, and the Yanktonai and the Teton moved north and west. Permission: CC0, www.demis.nl

Military clashes between Dakota and U.S. troopsPermission: CC0, www.demis.nl

Military clashes between Lakota and U.S. troopsPermission: CC0, www.demis.nl

1. Westward

1.1 In the land of the smoking water

The snow is falling in thick flakes. Because of the bad weather, the two French explorers and fur traders, Pierre Esprit Radisson and Médart Chouart, are unable to leave their camp in the forests of the Great Lakes to hunt. They are going hungry. In 1660, winter just won't go away.

When the snowfall finally eases, they find a hospitable welcome from some people in what is now the Wisconsin-Minnesota border area. Radisson and Chouart introduce themselves to their new acquaintances with a blowoff. While sitting around a fire in a lodge and smoking a pipe, the natives scatter tobacco into the flames. The French do the same with gunpowder, causing their hosts to immediately rush off in all directions "without any further delay or looke for so much time as to looke for the dore", as Radisson smirkingly notes.1

The French colonists in the Americas do known of these hospitable people by hearsay for 20 years already. The Ojibway, who live north of the Great Lakes and trade with the French, told them about them and called them "Nadoweis-siw", which means "little snakes". A loose translation would be "enemies not to be taken too seriously". The Ojibway had already reserved the more respectful term "big snakes" for the Iroquois living south of the lakes. A century and a half later, however, the Ojibway would take the "Nadoweis-siw" very, very seriously as enemies.2 The "Nadoweis-siw" call themselves Lakota or Dakota, meaning "friends" or "allies" in their various dialects. For the people of this nation, Radisson and Chouart are the first Europeans they see. The French slur the Ojibway term to "Nadouessioux", and both they and the English-speaking Americans later shorten it to "Sioux".3

For the further relationship between “Nadouessiox” and the French, Radisson's and Chouart's rough joke is not harmful. When Radisson later visits them twice and brings up his gunpowder act again, he only makes everyone laugh.4 French traders and missionaries then visit the Lakota and Dakota. In 1686, a trader named Nicholas Perrot establishes a fort in their territory.5 Nine years later, one of their representatives visits the French governor in Montreal, assuring him of the Lakota's and Dakota's friendship and asking him to send more traders.6

By far the most important export of the indigenous peoples, and of particular interest to the French, is furs. In return, they provide the natives with goods they cannot manufacture themselves: metal tools, glass and firearms. The eastern groups of the Dakota have mainly beaver and muskrat pelts to offer, the western Dakota and Lakota bison hides.7 Although the relations between the "Nadouessioux" and the French are rather friendly, they are not completely free of tensions. The trader Perrot is said to have been sometimes confronted with hostile Dakota. In 1736, the Dakota kill 20 Frenchmen at the Lake of the Woods, on the present border between the United States and Canada. This may have been a harsh reaction by the Dakota to the French trading with their enemies, the Cree.8

The territory inhabited by the Lakota and Dakota is the upper Mississippi River, west of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior, in today's U.S. states Wisconsin and Minnesota. The name "Minnesota" even comes from their language. Mni šota means "smoking water", referring to the fog that often hangs over the waters of this region of forests, swamps and lakes.9

Where the Lakota and Dakota originally came from will probably never be known. Linguists have debated whether the Siouan languages may have originated on the Atlantic coast, in the area of present-day North Carolina. Another theory was that they came from the Ohio Valley.10 The most widely accepted variant is that the Siouan languages developed in the middle Mississippi valley about 2,500 years ago. According to archaeological research, the ancestors of the Lakota and Dakota arrived at the Mississippi headwaters around 800 AD. However, these findings should be taken with a grain of salt. Linguistic conclusions are often based on theoretical considerations. And archaeological research can only prove cultural similarities, not whether the people whose remains are being studied saw themselves as a common ethnicity or shared a common language. So it is unclear when exactly the Lakota and Dakota came to see and call themselves Lakota and Dakota.11

In general, the way of life of the Lakota and Dakota was similar to that of the neighboring nations in the region. The woodland natives of northeastern America lived in villages of six to eight families during the winter. In the summer, when food was plentiful, larger groups would gather. For hunting or warfare, several villages would sometimes join together. The natives lived in conical or domed wigwams covered with birch bark or hides, fished in the lakes, hunted deer and small game in the woods, and did some horticulture.12

Some of the whites who visited the Nadouessioux reported that these people were farmers, others said that they did not practice agriculture. Probably both are true: Some villages were surrounded by fields, others were not. At the time the French met the Lakota and Dakota, corn and tobacco are confirmed as their crops. They may also have grown beans and squash. At the very least, planting corn, beans and squash in the same field was common among aboriginals in the Americas.13 And at least by the 18th century, it was undisputed that the Dakota were cultivating these three crops.14

