60 Fun Facts About Sioux

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

Each fire stands for one oyate, or people, within the nation.

The word 'Sioux' comes from a French rendering of a term in which language?

Nadowessi is often said to mean 'little snakes' or 'enemy'; the French added their plural -oux and later clipped it.

What do the words Dakota and Lakota translate to?

The two names reflect dialect differences within the same nation.

Which people are correctly called Nakota, a label often wrongly applied to the Yankton Dakota?

They live in western Canada and Montana.

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

An 18th-century war with the Ojibwe pushed them west into southern Minnesota.

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

By the 1850s they controlled a vast territory west of the Missouri.

How many bands or sub-tribes make up the Lakota?

They include the Brulé, Miniconjou, Sans Arc, Two Kettles and Sihasapa (Blackfeet).

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

The national park built around it in 1903 was the first created specifically to protect a cave.

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

She acted as an intermediary between the Great Spirit and humankind.

What is Wakȟáŋ Tháŋka?

It is believed to have created the universe and to embody everything within it as one.

Which of the Seven Sacred Rites is the purification lodge?

Haŋbléčheyapi is crying for a vision, and Wiwáŋyaŋg Wačhípi is the Sun Dance.

The Yankton Dakota kept a treaty role as caretakers of which Sioux cultural site where pipe stone is dug?

The soft red stone is carved into ceremonial pipes.

Whose 1866-68 campaign left the Lakota as the only nation to defeat the US on American soil?

He signed the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty and later led his people onto the reservation that became Pine Ridge.

The Fetterman Fight of December 1866, in which all 81 soldiers died, is known to the Lakota by what name?

Crazy Horse led the decoy party that lured Captain Fetterman out of Fort Phil Kearny; at the time it was the Army's worst defeat by Native Americans.

The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie set aside the Black Hills as part of what?

It barred all non-Indigenous settlement of the Hills 'forever'.

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

The government then failed to keep miners and settlers out of the Hills.

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

It was fought on 25-26 June 1876 along the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory.

Before the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull had a vision of soldiers 'as thick as grasshoppers' doing what?

His people took it as a foreshadowing of a great victory.

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

Its dead numbered 268, including Custer.

What was the only verified survivor of Custer's own command at the Little Bighorn?

The horse belonged to Captain Keogh and became a regimental mascot.

To which country did Sitting Bull lead his band in May 1877 rather than surrender?

He stayed near Wood Mountain in what is now Saskatchewan until 1881.

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

He then returned to the Standing Rock Agency.

Who killed Sitting Bull on 15 December 1890?

They were trying to arrest him because officials feared he would join the Ghost Dance movement.

Which Lakota band did Sitting Bull belong to?

The name means 'Camps at the End of the Camp Circle'.

Crazy Horse was a war leader of which Lakota band?

His lighter complexion and wavy hair earned him the childhood nickname Curly Hair.

What did Crazy Horse avoid throughout his life, in keeping with his personal humility?

No authenticated photograph of him exists.

How did Crazy Horse die in September 1877?

He had surrendered at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, that May and was being confined to the guardhouse.

The Ghost Dance was founded by which Northern Paiute prophet, also known as Jack Wilson?

He was said to have had his vision during a solar eclipse on 1 January 1889.

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

Soldiers of the 7th Cavalry were trying to disarm Spotted Elk's band of Miniconjou.

Roughly how many Lakota were killed at Wounded Knee?

Most were women and children; the Army was firing four Hotchkiss guns.

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

He was ill with pneumonia and was killed along with much of his band.

One account says the shooting at Wounded Knee began when a Lakota man named Black Coyote refused to give up his rifle. What made him slow to understand the order?

Historian Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, supports the account.

How many soldiers received the Medal of Honor specifically for Wounded Knee?

In 1990 Congress passed a resolution expressing 'deep regret' for the massacre.

How many Dakota men were hanged at Mankato on 26 December 1862, the largest one-day mass execution in US history?

President Lincoln had reviewed 303 death sentences and approved 39; one man was reprieved.

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

The war began after the US failed to make treaty payments and rations ran out.

Since 1990 the Sioux have refused a Supreme Court award now worth over $1 billion, demanding what?

The 1980 ruling in United States v. Sioux Nation held that the Hills had been taken illegally.

The 1980 case United States v. Sioux Nation ruled that taking the Black Hills required what?

The award has been left uncollected in the Treasury ever since.

What is the highest summit in the Hills, renamed in 2016 for a Lakota holy man?

It rises to 7,242 feet and is also the highest point in South Dakota.

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

Black Elk was a second cousin of Crazy Horse, fought at the Little Bighorn and toured Europe with Buffalo Bill.

Which Lakota elder commissioned the Crazy Horse Memorial from sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski?

Work began in 1948 and the face alone, 87 feet high, was finished in 1998.

In what year did work begin on the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills?

Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski started carving in 1948; when complete it is planned to be 641 feet long and 563 feet high, about 17 miles from Mount Rushmore.

For how many days did Lakota and AIM activists hold the town of Wounded Knee in 1973?

US Marshals and the FBI cordoned off the town; charges against AIM leaders Dennis Banks and Russell Means were later thrown out.

Which AIM-supporting actor sent Sacheen Littlefeather to refuse his 1973 Oscar during Wounded Knee?

He had been nominated for The Godfather; Johnny Cash and Jane Fonda also backed the occupiers.

The 1973 Wounded Knee occupiers wanted to remove which allegedly corrupt tribal president?

An impeachment attempt by the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization had failed first.

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

The pipeline runs under Lake Oahe on the Missouri River just upstream of the reservation.

What did the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters call themselves?

Tribal historian LaDonna Brave Bull Allard founded the Sacred Stone Camp near Cannon Ball, North Dakota.

Roughly how many people still spoke Lakota in 2010, out of a Lakota population above 170,000?

Lakota is the westernmost of three closely related Siouan languages.

Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves won how many Academy Awards?

They included Best Picture and Best Director for Costner's directorial debut.

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

He gives the Lakota his stash of firearms in time for the fight.

Which tribe did the Lakota defeat in 1776 to take control of the Black Hills?

The Cheyenne had earlier taken the region from the Kiowa; the Lakota later allied with the Northern Cheyenne.

In which year did French explorers first record the name Nadouessioux, the root of 'Sioux'?

Jean Nicolet wrote it down; the English adopted the shortened form by the 1760s.

What symbol, the medicine wheel or 'sacred hoop', represents the Sioux belief that everything in the universe is connected?

It is the preeminent symbol of Sioux religion.

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?

The deal covered 100,000 acres at the river confluences near today's Hastings and Saint Paul; Fort Snelling followed in 1819.

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

A detachment of US soldiers illegally entered a Sioux camp to make arrests and sparked a battle.

The Lakota band name Sičháŋǧu, rendered in French as Brulé, translates to what?

Spotted Tail was a notable Sičháŋǧu leader; the Rosebud Sioux Tribe now also calls itself the Sičháŋǧu Oyáte.

Which dam, built under the 1944 Flood Control Act, cost the Cheyenne River Reservation 150,000 acres?

Standing Rock lost nearly 56,000 acres too, much of it the reservations' prime agricultural land.

What do the Lakota call the Rocky Mountains, meaning 'white mountains'?

Mounted on light cavalry, the western Sioux had expanded their range to the Rockies by the 1800s.

Warfare with which confederacy dispersed the Dakota westward from the Great Lakes in 1659?

Later migrations of musket-armed Ojibwe in the 17th and 18th centuries pushed the Dakota further into Minnesota.