The Sioux plains warrior culture was a result of continual change and migration over several centuries. Anthropologists and historians apply the greater term Sioux to a group of Native American tribes related, but autonomous tribes of the American West. These tribes had never all assembled together as a nation, but they shared the same culture, religions, folk heritage and, most importantly, language. In their own language they called themselves Dakota (or Lakota in the western tribes' dialect), meaning ally. The term Sioux originated from a Chippewa French term for enemy. There were three major divisions of the Sioux: the semi-nomadic Santee Sioux who settled along the Minnesota River, the Yankton Sioux who occupied areas around the Missouri River, and the Teton Sioux who migrated further west and became the feared masters of the Great Plains.

The Tetons, or Lakota Sioux consist of seven allied minor tribes--Hunkpapa, ("Camps at opening of the Circle"), Oglala (Scatters Their Own), Brule (Burned Thighs), Two Kettle (Two Boilings), Sans Arc ("Without Bows"), Miniconjou (Planters by Water), and Blackfoot-Sioux (not to be confused with the Blackfoot Tribe of Northwestern Montana. When the Europeans first came to North America the Tetons were an agricultural society, inhabiting the region surrounding the head waters of the Mississippi River. Their only domestic animal was the dog, and they hunted local small game and on occasion sent parties off to hunt buffalo west of the Missouri River.

The Sioux migrated west under territorial pressure from the Chippewas who were armed with muskets from white traders. The Chippewas were expanding westward in as an economic and territorial result of the Revolutionary War. The resultant Sioux displacement brought them into territory of what is today Wyoming and South Dakota, where they expropriated rich buffalo hunting grounds from weaker tribes, including the Crows and Arikara. At their population peak, around 1800, all the Sioux tribes numbered about 27,000 people. Over 15,000 of them were Tetons. With the exception of about 10,000 Pawnee, none of the Tetons' neighbors totaled more than 4,000 people, including their one strong ally of about 3,500 Cheyenne.

The Sioux gradually acquired horses during the late 1700's by trading guns and outright theft. This was a critical transition. Their greatest asset and focal point for all economy and warfare became the horse. Sioux use and domestication of horses caused their rapid transition from an agrarian to a nomadic hunting society. Within two generations of their introduction, a horse-centered economy and culture developed that dominated all other aspects of everyday life--changing methods of hunting, trading, migrating, and most of all fighting. Plains Indian methods and motives of warfare became inextricably tied to the skilled use, ownership, and tactical mobility of the small, hardy and enduring Indian pony. Riding skills were imperative for raiding, defending their homes and essential for effective buffalo hunting.

The Teton Sioux became master pony soldiers, able to pursue and kill the swift buffalo in numbers that allowed more than just survival, but to build capital trading assets; able to fight mounted with an assortment of weapons; able to endure rapid travel over vast distances to raid or trade; and able to evade and survive attacks from threatening or approaching enemies. Horses (representing wealth and capital) were a Sioux warrior's primary asset, and intertribal warfare was centered on their use and possession. War parties were constantly raiding to take captives, ponies and trophies from rival bands. Other raids were for tribal protection or revenge (the result of incidents during pony raids) and to gather war honors. From before the 1866 Sioux uprising until the final subjugation of their culture, the Plains Indians' society was dominated by a warrior code centered on the conduct of personal combat exercised through continuous raids, small skirmishes, and ambushes across the vast plains area. The Sioux and Cheyenne were in a constant state of war with each other and their territorial rivals--the Crow, Pawnee, Shoshone, Arikara, and many others. Predominance of war defined the very nature of life for the red and white man on the Great Plains.

The practice of individual combat and its style of warfare could be vicious and deadly if one side attained a surprise and/or superior numbers, or virtually bloodless if there was any parity. Warriors practiced a customary code of behavior that rated each act of bravery in battle. There were more honors for "counting coup" against an enemy than for actually killing him. Individual bravado took precedence over tactical cohesion. Individuals advanced and fled as an indication of personal daring and valor. Soldiers thought the Indians cowardly for fleeing so frequently and effectively. In the warriors' culture, it would be no more cowardly than a boxer "dodging a left hook."

The Indian rules of warfare were individualistic and far more complex than those of the white soldiers. Warriors held their own standards and practices of personal bravery and tribal honor that were unknown to most of their white military professional enemies. Male children were raised to be warriors. They excelled at such skills as stealth, tracking, riding, hand-to-hand combat, and surviving off the land. There was no other purpose for a male in this culture but to become a combatant. Those who did not became outcasts. Warrior status was the only method of attaining wealth, authority, and personal identity.

