THE SIOUX WHO CLOSED THE ROAD OF THE WHITES
The name Sioux comes down from a longer Chippewa word meaning "adder" or "enemy." The Indians who bore this name were the powerful Dakotas—the true Sioux of history.
The wide Nation of the Lakota, as these Sioux called themselves, was a league of seven council fires.
The four divisions of the Santees lived in Minnesota; the two divisions of the Yanktons lived between them and the Missouri River; the one large division of the Tetons lived in their Dakota country, west of the Missouri River.
The Santees, the Yanktons and the Tetons spoke their own dialects. They differed in appearance from one another. They were separated into tribes and bands.
Even as late as 1904 they numbered twenty-five thousand people in the United States. By mind, muscle and morals they have been rated as leaders of the Western red men. They roamed hither-thither, and depended upon the buffalo for food. They waged stout war.
The Tetons were the strongest, and formed half of, the Dakota nation. It was chiefly they who fought the United States soldiers for so long. The war opened in 1855, over the killing of a crippled cow by a Min-i-con-jou, at Fort Laramie of Wyoming, on the Oregon Trail of the emigrants.
The Brulés, or Burnt Thighs; the Og-la-las, or Scatter-one's-own; the Hunk-pa-pas, or Those-who-camp-by-themselves; the Min-i-con-jous, or Those-who-plant-beside-the-stream; the Si-ha-sa-pas, or Black-moccasins: these were the Teton Sioux who battled the hardest to save their buffalo and their lands from the white man.
