The Sioux is one of our most famous Indian nations. As the Iroquois activities two centuries ago placed them in the forerank of American aborigines, so the Sioux from the days of Lewis and Clark down to the present have been much in evidence. They are primarily a strong, hearty race possessed of dominant spirit. Their reservations at Standing Rock, Rosebud, Pine Ridge, etc., contain most of the 28,000 natives of this stock. Reference to Major Powell’s linguistic map will acquaint readers with the enormous extent of territory they once occupied. The Commissioner’s map of 1913 shows that these people today own a small fraction of their original holdings.
The general progress of the Sioux, the famous men that they have produced, I have covered in the chapters treating of Education, Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, etc.
They were known to the army officers as Horse Indians, and to many others as Plains Indians. The horse was to the Sioux what the birch bark canoe was to the Ojibwa or the Penobscot. In early days their habitat was almost entirely confined to the Great Plains, the foothills of the Black Hills and the Missouri River. They were in Minnesota at an early period, but were driven westward and southward by the Ojibwa. The older Ojibwa claim that the Sioux frequently surprised hunting parties of these woods Indians, and that whenever the Ojibwa were caught out on the plain by the Sioux, they were invariably defeated with great loss. The Ojibwa therefore resorted to the strategy of luring the Sioux into the woods. Where this was possible, the expert woodcraft of the Ojibwa came into play and they generally defeated their enemies with heavy slaughter.
1850 to 1868 found the Sioux supremacy on the Great Plains unquestioned. With the coming of the railroad, and steamboat navigation on the Missouri, and the great influx of white traders, their powers declined as I have indicated in some detail on other pages.
The story of the Brulé, Miniconjou, Oglala, Teton and other divisions, so far as history is concerned, is pretty much the same. The buffalo was their chief support, in fact their very life was bound up in this animal. The wild horse was a later acquisition. In order to understand them thoroughly, the past fifty years, we should study in detail the life of Red Cloud, that of Sitting Bull, and in addition the Messiah craze, as previously mentioned.
The contrast between the Pine Ridge of today and that of 1890 is almost beyond belief. In 1890, one of the strangest ceremonies imaginable was in full swing. In 1909, when I visited Pine Ridge, exactly nineteen years later, I found the Sioux working upon their allotments, farming, digging irrigation ditches, and doing their best toward “taking the white man’s road.” On the plains where once clustered the tipis of the Ghost dancers were the large, modern brick buildings of the Oglala school, a most successful institution where young men and women are trained in the arts. Certainly the progress of these Indians is more than surprising—it is remarkable. And it is chiefly due to the fact that they have had as their Superintendent or Agent a man who is in sympathy with them and who has not been replaced through political influence. Major John R. Brennan has supervised the famous old fighting Oglala Sioux for more than fifteen years.
The progress of these Indians is, as I have said, creditable, but they are still poor, there is much suffering, and the increase in stock has not been as large as desired. Farming operations continue on a large scale, but the soil is more suited to grazing than farming, although the Indians do the best they can under the circumstances.
All of the Sioux have so far progressed, that it is unthinkable that any fanaticism such as the Ghost dance will again overtake them. It is quite safe to predict that since all of their children have been educated and nearly all of the Sioux of every reservation have been allotted land in severalty, they will continue to progress, and if the ravages of tuberculosis are stayed, a large number of the descendants of the full-bloods will survive and become useful citizens.
These Indians, after the surrender of Sitting Bull, were not much in the public eye until occurred the famous Ghost dance, or Messiah craze, and that being the chief event since the Custer fight we must needs devote considerable space to it.
On several occasions during the past two centuries, in this country, Indian shamans, or priests, have prophesied the coming of an Indian Messiah. We shall at some future time consider this interesting subject in detail, but within the period embraced in this book, that peculiar craze which swept throughout the West and the South during the year 1890, and known as the Ghost Dance, is the chief religious event.