The Iroquois called these three plants "the three sisters" because they fit together perfectly.15 The beans wrapped themselves around the corn, while the large leaves of the squash plants shaded the ground, inhibiting weed growth and keeping the soil moist while protecting it from being washed away by heavy rains. In addition, the bean plants kept the soil fertile because bacteria at their roots fixed nitrogen there, which fertilized them and other plants. These three crops also complemented each other nutritionally. Corn is rich in starch, but lacks lysine and tryptophan, two amino acids that the human body cannot produce but needs to generate essential proteins. The bean fills this gap perfectly because it is rich in lysine and tryptophan. Corn, beans and squash grown together not only keep the soil healthy, but also provide a diet that people can live on without deficiency symptoms.16

Nevertheless, the Lakota and Dakota subsisted to a considerable extent not from the fruits of their fields but from hunting. Especially the western groups would push into the grasslands of the Great Plains and kill bison. The eastern groups would use the wild rice.17 This plant, which is botanically unrelated to rice grew in abundance in the littoral zones of the lakes in the Mississippi headwaters region. The aboriginals harvested it by paddling their canoes through the wild rice in shallow water, bending down the 18-foot-long stalks and threshing the seeds into the canoe. Steering the boats was the men's job, threshing the women's. In an earthen pit lined with hides, the women pounded the dried wild rice seeds.18

In early spring, just after the thaw, maple syrup production began. The natives in the Great Lakes region carved the bark of maple trees and collected the sugary secret in wooden containers or in canoes. The reducing of the syrup was usually the work of women, children and older men, as the younger men left the villages to hunt during this time of year. Strongly reduced and ground into powder, the sugar could be used for the rest of the year. Indigenous cuisine used it to enhance wild rice, corn, and meat dishes..19

French traders greatly influenced the development of the Lakota and Dakota, albeit indirectly and most likely unintentionally. They did so through one of their trade items: firearms. With them, the French supplied the Ojibway, who lived relatively close to the French colonies in present-day Canada.20 Of course, this gave the Ojibway an overwhelming advantage over their indigenous enemies, who lived farther from the French. And the Ojibway didn't miss the opportunity to turn the French guns on their red neighbors and expand at their expense. As a result, by 1740, the Lakota and Dakota abandoned their now dangerous territories and retreated southwest. They did not leave all at once. Small groups left over the course of several decades.21 The peasant nations of the Arapaho and Cheyenne shared their fate, also looking into the barrels of the Ojibway guns and moving west.22

Of course, the regions into which the Lakota and Dakota were moving were not uninhabited. The newcomers themselves were hardly more pleasant neighbors than the Ojibway, and they pushed the old-timers south and west, particularly when they were well supplied with French and British firearms.23 The Omaha were the first to suffer. In their territory of southwestern Minnesota and northern Iowa, the Lakota and Dakota had established villages by the end of the 18th century and pushed the Omaha toward the Missouri River. In Minnesota, the victors split into seven groups, but retained a sense of similarity and belonging together.24 They spoke of themselves of the oceti šakówiŋ, the "seven council fires". The names of the nations of the seven council fires were:

Teton,

Yankton,

Yanktonai,

Mdewakanton,

Wahpekute,

Wahpeton and

Sisseton.

25

This differentiation also was along dialect lines. The Teton are identical with the Lakota, while the other groups together form the Dakota. There is also a third dialect, the Nakota, whose speakers weren't part of the oceti šakówiŋ. The main difference of those dialects is the use of the phonemes L, D, and N. Words pronounced in Lakota with an L, sound in Dakota with D and in Nakota with N – as the names they had for themselves attest. All three words – Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota, mean "allies" or "friends". The word "bird" translates in Lakota ziŋtkala, in Dakota ziŋtkada and in Nakota ziŋtkana..26

For a long time, linguists considered the Yankton and Yanktonai to the Nakota. Indeed they speak some words with N, but by no means all. So, more recent research suggests that these two nations are to be counted to the Dakota, forming the western Dakota, while the eastern Dakota are the Mdewakanton, Wahpekute, Wahpeton and Sisseton, known collectively as the "Santee".27

But the Assiniboine are undoubtedly speakers of the N-dialect, the Nakota. The Assiniboine call themselves Nakota or Nakonabi – this proper name also illustrates the relatedness. However, the Assiniboin an the one side and the Lakota and Dakota on the other side were bitter enemies. The Assiniboine had split from the Yanktonai before the first contact to whites and had moved north into what is today the borderland between the United States and Canada. There they had sided with old enemies, the Cree and the Ojibway. From then on, the Lakota and Dakota called their relatives hohe, "rebels". The name Assiniboine was given to them by the now befriended Ojibway. In their language assi-nibo-in means "those who cook with stones". This name comes from the technique of heating water by throwing red-hot stones into it – a technique used by the Assiniboine as well as by the Lakota and Dakota.28

Radisson's original text has not been preserved, only an English translation, see Wisconsin Historical Society:

Voyages of Peter Esprit Radissonn, being an account of travels and experiences among the North American Indians, from 1652 to 1684, transcribed from original manuscripts in the Bodleian Library and the British Museum

, p. 209, retrievable:

https://content.wisconsinhistory.org/digital/collection/tp/id/39401

, retrieved 1-4-2021.

