A Brief History of South Dakota/Chapter 3

by Doane Robinson

CHAPTER III

THE ABORIGINAL INDIANS

The Ree, or Aricara, Indians were possibly the first human inhabitants of South Dakota. These Indians

Ree Indian Lodge

built permanent villages, of earth lodges, and lived by agriculture and the chase. Their homes were always near the Missouri River or some other large stream. Their lodges were built by digging a round hole, like a cellar, in the earth, over which a roof was made by setting up forked timbers, which were covered with poles and brush and then buried in earth. A hole was left in the top of the lodge for ventilation, light, and the escape of smoke. These lodges were very comfortable and do not seem to have been unhealthful. Farming by the Rees was limited to the raising of corn, beans, pumpkins, squashes, and tobacco. Each family had its own tract of ground, fenced off with bushes and rushes, and the only implement used in the cultivation of the crop was a sort of shovel made from the shoulder blade of the buffalo. For very many years, how long is not known, but probably nearly a century, their chief settlement was in the immediate vicinity of Pierre, but in 1792, being driven away by the Sioux, they settled in the northern part of the state near the mouth of Grand River, where part of the tribe was already established.

When white men first had knowledge of the Dakota country, the Omaha Indians occupied the Big Sioux valley and the Missouri valley as far as the mouth of the James River, while at that time, or very soon thereafter, a settlement of Sisseton Sioux was made at Big Stone Lake, and the Kiowas occupied the Black Hills. All of these tribes, unlike the Rees, were nomadic; that is, they lived in tents and moved about from place to place as suited their convenience.

Sometime in the latter part of the seventeenth century the Sioux Indians who were natives of the timbered try about the lakes in northern Minnesota, were forced away from their homes by the Chippewas, and some of their bands came out to the prairie. For many years they remained upon the upper Minnesota River and Big Stone and Traverse lakes, and, having secured horses, began to hunt the buffalo far out on the plains of South Dakota. In the course of time they learned that west of the Missouri River the
Buffalo snowfall was very light, and that the buffalo gathered there in the winter season to feed upon the rich grasses of what are now the famous South Dakota ranges. This fact made the Sioux wish to live there, where they could secure plenty of buffalo meat with little effort both summer and winter. But the country which they wished to occupy was the home and hunting ground of the Rees, who stubbornly fought off the invading Sioux. It was before 1750 that these prairie or Teton Sioux undertook to conquer the buffalo ranges west of the Missouri. A war of more than forty years followed, in which the Sioux were finally successful. They could not dislodge the Rees from their strong forts on the Missouri, but having succeeded in crossing the river, they were able to keep the buffalo so far away that the Ree hunters could not get them, and thus they really starved out their enemies, who, as we have seen, moved to a new home on the Grand River. As military men would say, the Rees were flanked out of their position by the Sioux.
Sioux Warrior

In 1775 the enterprising Oglala branch of the Teton Sioux had penetrated as far as the Black Hills, where they paid their compliments to the Kiowas and before the end of the eighteenth century had driven them away, and settled in their territory.

While the Teton Sioux were thus making a settlement west of the Missouri, their relatives the Yanktons, who like themselves had been crowded out of the Minnesota timber, were trying to find a home in the lower country between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. They settled among the Osages, but were driven away. Then they conquered a small territory in the Otto country in western Iowa, but finally were driven away from there with the loss of all their horses and other property. Before the Teton Sioux went to the Missouri they had driven the Omahas from the Big Sioux and James rivers to a new home south of the Missouri, and the Teton Sioux claimed the Big Sioux and James valleys as conquered territory. Now, however, while the Tetons' hands were full with their forty years' war with the Rees, the Omahas were threatening to come back into their old South Dakota homes. Therefore when the Yanktons, whipped and robbed by the Ottos, came up the Missouri looking for a place to rest, they were warmly welcomed by the Tetons, who gladly gave them a large territory to occupy on the James River, and fitted them out with arms and horses to enable them to defend their new home from the threatened invasion of the Omahas.

So it came about that before the end of the eighteenth century all of South Dakota, except a very small territory, not more than four or five townships in extent, near the mouth of Grand River, which was occupied by the Rees, had passed into the possession and control of the powerful Sioux tribes.