The Sioux have many great aspects like there territory that they controlled. This web page will talk about the lands the Sioux came from, the northern Minnesota region, where they went from there, and where they are now  in present day.  This page will also talk about the buffalo and its importance to the Sioux culture.  It's importance ranges from a food source to tools and other items made from its bones and skin.  Also this page will try to shed some light on why the buffalo dyed out.  Finally this page is going to explain about some of the major events on the history of the Sioux like Sitting Bulls death, what happened at Wounded Knee an after Wounded Knee what happened to the Sioux.  Then finally It'll explain about how Wounded Knee and the death of Sitting Bull is connected with the Ghost Dance religion.
              When the Sioux didn't have horses they lived in western Minnesota.  They where just a normal woodland tribe, medium in size.  They lived off of small game, deer, and wild rice.  Occasionally they went out onto the plains to hunt buffalo.  The first whites they came in contact with where French traders.  Later it is noted by there tradition the French thought they came from the northeast some time before that.  In the late 1700's to the early 1800's the Sioux discovered horses and used them to move onto the plains where they would be know as fierce fighters off horse back and good allies.  There they gained there land the Black Hills and the Bozeman trail.  There they first encountered the Army and the problems with the white man begins. the life of the Sioux on the plains depended on the buffalo at this time.

The lands of the Sioux
               The buffalo on the plain was the life force of the Sioux.  They where the most important food source to the Sioux tribes.  They fed the Sioux since the moved out onto the plains. the Sioux used the buffalo for many tools like spoons and bowls.  They used the smaller bones for needles and the sinews for thread.  They also used some of the larger bones for war clubs and other weapons.  They also used the buffalo to burry there dead.  First they would wrap the body in a buffalo hide then using strips of buffalo hid make a platform 5-6 feet off the ground.  The  Sioux people where shock when they found out that the white people buried  there dead underground. They believed it would  prevent the soul of the body from from leaving to go into the afterlife. After a while the Sioux started to stray from there traditional burial to putting a wooden coffin on a platform then to setting a coffin on the ground to burying the coffin underground like the whites.  Why the buffalo disappeared from the plains is almost interlay whites fault because they started the mass killing of buffalo.  The hundreds of thousands of buffalo that where killed by "professional buffalo killers" finally took its toll on the buffalo population and killed off the buffalo almost entirely.  This caused the Sioux and other Indians to depend on government food rations which where small and sometimes didn't even come. That is what caused the fall of the great Sioux nation some experts think.
            The major events in Sioux history are linked.  It was like a chain reaction all starting with the buffalo.  When the buffalo disappeared the Indians had to move to reservations to receive government food rations and life on the reservations was cramped and miserable.  This led to the Ghost Dance Religion.  The Ghost Dance religion consisted of dancing in a circle until the dancer became so dizzy he fell down and went into a trance like state there they would have visions.  The Ghost Dance religion was supposed to bring back the dead, restore the lands, drive the whites away, and bring back the buffalo.  This led to some white settlers getting scared because of this and asked the government to do something about this.  The government reacted by trying to arrest Sitting Bull a famous Sioux leader that supported the Ghost Dance religion. When he was being arrested he resisted and was shot and killed by a solder.  After this the band that was led by Sitting Bull was led by Bid foot toward the badlands. As they tried to get there they where captured by the 7th Calvary on December 28, 1890.  There they reached Wounded Knee.  There they where ordered to disarm but when there medicine man though a hand full of dust into the air a young worrier lunged at a nearby officer and was killed.  Then the solder opened fired  on the Indians and killed all of them.  The army later claimed that it was hard to distinguish men from women.  After that the will of the Indians broke and they went to reservations in the late 1800's and early 1900's.  
" What was done in my country I did not want.  Did not ask for white people going though my country. When white man comes in my county he leaves a trail of blood behind him." Red Cloud.  When red Cloud said that he was right about one thing lots of things happened to Indians that they didn't want like depending on  a forin  government for food and not binging able to have there own land and hunt there own food. If you think about all the events in Sioux history white man did leave a trail of blood.

Derek Froning

8th American History

Rossville Jr. High

Plains History Project

2004

 

Bibliography
Revised: December 23, 2004 .