Social Organization

At one level of social organization we find seven villages in Minnesota which call themselves Oceti Šakowin, the Seven Fireplaces. Each of the villages (with the exception of Wahpekute) is distinguished by the suffix tunwan, 'village', to its proper name. Oceti, 'fireplace', may be regarded as a synonym of village. The Seven Fireplaces stands in contradistinction to all nonmember Siouan-speakers, and, of course, this would include non-Indians. The native term for nonmembers is toka, usually glossed "enemy" but perhaps better translated as "outsider" inasmuch as even friendly outsiders such as the Cheyennes and Arapahos are today regarded as toka.

At the second level, we find the Teton village giving rise to seven divisions, the largest of which is the Oglala. At this historical period, however, the tunwan suffix is missing. The constituents of the Tetons are not village-based. Instead, we find the Oglalas and other members of the Tetons referring to themselves as oyate, 'people'. Today, oyate is not only the generic term for people, but is also used ritually to refer to animals (e.g., Mato Oyate, 'Bear People') and birds (Wanbli Oyate, 'Eagle People'). In its ritual context, anthropologists have tended to translate oyate as "nation." This is somewhat misleading because it gives the impression that the Oglalas differentiate between Oglala Oyate and Wanbli Oyate (i.e., Oglala People but Eagle Nation). There is no reason to assume that the Oglalas in fact do differentiate, at least in ritual contexts.

At a third level we find the Oglalas giving rise to seven divisions which in terms of emic categorization are neither tunwan nor oyate. The Lakota term for this third level of social organization is tiyošpaye (from ti, 'to dwell', and ošpaye, 'a drove, a herd consisting of different kinds of animals, a company separated from the main body'; ošpaye is derived from ošpe, 'a piece, a part'). Tiyošpaye has previously been glossed in a number of ways: "a band, a division of a tribe, a community"(Buechel); "lodge group, or group that lives together"(DeMallie); "they live together"(Feraca); "family hunting group"(Hassrick); "camp"(Howard); and "tipi-division-bands" (Walker). Most authors have regarded the tiyošpaye as the smallest sociopolitical unit that operated under one or more chiefs throughout most of the year.

With respect to these three levels of social organization, an Oglala would theoretically identify himself in the following way:
1. At the first level he would regard himself as a member of the Titunwan.
2. At the second level he would regard himself as a member of the Oglala oyate.
3. At the third level he would regard himself as a member of the Kiyaksa (or other) tiyošpaye.
His membership in the above would be determined by his birth.

At still another level of social organization, an Oglala would be a member of wicoti (from wica, third person plural [objective]; o, 'in'; and ti, 'to dwell'), the generic term for camp, encampment. A wicoti may be comprised of several families from the same tiyošpaye, or several families representing a number of different tiyošpayes. An Oglala belonged to the same tiyošpaye from birth to death but could change his residence from one wicoti to the next, as he desired. He regarded everyone in his tiyošpaye and wicoti as kin, and was required to seek a spouse outside these bounded units. According to one Oglala, old men would gather their grandchildren around them and admonish them by saying, "Grandchildren, do not choose a wife from the corner of your household!" (Tokoja, tiokah'mi etan tawicutun šni po!) The grandchildren were carefully taught their kinship terms so that they might know whom among them were eligible for marriage. They were cautioned to climb to the top of a hill and look for a wife on the other side.

The wicoti was comprised minimally of two or more tiwahe. Tiwahe is the generic term for family. It is derived from ti, 'to dwell', and wahe which is related to wohan, 'cooking' (compare with Oohenunpa, 'Two Kettle' or Two Boilings'; han in final position becomes he). Each tiwahe was comprised of one or more tipis, which accommodated a man, his wife or wives, unmarried children, and possibly elderly parents.

To summarize, the rank order in which an Oglala claimed membership in what has been arbitrarily identified as nation, tribe, band, etc., may be expressed in the following manner:

Kinship and Marriage

The Oglalas, as well as other Tetons, are regarded as having Iroquoian cousin terms and a tendency toward patrilocal residence. Membership in a tiyošpaye was predicated on cognate principles, that is to say, there were some choices as to which tiyošpaye an Oglala could claim allegiance to. According to some investigators, boys chose the tiyošpaye of their father, and girls, of their mother. This is reflected in the kinship terminology collected by Buechel but not in others. Since all members of the wicoti and tiyošpaye regarded themselves as kin, men were required to obtain spouses from another tiyošpaye. The distinction between one's own tiyošpaye and another's is reflected in some kinship terminology still employed by the Oglalas.