The Plains warrior's prowess and expertise on horseback is what set him apart and made him such a formidable opponent. With their acquired equestrian skills the numerous Teton Sioux thrived in the vast plains and expanded their control over the wilderness traversed by the Yellowstone River and its three major tributaries, the Tongue, Powder, and Bighorn Rivers. By the mid-eighteenth century this region was the principal grazing land for the last of the great North American buffalo herds.

To continually track and hunt the buffalo, and for protection, Sioux camps were hastily transportable. At the first sign of danger the noncombatants would conduct the "drill" of rapidly packing essentials and then fleeing while the warriors mounted and defended the camp. Depending on the immediacy of the threat, camp occupants might flee with only the very old and small children. The first priority was always to protect the pony herd since mobility meant life and death on the vast plains. The most serious tribal vulnerability was pony weakness in winter months resulting from limited grazing.

To graze their pony herds, hunt for food, and track the buffalo, the Sioux lived in separate small bands of three to ten interrelated families called tiyospaye. These bands normally lived and hunted in their small patriarchal groups, but they would hold larger temporary tribal gatherings for marriages, religious rituals, large hunting parties and to conduct overwhelming attacks on any unyielding rivals. Raiding also enabled them to increase their propagation through the capture of women and children as adoptees, wives, or slaves.

Under these conditions of continual raiding and warring, elite warrior societies called akcitas dominated the society of the Great Plains tribes. These "fraternity-like" orders crossed family and tribal lines. In this manner Sioux and Cheyenne tiyospaye cooperated religiously and militarily. Each akcita had its own institutional creeds, codes and levels of elitism. Warriors were elected to membership after performing certain feats. Sitting Bull had a reputable war record and was an influential member of the "Brave Hearts" and "Order-of-the-Fox" akcitas. Some exclusive soldier societies, such as the Fox and Bear akcitas, were noted for unyielding tenacity and obstinacy in individual combat. The white men called them 'Dog Soldiers' based on their practice of tying themselves to a leash, staked to the ground. From this "staked-in position" a warrior would refuse to give ground, prepared to die before he retreated, forbidding all enemies to approach.

These societies, with their distinctive costumes, dances, and chants instilled military discipline among warriors. The various akcitas also competed against each other for the greater honors of combat. During larger raids the soldier societies served as a police force. More mature and seasoned braves kept the younger or more impetuous warriors from riding ahead and spoiling a surprise attack or from compromising an ambush. Warrior societies also helped bring rebellious and less cooperative factions under tighter influence. While there was no formal military chain of "command and control" the rising importance of the akcitas helped develop a new kind of institutionalized authority. In combat, most Indian leaders had a small "personal following" of warriors who always fought beside them. Personal followings were normally kinsmen and close relatives, but the cohesion of the tiyospaye and akcita were the predominant bonds.

Once their geographic territory was militarily established, the Lakota Sioux were able to capitalize on their central great plains position to raid, steel horses, and take captives from all of their weaker neighbors. They used their abundant hunting resources to trade furs, buffalo hides, and meat for more firearms and horses. The Lakota became more technologically advanced than the weaker enemies to the west, and richer in capital "trading resources" than the agricultural tribes to the east. This extensive raiding and trading enabled them to keep parity with the eastern tribes, and still maintain a nomadic lifestyle. Teton population flourished and brought on an increased need for horses, agricultural food supplements, and buffalo hunting grounds (territorial control). The result were intensified "wars of conquest against their neighbors, especially the Pawnee and Crows."

The contest for supremacy of the Great Plains was settled by aggressive Sioux expansion, and disease. The Teton Sioux escaped several deadly epidemics of the early 19th Century by virtue of their nomadic life-style and relative seclusion. When European biological onslaughts emaciated their enemies, the culturally quarantined Lakota Sioux population increased dramatically. Some accounts claim their numbers quadrupled between 1800 and 1850, bringing their numbers to a minimum of 20,000. Other Plains Indians' populations were halved by diseases and military defeat during this same period.

