Oceti Šakowin

Native Americans have inhabited Turtle Island, the North American continent, continuously since about 70,000 B.C. The Oglala Lakota belong to that Native American population which prior to white contact called itself Oceti Šakowin, usually translated as The Seven Council Fires (from oceti, 'stove, fireplace' and šakowin, 'seven'). Fireplace is a term widely used by a number of American Indian tribes as a metaphor for various levels of social and political organization. The numbers four and seven are regarded as sacred numbers among most North American Indians (see Sacred Numbers in Lakota Spirituality). Heptadic structures are found among a number of Siouan-speakers. Since 1640, the Seven Fireplaces have been more popularly known as the Sioux. The term itself was recorded by Jean Nicolet during his visit to the Winnebagos of Green Bay in the Jesuit Relation for 1640. The earliest spelling of the term was Naduesiu, a French corruption of the Algonquian nadowe-is-iw-ug, 'lesser, or small, adder/snake' (Nadowe, 'adder/snake, enemy'; is, diminutive; iw-ug, 'they are'), which was used by the Ojibwas to distinguish the Seven Fireplaces from the Iroquois, whom they called nado-wewok, 'real adder/snake'. It is from the pejorative Sioux that the linguistic designation Siouan is derived.

Over the years, the term Oceti Šakowin was eventually supplanted by the term Sioux, and today, when speaking English, the Oglalas and others refer to themselves as Sioux to indicate the relationship between all members who once identified themselves collectively as Oceti Šakowin. Sioux as a substitute for Oceti Šakowin seems acceptable inasmuch as the latter term became dysfunctional after the original constituents of the federation were dispersed. However, in addition to the political designation Sioux, the people themselves, when speaking their native language, employed other cognate terms which in a general sense may today be glossed as "Indian." Since the Seven Fireplaces did not speak a common language, but rather three mutally intelligible dialects of the same language, there was in fact no single term in their native language which could be employed to classify all members of the Seven Fireplaces other than Sioux. The designations of these dialects - Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota - eventually became terms which various investigators employed to define and classify political units, rather than dialectal ones; and in the process, Dakota became the favorite term under which the collective membership of the old Seven Fireplaces was subsumed. Furthermore, as the constituents of the original Seven Fireplaces were dispersed and migrated from their original homes in Minnesota to the prairies and plains, additional terms suggesting geographic relationships were combined with dialectal terms in order to provide more specific labels for various divisions of social and political units. The indiscreet application of combined political, dialectal, and geographic designations gave rise to nearly all possible permutations of the three variables. Thus the literature abounds with such disignations as Western Sioux, Teton Dakota, Oglala Sioux, Oglala Dakota, Middle Sioux, Eastern Sioux, etc.

The first positive mention of the Sioux appears in the Jesuit Relation for 1640, in which appear tribal names collected by Jean Nicolet a few years earlier. Nicolet first learned of the peopled called Naduesiu from the Winebagos at present Green Bay, Wisconsin. However, it was not until 1660 that two French explorers, Pierre Esprit Radisson, and Médard Chouart, sieur des Groseilliers, encountered the Sioux in what is now northwestern Wisconsin or Eastern Minnesota at an annual Feast of the Dead. Here, the Sioux regarding the French as demigods "wept copiously and smoked the calumet with the strangers". Subsequent encounters by the missionaries Claude Jean Allouez, Jacques Marquette, and Louis Hennepin, and the military men and traders Daniel Greysolon, sieur Duluth; Nicolas Perrot; and Pierre Charles Le Sueur, provide the first ethnographic accounts.

By the beginning of the sixteenth century, the people known as the Oceti Šakowin had established themselves on the headwaters of the Mississippi. The French who first encountered them regarded them as formidable warriors. Historians state that when the Seven Fireplaces were not fighting their enemies, mainly the Central Algonquians, they were fighting each other, despite the fact that their dialectal names (Dakota, Nakota, Lakota) signify "friendly" or "allied" (compare kola, 'friend'; wolakota, 'peace'; okolakiciye, 'association, sodality'). Hennepin classified the Sioux into the Sioux of the East (east of the Mississippi), comprising the Mdewakantons, Wahpetons, Wahpekutes, and Sissetons, and the Sioux of the West, comprising the Yanktons, Yanktonais, and Tetons. The four divisions of the Sioux of the East were also known collectively as Santee (from isan, 'knife' and ti, 'to dwell'), the name - also spelled Izatys - of the principal village of the Mdewakantons near present Mille Lacs, Minnesota.

Le Sueur in 1700, estimated the population of the Seven Fireplaces at 4,000 families. In 1736, a census reflecting the opinions of voyagers estimated the population at from eight thousand to ten thousand. Wars between the Sioux and the Chippewas and Crees were in part responsible for an out-migration of the Eastern division from their homes around Mille Lacs, since the Chippewas were armed by the French traders. Missionaries state that the attraction of traders operating around the junction of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers also contributed to the abandonment of the original homeland. DeMallie suggests that the desirability of homes farther west also contributed to the early migrations. Around 1750, the Santee village was attacked by Chippewas, an event which one investigator calls "the most readily identifiable...in the process by which [the Sioux] were transformed from a typical tribe of the Eastern Woodlands culture to a people at least on the margin of the Plains Indian culture."

