56 Fun Facts About Sioux

What does the Sioux name for their own nation, Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, mean?

Seven Council Fires counts the nation's seven allied peoples, each keeping its own council fire: four Dakota groups in the east, two in the middle and the Lakota in the west.

The word 'Sioux' is usually traced to a French rendering of a term in which language?

Ojibwe is the usual answer, though some linguists point to the closely related Ottawa. The French wrote the name as Nadouessioux, then kept only its last syllable.

What do the words Dakota and Lakota translate to?

Friend, ally is the sense of both: they are one name in two dialects. 'Sioux' was an outsiders' label, shortened by the French from a name a rival nation used for them.

Which English word for a Native American dwelling was borrowed from the Sioux languages?

Tipi comes from the Dakota and Lakota word for a dwelling. When a camp moved, the poles became the frame of a travois, a drag sled that carried the folded cover.

Around which Great Lake did the Santee Dakota live before the 17th century?

Superior's wooded shores were Santee country, where they gathered wild rice and speared fish from canoes until long wars with a rival nation to the east pushed them south and west.

Which animal's 18th-century arrival made the Lakota a dominant power on the Northern Plains?

The horse remade Lakota life around the mounted bison hunt, and they pushed west across the Missouri as far as Wyoming and Montana.

The Lakota share their other name with which Wyoming mountain range?

Teton Sioux chiefs confronted Lewis and Clark on the Missouri in 1804, and an armed standoff almost came to a fight before the expedition was let upriver.

The Lakota origin story says the people first emerged into the world from which Black Hills site?

Wind Cave 'breathes': air flows in or out of its small natural opening as the pressure outside changes, and Lakota tradition speaks of it as a place where the earth breathes.

Which figure in Sioux tradition brought the sacred pipe and taught the Seven Sacred Rites?

White Buffalo Calf Woman is said to have changed into a white buffalo as she left, promising to return, which is why the birth of a white calf is greeted as a sacred sign.

In Sioux belief, what is Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka?

The Great Spirit is addressed through the sacred pipe: the rising smoke is said to carry the smoker's voice to it.

In Lakota ceremony, what is Inípi?

The sweat lodge rite purifies: heated stones are carried into a small dome of bent saplings, and it often prepares people for a vision quest or the Sun Dance.

The Yankton kept treaty rights to dig at which Minnesota quarry, held sacred by many Plains nations?

Pipestone Quarry yields the soft red stone carved into ceremonial pipes, and digging there is still reserved for enrolled members of Native American tribes.

Whose 1866-68 war closed the Bozeman Trail and made the US Army abandon three forts?

Red Cloud refused to talk peace until the soldiers had marched out of the Powder River country, and the empty forts were burned behind them.

What do the Lakota call the Fetterman Fight, which killed an Army column of 81?

Battle of the Hundred-in-the-Hands: decoys, Crazy Horse among them, drew the whole column over a ridge into an ambush, the Army's worst defeat on the Plains until the Little Bighorn.

The 1868 treaty that reserved the Black Hills for the Sioux is named for which Wyoming fort?

Fort Laramie gave the treaty its name. Its terms said no land could be given up unless three-quarters of the adult men signed, a rule the later taking of the Hills ignored.

Whose 1874 expedition into the Black Hills set off the gold rush that broke the 1868 treaty?

George Armstrong Custer's party confirmed gold in the Hills, and the town that prospectors founded at his campsite the next year still bears his name.

By what name do the Lakota know the 1876 clash at the Little Bighorn?

Battle of the Greasy Grass is the victors' name, yet the battlefield park bore the defeated commander's name until Congress changed it in 1991 and added a memorial to the warriors.

Before the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull had a vision of soldiers doing what?

Falling upside down into the Lakota camp, like grasshoppers from the sky: he saw it during a Sun Dance weeks before the fight, and his people read it as a promise that the soldiers coming for them would die.

Which regiment did the Lakota and their allies defeat at the Little Bighorn?

