Uncpapa, once the most warlike and probably the most powerful of all the bands, though not the largest.
Oglala. The meaning and derivation of this name and of Uncpapa have been the subjects of controversy.
Hale, Gallatin, and Riggs designate a “Titon tribe” as located west of the Missouri, and as much the largest division of the Dakotas, the latter authority subdividing into the Sichangu, Itazipcho, Sihasapa, Minneconjou, Ohenonpa, Oglala, and Huncpapa, seven of the tribes specified above, which he calls bands. “Titon,” (from the word tintan, meaning “at or on land without trees or prairie,”) was the name of a tribal division, but it has become only an expression for all those tribes whose ranges are on the prairie, and thus it is a territorial and accidental, not a tribular distinction. One of the Dakotas at Fort Rice spoke to the present writer of the “hostiles” as “Titons,” with obviously the same idea of locality, “away on the prairie,” it being well known that they were a conglomeration from several tribes.
LONE-DOG’S WINTER COUNT.
Fig. 183.
Fig. 183, 1800-’01.—Thirty Dakotas were killed by Crow Indians. The device consists of thirty parallel black lines in three columns, the outer lines being united. In this chart, such black lines always signify the death of Dakotas killed by their enemies.
The Absaroka or Crow tribe, although belonging to the Siouan family, has nearly always been at war with the Dakotas proper since the whites have had any knowledge of either. They are noted for the extraordinary length of their hair, which frequently distinguishes them in pictographs.
Fig. 184.