Siouan people

“ Social classes are undifferentiated. Any man can win a name and rank in the section, gens, phratry, tribe, or nation by bravery in war or by generosity in the bestowal of presents and the frequent giving of feasts. While there are no slaves among the Siouan tribes, there are several kinds of servants in civil, military, and religious affairs. ”

“ The development of affectation and self-control among the Siouan tribesmen was undoubtedly shaped by warlike disposition, and their stoicism was displayed largely in war—as when the captured warrior went exultingly to the torture, taunting and tempting his captors to multiply their atrocities even until his tongue was torn from its roots, in order that his fortitude might be proved ”

“ They were typical American barbarians, headed by hunters and warriors and grouped in shifting tribes led by the chase or driven by battle from place to place over their vast and naturally rich domain, though a crude agriculture sprang up whenever a tribe tarried long in one spot. No native stock is more interesting than the great Siouan group, and none save the Algonquian and Iroquoian approach it in wealth of literary and historical records ”

“ There is ground for believing that the true home of the whole Siouan stock is not in the west, or even in the central region, but along the south Atlantic slope. (See the author’s Siouan Tribes of the East.)
The Sioux language has three well-marked dialects—the eastern or Santee, the middle or Yankton (including the Asiniboin in the north) , and the western or Teton. The tribe consists of seven great divisions, each of which again has or had subdivisions. Dorsey enumerates over one hundred in all. ”

“ Although the accultural condition of the Siouan survivors ranges from the essentially primitive status of the Asiniboin to the practical civilization of the representatives of several tribes, it is fair to consider the stock in a [pg 186] state of transition from barbarism to civilization; and many of the tribesmen are losing the characteristics of activity and somatic development normal to primitive life, while they have not yet assimilated the activities and acquired the somatic characteristics normal to peaceful sedentary life. ”

“ The ceremonial observances of the Siouan tribes were not different in kind from those of neighboring contemporaries, yet some of them were developed in remarkable degree—for example, the bloody rites by which youths were raised to the rank of warriors in some of the prairie tribes were without parallel in severity among the aborigines of America, or even among the known primitive peoples of the world. ”

“ Sympathy for Belgium and the popular aversion to Teutonic methods had left no doubt as to the duty of Siam. The motive of Siam had a curious fitness, though there was a certain quaintness in her expression of a desire to make, “the world safe for democracy.”
The native name of Siam is Muang-Thai, which means the Kingdom of the Free. Siam is about as large as France, and has a population of about eight millions. Its people, who are of many shades of yellowish-brown, have descended into this corner of Asia from the highlands north of Burma and east of Tibet. ”

“ Among the tribes of the Siouan family the primary unit is the clan or gens, which is composed of a number of consanguinei, claiming descent from a common ancestor and having common taboos; the term clan implying descent in the female line, while gens implies descent in the male line. Among the Dakota, as among the ¢egiha and other groups, the man is the head of the family.
Several of the Siouan tribes are divided into two, and one (the Osage) is divided into three subtribes. Other tribes are composed of phratries, and each subtribe or phratry comprises a number of gentes. ”

“ We can not say whether each of the colors (including spotted and striped) has a mystic significance in the Siouan mind. Perhaps further study may show that red (śa) and scarlet (duta, luta) have the same symbolic meaning, and rusty-yellow (ġi) may be an equivalent of yellow (zi) .
[Pg 534]
THE EARTH POWERS.
§ 383. The Tunkan or bowlder, the Dakota name for the Earth powers, is also called the Lingam by Riggs ( § 132) , as if connected with a phallic cult (§§ 164, etc.) . ”

“ Since the advent of white men the characteristics of the Siouan Indians, like those of other tribes, have been somewhat modified, partly through infusion of Caucasian blood but chiefly through acculturation. With the abandonment of hunting and war and the tardy adoption of a slothful, semidependent agriculture, the frame has lost something of its stalwart vigor; with the adaptation of the white man's costume and the incomplete assimilation of his hygiene, various weaknesses and disorders have been developed ”

“ They have a number of purely local customs and practices which are entirely different to those which are prevalent in Egypt, or among the Arabs of the Western Desert. The Siwans are Mohammedans, and strictly religious in most of their observances, but in some of their habits one can trace a faint resemblance to rites that [208] have survived from former times, long before the people adopted their present religion. But most of the apparently meaningless practices are founded on the inherent fear of evil spirits, which are implicitly believed in by all the inhabitants. ”

“ The Sioux, notwithstanding this good teaching of the very tradition which they still repeat to the stranger, have, by the right of the strongest, taken possession of the sacred neutral ground; and they, and all other tribes of the red race, are either being absorbed into the white population or exterminated by it. The development of the myth and the people of the myth has been therefrom alike arrested. ”

“ Modern scholarship inclines to place the origin of the great Siouan or Dakotan family possibly amidst the eastern foothills of the southern Alleghanies or at least as far east as Ohio, whence, after a long period, they probably were driven by the Iroquois and other enemies beyond the Mississippi. Being essentially nomadic, without permanent villages and relying on constant hunting for their food, following their game wherever it might lead, they necessarily ranged widely and covered broad areas. ”

“ Fur robes and rush mats commonly served for bedding, some of the tribes using rude bedsteads. The buffalo-hunting prairie tribes depended largely for apparel, bedding, and habitations, as well as for food, on the great beast to whose comings and goings their movements were adjusted. Like other Indians, the Siouan hunters and their consorts quickly availed themselves of the white man's stuffs, as well as his metal implements, and the primitive dress was soon modified. ”

