The Yankton Sioux

The Yankton along with the Yanktonai make up the Western Dakota division of the Dakota People. Although the Yankton and Yanktonai sometimes considered themselves to be one people, their separate locations resulted in a unique history for each. First mentioned on Father Louis Hennepin’s map of 1683, the Yanktons were located between Mille Lacs Lake and Lake of the Woods in northern Minnesota. La Sueur moves them south and west to the Pipestone Quarry close to where Lewis and Clark met them in 1804.^[2]Raymond J. DeMallie, Handbook of North American Indians: Plains Vol. 13 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2001), 777; Frederick Webb Hodge, Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, … Continue reading

Encounters

As they appear in the daily journal entries, the Yankton Sioux were the good guys. Certainly the greetings, councils, and celebrations went well during the final days of August 1804—even more so when contrasted against the Lakota Sioux difficulties in late September of the year. The captain’s report on the Eastern Indians, written while wintering at Fort Mandan, held a much less favorable opinion towards the people. In it, the captains complained that the Yankton:

furnished [the Lakota Sioux] with the means, not only of distressing and plundering the traders of the Missouri, but also, of plundering and massacreing the defenceless savages of the Missouri, from the mouth of the river Platte to the Minetares [Hidatsas], and west to the Rocky mountains.

As for the other division of the Western Dakota, the captain thought the conduct of the Yanktonai somewhat better:

These are the best disposed Sioux who rove on the banks of the Missouri, and these even will not suffer any trader to ascend the river, if they can possibly avoid it: they have, heretofore, invariably arrested the progress of all those they have met with, and generally compelled them to trade at the prices, nearly, which they themselves think proper to fix on their merchandise . . . .^[3]Moulton, Journals, 3:414.

The expedition never met the Yanktonai, but on 5 April 1804, they gave written queries, instructions, a speech, and Indian commissions (paroles) to St. Louis trader Lewis Crawford. He was tasked to deliver those items to the Iowas and Sioux—most likely the Yanktonai, collect vocabularies, and send delegates for Washington City via St. Louis. According to various correspondence, while the expedition struggled up the Missouri in 1804 and wintered until April 1805, Crawford fulfilled the captains’ request and sent delegates down the Mississippi to St. Louis.^[4]Lewis to Amos Stoddard 16 May 1804 in Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents: 1783-1854, 2nd ed., ed. Donald Jackson (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 190; Amos … Continue reading

History

The Yanktons were present at the 1851 Treaty Council (See “Treaties and Wars” in Teton Sioux). However, the pivotal treaty for the nation came in 1858 in which Charles Picotte, signing as the people’s legal representative—a representation disputed by many members, ceded all lands in exchange for the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota and formalized their role as caretakers of the Pipestone Quarry. The latter would not be clarified, at least legally, until 1929. In 1859, the people would start campaigning for the annuities and school that were also promised in that treaty.

In 1878, some Yankton Sioux began moving to farms in anticipation of the coming severing of the reservations into private allotments. By 1980, 1,481 Yanktons took allotments and four years later, the remaining allotments were sold to whites—about half of the reservation.^[5]DeMallie, 777–780, 791.

Today, many Yankton maintain tribal governments through several reservations in the United States and Canada. Of note, is the Yankton Sioux Tribe of South Dakota headquartered in the Yankton Indian Reservation.^[6]“Yankton Sioux Tribe,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankton_Sioux_Tribe, accessed 30 January 2021.

Selected Pages and Encounters