Sioux (Očhéthi Šakówiŋ)

The Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, the "Seven Council Fires", are the Dakota and Lakota peoples of the northern Great Plains, long known to outsiders as the Sioux. That name came into English from French, probably a shortening of an Ojibwe name for them, while Dakota and Lakota mean "friend" or "ally". Today they have many tribal governments in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Montana, and First Nations in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Each fire stands for one oyate, or nation. Four of them, the Bdewákaŋthuŋwaŋ (Mdewakanton), Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ (Wahpeton), Waȟpékhute (Wahpekute) and Sisíthuŋwaŋ (Sisseton), make up the Santee or Eastern Dakota. Two, the Yankton and Yanktonai, form the Western Dakota. The seventh, the Thítȟuŋwaŋ or Teton, is the Lakota, the largest and westernmost, whose seven bands include the Oglala, Hunkpapa, Miniconjou and Sicangu (Brulé). The language has three dialects: Eastern Dakota, Western Dakota and Lakota. An older scheme called the Yankton–Yanktonai "Nakota", but later studies found they call themselves Dakota; the name Nakota properly belongs to the related Assiniboine and Stoney, who split away in the 1500s. Society rested on the thiyóšpaye, extended-family camp circles, and on kinship that reached into the spiritual world. Lakota tradition tells that White Buffalo Calf Woman brought the sacred pipe and the Seven Sacred Rites.

Archaeologists think Sioux ancestors reached central Minnesota and north-western Wisconsin from the Mississippi valley shortly before 800. In the seventeenth century the Dakota lived around Lake Superior and the Mississippi headwaters, gathering wild rice and fishing; the French first met them in 1659–1660. Wars with the Ojibwe, who had French guns, pushed them south and west through the eighteenth century. The Lakota had horses by about 1700, according to a Lakota winter count, and moved onto the plains as mounted bison hunters. They crossed the Missouri around 1750, took the Black Hills from the Cheyenne in 1776, and by the 1840s had pushed into the Powder River country, fighting the Crow, while allying with the Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho.

Treaties in 1851 left the Eastern Dakota with a narrow strip along the Minnesota River, dependent on payments that often came late. In August 1862, amid starvation, a faction of Dakota attacked settlements along the river, beginning the Dakota War; many Sisseton and Wahpeton opposed the fighting. After hasty trials, 38 Dakota men were hanged at Mankato on 26 December 1862, the largest mass execution in US history. Congress cancelled the Dakota treaties, and most Dakota were expelled from Minnesota to reservations further west or fled to Canada.

The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which ended Red Cloud's War, created the Great Sioux Reservation, including the sacred Black Hills. After Custer's 1874 expedition and the gold rush that followed, the United States broke the treaty. Lakota and Northern Cheyenne forces under leaders including Crazy Horse and Gall, inspired by Sitting Bull, defeated Custer's 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876, but the bands were forced to surrender within a year. In 1877 Congress took the Black Hills. On 29 December 1890 the 7th Cavalry opened fire on a Miniconjou and Hunkpapa camp at Wounded Knee; more than 150 Lakota, including women and children, and 25 soldiers died.

Allotment, the 1889 break-up of the Great Sioux Reservation and boarding schools that banned language and ceremonies followed. In 1973 activists occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days. In 1980 the Supreme Court ruled that the Black Hills had been taken illegally; the tribes have refused the compensation, now over a billion dollars, and seek the land itself. In 2016 Standing Rock led protests against the Dakota Access pipeline. In 2020, 108,855 people in the US reported being solely Sioux.

Our maps for 1492, 1530, 1600, 1650, 1700 and 1715 draw approximate Sioux territories, labelled "Očhéthi Šakówiŋ" or by division: Teton (Lakota), Santee, Yankton and "Yankontai" (Yanktonai). The 1492 map also shows an unrelated people, the Santee of the Carolina coast, labelled "Santee (Carolina)". On the 1650 map the Teton border the Assiniboine, Crow, Cheyenne and Arapaho.