172 SYSTEMS OF CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY 



Since the period of their discovery, when the Dakotas occupied a territory of small 

 dimensions, a great change has taken place in their condition, ascribable, in part, to 

 the retro-migration westward of the Indian nations ; but chiefly to the possession 

 of the horse, which has proved by far the most important material gift of Americans 

 to the American aborigines. After they had learned to rear and tend this valuable 

 domestic animal, in which they have been eminently successful, they gradually 

 spread over the vast prairies of the interior of the continent, which never before 

 had been capable of human occupation, until at the present time their range 

 extends over the immense area from the western head branches of the Mississippi 

 to the foot of the Rocky Mountain chain. The change thus wrought in their 

 condition has been chiefly for the worse, although it seems probable that they are 

 now more numerous than at any former period. They have ceased altogether to 

 live in villages, in which the first germs of social progress originate, and have 

 betaken themselves to camps on the plains, where they now lead a life of unrelieved 

 hardship, and of incessant conflict with adjacent nations, although acknowledged 

 masters within their own area. They have now become nomades in the full sense 

 of the term, depending for subsistence upon the buffaloes, whose migrations they 

 follow. When first known to us they were not agriculturalists in the slightest 

 particular, but depended exclusively upon fish, wild rice, and game. The innume- 

 rable lakes in central and northern Minnesota were well stocked with fish, and the 

 mixture of forest, lake, and prairie, which make this one of the most strikingly 

 beautiful regions within the limits of the United States, also rendered it an excel- 

 lent game country. The exchange was greatly to their disadvantage. Their 

 transfer to the plains, where the greater part of them now dwell, was much more 

 from necessity than choice. The steady and irresistible flow of the white popula- 

 tion westward necessarily forced the Dakotas in this direction, so that their retro- 

 gression was but the realization of their portion of the common destiny of all the 

 nations east of the Mississippi. 



The Dakotas have long enjoyed the advantages imparted by a consciousness of 

 strength from superior numbers. 1 They have had the sagacity and wisdom to 

 maintain a species of alliance among the several subdivisions into which they had 

 fallen by the inevitable law of Indian Society, although each band was practically 

 an independent nation. Friendly relations have subsisted among them from time 

 immemorial with the single exception of the Asiniboines, who became detached 

 shortly before the year 1600, as near as can be ascertained, and incurred, in conse- 

 quence, the hostility of their congeners. The important uses of the federal principle 

 to arrest the constant tendency to denationalization was understood by the Dakotas, 

 although it never ripened into a permanent and effective organization. Their 

 name La-Jeo'-ta in the dialects of the western nations, and Dd-ne-Jco'-ta in that of 

 the eastern, signifies leagued or allied, and they also called themselves, by a figure 

 of speech, "The Seven Council Fires," from the seven principal bands which formed 



1 They arc estimated at the present time, to number about twenty-three thousand. 