Gibbon, Guy:

The Sioux. The Dakota and Lakota Nations

, Malden 2003, p. 48, see also Stammel, Heinz-Josef:

Indianer. Legende und Wirklichkeit von A-Z

, Sonderausgabe, Munich 1992, p. 276.

Gollner-Marin, Martin Nizhoní:

Ikce Wicaša - Der Überlebenskampf der Lakota und die Liebe zur Weisheit. Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philosophischen Fakultäten der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität zu Freiburg i.Br.

, Freiburg 1994, pp. 19-20.

Meyer, Roy W.:

History of the Santee Sioux. United States Indian Policy on Trial

, 2. Ed. Lincoln/London 1993, pp. 3-5.

Ibid, p. 9.

DeMallie, Raymond J.:

Community in Native America: Continuity and Change among the Sioux

, in:

Journal de la Société des américanistes 95 1/2009

, retrievable:

https://doi.org/10.4000/jsa.10792

, retrieved 6-3-2023.

Gibbon:

The Sioux

, pp. 53-59.

Rothman, Hal K.:

Managing the Sacred and the Secular: an Administrative History of Pipestone National Monument

, Henderson 1992, pp. 13-14.

Stammel:

Legende und Wirklichkeit

, p. 276.

Maroukis, Thomas C.:

Peyote and the Yankton Sioux. The Life and Times of Sam Necklace

, Norman 2004, p. 6.

Gibbon:

The Sioux

, pp. 31-36.

DeMallie, Raymond J.:

The Sioux at the Time of European Contact: An Ethnohistorical Problem

, in: Strong, Pauline T./Kan, Sergei A.:

New Perspectives on Native North America: Cultures, Histories, an Representations

, Lincoln 2006, p. 248.

Landon, Amanda J.:

The „How“ of the Three Sisters: The Origin of Agriculture in Mesoamerica and the Human Niche

, in:

Nebraska Anthropologist 40/2008

, p. 118, see also: Hurst Thomas, David:

Die Bauern der Neuen Welt

, in: Burenhult, Göran (Ed.):

Menschen der Urzeit. Die Frühgeschichte der Menschheit von den Anfängen bis zur Bronzezeit

, Cologne 2004, pp. 384-391.

Maroukis, Thomas C.:

Peyote and the Yankton Sioux

, p. 27.

Taylor, Colin:

Der Nordosten

, in: idem et al.:

Indianer. Die Ureinwohner Nordamerikas – Geschichte, Kulturen, Völker und Stämme

, Gütersloh/München 1992, p. 231.

Hurst:

Die Bauern der Neuen Welt

, in: Burenhult (Hg.):

Menschen der Urzeit

, S. 380.

DeMallie:

Ethnohistorical Problem

, in: Strong/Kan:

New Perspectives

, pp. 248-249.

Taylor:

Nordosten

, in: ders. et al.:

Ureinwohner Nordamerikas

, p. 237, see also Maroukis:

Peyote and the Yankton Sioux

, pp. 9-10, see also Stammel:

Legende und Wirklichkeit

, p. 290.

Eastman, Charles A.:

Indian Boyhood

, New York 1902, pp. 20-23, retrievable:

http://pinkmonkey.com/dl/library1/digi152.pdf

, retrieved 6-3-2017.

Stammel:

Legende und Wirklichkeit

, p. 215.

Ibid, p. 276.

Ibid, p. 202, see also Gibbon:

The Sioux

, pp. 53-54.

Hyde, George E.:

Red Cloud's Folk. A History of the Oglala Sioux Indians

, Norman 1975, p. 9.

Lutz, Gregor:

Das Who-is-Who der Teton Sioux

, Norderstedt 2009, p. 8.

Ibid, pp. 8-10. However, the term

oceti šakówiŋ

is not historically documented before the beginning of the 18th century, see DeMallie:

Continuity and Change among the Sioux

, in:

Journal de la Société des américanistes 95 1/2009

, retrievable:

https://doi.org/10.4000/jsa.10792

, retrieved 6-3-2023.

Krüger, Martin:

Lakóta wówaglaka – Lakota (Sioux) für Anfänger

, Wyk auf Föhr 2000, p. 14.

Miller, David et al.:

The History of the Assiniboine and the Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana

, 1800-2000, Poplar 2008, pp. 34.

Stammel:

Legende und Wirklichkeit

, p. 203.

