EatTheRich
President
The ancestors of the Fort Peck tribes (Siouan-speaking Dakota Sioux, Lakota Sioux, and Assiniboine) share cultural characteristics with hunter-gatherer cultures that spread from a homeland near Santee, South Carolina hunting mammoth and later deer, through early adoption of pottery, to semi-nomadic hunters, gardeners, and merchants that share cultural features with Hopewell and Late Woodland cultures of the Columbus, Ohio area. They lived in log cabins or when on the hunt in willow-elk hide wigwams, grew beans, and exported stone hoes or other tools that they produced in excess of their own villages’ supply in exchange for imported corn traveling up the Ohio from the Cahokia (East St. Louis) area, their main food source. Cahokia (perhaps controlled by Natchez-speaking people, we don’t know the historic name) would go on to become the biggest pre-Columbian city in present-day U.S. centuries later, but at the time it was just a locally important town. As the Ohio Valley population grew and wars over land became more common, smaller settlements became the norm, trade and hunting decreased, and a local subsistence economy based on corn, beans, and squash started to predominate. Doctors say heavy reliance on corn as a food staple would have led to much sickness from pellagra.
Oral tradition says that around the year 600, after multiple crop failures, the Fort Peck tribes appear to have fled upriver to the Green Bay, Wisconsin area to live among their distant relatives the Winnebago. There they lived in grass, willow, and deerskin huts, and moved from village to village fishing for lake trout, picking raspberries, collecting maple syrup, hunting deer, mining copper, and sending canoe convoys of syrup, domestically produced copper jewelry, and candy to the Chicago-area, perhaps controlled by Caddoan-speaking people, in exchange for their chief import, tobacco, and miners to the Pipestone, Minnesota area to mine pipestone (used to make pipes) in the communal quarries there. But at the same time the Fort Peck moved in among the Winnebago, their closest relatives, the ancestors of the Osage, Kansa, Ponca, Omaha, and Quapaw, having fled the opposite direction, were raiding the towns of the Mississippi River, drastically raising the tobacco prices by disrupting the trade, and leading the Winnebago to soon expel the ancestors of the Fort Peck tribes.
The ancestral Fort Peck tribes sacked a (perhaps Algonquian-speaking and showing Early Woodland cultural characteristics) villages near present-day Malmo Township, Minnesota and lived by fishing for walleye and pike, hunting elk, charging for visits to their shrine and medicine woman on Mille Lacs lake, and sending raiding parties against hunters and fishers in the Mille Lacs Lake-Rum River region, and against merchants on the upper Mississippi. Trading convoys went west to the Blackfeet-speaking territories of northwestern Montana to trade corn and hides for lodgepoles used to construct the elk-skin tepees that replaced earlier housing forms.
As corn-based agriculture recovered, trading networks of food, hides, pipes, stone tools, and sacred medicine bundles stretching from the Great Lakes to the Great Plains began developing and aristocratic clans from other tribes began marrying into the traditional ruling clans of the Sioux. To keep the peace among seven Algonquian, Siouan, and Caddoan speaking tribes ... the Mandan, Hidatsa/Crow, Arikara, Sioux, Assiniboine, Cree, and Chippewa/Ottawa/Potawatomi ... a rule was established that each tribe had to select two pipe carriers, one male and one female, to represent it at sacred peace pipe ceremonies, and each pipe carrier had to marry someone of a different tribe. The Sioux and Assiniboine did this by electing representatives from among the nobility of each village for a council fire and having this select pipe carriers for the tribe as a whole. As traditional village rule passed from father-in-law to son-in-law, which centuries earlier had displaced the earlier rule passed from father to daughter, male warrior and elder societies challenged the old matrilineal aristocracy. As corn crops failed again, a new nobility that inherited its rights from father to son took primacy, and the leaders of this nobility fought each other for domination.