The Lakotas had no significant Native American enemies to the east and enjoyed a formidable technological and demographic advantage over all of their enemies to the west. Their combination of aggressive conquest, trading, raiding, and isolation from disease left the Teton Sioux militarily uncontested. Their mounted skills and technological advantages developed to the point of martial supremacy. From the 1800 on the Teton Sioux had "...transformed from pedestrians to mounted nomads." and by mid-century rapidly "transformed themselves into the true horse-and-buffalo Indians."

By 1866 the seven Sioux Tribes and their like allies had firmly established a military empire on the American Great Plains. The nomadic Sioux depended heavily on the sedentary village-dweller tribes such as the Arikara for agricultural foodstuffs.

So domineering were the Sioux that their visits to the Arikara villages might also be described as peaceful raiding expeditions. They went far beyond simple prices for their meat and buffalo hides, took what they wanted from the villagers, pillaged Arikara gardens and fields, stole horses, beat and insulted Arikara Women and destroyed their grazing fields--all with little fear of reprisal. According to one white trader "The Sioux acted as if the villagers were a certain kind of serf, who cultivates for them and who, as they say, takes for them, the place of women." The Sioux could not survive without certain manufactured goods, or agricultural support from their (intrinsically vassal) neighboring tribes, fitting the full definition of a macro-military society.

The Sioux were respected and feared by their enemies and allies alike. The Northern Cheyenne became a chief ally of the Sioux, migrating to the great plains in an experience similar to that of their more numerous cousins to the North. The Cheyenne occupied the southwestern plains along the upper Platte River and split into two groups. The Southern Cheyenne seized the High Plains near the Arkansas River, and the Northern Cheyenne allied themselves with the Sioux in Northern Wyoming. These two warlike tribes dominated the vast region, subjugating numerous other tribes, some to the point of near extinction. Between 1863 and 1876 both the Aboriginal Military Empire of the Teton Sioux and Northern Cheyenne experienced a macro-cultural collision with white American expansion. Both evolved culturally and militarily to accommodate to the new threat.

In 1863, in the midst of the American Civil War, a gold rush in western Montana prompted pioneering of the Bozeman Trail, which cut through the heart of the Sioux buffalo hunting grounds. By 1866 the Army built three forts (Reno, Kearny, and C. F. Smith) along the Bozeman Trail to protect those migrating west. This military presence ignited hostilities between the Sioux and whites. The Northern Cheyenne in Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado took to the warpath as early as 1862, incited by an intrusion of homesteaders from the East, Colorado mining camps from the west and construction of the Union Pacific Railroad to the North. Small war bands of Dog Soldiers began to range the plains raiding white settlements, mining camps, and military detachments.

In November 1864, the 3rd Colorado Volunteers (mostly Denver and Boulder militia recruits) executed as many as 600 fleeing noncombatants, along with other reported atrocities in a dawn attack on a peaceable Cheyenne village in eastern Colorado. Many whites and the not-yet-hostile Cheyenne and Sioux were incensed by the raid known as the "Sand Creek Massacre." The well-known Cheyenne chief White Antelope was killed along with his family; and a key Cheyenne peace advocate, Black Kettle, was wounded. His wife was killed. While the Sand Creek tragedy was not a US Army operation, the event had an immense psychological impact on the Plains tribes. Afterwards few of the the family tiyospaye bands considered themselves safe from military attack and sought more remote environments, or larger groups. Some tiyospaye bands began to camp directly adjacent to white trading posts, but very few chiefs were willing to negotiate for peace except from a position of strength, or to gain a temporary advantage.

The Oglala Sioux chief Red Cloud rose to prominence during this period. His successful leadership in combat united the various bands to resist the white invasion. Red Cloud mustered support from many aspiring leaders including Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Rain in the Face. From 1866 to 1868 the Sioux interrupted all movement along the Bozeman trail and threatened the isolated Army forts. On 21 December 1866, near Fort Phil Kearny, a large detachment under Captain William J. Fetterman was lured into an ambush. Fetterman, who once boasted he could ride through the entire Sioux nation with 80 soldiers, met an overwhelming force of warriors led by Red Cloud and was killed along with exactly 80 men. For three years of open warfare the Sioux and Cheyenne repeatedly defeated or evaded US Army in the Great Plains Territories.

By August 1867 the Army detachments with Spencer repeating rifles managed to win defensive victories at the Wagon Box and Hayfield engagements. The Spencer repeater was exceptionally deadly when massed warriors charged the defending soldiers. Both the Army and the Indians learned lessons in the effectiveness of firepower from these were small skirmishes. However, the Bozeman Trail was still hopelessly untenable. The Army strategy of manning forts to protect the westward trails, and the Indian frontier was a complete failure.