The 7th Cavalry lost five of its twelve companies to the last man that day, and fourteen years later it was the same regiment that opened fire at Wounded Knee.

Which Army horse, found badly wounded after the Little Bighorn, was long famed as its side's only survivor?

Comanche was nursed back to health and, by regimental order, never ridden again. Mounted after his death in 1891, he still stands in a University of Kansas museum.

Where did Sitting Bull lead his band in May 1877 rather than surrender?

Canada sheltered him for four years, but it gave his people no rations, and with the buffalo failing, hunger drove him back across the border to surrender in 1881.

In 1885 Sitting Bull spent a season performing with which touring show?

Buffalo Bill's Wild West paid him about $50 a week simply to ride once around the arena, and he earned more by selling his autograph to the crowds.

Who killed Sitting Bull on 15 December 1890?

Indian agency police, Lakota men in government service, were sent to arrest him for fear he would back the Ghost Dance, and shot him when his followers tried to stop them.

Which Lakota band did Sitting Bull belong to?

Hunkpapa followers of his fled south after he was killed and joined the Miniconjou band that the Army attacked at Wounded Knee two weeks later.

Crazy Horse was a war leader of which Lakota band?

Oglala on his father's side, he rode into battle with a single feather and never a war bonnet, which the best-known account traces to a vision in his youth telling him to go plainly dressed.

What did the Lakota war leader Crazy Horse refuse all his life?

Being photographed or sketched was something he never allowed, so the vast mountain carving of him in the Black Hills can only guess at his face.

How did Crazy Horse die in September 1877?

Bayoneted by a guard, in most accounts, as he fought to stay out of the Fort Robinson guardhouse four months after his surrender, while an old friend, Little Big Man, held him back.

Which Northern Paiute prophet's 1889 vision set off the Ghost Dance that swept the Plains?

Wovoka came out of a trance during a solar eclipse preaching a dance that would bring back the dead; Lakota dancers later added the 'ghost shirts' to its ceremonies.

The Wounded Knee Massacre took place on 29 December 1890 on which reservation?

Pine Ridge was where the band hoped to find sanctuary after Sitting Bull was killed; troops intercepted it on the way and camped it beside Wounded Knee Creek for the night.

By what nickname was Chief Spotted Elk, whose band was attacked at Wounded Knee, later known?

Big Foot was ill with pneumonia on the flight south and gave up without a fight when the Army caught up with his band the day before the massacre.

In one account of Wounded Knee, why did Black Coyote fail to obey the order to give up his rifle?

He was deaf, by this account, and his rifle went off as soldiers grappled with him; which side fired that first shot has been argued over ever since.

Which decoration went to about twenty soldiers for Wounded Knee?

Medal of Honor awards, the Army's highest, went to some twenty men for that day; Native American groups and members of Congress have pressed for years to have them rescinded.

Which president reviewed 303 death sentences after the Dakota War and let 38 hangings go ahead at Mankato?

Abraham Lincoln had the trial records gone through case by case and spared 265 men; the 38 hanged together the day after Christmas remain the largest mass execution in US history.

The Dakota War of 1862 is also known by the name of which Dakota leader?

Little Crow at first told the young men that fighting the whites was hopeless, then agreed to lead the war he had tried to talk them out of.

The Lakota knew a Black Hills peak as the Six Grandfathers before it was carved into which monument?

Mount Rushmore got its present name from Charles Rushmore, a New York lawyer who visited in the 1880s to check mining claims, decades before the presidents were carved.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that taking the Black Hills from the Sioux had required what?

Just compensation with interest came to about $106 million, but the Sioux have never taken the money: they want the land back, and the fund has since grown past $1 billion.

What is South Dakota's highest summit, which carried an Army general's name until 2016?

Black Elk Peak took a Lakota holy man's name in place of William Harney's, the general whose troops destroyed a Brulé village at Blue Water Creek in 1855.

Which writer interviewed Black Elk and published the result as Black Elk Speaks in 1932?

John Neihardt, Nebraska's poet laureate, came looking for memories of the Ghost Dance for an epic poem and stayed to take down the old man's life story instead.

