Sioux (Or Dakota) Indians

Sioux (Or Dakota) Indians, confederation of tribes that occupied territory in the present states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas, and smaller sections in Virginia and the Carolinas. The Siouan linguistic family was the most numerous among the Plains Indians, and included the Assiniboin, Mandan, Hidatsa, Crow, Omaha, Osage, and other tribes. The Sioux proper were friendly with the English, aiding them in the Revolution and the War of 1812. After several unsuccessful treaties, they rose under Little Crow (1862) and massacred more than 800 Minnesota settlers. In a subsequent revolt, when prospectors overran their Dakota reservation, the Sioux were led by such chiefs as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse against Custer, whose forces they annihilated. They were quelled in 1891. In Cooper's The Prairie, the Sioux figure as the “Ishmaelites of the American deserts,” and they appear in Neihardt's Song of the Indian Wars, Garland's The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop, and Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha. Nonfictional descriptions are to be found in Parkman's The Oregon Trail, W.J. Snelling's Tales of the Northwest, and Mari Sandoz's Crazy Horse and These Were the Sioux. Charles A. Eastman's works are concerned with the Sioux.