JENKS] DAKOTA MIGRATIONS 10438 
THe Daxkora 
Ethnologists have shown that the Indian tribes of the Siouan lin- 
euistic stock at one time occupied the Piedmont and coastwise areas 
between the Appalachian range and the Atlantic in the present states 
of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.’ Allen® has proved 
that the bison, prior to the year 1800, had crossed the Appalachians 
from the west and occupied the Piedmont area, entering this region 
probably by the way of Cumberland gap. W J MeGee® puts these 
two facts together, and suggests that the bison led the ancestors ot the 
Dakota, one of the Siouan-speaking tribes, from the Piedmont into 
the western prairies, where history found them. Hale* suggests that 
the valley of Ohio river and of Big Sandy river, which flows into the 
Ohio and whose headwaters almost interlace those of the southerly 
flowing Cape Fear river, was the thoroughfare of these Indians and 
the bison. Further than this, Allen points out on the map accom- 
panying his memoir that prior to 1800 bison had occupied the western 
part of Wisconsin as far north as the highlands, and all of Minnesota 
except the northeastern portion. Thus they could easily have led 
the Siouan stock through Cumberland gap, the thoroughfare sug- 
gested by Hale, across the best pasture lands of America, the blue 
grass of Kentucky and the prairies of Indiana and Illinois, into the 
territory under consideration. 
It is believed, however, that the Dakota were not much given to 
buffalo hunting until they came into the prairie region west of the 
Mississippi river, where they became distinctly a buffalo-hunting 
people. Mr James Mooney suggested to the writer, after this memoir 
was written, that the Siouan ancestors were literally pinched out of 
their home in the east. The Iroquoian stock on the north and the 
Algonquian on the south of them drew in like the approaching sides 
of a triangle, and they were obliged to flee westward or perish. 
Tt must further be noted that the Dakota, or that division of the 
Siouan stock which opposed the westward migration of the Ojibwa, 
were more of the nature of plains Indians than of river Indians. None 
of the early travelers, including the Jesuit fathers, speak of them as 
having homes farther east than St Croix river. They all speak of 
them as settled west of Lake Superior. To be sure the Dakota roamed 
over all of Wisconsin, even to Sault Ste Marie and to Green bay; and 
as late as 1696 they attacked the Indians in Michigan around the 
southern end of Lake Michigan, but their instincts were clearly those 
of nomads. With the exception of the Siouan-speaking Winnebago 

1Horatio Hale, The Tutelo Tribe and Language, Proc. Am. Philos. Soe., vol. xX1, 1883-84; see also 
James Mooney, Siouan Tribes of the East, bulletin of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1894, and Horatio 
Hale, Indian Migrations, Am. Antiquarian, January and April, 1883. 
2The American Bisons Living and Extinct. 
3The Sioux Indians; A Preliminary Sketch, Fifteenth Ann. Rept. Bu. Amer. Ethnol., p. 173. 
4Indian Migrations, op. cit., p.3. 