1.2 Mysterious dogs

Far away from the Lakota and Dakota, on the battlefields of the Seven Year's War between the European powers, important things for the indigenous nations in North America were about to happen. In the Peace of Paris 1763 France had to cede its colonies in present-day Canada to Britain. Before that, the British had created military facts and had conquered Montreal and Quebec. Official trade with the French came to a standstill for the natives. However, many French traders continued their businesses on their own accounts and supplied the natives with goods in exchange for furs.1

For the Lakota and Dakota, this meant no disadvantage, for British explorers and traders from the Hudson's Bay Company came to them in the years after 1760. With them, the bargains were even better than with the French, soon the amount of trade with the British was four times higher than the amount with the French. In particular the Yanktonai sent trade delegations to the Forts of the Hudson's Bay Company in the Red River area in present-day Manitoba and soon slipped into the role of distributors for British goods like knifes, arrowheads, cooking utensils, and firearms. Each year they hosted trade fairs in their villages.2

But these bargains came to an end in 1821. In this year, the Hudson's Bay Company endet the trade with the Dakota, because the Ojibway, who also were doing pretty good businesses with the British, had insisted on that end. The Dakota had become more and more powerful, and this power had made the Ojibway nervous. On several occasions, trade delegations of the competitors had quarreled with each other when they showed up at the same fort at the same time.3 After the bargains with the British ended for the Dakota, they increased trading with the Métis. These were descendants of white fur trappers and native women in Canada. They played a vital role as middlemen, with their business model consisting to a certain amount in bootlegging of restricted or prohibited products across the border. With the Métis, the Dakota, Lakota and other nations exchanged furs for guns, ammunition and liquor.4

The rising power of the Dakota and especially the Lakota came from a creature they first encountered around the year 1700. The horse would radically change their entire way of life or at least that of the Lakota, although it took them until circa 1750 to make this animal a central component of their culture.5

As it is well known, the Spanish had introduced the horse to the New World. With 16 of these animals Hernán Cortés began his conquest of the Aztec empire in Mexico. Contrary to what is often written, mounted warriors in glittering cuirasses did not make the indigenous Mexicans to flee in panic, but certainly they had some respect.6 During Spanish advances out of Mexico, the aborigines in the north of the continent became aware the new hoofed animal. In 1541, Francisco de Coronado pushed northeast, hoping to find the mystic gold land Quivira. His 250 riders led with them more than 1,000 reserve horses and mules. Although Coronado was surprised by a hailstorm quite early in his expedition, in which the most of his mounts and pack animals ran away, he made it as far as present-day Kansas, where he eventually turned back, due to the absolute lack of golden lands.7

By the beginning of the 17th century, Coronado's now-feral horses had grown into large herds. Natives took possession of some of the animals, learned to ride and to breed them.8 In addition, many horses were taken by the indigenous peoples, when the Pueblo nations in what is now the Southwest of the United States revolted against the Spanish, pressing them so hard that they retreated southwards for a time.9

The first true horse people in North America were the Shoshone and the Comanche, who split off from the Shoshone. Originally at home in the Rocky Mountains of Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado, a complete new living environment opened for them: the Great Plains. Around 1700 these lands were populated along the main courses of the rivers, but wide areas were deserted. An extreme environment: arid, whipped by winds, and with temperature differences of up to 70 degrees Celsius (almost 160 degrees Fahrenheit) within a year.10 It was the horse that made it habitable. On high horse, the Shoshone and Comanche hunted the bison more successfully. They used the hides of the wild bovines to make large, conical tents that kept cool in the hot summers and warm in the cold winters. Mounted, they could carry more food than on foot. Their numbers increased, and they expanded their territory enormously. While the Comanche moved south into the prairies of present-day Texas and Oklahoma, the Shoshone roamed a vast territory from the Arkansas River to today's Canadian states Saskatchewan and Alberta by 1750, militarily dominating their unmounted neighbors.11

But these neighbors didn't stay unmounted for long. They captured horses from or traded them with the Shoshone, for the Shoshone exchanged goods for these animals. Their neighbors in turn traded horses for agricultural products and other goods with the farming peoples further east. Centers of bargain were the palisaded and walled earth house villages of the Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa. These three neighboring nations, located at the Missouri on both sides of the present-day border between North and South Dakota, were powerful at that time. In 1805, the fur trader Charles Mackenzie witnessed in a Hidatsa village the arrival of a Crow trading delegation with a purchasing power of 250 horses. In return they received corn, metal tools and metal cooking pots – and 200 rifles with 100 rounds of ammunition each.12 The latter was particularly significant.

The French, the British, and later the U.S. Americans never gave the natives a lot of firearms, and seldom really good ones, but it was still more than the Spanish were willing to give. "No guns to natives" was their strict policy. Bad luck for the Shoshone who traded with the Spanish. By acquiring horses their neighbors had caught up militarily, and now firearms made them superior to the Shoshone.13 An old Blackfeet named Saukamappee told to the explorer David Thompson about a battle of Blackfeet and Assiniboine against a large Shoshone war party, probably in Saskatchewan around 1740. The allied nations combined fielded ten riflemen against the Shoshone, and achieved with them a punching-through outcome, as Saukamappe reported:

"The Snake mans finding so many of them killed and wounded kept themselves behind their shields. […] Our shots caused consternation and dismay along their whole line. The battle had begun about noon, and the sun was not yet half down, when we percieved some of them had crawled away from the shields, and were taking to flight."14

The splendour of the Shoshone was gone. From the northeast the Blackfeet and the Assiniboine pushed onto the Plains. From the East came the Cheyenne and the Arapaho.15 And on top to the military pressure came smallpox. An epidemic around the year 1780 hit the Shoshone particularly hard.16

