Dakota people

“ Very seldom does it happen, at least among these western bands, that a chief attains to much power, unless he is the head of a numerous family. Frequently the village is principally made up of his relatives and descendants, and the wandering community assumes much of the patriarchal character. A people so loosely united, torn, too, with ranking feuds and jealousies, can have little power or efficiency.
The western Dakota have no fixed habitations. Hunting and fighting, they wander incessantly through summer and winter. Some are following the herds of buffalo over the waste of prairie ”

“ It was sometimes tiresome to receive large groups of people, who wanted to know impossible things about the country, and if it was a good soil for wheat. I only remember one party who taxed my patience to the uttermost. They cared nothing about Dakota as an agricultural territory, but had come on purpose to see the general. To satisfy them, I sent the servants and orderly to find him, but all returned with the same answer—he was nowhere to be seen. I walked about the garrison with them, explaining our post as best I could ”

“ To the people of southern Dakota, after the long years of dreary struggle through Indian troubles, grasshoppers, and bad crops, the Black Hills gold excitement seemed a godsend. The settlements along the Missouri were thronged with determined strangers waiting for an opportunity to slip into the Hills. ”

“ The leaders of that period believed that it would be a crime for them to sit idly by and permit the great territory to become one state, with but two members of the United States Senate, thus entailing to posterity forever a sort of political vassalage to the small states of the eastern seaboard. Besides this there was at that period an inherent difference between the people of South Dakota and those of the North. South Dakota was chiefly occupied by homesteaders, who brought with them the conservative notions of small farmers, about public and private economy, morality, and education. ”

“ In the literature on the subject the great linguistic [97] stock or family embracing not only the Sioux or Dakotas proper, but the Missouris, Omahas, Ponkas, Osages, Kansas, Otos, Assiniboines, Gros Ventres or Minnitaris, Crows, Iowas, Mandans, and some others, has been frequently styled the Dakota Family. Major Powell, the Director of the Bureau of Ethnology, from considerations 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. ”

“ Gophers flashing across the road. Little towns crowded on Saturday night, and busy cities shipping out the products of North Dakota and supplying the needs of the producers. Sudden blinding, isolating blizzards, and soft, fragrant spring days with tiny sprouts of grain peering greenly through the topsoil. Pasque flower and cactus, flame lily, and fields of yellow mustard. The sad, slow wail of a coyote on the still prairie. People—Norwegians, Germans, Russians, Poles, Czechs, Icelanders, but all Americans. Square dances in barn lofts, and college "proms" with corsages and grand marches. ”

“ The cheek bones of the Dakotas are much less prominent than those of the Chippewas, and those one-fourth Chippewa and three-fourths white have on an average darker complexions than those half white and half Dakota. Among the Minnetarees and Mandans are many persons of light hair, blue eyes, and tolerably fair complexion, not attributable to an infusion of Caucasian blood since the time of Columbus.
No people take more pains to speak their language accurately than the Dakotas. ”

“ A skilled physician when he visits a sick room always diagnoses the case of the patient before he administers a remedy. In order to comprehend thoroughly the tremendous significance the Land of the Dacotahs bears in its relation to the solution of the problem of country life in America, one must know something about the commonwealth and its people.
North Dakota is a prairie state. Its land area comprises seventy-one thousand square miles of a rich black soil equal in its fertility to the deposits at the delta of the River Nile in Egypt. There are over forty million acres of tillable land. ”

“ Thousands of despondent men resolved at once to recover their fortunes in southern Dakota. The action of the military in preventing the entry of the miners into the Black Hills cooled the ardor of many of them, but that very obstacle made the people believe that the army was guarding a vast storehouse of wealth, and that fortunes were awaiting them. Some, hardy enough to pass the barrier, sent out reports of rich finds, and this increased the determination of very many to get into the Hills. ”

“ These unfortunate beings, who have been referred to as minquga and minquge in Chapter III (§ 30) , are called wiŋkta by the Santee and Yankton Dakota, and wiŋkte by the Teton. They dress as women and act in all respects as women do, though they are really men. The terms for sodomy, wiŋktapi and wiŋktepi, are significant, and go to prove that the berdaches should not be called hermaphrodites. It is probable that the Dakota regard the moon as influencing these people. ”

“ The constitution was submitted to the people at an election on the first day of October. They approved it, and on the second day of November, 1889, President Harrison issued his proclamation, admitting South Dakota as a state in the Union. North Dakota was admitted as another state by the same proclamation.
Statehood was welcomed by the people with real rejoicing. As a territory the people had no part in the election of a President, nor in the legislation by Congress, and all of the conditions of territorial life tended to make a people dependent rather than self-reliant. ”

“ Sorely as were the people of Vermilion disappointed, their sense of humor was too great to permit them to mourn long over the laughable mistake. "Governor" Bigelow lived with them for many years and in the fullness of a ripe old age died among them, respected by every one; but Yankton became the temporary and the permanent capital of Dakota territory.
After setting up his headquarters at Yankton, Governor Jayne had a census taken, which showed 2402 white people in Dakota territory; and called an election for the choice of a delegate to Congress and members of a legislature. ”

“ Few group characteristics attach to the Canadians, who constitute 1.5 percent of North Dakota's foreign-born population, and are found in the northeast counties and the Red River Valley. Many of them are descendants of the Selkirk colonists who settled from Fort Garry to Fort Pembina early in the nineteenth century. It is from these colonists that most of the Scottish people in this State trace their descent. ”

“ AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN, JANUARY, 1882.
THE DAKOTAN LANGUAGES, AND THEIR RELATIONS TO OTHER LANGUAGES. BY A. W. WILLIAMSON.
To the ethnologist and to the philologist the Dakotas and those speaking kindred languages are a very interesting people. There are four principal Dakota dialects, the Santee, Yankton, Assinniboin and Titon. The allied languages may be divided into three groups:
I. a, Winnebago; b, Osage, Kaw, and 2 Quapaw; c, Iowa, Otoe and Missouri; d, Omaha and Ponka.
II. Mandan. ”