The generic term for relations, relatives, kinsmen is otakuye (o, noun prefix, and takuye, 'to have, regard, consider related' [takukiciyapi, 'relatives' is derived from this, from takuya, 'to have as a relative'; kici, reflexive infix 'each other'; pi, third person plural, subjective, glossed as 'they call each other kin']). No one could marry another in the class of otakuye. Another term which also applies to relative, relations, kinsmen is titakuye. Titakuye is currently glossed as "his/her side of the family" and signifies the relatives in one's own tiyošpaye as opposed to relatives in one's spouse's.

The alliance of members of two tiyošpayes gives rise to another term, which cannot be precisely glossed in English, omawahetun. Buechel calls it a term of address between parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents of a married couple. Etymologically, the term may be derived from unma, 'other'; wahe, 'cooking, boiling'; and tun, 'to bear, given birth to'. It is worth while to note here that tun, which signifies "birth, creation, giving rise to," is the radical element of tunwan, 'village'. The term also appears significantly in the discussion of Lakota religious concepts (see Lakota Spirituality), particularly those related to life and death. Finally, related to omawahetun is the term owahecun, the generic term for kinship terminology. It is probably derived from o, noun prefix; wahe and ecun, 'to do'.

It is unlikely that marriage prohibitions were intended to encompass the omawahetun relationship, for this would in fact militate against the exogamous principle of marrying someone from another tiyošpaye. Today the term is conventionally employed to indicate a relationship created by marriage, but for which there is no kinship term.

The notion of finding a spouse in another tiyošpaye is still highly valued today. Oglalas say that most of the arguments in their communities revolve around accusations that persons are inbred. The term for incest, wogluze (also "taboo") is derived from winyuze, 'to marry', but literally, 'to catch a woman'. Wogluze signifies "one who marries one's own (kin)." The products of incestuous relationships are called wicogluzewin (girl) and wicogluze hokšila (boy). A social dance song, which is still sung on the Pine Ridge Reservation, underscores the dictum to look for a spouse from another tiyošpaye:

Dearie, I'm here and I want to see you.
There's no relationship over here.
We can tell the whole world what we're doing.

Up to the reservation period the Oglalas maintained a peculiar system of classifying children based on birth-order names. This system has been reported for the Oglalas by Walker (1914), for the Canadian Dakotas (Wallis, 1947), for the Winnebagos by Radin (1923), and for other societies by Lévi-Strauss (1962). Riggs (1890) and Buechel (1970) also list birth-order names in their dictionaries.

Unfortunately, orthographic corruptions make it almost impossible to translate some of the names. The Oglalas, like the Winnebagos of Radin's time, neither employ the terms any more, nor do they agree that the terms had any meaning. However, the speculations made for the Winnebagos are applicable to the Santees, and implicitly to the Oglalas. The table below provides a comparison of birth-order names for the Santees (Riggs), the Canadian Dakotas (Wallis), and the Oglalas (Walker). Despite the lack of glosses for some terms, other relationships are implicit.

According to all authorities, the birth-order names were maintained until the child received another name during a life-crisis ritual. The new name usually bestowed by a kinsman or winkte, the latter of whom were considered to have auspicious powers related to childbirth and child rearing. In some cases, however, a birth-order name might be retained as an endearing nickname analagous to "bro" or "sis" in American usage.

Despite the inconsistencies in the orthographies in the table above, some speculation is in order. First, most of the terms are in some abbreviated form, and others appear in a diminutive form. Caske, which appears consistently as the name for the first-born male, is probably related to kaška, 'to bind' (icicaške, 'to bind together'). Winona (Wino'ne) is a diminutive form of winu, glossed by Riggs as "female captive." Interestingly Buechel glosses Witoka as the Lakota form of "female captive," the term used by Walker for first-born female. It would appear, if the first to be born are the first to be married and customarily among the Oglalas, a man might steal a wife, that the two terms are reciprocal and express the marriage relationship in the metaphor of capture. The term winu still survives in Lakota as the radical element in winuh'cala, 'old woman', a word also used as a synonym for "mother-in-law."

The other terms are not so easy to decipher. Hapan and its variations may be an attenuated form of, if not baby talk for scepan, 'sister-in-law' (female speaking); and Hepistanna may be the shortened form of scepanši, 'female cross-cousin' (female speaking). The phonemic changes in the male series for these same terms may be sex indicators. Although this does not hold for these terms in modern Lakota, there are still some surviving terms which employ phonemic changes to indicate sex differentiation (i.e., cinkši, 'son'; cunkši, 'daughter'; tunjan, 'niece'; tunska, 'nephew').

The terms for fourth-born male and female, with the exception Wiha'ki, almost defy translation. The others refer to last-born (hakakta, 'last-born child'; wihakta, 'last-born female child'; hoihakakta is the term for the youngest of a man's wives). The last entry in Wallis's list of males is a term for an offspring of a mixed-blood marriage, while Walker's last two terms refer to twins.

