The Sioux, or Oceti Sakowin, are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations peoples in North America. The modern Sioux consist of two major divisions based on language: the Dakota and Lakota; collectively, they are known as the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, or "Seven Council Fires." The term "Sioux" is an exonym created from a French transcription ("Nadouessioux") of the Ojibwe term "Nadowessi," and it can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or to any of the nation's many language dialects.
Before the 17th century, the Santee Dakota (Isáŋyathi; "Knife," also known as the Eastern Dakota) lived around Lake Superior, with territories in present-day northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. They gathered wild rice, hunted woodland animals, and used canoes to fish. Wars with the Ojibwe throughout the 1700s pushed the Dakota into southern Minnesota, where the Western Dakota (Yankton, Yanktonai) and Teton (Lakota) were residing. In the 1800s, the Dakota signed treaties with the United States, ceding much of their land in Minnesota. The failure of the United States to make treaty payments on time, as well as low food supplies, led to the Dakota War of 1862. This conflict resulted in the Dakota being exiled from Minnesota to numerous reservations in Nebraska, North and South Dakota, and Canada. After 1870, the Dakota people began to return to Minnesota, creating the present-day reservations in the state.
The Yankton and Yanktonai Dakota (Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋ and Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna; "Village-at-the-end" and "Little village-at-the-end"), collectively also referred to by the endonym Wičhíyena, resided in the Minnesota River area before ceding their land and moving to South Dakota in 1858. Despite ceding their lands, their treaty with the U.S. government allowed them to maintain their traditional role in the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ as the caretakers of the Pipestone Quarry, which is the cultural center of the Sioux people. They are considered to be the Western Dakota (also called middle Sioux) and have in the past been erroneously classified as Nakota. The actual Nakota are the Assiniboine and Stoney of Western Canada and Montana.
