SIOUAN TRIBES OF THE EAST. 



r BUREAU OK 



Lethnology 



West of all these tribes was the territory of the great Sioiian or 

 Dakotau stock, extending in a general way from the Mississippi to the 

 Eocky mountains and from the Saskatchewan to the Arkansas. With 

 the tribes farther westward and southward the present paper is not 

 concerned. 



Most of these tribes had fixed locations in permanent villages, sur- 

 rounded by extensive cornfields. They were primarily agriculturists 

 or fishermen, to whom hunting was hardly more than a pastime, and 

 who followed the chase as a serious business only in tlie interval be- 

 tween the gathering of one crop and the planting of the next. The 

 Siouan tribes, on the contrary, althougii generally cultivating the 

 ground to a limited extent, were essentially a race of hunters, follow- 

 ing the game — esj^ecially the buffalo — from one district to another, 

 here today and away tomorrow. Their introduction to the horse on 

 the prairies of the west probably served only to give wider opportunity 

 for the indulgence of an inborn roving disposition. Nomads have short 

 histories, and as they seldom stopped long enough in one place to 

 become identified with it, little importance was attached to their wan- 

 derings and as little was recorded concerning them. 



The position of the Algonquian and Iroquoian tribes, as the native 

 proprietors of an immense territory claimed by two great rival Euro- 

 l)ean nations, rendered their friendship a matter of prime concern 

 throughout the colonial period; and each party put forth strenuous 

 efibrts to secure their alliance against the other. As a principal means 

 to this end, numerous missionaries were sent among them, especially 

 by the French, to learn their languages, become familiar with their 

 habits of living and modes of thought, and afterward to write down the 

 facts thus gathered. There were besides among the early settlers of 

 New England and the northern states generally a number of men of lit- 

 erary bent who made the Indians a subject of study, and the result is 

 a vast body of literature on the northern tribes, covering almost every 

 important detail of their language, habits, and history. In the south 

 the case was otherwise. The tribes between the mountains and the sea 

 were of but small importance politically; no sustained mission work was 

 ever attempted among them, and there were but few literary men to 

 take an interest in tliem. War, pestilence, whisky and systematic 

 slave hunts had nearly exterminated the aboriginal occupants of the 

 Carolinas before anybody had thought them of sufficient importance to 

 ask who they were, how they lived, or what were their beliefs and 

 opinions. 



The region concerning which least has been known ethnologically is 

 that extending from the Potomac to the Savannah and from the moun 

 tains to the sea, comprising most of Virginia, North Carolina, and South 

 Carolina. Of some of the tribes formerly within this area the lin 

 guistic connection has long been settled; of some others it is a matter 

 of recent discovery; of others again it is still a matter of doubt; while 



