The Siouan Indians | Page 9

is significant that the Dakota word for horse
(suk-tan'-ka or sun-ka'-wa-kan) is composed of the word for dog
(sun'-ka), with an affix indicating greatness, sacredness, or mystery, so
that the horse is literally "great mysterious dog," or "ancient sacred

dog," and that several terms for harness and other appurtenances
correspond with those used for the gear of the dog when used as a draft
animal.(45) This terminology corroborates the direct evidence that the
dog was domesticated by the Siouan aborigines long before the advent
of the horse.
Among the Siouan tribes, as among other Indians, amusements
absorbed a considerable part of the time and energy of the old and
young of both sexes. Among the young, the gambols, races, and other
sports were chiefly or wholly diversional, and commonly mimicked the
avocations of the adults. The girls played at the building and care of
houses and were absorbed in dolls, while the boys played at archery,
foot racing, and mimic hunting, which soon grew into the actual chase
of small birds and animals. Some of the sports of the elders were
unorganized diversions, leaping, racing, wrestling, and other
spontaneous expressions of exuberance. Certain diversions were
controlled by more persistent motive, as when the idle warrior occupied
his leisure in meaningless ornamentation of his garment or tipi, or spent
hours of leisure in esthetic modification of his weapon or ceremonial
badge, and to this purposeless activity, which engendered design with
its own progress, the incipient graphic art of the tribes was largely due.
The more important and characteristic sports were organized and
interwoven with social organization and belief so as commonly to take
the form of elaborate ceremonial, in which dancing, feasting, fasting,
symbolic painting, song, and sacrifice played important parts, and these
organized sports were largely fiducial. To many of the early observers
the observances were nothing more than meaningless mummeries; to
some they were sacrilegious, to others sortilegious; to the more careful
students, like Carver, whose notes are of especial value by reason of the
author's clear insight into the Indian character, they were invocations,
expiations, propitiations, expressing profound and overpowering
devotion. Carver says of the "Naudowessie," "They usually dance
either before or after every meal; and by this cheerfulness, probably,
render the Great Spirit, to whom they consider themselves as indebted
for every good, a more acceptable sacrifice than a formal and
unanimated thanksgiving;"(46) and he proceeds to describe the
informal dances as well as the more formal ceremonials preparatory to

joining in the chase or setting out on the warpath. 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. 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; for, as among other primitive peoples, the charm of
hazard was greater than among the enlightened. The games were not
specially distinctive, and were less widely differentiated than in certain
other Indian stocks. The sport or game of chungke stood high in favor
among the young men in many of the tribes, and was played as a game
partly of chance, partly of skill; but dice games (played with plum
stones among the southwestern prairie tribes) were generally preferred,
especially by the women, children, and older men. The games were
partly, sometimes wholly, diversional, but generally they were in large
part divinatory, and thus reflected the hazardous occupations and low
culture-status of the people. One of the evils resulting from the advent
of the whites was the introduction of new games of chance which
tended further to pervert the simple Siouan mind; but in time the evil
brought its own remedy, for association with white gamblers taught the
ingenuous sortilegers that there is nothing divine or sacred about the
gaming table or the conduct of its votaries.
The primitive Siouan music was limited to the chant and rather simple
vocal melody, accompanied by rattle, drum, and flute, the drum among
the northwestern tribes being a skin bottle or bag of water. The music
of the Omaha and some other tribes has been most appreciatively

studied by Miss