“ So many homesteading necessities could be purchased at the pioneer settlements that after reading Dakota newspapers of this period a North Carolina editor announced that "the people are fully up to the highest notch of civilization."
As the lands of the Red River Valley and the Drift Plain were occupied, settlers were forced to go farther west into the farming-grazing belt of the Missouri Coteau. Influenced by the fortunes being made in wheat in the eastern part of the State, they too became wheat farmers. ”

“ This period, from 1877 until 1883, is known as the great Dakota boom. History has no other instance to compare with it.
When this period began, Sioux Falls was but a little village of three or four hundred people, and was the northernmost point of any consequence within what is now South Dakota. Within five years Brookings, Madison, Mitchell, Huron, Pierre, Watertown, Redfield, Aberdeen, Webster, and Milbank had become important cities. ”

“ For many years education and religion in North Dakota were closely associated, for the earliest schools were organized by priests. The Scottish Highlanders of North Dakota's first white settlement—the Selkirk colony at Pembina—were a highly religious peasant people who keenly felt the absence of churches and schools in the land to which they had migrated. ”

“ There he found a party of young Indians, eleven in number, under the leadership of a mixed-blood Indian named Martin Charger, grandson of Captain Meriwether Lewis the explorer, who were known to their people as the crazy band, or fool soldier band, because they had taken an oath to help the whites at any cost to themselves. This band immediately set out on their ponies to reach the hostile camp up the river, and, if possible, effect the rescue of the captives. ”

“ Because North Dakota is a farm State, many of its customs hinge on certain matters of rural importance such as the weather and the crops. Whether or not the farm people are able or inclined to attend is the greatest factor in the success of most social and civic events. ”

“ A reign of terror grew up among the civilians so that none of the teamsters would leave the stockade for wood or supplies unless accompanied by many soldiers. Attacks upon the wood guard were of almost daily occurrence, and the result was always to the advantage of the Indians.
Red Cloud had by this time assembled an army of not less than three thousand men, with their families, and this vast concourse of people he fed and clothed while keeping Fort Phil Kearney almost in a state of siege. ”

“ Contrast often helps us to endure, and Dakota was not so bad as their last station in Arizona. The dinner was excellent, and our entertainers were the happy possessors of a good cook.87 Rarely do army people have two good servants at the same time on the frontier. Our host and hostess made no apologies, but quietly waited on the table themselves, and a merry time we had over the blunders of the head of the house, who was a distinguished general, in his endeavors to find necessary dishes in the china closet. ”

“ Out upon these roofs, especially in the summertime, was much activity—children played, old men watched for enemy tribesmen, sweethearts conversed, neighbors gossiped. Although the tribes were often ruthless and cruel in war, in their prairie homes and villages they were very friendly and companionable people. Both men and women indulged in a great number of games, and spent a good deal of time in visiting, feasting, and dancing. Catlin upon his departure after living with the Mandans for months was loaded with gifts and urged to continue his visit. ”

“ At any rate, many generations before the coming of the whites, the Mandan—probably crowded by other tribes—began to wander westward. Apparently their long trek finally brought them and their wives and children to the junction of the White River with the Missouri in what is now South Dakota. Grass-grown sites of their old villages along the benchland of the river show how these people, in quest of a new and more satisfactory home, moved northward in successive migrations until in time they arrived at the mouth of the Heart River in the neighborhood of present Mandan and Bismarck. ”

“ Most of the population is white. The town was settled in 1891 when the agency was established. In addition to its regular governmental functions, the agency operates a non-profit flour mill and conducts an experimental farm to educate the Indians in modern agricultural methods. Despite this, many Indians lease their farming lands to white people. What is now the Government School was built in 1876 as the Congregational mission, the first on the reservation. ”

“ Territorial Governors and other high officials were not popular with the people. They were usually from the East and had no interest in the country, their salaries or political advancement being their chief concern. Just after the first legislature had adjourned an Indian uprising disturbed the settlers. It did not take the Governor and other officials long to quit the Territory. Moses Armstrong, later a Congressman, wrote, "With such rapidity do they fly, pale and breathless, that a boy could play marbles on their horizontal coat tails." ”

“ Howard was a very efficient, far-sighted, and capable man. He was advanced in years and hoped to make his administration of Dakota affairs the crowning act in a long and useful life. He impressed himself for good on most of the affairs and enterprises of the territory, but at the beginning of 1880 he died and George A. Hand, secretary, became acting governor for a period of six months, until the appointment of Nehemiah G. Ordway of New Hampshire, who served for four years, with small satisfaction to the people. ”

“ The peculiar European three-cornered head scarf is still worn by many of the women. Most of the people have been naturalized and are greatly interested in political trends. About one-third of them are members of the United Farmers and Workers League of America, an organization professing communistic doctrines. The radical views and intensive political activity of these members of the community have earned it a reputation as the communistic center of North Dakota.
At 117 m. is the junction with US 2 at STANLEY (see Tour 6) .
SIDE TOUR 3B
Junction US 83—Junction US 10. ”

“ When the troops approached to arrest Big Foot and his people, the Indians were greatly alarmed, and though they agreed to accompany the soldiers to the fort, they escaped in the night time, and set off to join the dancers in the Bad Lands. Soldiers were at once sent in pursuit, and on the evening of December 28 Big Foot's band was overtaken on Wounded Knee Creek, about sixteen miles from Pine Ridge agency, where they were encamped, awaiting the return of scouts they had sent out to locate the camp of the ghost dancers. ”