“ So the sports of the Siouan Indians were both diversional and divinatory, and the latter were highly organized in a manner reflecting the environment of the tribes, their culture-status, their belief, and especially their disposition toward bloodshed; for their most characteristic ceremonials were connected, genetically if not immediately, with warfare and the chase.
Among many of the Siouan tribes, games of chance were played habitually and with great avidity, both men and women becoming so absorbed as to forget avocations and food, mothers even neglecting their children ”

“ Surely your story will stimulate interest not only in the archæologist, but in all who desire to trace the manners, customs and characteristics of present-day peoples to their original sources. Those Siwans of whom you make a special study are of all people perhaps the most interesting, for, living, as it were, on an island, in a sea of desert, they—like the Abyssinians on the east—have been less affected by the world-changes than those who inhabit the main highways of the great African continent. ”

“ Mohammed Saleh had been in Siwa before and he knew exactly how much money the various inhabitants had. This acquaintance with everybody’s financial position was of great use when he began to extort money from the natives. Those who could not or would not pay were beaten in the market-place and forcibly enlisted into the army; those who paid a little were made corporals and officers, and only the people who gave much money were exempt from service. The richest sheikhs and [127] merchants were presented with Turkish and German medals and orders and promoted to Pashas and Beys. ”

“ The three first dynasties reigned in Ayuthia, which was captured and destroyed in the year of 1767, after a three-year siege, they having been the monarchs of Siam for a period of four hundred and seventeen years. After the Burmese had sacked the capital and taken off thousands of the people prisoners a Siamese General, P'ra yah Lohk-Sin, of great celebrity, rallied the Siamese under him at T'onaburee and after a number of hard-fought battles, drove the invaders back and laid the foundation of Bangkok, since then the capital. ”

“ The Siwans are town dwellers whose dominant principle has been a sort of communism, whereas the Arabs are nomads, who adopted patriarchalism as their method of rule. The Siwans fought on foot, the Arabs were essentially cavalry. There are sheikhs in Siwa, but they are more like the members of a town council, while the real Arab sheikh corresponds to the feudal lord of the Middle Ages. It is strange to find the Siwans, with such a definite, different scheme of living, existing in the midst of a desert whose Arab population regards them almost as foreigners. ”

“ The great Siouan race occupied nearly all the upper valley of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and their tributaries. North of them dwelt the Ojibways, an Algonquin tribe with an entirely different language. The Sioux nation proper originally occupied a vast territory, and in the middle of the nineteenth century they still held the southern half of Minnesota, a portion of Wisconsin and Iowa, all of the Dakotas, part of Montana, nearly half of Nebraska, and small portions of Colorado and Wyoming. ”

“ Even still, although hemmed in on one side by the British possessions, on the other by the French protectorate of Camboja, Siam comprises beyond the Menam Valley a considerable part of the Malay Peninsula, and draws tribute from numerous people in the Mekong and Salwen basins. But this State, with an area about half as large again as that of France, has a population probably less than 6,000,000. ... The inhabitants of Siam, whether Shans, Laos, or Siamese proper, belong all alike to the same Thai stock, which is also represented by numerous tribes in Assam, Manipur, and China. ”

“ I have heard people at home say what a scandal it is that in some places the poor downtrodden natives have to stand up and move off the path for an Englishman, but after all they would do exactly the same for their own Pashas, and apart from being an Englishman one was entitled to respect as being the representative of the Egyptian Government in Siwa. ”

“ The impression which most travellers in Siam have received in regard to the moral characteristics of the people has been generally favorable, and is on the whole confirmed by the judgment of foreigners who have been longer resident among them. They have, of course, the defects and vices which are to be expected in a half savage people, governed through many generations by the capricious tyranny of an Oriental despotism. ”

“ These are all Sioux proper, but there are many other tribes that speak languages that are related to the Sioux. Among these Siouan—but not Sioux—tribes are the Winnebagoes, Mandans, Ponkas, Assinaboines, Omahas, and Otoes.
The Sioux are tall, finely built Indians, with large features and heavy, massive faces. They are a good type of the Plains Indians who until lately lived by hunting buffalo. There are now nearly thirty thousand true Sioux and about ten thousand Siouans of related tribes. ”

“ Many of the Siouan Indians were adepts in the sign language; indeed, this mode of conveying intelligence attained perhaps its highest development among some of the tribes of this stock, who, with other plains Indians, developed pantomime and gesture into a surprisingly perfect art of expression adapted to the needs of huntsmen and warriors. ”

“ The inhabitants of Siwah speak a dialect of the Berbery, and only a very few of them know any word [256] of Arabic; they are unquestionably an Aboriginal people, probably the descendants of one of the Nomad tribes, who inhabited the interior of Libya, and who may have succeeded to the possession of the Oasis of Ammon, after the extinction of the Roman power in this country. The entire population consists of the inhabitants of Siwah Proper, which is divided into east and west, and those of Agharmy, a small town about two miles to the east, in all little more than four thousand souls. ”

“ There is also a tea-set, and all the appliances for betel chewing and tobacco smoking, some stock of provisions and condiments for food.
Probably the most reliable witnesses to the true character of the Siamese are those Protestant missionaries whose lives are passed in intimate association with the people and devoted to doing them good. From a recent book written by one of these, Miss M. [Pg 238] L. Cort, [A] we shall obtain a fair idea of life in Siam and of certain customs dear to the common people.
"Women enjoy greater liberty than in almost any other Oriental land. ”

“ At the first news of the Siamese revolt the King of Burma sent orders to the governor of Tavoy to overrun the country again, and to press the inhabitants of the town into his army to effect the entire ruin of the country.
These people, outwardly subservient, had disguised their hatred against their recent oppressors. The general took only a few Burmese with him as he had put his trust in the Siamese whom he imagined were reliable. ”