184 DAKOTA GRAMMAR, TEXTS, AND ETHNOGRAPHY. 
* From the name we read that they were in a wooded country and 
made wooden protections from the assaults of their enemies. 
Some of the families appear to have made the gathering of the wild 
rice in the lakes a specialty, and so for a century or more we find them 
known as the Villages of Wild Rice Gatherers. 
When the Frenchmen, in 1680, joined the buffalo hunt of the Dakota, 
they remarked that they killed them with stone-headed arrows and cut up 
the meat with stone knives. The sharp flint stone used for this purpose 
they found on the banks of the Thousand Lakes, and hence the name of 
“waka,” or mysterious. And from this fact also they called the lake, or 
a part of it, by the name of ‘ [say-ta-mde,” Lake of Knives, or Knife Lake. 
lages. 
From living there the whole of those eastern Sioux were called ‘‘Isayn-ya-ti”— 
DoD 
Knife Dwellers—whiech has been modified to 
SANTEE. 
For a century or more past there has been included in this name The 
Leat-shooters (Walipekute), and also Leaf Village (Walipetoyway).’ Both 
these last-named bands continued to dwell, for the most part, in the wooded 
country, as their names indicate. In the list of Dakota bands furnished by 
Le Sueur, about the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Wahpatons, 
or Leaf Villages, are classed with what was then called ‘The Sioux of the 
West.” And a somewhat singular combination occurs in the name ‘“ Wa- 
hpeton-Teton,” indicating that some of the Leaf Village band had become 
“ Dwellers on the Prairie.” 
Other names of divisions at that period, such as ‘Great Wild Rice Vil- 
lage,” “Grand Lodge Village,” ‘“‘Dung Village,” ete., have gone into disuse. 
Nor is it possible, at this time, to discover to what families they belonged. 
Two hundred years ago, the Dakota nation was said to consist of seven 
Council Fires. Of these we have already spoken of three, viz: Spirit Lake 
(Mdewakaytonway), Leaf Shooters (Wahpekute), and Leaf Village (Walipe- 
toy) wal) ). 
SISSETON, 
Coming next to these is the Sisseton band. The meaning of the name 
is not quite clear; but Mr. Joseph Renville, of Lac-qui-parle, in his day re- 
garded as the best authority in Dakota, understood it to mean “Swamp 
‘Another version of this name is “ Brave-hearts,” as if from Cante, heart, and kaska, to bind. 
* See testimony of Rey. A. L. Riggs in foot-note 2 on pp. 159, 160. 