On the Southwestern Plains isolated detachments, settlements, and supply details were repeatedly ambushed by the Cheyenne military society war bands called "Dog Soldiers" by the whites. Civil War hero Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer conducted his first Indian campaign there, commanding the newly formed 7th Cavalry Regiment. For the entire summer of 1867 Custer was completely unable to engage the enemy. His regiment nearly disintegrated from harsh conditions, corrupt administration, numerous desertions, and raging drunkenness among the regiment's officers. Custer's campaign against the Cheyenne was an operational failure.

In one engagement called the Battle of Beecher Island, fought in November 1868, a detachment of 50 scouts under Army command, armed with Spencer repeating rifles, fought off an estimated 900 Oglala, Brule, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors in northeastern Colorado. Five defenders were killed, eighteen were wounded, and they lost all of their horses (about 45% casualties and 100% of their combat power was neutralized). The scouts survived several massed Indian charges and a siege that lasted five days. Less than a dozen warriors were killed, along with the charismatic Cheyenne war chief known as Roman Nose who was shot in the final failed charge. While this was not a true victory for either side, the tactical value of effective firepower was clearly evident to all.

The only operational Army success came with the controversial Battle of the Washita in November 1868. Lieutenant Colonel Custer, commanding the 7th Cavalry, launched a winter campaign against the Northern Cheyenne. The 7th Cavalry, moving independently, surprised and completely destroyed a Cheyenne camp in the snowy Oklahoma wilderness. Custer had divided his 720-man regiment into four equal parts and surrounded the village at dawn. There were no more than 150 Cheyenne warriors in the camp, who put up some resistance and were either killed or fled, none were captured. Many noncombatants were killed trying to flee with the surprised warriors. The surviving women and children were kept as hostages. Cavalry losses were light. Custer's troopers burned the entire camp and supplies, and shot most of the ponies. When hundreds of warriors counter-attacked from numerous other unscouted, undetected camps nearby, Custer withdrew under the cover of darkness.

The Washita Battle evoked controversy in the press because the chief killed there was the peace advocate Black Kettle, wounded four years before at Sand Creek. In both cases he was reportedly flying a US Flag in the camp. However, Custer had tracked a hostile raiding party into the camp, and recovered white captives and stolen goods from massacred white settlements. The US Army and Federal Government heralded the Washita as a victory. Custer had successfully carried the fight to the Northern Cheyenne in their winter quarters.

While the Army's strategy of defensive forts was inadequate to protect the Bozeman Trail, the completion of the Union Pacific Railroad made its use unnecessary. The US Government decided to abandon the Bozeman Trail forts and negotiated a treaty with the Sioux and Cheyenne at Fort Laramie in 1868. During these negotiations Red Cloud proved himself to be an effective warrior and shrewd political leader. Red Cloud did not represent all of the Sioux and Cheyenne, but he was respectably influential and martially intimidating. He spoke with more collective authority than any other chief before or after. Red Cloud's negotiating success was not from a Sioux consensus, but from his position of military strength and the US Government's willingness to make insincere and empty concessions. Red Cloud signed the treaty only after the forts were emptied and burned by his triumphant warriors.

The Fort Laramie Treaty set aside the Great Sioux Reservation (all of present-day South Dakota west of the Missouri River) with the Sioux drawing rations from several government agencies along the Missouri River. The treaty also allowed the Sioux and Cheyenne to hunt in the "unceded territory," meaning territory not explicitly ceded to the Sioux, including the Powder River Basin that stretched from the Rocky and Bighorn Mountains in the West to the Great Sioux Reservation along the Missouri River in the East. Most Sioux viewed "unceded" as territory they had not relinquished. The Treaty ended the official wars, but both the Sioux and the US Army began to prepare for an eventual showdown.

More Sioux Wars

Part 1: Introduction: Warfare on the Great Plains
Part 2: Collision Courses: The American and Sioux Empires
Part 3: Strategic and Operational Crisis
Part 4: Military Acculturation and Tactical Evolution
Part 5: The Tactical Acculturation Model: The Evolved Sioux Tactics
Part 6a: The Great Sioux War of 1876
Part 6b: Battle of Little Big Horn
Part 7: Conclusion: Demise of the Plains Warriors
Part 7: Bibliography: Primary, Secondary, and Government Sources