The amazement the horse must have caused among the Lakota is reflected in the name they gave it. Šuŋka wakhaŋ translates to "mysterious dog". Dogs were the only domestic animals the natives knew before. The term "wakhaŋ" – it can be translated with both "sacred, mysterious" and "enigmatic, arcane" – was used by the Lakota and Dakota to refer to just about anything that they never encountered before, that was beyond description with words from their world, but needed a name.17 Firearms, for example, they called maza wakhaŋ, "mysterious metal".18 Alcohol was known to them as mni wakhaŋ, "mysterious water". The eastern Dakota called horses – somewhat lesser mystifying – šuŋka taŋka, "big dogs".19

Probably they received their first horses from the Arikara, who with approximate 20,000 souls were as numerous as the Lakota and Dakota combined.20 The first contacts between these nations were likely trade meetings, where the Teton would sometimes act the part of beggars, asking for corn and beans. But soon they emphasized their requests with the help of their British rifles. The Arikara had only few firearms. So the trade missions gradually turned into raids. The Lakota and Dakota once again turned out as neighbors best seen from the back. Horses, of course, were among their favourite prizes in their raids against the Arikara.21

Trade networks and raids ensured that horses spread rapidly in the northern and eastern direction during the 18th century, while access to firearms moved slowly south and west. For the Lakota and Dakota, these two things opened up the very environment that the Shoshone dad previously occupied: the Great Plains.22 And it were the Lakota in particular who rose to the challenge. They completely changed their lives and adapted to šuŋka wakhaŋ. But yet they didn't push into the plains west of the Missouri. At this River the Arikara were located like a locking bolt – at least until 1780. In this year the smallpox epidemic which hit the Shoshone so hard also killed four fifths of the Arikara. Their headcount dropped to 4,000, that of their villages from 32 to two.23

The way was now free for the Teton, who where virtually unaffected by the plague. From 1780 and 1800 the Lakota crossed in small groups the Missouri. They abandoned their semi-sedentary lifestyle and became pure nomads.24 Their name "Teton" comes from Thítħuŋwaŋ, meaning "they look for a place to camp".25

By 1800 the migration onto and on the Plains had largely come to a standstill. The Shoshone had retreated to the Rocky Mountains. The Lakota now controlled the area between the Missouri, the Little Missouri and the Black Hills. These mountains had previously been inhabited by the Kiowa, who moved into today's Texas and Oklahoma. The Teton had also pushed the Cheyenne west and the Pawnee south.26 By now they had split into three tribes: the Oglala in the southwest, the Brulé in the southeast, and the Saone in the north. The Saone split again shortly afterwards, so the Teton appeared in seven tribes:

Oglala,

Sicangu (Brulé),

Minneconjou,

Ohenunpa (Two Kettle),

Itazipco (Sans Arc),

Hunkpapa and

Sihasapa (Blackfoot Sioux, not to confuse with the Blackfeet).

27

The Dakota, like the Lakota, had embraced the horse, but kept to their fields. They had stayed east of the Missouri and maintained their half settled, half nomadic way of life. The Eastern Dakota – the Santee nations Mdewakanton, Wahpekute, Wahpeton and Sisseton – lived in the southwestern Minnesota. Between the Santee and the Teton were the Western Dakota, the Yankton and Yanktonai.28

In this juncture, the Yankton fulfilled the special spiritual function as keepers of the pipestone quarries. In their territory were the quarries located from which the Lakota and Dakota obtained the clay stone from which they carved bowls of for their sacred tobacco pipes. The importance of these quarries to the Yankton is illustrated by an incident that the painter George Catlin reported. Catlin, who was one of the first U.S. Americans to travel the Great Plains, wrote that he and an companion wanted to visit the quarries. On their way to them they were stopped by a group of Dakota – probably Yankton – had stopped them. One of their spokesmen had said to them:

"Why do the white men want to go there? You don't have good intentions; we know you don't, and the sooner you turn back the better."29

Like other nations of the Plains culture, the Lakota and Dakota did not get along very well with their indigenous neighbors. To their north the Cree federation was located, which included the Ojibway and the Assiniboine as well as the Cree. To the northwest of the Lakota territory, in modern-day Montana and Alberta, lived the Blackfeet and their allies, the Gros Ventre. To the south, in what is today Nebraska, were the Pawnee, to the west the Crow and the Shoshone. All of them were the targets of Lakota and Dakota warfare and raids, as were the sedentary nations at the Missouri, the Arikara, Hidatsa, Mandan, Ponca, and Omaha.30 The Cheyenne and the Arapaho in the southwest were initially enemies of the Teton. After about 1830, the Lakota formed an alliance with parts of these nations.31

George Catlin visited and painted the pipestone quarries of the Yankton.Permission: CC0, George Catlin, "Pipestone Quarry on the Coteau des Prairies", painting, 1837

Gibbon:

The Sioux

, p. 49.

DeMallie:

Community in Native America

, in:

Journal de la Société des américanistes 95 1/2009

, retrievable:

https://doi.org/10.4000/jsa.10792

, retrieved 6-3-2023, see also Hyde:

Red Cloud's Folk

, p. 8, and Meyer:

Santee Sioux

, pp. 15-20.

