The Siouan Indians | Page 8

as his metal implements,
and the primitive dress was soon modified.
The woodland habitations were chiefly tent-shape structures of saplings
covered with bark, rush mats, skins, or bushes; the prairie habitations
were mainly earth lodges for winter and buffalo-skin tipis for summer.
Among many of the tribes these domiciles, simple as they were, were
constructed in accordance with an elaborate plan controlled by ritual.
According to Morgan, the framework of the aboriginal Dakota house
consisted of 13 poles;(33) and Dorsey describes the systematic

grouping of the tipis belonging to different gentes and tribes.
Sudatories were characteristic in most of the tribes, menstrual lodges
were common, and most of the more sedentary tribes had council
houses or other communal structures. The Siouan domiciles were thus
adapted with remarkable closeness to the daily habits and environment
of the tribesmen, while at the same time they reflected the complex
social organization growing out of their prescriptorial status and
militant disposition.
Most of the Siouan men, women, and children were fine swimmers,
though they did not compare well with neighboring tribes as makers
and managers of water craft. The Dakota women made coracles of
buffalo hides, in which they transported themselves and their
householdry, but the use of these and other craft seems to have been
regarded as little better than a feminine weakness. Other tribes were
better boatmen; for the Siouan Indian generally preferred land travel to
journeying by water, and avoided the burden of vehicles by which his
ever-varying movements in pursuit of game or in waylaying and
evading enemies would have been limited and handicapped.
There are many indications and some suggestive evidences that the
chief arts and certain institutions and beliefs, as well as the geographic
distribution, of the principal Siouan tribes were determined by a single
conspicuous feature in their environment--the buffalo. As Riggs, Hale,
and Dorsey have demonstrated, the original home of the Siouan stock
lay on the eastern slope of the Appalachian mountains, stretching down
over the Piedmont and Coastplain provinces to the shores of the
Atlantic between the Potomac and the Savannah. As shown by Allen,
the buffalo, "prior to the year 1800," spread eastward across the
Appalachians(34) and into the priscan territory of the Siouan tribes. As
suggested by Shaler, the presence of this ponderous and peaceful
animal materially affected the vocations of the Indians, tending to
discourage agriculture and encourage the chase; and it can hardly be
doubted that the bison was the bridge that carried the ancestors of the
western tribes from the crest of the Alleghenies to the Côteau des
Prairies and enabled them to disperse so widely over the plains beyond.
Certainly the toothsome flesh and useful skins must have attracted the

valiant huntsmen among the Appalachians; certainly the feral herds
must have become constantly larger and more numerous westward,
thus tempting the pursuers down the waterways toward the great river;
certainly the vast herds beyond the Mississippi gave stronger incentives
and richer rewards than the hunters of big game found elsewhere; and
certainly when the prairie tribes were discovered, the men and animals
lived in constant interaction, and many of the hunters acted and thought
only as they were moved by their easy prey. As the Spanish horse
spread northward over the Llano Estacado and overflowed across the
mountains from the plains of the Cayuse, the Dakota and other tribes
found a new means of conquest over the herds, and entered on a career
so facile that they increased and multiplied despite strife and imported
disease.
The horse was acquired by the prairie tribes toward the end of the last
century. Carver (1766-1768) describes the methods of hunting among
the "Naudowessie" without referring to the horse,(35) though he gives
their name for the animal in his vocabulary,(36) and describes their
mode of warfare with "Indians that inhabit still farther to the westward
a country which extends to the South Sea," having "great plenty of
horses."(37) Lewis and Clark (1804-1806) mention that the "Sioux of
the Teton tribe ... frequently make excursions to steal horses" from the
Mandan,(38) and make other references indicating that the horse was in
fairly common use among some of the Siouan tribes, though the animal
was "confined principally to the nations inhabiting the great plains of
the Columbia,"(39) and dogs were still used for burden and draft.(40)
Grinnell learned from an aged Indian that horses came into the hands of
the neighboring Piegan (Algonquian) about 1804-1806.(41) Long's
naturalists found the horse, ass, and mule in use among the Kansa and
other tribes,(42) and described the mode of capture of wild horses by
the Osage;(43) yet when, two-thirds of a century after Carver, Catlin
(1832-1839) and Prince Maximilian (1833-34) visited the Siouan
territory, they found the horse established and in common use in the
chase and in war.(44) It