The great linguistic stock or family which embraces not only the Sioux or Dakota proper, but the Missouri, Omaha, Ponka, Osage, Kansa, Oto, Assinaboin, Gros Ventre or Minnitari, Crow, Iowa, Mandan, and some others, has been frequently styled the Dakota family. Maj. J. W. Powell, the Director of the Bureau of Ethnology, from consideration of priority, has lately adopted the name Siouan for the family, and for the grand division of it popularly called Sioux has used the term Dakota, which the people claim for themselves.
The word “Dakota” is translated in Riggs’s dictionary of that language as “leagued” or “allied.” The title Sioux, which is indignantly repudiated by the people, is either the last syllable or the last two syllables, according to pronunciation, of “Nadowesioux,” which is the French plural of the Algonkin name for the Dakotas “Nadowessi,” “hated foe.” The Ojibwa called the Dakota “Nadowessi,” which is their word meaning rattlesnake, or, as others translate, adder, with a contemptuous or diminutive termination; the plural is Nadowessiwak or Nadawessyak. The French gave the name their own form of the plural and the voyagers and trappers cut it down to “Sioux.”
The more important of the tribes and organized bands into which the Dakotas are now divided, being the dislocated remains of the “Seven Great Council Fires,” are as follows:
Yankton and Yanktonai or Ihanktonwạn, both derived from a root meaning “at the end,” alluding to the former locality of their villages.
Sihasapa, or Blackfeet.
Ohenonpa, or Two-Kettles.
Itaziptco, Without Bow. The French equivalent Sans Arc is more commonly used.
Minneconjou, translated “Those who plant by the water,” the physical features of their old home.
Sitcangu, Burnt Hip or Brulé.
Santee, subdivided into Wahpeton, Men among Leaves, i. e., among forests, and Sisseton, Men of Prairie Marsh. Two other bands, now practically extinct, formerly belonged to the Santee, or as it is more correctly spelled, Isanti tribes, from the root “Issan,” knife. Their former territory furnished the material for stone knives, from the manufacture of which they were called the “knife people.”