McCrady, David G.:

Living with Strangers. The Nineteenth-Century Sioux and the Canadian-American Borderlands

, Toronto/Buffalo/London, p. 10.

Ibid, pp. 45-46.

Rothman:

Managing the Sacred and the Secular

, p. 12, see also Gibbon:

The Sioux

, p. 4.

Rinke, Stefan:

Conquistadoren und Azteken. Cortés und die Eroberung Mexikos

, Munich 2019, p. 327.

Stammel: Legende und Wirklichkeit, p. 59.

Ibid, pp. 59-60.

Drury, Bob/Clavin, Tom:

The Heart of Everything That Is. The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend

, New York 2013, pp. 53-54.

Taylor, Colin:

Die Plains

, in: idem et al:

Indianer. Die Ureinwohner Nordamerikas – Geschichte, Kulturen, Völker und Stämme

, Gütersloh/Munich 1992, p. 62, see also Rothman:

Managing the Sacred and the Secular

, p. 11.

Taylor:

Die Plains

, in: idem et al:

Ureinwohner Nordamerikas

, pp. 63-64.

Ibid, p. 68.

Ibid, p. 66.

Ibid, p. 65, see also Binemma, Theodore:

The common and contested ground: a history of the northwestern Plains from AD. 200 to 1806. A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History

, University of Alberta, Edmonton 1998, p. 191.

Taylor:

Die Plains

, in: idem et al:

Ureinwohner Nordamerikas

, p. 66.

Oeser, Rudolf:

Epidemien. Das Sterben der Indianer

, Norderstedt 2003, p. 116.

Krüger:

Lakóta wówaglaka

, p. 15.

Walker, James R.:

Lakota Belief and Religion (1849)

, ed. by DeMallie, Raymond J. und Jahner, Elaine A, Lincoln 1991, p. 73.

Maroukis:

Peyote and the Yankton Sioux

, p. 16, see also Gollner-Marin:

Ikce Wicaša

, p. 104.

Stammel:

Legende und Wirklichkeit

, p. 276.

Hyde:

Red Cloud's Folk

, p. 18.

Taylor:

Die Plains

, in: idem et al. (Ed.):

Ureinwohner Nordamerikas

, p. 69.

Hyde:

Red Cloud's Folk

, p. 17.

Stammel:

Legende und Wirklichkeit

, p. 276.

LaPointe, Ernie:

Sitting Bull. Sein Leben und Vermächtnis

, Hohenthann 2011, p. 21.

Stammel:

Legende und Wirklichkeit

, p. 276.

Lutz:

Who-is-Who

, p. 9.

Gibbon:

The Sioux

, p. 84, see also Taylor:

Die Plains

, in: idem et al. (Ed.):

Ureinwohner Nordamerikas

, p. 62, and Stammel:

Legende und Wirklichkeit

, p. 276.

Catlin, George:

Die Indianer Nordamerikas

, Vienna, new edition of the German first print of 1851, p. 349.

Taylor:

Die Plains

, in: idem et al. (Ed.):

Ureinwohner Nordamerikas

, p. 62.

Chief Dull Knife College (Ed.):

We, the Northern Cheyenne People. Our Land, Our History, Our Culture

, Lame Deer 2008, p. 14, see also Gibbon:

The Sioux

, p. 88.

1.3 The common culture of the Plains nations

Culturally, the aboriginal peoples of the Great Plains shared a lot of similarities. Whether they were half-sedentary or completely nomadic, whether they practiced agriculture or not: Their material lives were largely based on the hunt. The bison, roaming the prairies in herds numbering in the millions, was the mainstay of their existence. About 100 uses for bison products are known: The hides of this animal were used to make tarpaulins for their tents and warm robes for the winter, the bones to brew glue, the hooves to carve spoons. The natives used the tail as fly flap, the sinews as sewing thread, the thick leather from the bull's neck as soles for the moccasins. Almost every part of the animal was processed. The aboriginals conserved the biggest part of the meat by drying or smoking it for the winter or for times when the hunt was less successful.1

However, it is not entirely true that the natives took from nature only what they needed and wasted nothing, as the topos says. In fact, one of their hunting methods was to stampede a bison herd and drive it over the edge of a cliff. Even if a large part of the meat was preserved, it was impossible to exploit all after such a stunning hunting success. In 1809, the fur trader Alexander Henry came to such a slaughter in what is now Alberta. He reported, that almost all of the bulls were left untouched, only the fine cows were processed.2

Some years later, Goerge Catlin described how natives hunted bison in the middle of winter. At this time of year they had no chance of preserving the meat. But it wasn't food they wanted, they were after furs, since these had a better quality in the winter and could be exchanged more profitably with the Euro-American traders. The meat, Catlin wrote, was left for the wolves.3

So the aboriginal peoples were not always thrifty with their resources, although they only could afford this to a very limited extent. Even from the ancient history of North America such wastes are known. At Olsen-Chubbock in Colorado, archaeologists found the remains of 200 steppe bisons that were killed by natives 10,000 years ago. On many of the skeletons the scientists found no traces of having been processed.4

