The Siouan Indians | Page 8

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 C?teau 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 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