578 



SIOUAN FAMILY 



[B. A. E. 



so-called Chiwere tribes — Iowa, Oto, and 

 Missouri — separated from the Winnebago 

 or else moved westward to the Missouri 

 from the same region. The five remaining 

 tribesof thisgrouji — Omaha, Ponca, Osage, 

 Kansa, and Quapaw — which have been 

 called Dhegiha by Dorsey, undoubtedly 

 lived together as one tribe at some 

 former time and were probably located 

 on the Mississippi. Part moving farther 

 down became known as "downstream 

 people," Quapaw, while those who went 

 up were the "upstream people," Omaha. 

 These latter moved n. w. along the river 

 and divided into the Osage, Kansa, Ponca, 

 and Omaha proper. As to the more re- 

 mote migrations that must have taken 

 place in such a widely scattered stock, 

 different theories are held. By some it 

 is supposed that the various sections of 

 the family have become dispersed from 

 a district near that occupied by the Win- 

 nebago, or, on the basis of traditions re- 

 corded by Gallatin and Long, from some 

 point on the n. side of the Great Lakes. 

 By others a region close to the eastern 

 Siouans is considered their primitive 

 home, whence the Dhegiha moved west- 

 ward down the Ohio, while the Dakota, 

 Winnebago, and cognate tribes kept a 

 more northerly course near the Great 

 Lakes. The tribes of the Manahoac con- 

 federacy were encountered by Capt. John 

 Smith in 1608, but after that time all of the 

 eastern Siouans decreased rapidly in num- 

 bers through Iroquois attacks and Euro- 

 pean aggression. Finally the remnants of 

 the northern tribes, consisting chiefly of 

 Tutelo and Saponi, accompanied the Tus- 

 carora northwardtothelroquois and were 

 adopted by the Cayuga in 1753. On the 

 destruction of their village by Sullivan in 

 1779 they separated, the Saponi remain- 

 ing with the Cayuga in New York, while 

 the Tutelo fled to Canada with other Ca- 

 yuga. From the few survivors of the 

 latter tribe. Hale and J. O. Dorsey ob- 

 tained sufficient material to establish their 

 Siouan connections, but they are now 

 almost extinct. The fate of the Saponi 

 is probably the same. The south- 

 ern tribes of this eastern Siouan group 

 consolidated with the Catawba, and con- 

 tinued to decrease steadily in numbers, 

 so that at the present time there are only 

 about 100 remaining of the whole con- 

 federated body. Some of the eastern 

 Siouan tribes may have been reached 

 by De Soto; they are mentioned by the 

 Spanish captain Juan Pardo, who con- 

 ducted an expedition into the interior of 

 South Carolina in 1567. 



The Biloxi were first noted by Iber- 

 ville, who found them in 1699 on Pas- 

 cagoula r., Miss. In the next century 

 they moved n. w. and settled on Red r.. 

 La., where the remnant was found by 



Gatschet in 1886 and their affinities de- 

 termined. These people reported that 

 another section had moved into Texas 

 and joined the Choctaw. 



The Ofo, called Ushpi by their neigh- 

 bors, are first mentioned by Iberville in 

 1699, but were probably encountered the 

 year preceding by the missionaries De 

 Montigny, Davion, La Source, and St 

 Cosme, though not specifically men- 

 tioned. Unlike the other Yazoo tribes, 

 they sided with the French in the great 

 Natchez war and continued to live near 

 the Tunica Indians. Their Siouan affin- 

 ity was demonstrated by Swanton in 1908 

 through a vocabulary collected from the 

 last survivor. 



The first known meeting between any 

 western Siouans and the whites was in 

 1541, when De Soto reached the Quapaw 

 villages in e. Arkansas. The earliest 

 notice of the main northwestern group is 

 probably that in the Jesuit Relation of 

 1640, where mention is made of the Win- 

 nebago, Dakota, and Assiniboin. As 

 early as 1658 the Jesuit missionaries had 

 heard of the existence of 30 Dakota vil- 

 lages in the region n. from the Potawat- 

 omi mission at St Michael, about the 

 head of Green bay. Wis.. In 1680 Father 

 Hennepin was taken prisoner by the same 

 tribe. 



In 1804-05 Lewis and Clark passed 

 through the center of this region and en- 

 countered most of the Siouan tribes. 

 Afterward expeditions into and through 

 their country were numerous; traders 

 settled among them in numbers, and 

 were followed in course of time by per- 

 manent settlers, who pressed them into 

 narrower and narrower areas until they 

 were finally removed to Indian Territory 

 or confined to reservations in the Da- 

 kotas, Nebraska, and Montana. Through- 

 out all this period the Dakota proved 

 themselves most consistently hostile to 

 the intruders. In 1862 occurred a bloody 

 Santee uprising in Minnesota that resulted 

 in the removal of all of the eastern Da- 

 kota from that state, and in 1876 the out- 

 break among the western Dakota and the 

 cutting off of Custer's command. Later 

 still the Ghost-dance rehgion (q. v.) 

 spread among the Sioux proper, culmi- 

 nating in the affair of Wounded Knee, 

 Dec. 29, 1890. 



It is impossible to make statements 

 of the customs and habits of these 

 people that will be true for the entire 

 group. Nearly all of the eastern tribes 

 and most of the southern tribes belonging 

 to the western group raised corn, but the 

 Dakota (except some of the eastern 

 bands) and the Crows depended almost 

 entirely on the buffalo and other game 

 animals, the buffalo entering very deeply 

 into the economic and religious life of 



