The Siouan Indians

The Siouan Indians by W. J.
McGee

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Title: The Siouan Indians
Author: W. J. McGee
Release Date: October 23, 2006 [Ebook #19628]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO 8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
SIOUAN INDIANS***

The Siouan Indians
A Preliminary Sketch - Fifteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of
Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1893-1894,
Government Printing Office, Washington, 1897, pages 153-204

by W. J. McGee

Edition 1, (October 23, 2006)

CONTENTS
THE SIOUAN STOCK DEFINITION EXTENT OF THE STOCK
TRIBAL NOMENCLATURE PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
PHONETIC AND GRAPHIC ARTS INDUSTRIAL AND ESTHETIC
ARTS INSTITUTIONS BELIEFS THE DEVELOPMENT OF
MYTHOLOGY THE SIOUAN MYTHOLOGY SOMATOLOGY
HABITAT ORGANIZATION HISTORY DAKOTA-ASINIBOIN
¢EGIHA {~LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED T~}OIWE'RE
WINNEBAGO MANDAN HIDATSA THE EASTERN AND
SOUTHERN TRIBES GENERAL MOVEMENTS SOME
FEATURES OF INDIAN SOCIOLOGY

THE SIOUAN INDIANS
A PRELIMINARY SKETCH(1)
BY W.J. McGEE

THE SIOUAN STOCK

DEFINITION

EXTENT OF THE STOCK
Out of some sixty aboriginal stocks or families found in North America

above the Tropic of Cancer, about five-sixths were confined to the
tenth of the territory bordering Pacific ocean; the remaining nine-tenths
of the land was occupied by a few strong stocks, comprising the
Algonquian, Athapascan, Iroquoian, Shoshonean, Siouan, and others of
more limited extent.
The Indians of the Siouan stock occupied the central portion of the
continent. They were preeminently plains Indians, ranging from Lake
Michigan to the Rocky mountains, and from the Arkansas to the
Saskatchewan, while an outlying body stretched to the shores of the
Atlantic. 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; for since the advent of white
men the Siouan Indians have played striking rôles on the stage of
human development, and have caught the eye of every thoughtful
observer.
The term Siouan is the adjective denoting the "Sioux" Indians and
cognate tribes. The word "Sioux" has been variously and vaguely used.
Originally it was a corruption of a term expressing enmity or contempt,
applied to a part of the plains tribes by the forest-dwelling Algonquian
Indians. According to Trumbull, it was the popular appellation of those
tribes which call themselves Dakota, Lakota, or Nakota ("Friendly,"
implying confederated or allied), and was an abbreviation of
Nadowessioux, a Canadian-French corruption of Nadowe-ssi-wag ("the
snake-like ones" or "enemies"), a term rooted in the Algonquian
nadowe ("a snake"); and some writers have applied the designation to
different portions of the stock, while others have rejected it because of
the offensive implication or for other reasons. So long ago as 1836,
however, Gallatin employed the term "Sioux" to designate collectively
"the nations which speak the Sioux language,"(2) and used an
alternative term to designate the subordinate confederacy--i.e., he used
the term in a systematic way for the first time to denote an ethnic unit

which experience has shown to be well defined. Gallatin's terminology
was soon after adopted by Prichard and others, and has been followed
by most careful writers on the American Indians. Accordingly the name
must be regarded as established through priority and prescription, and
has been used in the original sense in various standard publications.(3)
In colloquial usage and in the usage of the ephemeral press, the term
"Sioux" was applied sometimes to one but oftener to several of the
allied tribes embraced in the first of the principal groups of which the
stock is composed, i.e., the group or confederacy styling themselves
Dakota. Sometimes the term was employed in its simple form, but as
explorers and pioneers gained an inkling of the organization of the
group, it was often compounded with the tribal name as
"Santee-Sioux," "Yanktonnai-Sioux," "Sisseton-Sioux," etc. As
acquaintance between white men and red increased, the stock name was
gradually displaced by tribe names until the colloquial appellation
"Sioux" became but a memory or tradition throughout much of the
territory formerly dominated by the great Siouan stock. One of the
reasons for the abandonment of the name was undoubtedly its
inappropriateness as a designation for the confederacy occupying the
plains of the upper Missouri, since it was an alien and opprobrious
designation