Indian Tribes in SD - Description and History, 1884

	This file is a complete transcription of the descriptive information about 
	the Indian tribes in SD as found in A. T. Andreas' "Historical Atlas of 
	Dakota", 1884.


				Indian Tribes

When the vast region lying between the Great Lakes and the Rocky 
Mountains began to be explored by the whites it was the home of the 
Indian and the wild beast. The dominant Indians were those of the 
Dakota family of which the Sioux constituted the principal division.

The various nations of the Algonquin family occupied the regions of 
the Great Lakes, the basins of the St. Lawrence and Ohio rivers, all of 
New England, the Canadas, and the states of New York, Pennsylvania, New 
Jersey and Delaware, and disputed with the Mobilian nations on the 
south, the Dakotas on the west and the Innuits on the north.

Between the lakes and the Mississippi the Dakota and the fierce 
Algonquin Iroquois frequently came in collision, and many a desperate 
battle was fought.  East of the lakes the Indian of the plains could 
gain no foothold, and until the advent of fire-arms among them, the 
Aligonquins failed in all their attempts to plant themselves in the 
Mississippi valley, at least in the region west of the lakes.

With the deadly fire-arms of the white man in their hands, obtained 
from the Hollander on the Hudson, and the Gaul in the valley of the St. 
Lawrence, fortune for a time perched upon the standard of the eastern 
Indians, and the Dakotas were forced beyond the Mississippi, with the 
exception of the Winnebago nation, a branch of the Dakota family, which 
for some unexplained reason left the congeners of the plains and chose 
a home on the western coast of Lake Michigan, where they were permitted 
to reside by the enemies of their ancestors.

The origin of the American races has been a subject prolific 
discussion, much of which has been based upon the superstitions of the 
past. Repeated efforts have tried to prove the decent of the copper 
colored nations of North American.

A careful study of the geology of the continents, which is the only 
solid ground work on which to predicate a history of the earth and its 
multiform life, beyond what we have of authentic written history, 
proves conclusively that many portions were fitted for the existence of 
human beings, while yet the bulk of the eastern continent was slowly 
forming under the billows of the sea.

In the great territory of which we are writing the fossil remains 
of gigantic Saurians and Amphibians, now extinct, show that this 
continent was densely peopled by living forms, many of which are still 
found in the newer regions of Africa and Asia

It is more than probable that the American continent was the home 
of human beings previous to the last glacial epoch, and also that all 
its early inhabitants were indigenous.

The theory of a common origin of the human family will not bear 
investigation any more than the same theory applied to the lower 
animals and the forest trees of the earth. Reasoning from all we know 
of the operations of natural law we must come inevitably to the 
conclusion that the continents and island of the world have produce 
originally, all the various forms of life, animal and vegetable, that 
have existed upon them; which forms came into being whenever the 
physical conditions were fitted to produce them.

The earliest European visitors to the present territory of Dakota 
were probably traders and missionaries of the Catholic church. There is 
a remote possibility that some portion of the Spanish expedition of 
Coronado in 1540-41 may have crossed the Niobrara, and that the "Land 
of the Dakotas" may have formed a part of the "Realm of Tartarrax" and 
the since famous Black Hills may have been the far off golden "Utopia" 
which the early Spanish leaders sought for in vain.

La Hontan, Hennepin, Joliet, Marquette and other French explorers 
and writers were acquainted with the Indian nations inhabiting the 
country around the headwaters of the Mississippi and beyond under the 
name "Nadouessioux" which included, probably, the Iowas, Pawnees, 
Arickarees, Poncas, Osages, Otoes, etc. Father Hennepin and two other 
Frenchmen sent out by La Salle from Fort Creve Coeur in the spring of 
1680, were captured near the mouth of the Wisconsin river by a band of 
Sioux and taken 200 miles north of the fall of St. Anthony, which 
Hennepin discovered on his return, and named in honor of his patron 
Saint. 

Gresolon Du Lhut, the famous voyageur and explorer, for whom a city 
at the west end of Lake Superior has been named, led a party from that 
point in the same year to the Mississippi, and became well acquainted 
with the Sioux.
EARLY HISTORY
INDIAN TRIBES