Re: Sioux/Dakota, Nakota, Lakota
David Grant Mccrady (ummccra0@cc.umanitoba.ca)
Wed, 26 Oct 1994 00:46:13 -0500
Ray DeMallie and Doug Parks (at Indiana University) are working on a book
that will try to sort out all the Dakota speech communities.
Traditionally, we have thought of Dakota as consisting of three dialects,
Dakota proper (spoken by the Santees), Lakota (spoken by the Tetons) and
Nakota (spoken by the Yanktons, Yantonais and the Assiniboins), but this is
not complex enough. The "Stonies," a group of people living in Canada and
usually said to be Assiniboins, speak a dialect distinct enough that it may
have become a new language altogether. Traditionally, the Assiniboins are
said to have split from the Yanktonais in the early 1600s, but Parks has
argued that their language is so different as to suggest an earlier separation
date. They probably left the Dakota core before modern groupings (Yankton,
Yanktonai, Santee and Teton) developed.
Undoubtedly the Yanktonais lived in Minnesota and Wisconsin along with the
other Dakota peoples before moving west. By the mid-1800s, the Yanktonais
lived in eastern Dakota and into Minnesota. Several thousand went to the
Milk River country (in Montana) in the spring of 1871. Ft Belknap was
established as the agency for the Crows, Assiniboins and Gros Ventres they
displaced. These Yanktonais were accompanied by a contingent of Dakotas
(refugees from the Minnesota war of 1862/3 who went to live on the plains).
Dave McCrady
History/University of Manitoba