The roles of the sexes were relatively clear-separated: Women dominated the domestic sphere, men the public. Over time, especially after the introduction of the horse, the male dominance in indigenous societies became more pronounced. In pedestrian times, for example, men and women used to go to the hunts together, but now the gentlemen would ride to the chases separately.5

But the native world was far from a simple binary of male and female. First, it was widely accepted among the indigenous peoples – not only on the Great Plains, but throughout North America – that sex was not necessarily synonymous with gender. Most nations recognized more genders than men and women. The Ojibways, for example, knew three of them: male, female, and "two-spirited". Under "two-spirited" all was included what we know today as homo-, inter-, and transsexual. The Lakota and Dakota called this third gender wiŋkté. Other nations identified four or five genders. And the people who belonged to these genders didn't have to live at the margins of society. On the contrary, it was considered as a great grace to be able to see the world with eyes other than the biologically determined eyes. So these people were held in high esteem. For instance, when a child was born they were asked to choose a name for the baby. Same-sex marriages were usually possible without any hindrance.6

Secondly, in the indigenous world of North America, even those who had clear sex were not obliged to act as such. Men could live as women without anyone being bothered. On the other hand, there were female warriors or hunters. George Catlin wrote about women who participated in warfare or in hunting. Cheyenne women in particular were considered as capable defending themselves.7 The Wahpeton Charles Eastman reported about his grandmother:

"This courageous woman had driven away a party of five Ojibway warriors. They approached the lodge cautiously, but her dog gave timely warning, and she poured into them from behind her defences the contents of a double-barrelled gun, with such good effect that the astonished braves thought it wise to retreat."8

In the indigenous world enemies were omnipresent. Fighting against them was an important part of the Plains native culture of the Plains. Lakota, Crow, Blackfeet or Kiowa were quite militant nations. Perhaps the historian Robert Utley explains best the reasons for the prominent role of warfare in the life of the Plains nations:

"Where their range overlapped with that of others, they fought for control of hunting grounds. They fought in defense against the aggression of others. They fought for plunder, chiefly the horses that comprised the prime measure of wealth. They fought for revenge, in retaliation for injuries real and fancied. They fought for glory and the strictly prescribed war honors that determined prestige and leadership. They fought because they had always fought and knew no other way"9

Pulitzer Prize-winner Larry McMurtry describes a fight between North American natives as a noisy spectacle with lots of yelling, mockery, feint attacks, then and when someone would be wounded and then and when someone would be killed. After individual bravery had been demonstrated to all the witnesses, all participants would yell at each other once more and then ride home. There were some really hard battles and even some massacres, but these were the exemptions.

The casualties of this way of life therefor were not that high to threaten the existence of the nations as such. This was because warfare was highly ritualized. The killing of an enemy was not even highly valued. As a heroic deed of the first order the touching of an enemy with the hand or with a stick was considered.11 The renown Cheyenne brave Big Foot for example prided himself on never having killed an enemy. His reputation was based on his talent to take away the horses of his opponents.12 However: After the end of the 1830s, the warfare intensified, as more and more firearms became available. At the same time, the game became scarce, so some of the smaller nations came under an existential pressure. Much of this pressure came from the Lakota, who became increasingly powerful and the nemesis of many of their neighbors.13

A warrior's social rank of a warrior was largely determined by his military merits and the risk he had taken to obtain them.14 In a sense, war was a manly and dangerous sport. Charles Eastman recounted this in his autobiography, first edited in 1916:

„I felt no hatred for our tribal foes. I looked upon them more as the college athlete regards his rivals from another college. There was no thought of destroying a nation, taking away their country or reducing them to servitude.15

But the ritualization should not obscure the fact that native warfare could be, and generally was, extremely cruel. It hardly ever distinguished between combatants and non-combatants. Between braves, they may have confined themselves to threatening gestures or feints. But in the indigenous view women and children were legitimate targets, often dying when getting into the fingers of enemy warriors. Rape was common, as was kidnapping. Sometimes captives, usually women or children, were assimilated into the tribe.16 For example, the Hunkpapa Sitting Bull adopted an twelve-year-old Assiniboine boy as a brother after his war party had killed the boy's entire family.17 However, the stake though and ritual torture was unknown among the nations of the Plains – except among the Comanche, who were quite inventive in tantalizing their captives.18

For a Plains native, war was a very individual thing. A war party always had only had a rudimentary command, and wasn't a static army that strategists could move around a battlefield like chess pieces. It was more like a collection of warriors or warrior groups. Each fought the way he could best display for all his bravery – the younger the man, the less inclined he generally was to follow orders. No Plains-indigenous war leader ever had complete control over his young lads, least of all a long-time control.19 He only could ensure loyalty by keeping losses at low level. In 1874, for example, when some Comanche and Kiowa were about to attack a group of buffalo hunters, the Comanche shaman Isatai told them that his magic could make them bulletproof. Unfortunately, as McMurtry tersely describes, it turned out that the bullets could penetrate both the medicine and the Comanche very easily.20 For the poor Isatai the disaster produced a pounding, although he laid the blame on a warrior who supposedly had messed up all the magic by riding a mule instead of a horse.21