The most interesting point about birth-order names is found in Wallis's list for females. Here we see more or less the ideal Sioux type of organization, not only in terms of the number seven, but in the manner in which the seven are differentiated, a manner reminiscent of the structure of the original Seven Fireplaces, particularly the manner in which the dialects cluster.

For detailed information on familial relationship terms, please see my Lakota Kinship System in my discussion about the Lakota language.

Throughout most of the year the Oglalas operated in small groups enabling them to exploit the environment with maximum efficiency. Each of the wicotis and tiyošpayes was under the leadership of one or more men commonly designated as itancan, 'chief, leader, boss'. A man was elected leader and maintained that status with the consent of the people who followed him. If he was unable to find game or lead warriors against their enemies, he could be replaced with another, more capable warrior-hunter. On the basis of what we know about social organization from documented sources, it is unlikely that the organization of the wicoti and tiyošpaye was stable. Yet the Oglalas maintained a complex political organization, at least as an ideal.

Wissler may be credited with making the first systematic attempt to analyze Oglala sociopolitical organization, one in which he focused on the organization of okolakiciye, or "societies." The following description of Oglala leadership and the maintenance of authority and control is abstracted from his seminal work (Wissler, 1912). It focuses mainly on the Red Cloud tiyošpaye.

The Chief Society (locally known even today as Tezi Tanka, 'Big Bellies', from the fact that the men were forty or older) served as a governing council which in turn elected seven chiefs for lifetime service. The seven chiefs were known as wicaša itancan, 'leader of men' (today the preferred form is wicašitancan from wicaša, 'man' and itancan, 'chief'). Wissler states that this position could be handed down from father to son, but that the governing council had the right to approve. The modern Oglalas still assert that chieftainship was hereditary, and most of the contemporary itancan bear the names of famous leaders of another generation.

The seven chiefs, or wicašitancan, delegated authority to four younger men, who were known as wicašayatanpi (from wicaša, 'man' and yatanpi, 'they praise', or praiseworthy men). The wicašayatanpi were also called "shirt wearers" from their particular badge of office, the so-called scalp shirt, or hair shirt. These men essentially controlled the camp.

Together, the Chief Society - the seven wicašitancan - and the four wicašayatanpi appointed four men to serve as wakicunze (from wakunza, 'to determine, influence' [compare wokunze, 'influence']; wakicunze may be glossed as "to determine for"). It was the wakicunze who determined where camps would be set up and when hunting would be permitted. They controlled the general social, political, and economic aspects of Oglala life.

The decisions of the wakicunze were carried out by men known as akicita, 'marshal, soldier chief'. The akicita were members of an akicita okolakicye, 'soldier society'. Whether real or ideal, an organization such as this war required only when tiyošpayes or segments of them came together for communal buffalo hunts and the annual sun dance. Smaller divisions of Oglalas operated throughout the year under only one itancan.

When an annual gathering of the tiyošpayes occured, they formed a camp circle whose opening, or tiyopa, 'door', was to the east. The entrance to the camp was also called hunkpa, 'camp entrance', or hoihanke, referring to the two ends of the camp entrance. The circle was often concentric, with younger married couples camping in front of their parents' lodges. In the center of the camp circle was the tiyotipi or soldiers' lodge, and/or the tiyokihe, 'lengthened tipi', made by attaching two tipi coverings together to form a large area for dancing and councils. The tiyotipi and tiyokihe faced east. The space inside the perimeter of outer tipis was referred to as hocoka (from ho [which as a radical can be translated a number of ways but here refers to camp] and coka, 'center, middle').

Symbolically, the camp circle was representative of unity and social solidarity. Everything inside the camp circle, that is, everyone and everything within the parameters of the hocoka, was irrefutably Oglala, despite the fact that during most of the year the constituents of the camp circle were in a state of flux. Outside the hocoka were the enemies, the inconsistencies of everyday life, the evil spirits, and later the white man. Everything within the circle was safe, knowable, auspicious. The sacred circle was represented in a number of symbolic ways; in design elements, artifacts, songs, and dances. Metaphorically, the camp circle was called cangleška wakan, 'the sacred hoop'.

It was during the formation of the camp circle by several tiyošpayes that young men and women could look for spouses. It was a time when there was general feasting and visiting. Dances were held, and members of the warrior societies recounted their deeds of valor. Buffalo were pursued under the jurisdiction of the akicita lest some young man stampede the herd in his personal quest for food and fame.

It was also during the formation of the camp circle that the great religious ceremonies were performed. These religious performances were the jurisdiction af another class of leaders, the wicaša wakan, the holy men. Many of these men banded together in okolakiciye consisting of members who had all shared in the same kinds of visions. They were not the chiefs, the warriors, or the feast makers. Their responsibilities revolved around another kind of authority and control. They were the intermediaries between common man and the supernatural spirits and powers, who, by proper propitiation, could be coaxed to enter the hocoka.