After the French and Indian Wars, in 1766, the Sioux were visited by Captain Jonathan Carver, who made observations on their customs and began compiling a dictionary of their language. He divided the Seven Fireplaces into River Bands and Prairie Bands, and estimated their total population at two thousand. Carver was followed by Peter Pond, a trader who embarked upon an expedition into Sioux country in 1773 - 75 and built a fort on the lower Minnesota River. His journal describes the Sioux living in tipis and owning a great number of horses and dogs.

The first official representative of the United States to reach the Sioux was Lt. Zebulon M. Pike, who attempted to establish American sovereignty on the upper Mississippi in 1805 - 06. He signed a treaty with the Mdewakantons in which they ceded 100,000 acres of land to the United States and for which they received about $200 worth of gifts and liquor on the spot and the promise of an unspecified sum of money. Pike estimated the total population of the Sioux at 21,675. He identified all the major components of the Seven Fireplaces, stating that the Wahpekutes "were the most stupid and inactive of all the Sioux."

Pike was followed in 1817 by the expedition of Major Stephen H. Long, the purpose of which was to identify sites for the construction of forts. The territory of the Eastern Sioux at the time of Long's expedition was reported as

bounded by a curved line E. of N. from Prairie du Chien on the Mississippi, so as to include all the E. tributaries of the Mississippi, to the first branch of Chippewa r.; thence westwardly to Crow Wing r., Minn.; and up that stream to its head; thence westwardly to Red r. and down that stream to Pembina; thence southwestwardly to the E. bank of the Missouri near the Mandan villages; thence down the Missouri to a point probably not far from Soldiers r.; thence E. of N. to Prairie du Chien, Wis.

The Santees, Yanktons, and Tetons can best be understood by regarding them as not only dialectally but culturally separate entities, each uniquely adapting to a particular environment. At the time of French contact, the Seven Fireplaces exhibited the cultural traits of the Woodland Indians, ones they shared with the Central Algonquians.Their economy was based on hunting, fishing, and gathering, all of which was supplemented by slash and burn horticulture.

French, British, and American travelers to Sioux country all reported the presence of villages along waterways which bisected prairie and marsh lands. Each village was under the leadership of one or more chief or subchiefs. Hickerson states that among the Santees and Yanktons, their several villages were autonomous:

Each was represented by one or more chiefs in matters related to treaties, war and peace, and trade. War was carried on independently by several villages, and it was not unusual for one village to be fighting while its nearest neighbor was in a state of truce. In treaties with the government, the separate villages usually acted separately. Their territories were demarcated one from the other, and presumably each village acted as a separate economic unit.

Hickerson further emphasizes the emergence of the village as the discrete political and territorial unit. Despite the autonomy of these villages, alliances were often formed for the purpose of waging war. One must assume that because of the combined pressures of warfare and encroachment by Europeans, the villages of the Seven Fireplaces were in a constant state of flux..Meyer states that when the Mdewakanton chief Wabasha moved a segment of his band, a portion of the village remained, forming the nucleus of a new band: "This was the pattern followed earlier and later; a subchief might take a few of his followers and establish a new village. or the principal chief might leave without taking all of the members of his band along. In this way the historic villages of the Mdewakanton Sioux were formed."

In this way the subsequent camps of Yanktons and Tetons were also formed after their migration onto the prairie. The same pattern in which chiefs and subchiefs formed and re-formed new villages and bands among the Mdewakantons was to be replicated by the westernmost groups of Sioux. Presumably the reasons for the reformulation and redistribution of populations were numerous: war, economic pressures, hostility between chiefs and subchiefs, and petty arguments. However, the manner in which these populations were redistributed remained relatively constant over time and space: the mental template which gave rise to new local populations was indelibly etched in the social structure of the Seven Fireplaces.

The conventional terminology for the Seven Fireplaces (Santees, Yanktons, and Tetons), particularly in its anglicized form, and the conventional glosses which anthropologists and linguists have perpetuated over time tend to support the idea that the Seven Fireplaces represented a social and cultural system which ideally unified. This unification is largely illusory. Rather, the Seven Fireplaces as being in a state on constant flux, forming temporary alliances, constantly shifting leadership and nuclei of villages and bands. This notion of flux and movement is suggested in the etymology of the native terms for autonomous political entities, and also becomes a major theme of the myths that rationalize the origins of the Oglalas. A perusal of the native terms for autonomous units over time presents an insight to the dialectic of change in Siuoux social organization. But at the same time it eluckdates some principals on continuity; certain native terms are reused again and again.