The traditional gods of the Sioux—the Great Mystery, a universal spirit; Beautiful Woman, a goddess of justice; Little Boy, a trickster god; sacred tobacco; and the thunderbirds (thunder spirits)—were supplemented for the ancestral Lakota by White Calf Buffalo Woman, a goddess of kinship who gave the Sioux and Assiniboine their seven sacred pipes and taught them the seven savored rites (sweat lodge, naming of children, healing, marriage, adoption, vision quest, and sun dance) and preached respect for women, around this time. Meanwhile as conflicts with the Cree and Chippewa/Ottawa/Potawatomi increased, and traditional networks based on intermarriage fell apart, formerly independent tribes formed a formal alliance, the Seven Council Fires (Oceti Sakowin) of which five were the Sisseton (Dakota for “fishing village”), Western Dakota (they lived closest to the pipestone quarries and made pipes), Wahpeton (Dakota for “leaf village,” since they were forest dwellers known for their deer hunting), Lakota (Lakota for “friend,” as Dakota is Dakota for “ally”; from here the war parties set out) and Assiniboine (it was from their villages in the northwest that merchants set out) now represented on Fort Peck. This alliance was ruled by a council of “shirt wearers” chosen by the men of the elder societies of each tribe, which were open to old men of aristocratic lineage and also to men who had proven themselves as warriors to the satisfaction of the warrior societies. Lakota calendars date the formation of this alliance to the year 900.
For hundreds of years to come, the Sioux/Assiniboine allied themselves with the Fox for raids on the wealthy Illinois and Pawnee cities of the Mississippi River to the south, while resisting the westward expansion of the Chippewa. After French fur traders came to Minnesota in the early 17th century, they established a lucrative fur-for-rifles/ammunition/rum/tobacco/clothing trade. The Iroquois, also growing rich and powerful through the beaver trade, and seeking to disrupt the trade networks of their rivals, offered to join the Oceti Sakowin and their Fox and Menominee allies for attacks on the Pawnee and Illinois, but demanded that the Oceti Sakowin end their alliance with the French and join an alliance with the English allies of the Iroquois. The Assiniboine (Cree for “enemies who cook with stones,” since they boiled meat by heating stones and then putting the stones in their pots, and where “enemy” was Cree for Oceti Sakowin; they call themselves the Hohe Nakodah, or “rebel alliance”) refused to break ties with the French and seceded from the Seven Council Fires, so the Western Dakota were given an additional seat to take their place. The tribes remaining in the Seven Council Fires are now known as the Sioux, abbreviated from Nadeoussioux, a Chippewa word meaning “little snakes,” a term used to differentiate them from the “big snakes,” the Iroquois. The Assiniboine became enemies of the Sioux and their Menominee and Potawatomi allies.
Oral tradition says that around the year 600, after multiple crop failures, the Fort Peck tribes appear to have fled upriver to the Green Bay, Wisconsin area to live among their distant relatives the Winnebago. There they lived in grass, willow, and deerskin huts, and moved from village to village fishing for lake trout, picking raspberries, collecting maple syrup, hunting deer, mining copper, and sending canoe convoys of syrup, domestically produced copper jewelry, and candy to the Chicago-area, perhaps controlled by Caddoan-speaking people, in exchange for their chief import, tobacco, and miners to the Pipestone, Minnesota area to mine pipestone (used to make pipes) in the communal quarries there. But at the same time the Fort Peck moved in among the Winnebago, their closest relatives, the ancestors of the Osage, Kansa, Ponca, Omaha, and Quapaw, having fled the opposite direction, were raiding the towns of the Mississippi River, drastically raising the tobacco prices by disrupting the trade, and leading the Winnebago to soon expel the ancestors of the Fort Peck tribes.
The ancestral Fort Peck tribes sacked a (perhaps Algonquian-speaking and showing Early Woodland cultural characteristics) villages near present-day Malmo Township, Minnesota and lived by fishing for walleye and pike, hunting elk, charging for visits to their shrine and medicine woman on Mille Lacs lake, and sending raiding parties against hunters and fishers in the Mille Lacs Lake-Rum River region, and against merchants on the upper Mississippi. Trading convoys went west to the Blackfeet-speaking territories of northwestern Montana to trade corn and hides for lodgepoles used to construct the elk-skin tepees that replaced earlier housing forms.
