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Souix Indians, or the great Sioux Nation as they are also known, are divided into three main divisions: the Lakota, the Dakota, and the Nakota. These divisions are based on the language dialects spoken.

The Sioux maintain many separate tribal governments scattered across several reservations and communities in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska, and also in Manitoba and southern Saskatchewan in Canada.

Santee Sioux (Dakota)

Santee Sioux T-shirt

The Santee people migrated north and westward from the south and east into Ohio then to Minnesota. The Santee were a woodland people who thrived on hunting, fishing and subsistence farming.

Migrations of Anishinaabe/Chippewa people from the east in the 17th and 18th centuries, with muskets supplied by the French and British, pushed the Santee further into Minnesota and west and southward, giving the name “Dakota Territory” to the northern expanse west of the Mississippi and up to its headwaters.

Yankton-Yanktonai Sioux (Nakota)

Oglala Sioux T-shirt

The Ihanktowan-Ihanktowana, or the Yankton (“campers at the end”) and Yanktonai (“lesser campers at the end”) divisions consist of two bands or two of the seven council fires. According to Nasunatanka and Matononpa in 1880, the Yanktonai are divided into two sub-groups known as the Upper Yanktonai and the lower Yanktonai (Hunkpatina). The Yankton-Yanktonai moved into northern Minnesota. In the 1700s, they were recorded as living in the Mankato region of Minnesota.

Teton Sioux (Lakota)

The western Santee obtained horses, probably in the 17th century (although some historians date the arrival of horses in South Dakota to 1720), and moved further west, onto the Great Plains, becoming the Titonwan tribe, subsisting on the buffalo herds and corn-trade with their linguistic cousins, the Mandan and Hidatsa along the Missouri.

Lakota T-shirt

The Sioux are divided into ethnic groups, the larger of which are divided into sub-groups, and further branched into bands. The Yankton-Yanktonai, the smallest division, reside on the Yankton reservation in South Dakota and the Northern portion of Standing Rock Reservation, while the Santee live mostly in Minnesota and Nebraska, but include bands in the Sisseton-Wahpeton, Flandreau, and Crow Creek Reservations in South Dakota. The Lakota are the westernmost of the three groups, occupying lands in both North and South Dakota.

• Santee Sioux division (Dakota)
  • Mdewakantonwan (“Dwellers of Spirit Lake”)

    notable persons: Taoyateduta

  • Sisitonwan (Sisseton, “Dwellers of the Fish Grounds”)
  • Wahpekute (“Leaf Shooters”)

    notable persons: Inkpaduta

  • Wahpetonwan (“Dwellers among the Leaves”)

• Yankton-Yanktonai division (Nakota)
  • Ihanktonwan (Yankton, “End Village”)
  • Ihanktonwana (Yanktonai, “Little End Village”)

    notable persons: Wanata

  • Stone sub-division (Nakoda)
    • Assiniboine
    • Stoney

• Titonwan/Teton division (Lakota) (“Dwellers on the Prairie”)
  • Oglala (“Those who Scatter their own”)

    notable persons: Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, Black Elk and Billy Mills (Olympian)

  • Hunkpapa (meaning “Those who Camp by the Door” or “Wanderers”)

    notable persons: Sitting Bull

  • Sihasapa (Blackfoot Sioux – not to be confused with the Algonquian-speaking Blackfeet)
  • Minniconjou (“Those who Plant by the Stream”)

    notable persons: Lone Horn, Touch the Clouds

  • Sicangu (French: Brulé) (“Burnt Thighs”)
  • Itazipacola (French: Sans Arcs “Without Bows”)
  • Oohenonpa (“Two Kettles” or “Two Boilings”)

Reserves and First Nations

Today, one half of all enrolled Sioux in the United States live off the reservation. Also, to be an enrolled member in any of the Sioux tribes in the United States, 1/4 degree blood quantum is required.

In Canada, the Canadian government calls tribal communities “First Nations.” In Canada reservations are called “Reserves.”

* Reserves shared with other First Nations