A reconsideration of the social organization of the Seven Fireplaces, based on etymologies of the native terms, reveals the following model:

1. Mdewakanton is derived from mdewakantunwan (mde, 'water, lake' [compare mni, 'water' and ble, 'lake']; wakan, 'sacred'; tunwan, 'village'). The conventional gloss is "Spirit Lake People", but tunwan signifies "village" (compare with the modern Lakota term for town, city, otunwahe) and should be part of the translation. William H. Keating, chronicler of the Long expedition, in 1825, identifies four Mdewakanton villages: Oanoska, the village under Big Eagle; Tetankatane; Taoapa; and Weakaote. There is some problem in deciphering the orthography. The second is probably "old buffalo" (tatanka tanni); the third possibly is "strikes the wound" (tao, 'wound' and apa, 'to strike'); the fourth may be "strikes many women" or "crowded with women" (winyan, 'women' and kaota, 'to strike many' or kaotins, 'crowded in'). Keating also cites the names of Mdewakanton bands by their leaders: Wabasha's band is called Keoxa (kiyuksa, 'to break in half'); Red Wing's is noted as Eanbosandata (?); and Little Crow's is called Kapoja (kapoja, 'light [weight]'). The first and last names are important insofar as they appear again as subdivisions of the Oglalas.

2. Wahpeton is derived from wah'petunwan (wah'pe, 'leaf' and tunwan, 'village'). Howard translates it as "Dwellers among the Leaves" and DeMallie as "Leaf Village." Both suggest that the Wahpetons wandered away from the Mdewakantons to the deciduous forests of the south, hence the name.

3. Wahpekute is from wah'pekute (wah'pe, 'leaf' and kute, 'to shoot'). Howard calls them "Shooters among the Leaves," and DeMallie "shoot in the leaves [village]." Interestingly, this is the only Fireplace that does not identify itself as a village (tunwan); above it was quoted that these Sioux were regarded as the most "stupid and inactive" among the tribe. They are also identified as being a group of renegades who deserted the Wabasha band and who were also known as Gens de la Feuille Tire, or Fire-Leaf band.

4. Sisseton comes from sinsintunwan (sinsin or sisin, 'to smell of fish' or 'besmeared, slimed, as with fish'; also 'dried on, glued, or glazed over'). Howard calls this band "People of the Boggy Ground," and DeMallie, "slimy village." Riggs and DeMallie attribute the name to the fact that the Sisseton village stank like fish. Hickerson states that fish were not regarded highly by the Dakotas, and that any allusion to fish is one suggesting poverty.

5. Yankton is derived from ihanktunwan (ihanke, 'end, termination, border, boundary' and tunwan, 'village'). Conventionally glossed as "End Village" or "End Dwellers," this term refers to a relative position in a camp circle rather than to a topographical area as do the preceding four.

6. Yanktonais is derived from ihanktunwanna (inhake, 'end'; tunwan, 'village'; and na, diminuitive suffix), conventionally glossed as "Little End Village" or "Little End Dwellers." Both the Yanktons and the Yanktonais are also referred to by other Sioux as Wiciyela or Wiciyena, glossed as "Those Who Speak like Men" by Howard and "our people, those who are ours" by DeMallie (probably from wica, third person plural [objective]; iye, 'to speak'; and la, suffix which connotes either diminution or proper name, hence 'speakers'). According to Howard, the Yanktons were divided into seven subdivisions, to which an eighth, the "Half-Breed," was added. The Yanktonais and Lower Yanktonais (also called Hunkpatina). Of these two divisions, the former was divided into six subdivisions, the latter into seven. I shall return to these subdivisions at a later point insofar as we again find terms used by the Santees and Tetons employed by the Yankton groups. As a matter of historical note, it is from the Yanktonais that the Nakoda-speaking Assiniboins emerged allying themselves with the Crees.

7. Teton, according to all sources, is derived from tintatunwan (tinta, 'prairie' [in Dakota dialect]; and tunwan, 'village'), and the conventional gloss is "prairie dwellers." Tinta does not appear in Lakota; it is replaced by tüh'eyab (ti, 'to dwell'; and ih'eyab [from ih'eyapa, 'away from, beyond']. thus I believe that both tinta in Dakota and tüh'eyab in Lakota are metaphors signifying "prairie," but in the sense of "village beyond the other dwellings." Furtahermore, ih'eyab is composed of i, preposition 'at' or 'toward'; h'e, 'mountain'; and yab (from yapa, 'moving toward'). Thus ih'eyab as it is used in the proper name may be regarded as a double metaphor, i.e., away from or beyond is actually "toward the mountains from." Another form, h'eyata, is used with wicaša, 'man', to indicate one of two divisions of the Sicangus, a constituent of the Tetons, hence h'eyata wicaša, 'upper men', distinguished one group of Sicangus from the kul wicaša (kuta, 'low, below') 'lower men'. The upper-lower dichotomy also appears among the Yanktonais.

Although Teton has been conventionally glossed as "Prairie Dweller,": the important distinction between this division and other members of the Seven Fireplaces is that its name bears no relationship to the others. That is to say that while the Dakota-speakers favor names that refer to their original homes in the Woodlands, i.e., lakes and forests, and the Nakota-speakers are named after relative positions in a metaphorical camp circle, i.e., the ends, the Lakota-speakers emerge with a generic name which refers to neither toponymic nor village-related concepts. The Tetons are, in fact, unique.