The Crazy Horse Memorial will show him doing what?

Pointing to his lands answers a soldier's taunt in the story behind the design: asked where his lands were now, he is said to have replied, 'My lands are where my dead lie buried.'

Which group led the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee?

American Indian Movement members held the village for 71 days against federal marshals and the FBI; its leaders were tried afterwards, but the judge threw the case out over government misconduct.

Which actor sent Sacheen Littlefeather to refuse his 1973 Oscar while Wounded Knee was under siege?

Marlon Brando had won Best Actor for The Godfather; his stand-in told the audience he was refusing it over Hollywood's treatment of Native Americans and the siege at Wounded Knee.

Which Wyoming landmark, known to the Lakota as Bear Lodge, became the first US national monument in 1906?

Devils Tower's grooved sides, in stories told by the Lakota and other Plains nations, are the claw marks of a giant bear trying to reach people who had escaped to the top.

The 2016 protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline centred on which reservation?

Standing Rock's protest camps by the Missouri drew support from more than 200 Native nations, the largest such gathering in generations, after the pipeline was routed under the river just north of its land.

What did those who camped against the Dakota Access Pipeline call themselves?

Water protectors ran their camps, the first of them called Sacred Stone, as places of prayer, walking out each day to hold ceremonies at the construction sites.

In the First World War, the Army gave Sioux soldiers which new task?

Sending coded messages in Native languages began in France in 1918, with Choctaw, Cherokee, Sioux and other soldiers, a generation before the Navajo code talkers of the Pacific war.

Which actor directed Dances with Wolves, set among the Lakota?

Kevin Costner shot his first film as director on location in South Dakota, staging its buffalo hunt with a herd on a ranch near Pierre.

Which tribe were the raiders Dunbar helps the Lakota defeat in Dances with Wolves?

Pawnee and Lakota were real enemies too: a Lakota attack on Pawnee hunters in Nebraska in 1873 helped drive the Pawnee to give up their land and move to Indian Territory.

Which gold-rush town, where Wild Bill Hickok was killed, began as an illegal Black Hills camp?

Deadwood's miners were all trespassers: a treaty had reserved the Black Hills for the Sioux only eight years earlier, and the rush that built the town is what broke it.

Which sharpshooter did Sitting Bull befriend in 1884 and nickname 'Little Sure Shot'?

Annie Oakley's shooting so impressed him on a visit to St. Paul that he offered $65 for a photograph of the two of them together.

Descendants of Dakota who fled north after 1862 live on reserves in Saskatchewan and which other prairie province?

Five of the reserves, including Sioux Valley and Dakota Tipi, are in that province.

In Sioux belief, dreaming of the Wakíŋyaŋ, or thunder beings, involuntarily makes a person what?

Black Elk, a famous Heyókȟa, said such people share their sacred power with everyone 'through funny actions'.

Which US officer negotiated the Dakota's first treaty with the American government in 1805?

Zebulon Pike got only two of the seven Dakota leaders present to sign, on the island where the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers meet, which now carries his name.

The 1854 Grattan affair, in which Chief Conquering Bear was killed, began over accusations of stealing what?

A cow belonging to an emigrant was the whole cause: Lieutenant Grattan marched 29 men into the camp to seize the man who killed it, and when the chief was shot his entire detachment was wiped out.

The Sičháŋǧu band of the Lakota, better known as the Brulé, carry a name that means what?

Burned Thigh is the literal sense, and French traders kept only the first half, calling the band the Brulé, 'burnt'; how the name arose is not known for certain.

Which Missouri River dam, whose reservoir the Dakota Access Pipeline runs under, flooded parts of two Sioux reservations?

Oahe Dam and its sister dams on the Missouri drowned the fertile river bottoms and forced Native American families from their homes.

What do the Lakota call the Black Hills, which they hold sacred?

Paha Sapa is, in a Lakota phrase, 'the heart of everything that is', which is why the Sioux have never stopped pressing for the hills' return.