As corn-based agriculture recovered, trading networks of food, hides, pipes, stone tools, and sacred medicine bundles stretching from the Great Lakes to the Great Plains began developing and aristocratic clans from other tribes began marrying into the traditional ruling clans of the Sioux. To keep the peace among seven Algonquian, Siouan, and Caddoan speaking tribes ... the Mandan, Hidatsa/Crow, Arikara, Sioux, Assiniboine, Cree, and Chippewa/Ottawa/Potawatomi ... a rule was established that each tribe had to select two pipe carriers, one male and one female, to represent it at sacred peace pipe ceremonies, and each pipe carrier had to marry someone of a different tribe. The Sioux and Assiniboine did this by electing representatives from among the nobility of each village for a council fire and having this select pipe carriers for the tribe as a whole. As traditional village rule passed from father-in-law to son-in-law, which centuries earlier had displaced the earlier rule passed from father to daughter, male warrior and elder societies challenged the old matrilineal aristocracy. As corn crops failed again, a new nobility that inherited its rights from father to son took primacy, and the leaders of this nobility fought each other for domination.
The traditional gods of the Sioux—the Great Mystery, a universal spirit; Beautiful Woman, a goddess of justice; Little Boy, a trickster god; sacred tobacco; and the thunderbirds (thunder spirits)—were supplemented for the ancestral Lakota by White Calf Buffalo Woman, a goddess of kinship who gave the Sioux and Assiniboine their seven sacred pipes and taught them the seven savored rites (sweat lodge, naming of children, healing, marriage, adoption, vision quest, and sun dance) and preached respect for women, around this time. Meanwhile as conflicts with the Cree and Chippewa/Ottawa/Potawatomi increased, and traditional networks based on intermarriage fell apart, formerly independent tribes formed a formal alliance, the Seven Council Fires (Oceti Sakowin) of which five were the Sisseton (Dakota for “fishing village”), Western Dakota (they lived closest to the pipestone quarries and made pipes), Wahpeton (Dakota for “leaf village,” since they were forest dwellers known for their deer hunting), Lakota (Lakota for “friend,” as Dakota is Dakota for “ally”; from here the war parties set out) and Assiniboine (it was from their villages in the northwest that merchants set out) now represented on Fort Peck. This alliance was ruled by a council of “shirt wearers” chosen by the men of the elder societies of each tribe, which were open to old men of aristocratic lineage and also to men who had proven themselves as warriors to the satisfaction of the warrior societies. Lakota calendars date the formation of this alliance to the year 900.
For hundreds of years to come, the Sioux/Assiniboine allied themselves with the Fox for raids on the wealthy Illinois and Pawnee cities of the Mississippi River to the south, while resisting the westward expansion of the Chippewa. After French fur traders came to Minnesota in the early 17th century, they established a lucrative fur-for-rifles/ammunition/rum/tobacco/clothing trade. The Iroquois, also growing rich and powerful through the beaver trade, and seeking to disrupt the trade networks of their rivals, offered to join the Oceti Sakowin and their Fox and Menominee allies for attacks on the Pawnee and Illinois, but demanded that the Oceti Sakowin end their alliance with the French and join an alliance with the English allies of the Iroquois. The Assiniboine (Cree for “enemies who cook with stones,” since they boiled meat by heating stones and then putting the stones in their pots, and where “enemy” was Cree for Oceti Sakowin; they call themselves the Hohe Nakodah, or “rebel alliance”) refused to break ties with the French and seceded from the Seven Council Fires, so the Western Dakota were given an additional seat to take their place. The tribes remaining in the Seven Council Fires are now known as the Sioux, abbreviated from Nadeoussioux, a Chippewa word meaning “little snakes,” a term used to differentiate them from the “big snakes,” the Iroquois. The Assiniboine became enemies of the Sioux and their Menominee and Potawatomi allies.