Scalping was practiced by almost all the nations of North America, and used with purpose. Scalps served as trophies, as certificates of bravery. George Catlin gave an account after he returned from his journey across the northern Plains, how prominent members of a village would display all of their scalps over their lodges on poles, and other inhabitants would do the same, for the prestige of each brave was related to the number of scalps he had taken in danger from his enemies.22

To own the scalp of a woman or of a child was not considered as a disgrace, but as proof that a brave had ventured into the immediate vicinity of an enemy village.23 It was also common to mutilate corpses after a battle. In fact, most Plains nations believed, that after death one would enter a heavenly spirit world, but one would arrive there in the physical state at the time of death. Gouging out eyes or cutting off hands, ears, noses or penises was therefore intended to mess up the afterlives of the dead enemies. However, it is difficult to find similar spiritual explanations for procedures like slicing the bladder and defacate into it. To a large extent, the widespread mutilating could be interpreted as a possibility for the winners – and very often for their women – to release their surplus adrenaline and to postmortally humiliate their defeated enemies.24 Also, the line to macabre jokes was crossed easily, how an episode shows that the prominent Crow Plenty Coups described. He recalled the hoax of one Medicine Raven, implying that he found this kind of humor tasteless. A group of Crow, including Plenty Coups and Medicine Raven, had fought with Lakota, and after that visited a friend named Paul McCormack, who was called called Yellow Eyes by the Crow, in a trading fort. Plenty Coups reported:

"Yellow Eyes ran straight to Medicine Raven, and, hastily pulling off a mitten, reached out his hand. […] Medicine Raven's buffalo robe was wrapped tightly about his body, and he only stuck out a hand which Yellow Eyes grabbed […]. He shook the hand very hard. When Medicine Raven turned around to shake the hand of Major Pease, I saw Yellow Eyes spring backward and drop something in the thin snow […]. I looked. It was the frozen hand of a Sioux."25

On the other hand, mutilation served as documentation. Each nation hat its own way of marking its involvement in a battle on the bodies of those killed. After a clash between natives and US soldiers in Nebraska in June 1867, the doctor William Bell recounted how the bodies of five dead soldiers were found after they had been cut off from the main force and annihilated by the natives:

"The muscles of the right arm, hacked to the bone, speak of the Cheyennes, or 'Cut arms'; the nose slit denoted the 'smaller tribe', or Arapahos; and the throat cut bears witness that the Sioux were also present. […] It was evident, from the number of different devices, that warriors from several tribes had each purposely left one in the dead man's body."26

Neither scalping nor mutilation were purely indigenous habits. Whites also removed the skin of the head or parts of it of their aboriginal enemies.27 And that was only the most popular atrocity committed by both sides. The U.S. officer James Connor, who was present when white militiamen attacked a village inhabited by Cheyenne and Arapaho in 1864, described:

"In going over the battleground the next day I did not see a body of man, woman, or child but was scalped, and in many instances their bodies were mutilated in the most horrible manner […]. I also heard of numerous instances in which men had cut out the private parts of females and stretched them over the saddle-bows and wore them over their hats while riding in the ranks."28

Of course the life of a Plains native was not all fighting and mutilating. There were more virtues besides the military qualities that could help a Kiowa, Arapaho or a Lakota to win the respect of his people. Forethought, for instance, sense of responsibility or generosity – basically the virtues which are esteemed all over the world.29 Wealthy tribe members were expected to give away or to lend horses to poorer people. Those who were seen to be generous gained not only social prestige but also authority.30 The Oglala Crazy Horse for example was known not only for his merits in war, but also for the helpfulness with which he cared for the poorer families in his group.31 A witted horse stealer also was an respectable person, for the weal and woe of the Plains natives depended on the possession or non-possession of horses. As well as going to war, they often went on raids. Capturing horses was undoubtedly the indigenous national sport.32 The Crow, with an average of 15 horses per household, were considered as the wealthiest on the northern Plains, and so received constant unwelcome visits from Lakota-, Cheyenne-, Arapaho-, and Blackfeet horse capturers.33

Almost all dwellers of the Plains had a system of societies. These associations kept order in the village or organized feasts throughout the year. There were societies for warriors, for elders, for healers, for religious matters, for men and women. They somewhat resemble the European system of guilds and crafts in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period.34

Unlike in Europe, people weren't born into such a system, and there were no sanctions if social norms were not followed – as long as no one had a disadvantage from it. Pacifists, homo- and transsexuals had their place in this structure. For them special societies existed, or they simply founded them themselves. In the semi- or full-nomadic native nations the military societies fulfilled the important task of protection. The societies were an essential help, because the next of kin, on whose aid one could rely in the event of an attack, often camped far away from each other.35 Societies were not always strictly limited to members of one's own nation. The Oglala Young Man Afraid Of His Horses for example joined the Society of the Crooked Lances of the befriended Cheyenne.36