Crow Creek Trip Orientation A Brief History of the Crow Creek Dakota
Background Sioux History:
The Crow Creek Sioux are members of the Great Sioux Nation. At one time The Great Sioux Nation extended from the Big Horn Mountains in the west to the east side of Minnesota. Canada was the northern boundary and the Platte River was the southern boundary.
The people of the Sioux Nation refer to themselves as Lakota/Dakota which means friend or ally. The United States government took the word Sioux from (Nadowesioux), which comes from a Chippewa (Ojibway) word which means little snake or enemy. The French traders and trappers who worked with the Chippewa people shortened the word to Sioux.
The Crow Creek Sioux Tribe is composed of descendants of two Divisions of Dakota and Nakota people. The Yankton are called the Middle Sioux, and the Isanti or Dakota people are comprised of four bands that lived on the eastern side of the Dakota Nation. The Isanti and Yankton speak the 'D' and ‘N’ (Dakota and Nakota) dialect of Siouan language. Both were a river-plains people who did some farming as well as buffalo hunting.
The U.S. government identified all the Tribes with similar languages as the Sioux people. The oral tradition of native people states that the Lakota and Dakota people were one nation. The Lakota people broke away and formed their own nation.
Because the Dakota who were taken to the Crow Creek Reservation are descendants of all bands of the Great Sioux Nation, they most naturally called themselves Hunkpati (Making of Relatives, To Live). The Hunkpati are identified as a distinct band with signature authority on the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty with the United States Government.
Crow Creek Reservation History: Before the 1862 US-Dakota War
The Dakota in Minnesota were gradually being threatened and enticed to cede their lands to the U.S. government in a series of treaties from 1778-1871. These treaties were in support of westward expansion by white settlers. In these agreements, Indian nations would exchange their rights to hunt and to live on parcels of land for trade goods, yearly cash payments, and the right to remain on part of their homelands. The treaties, which were almost wholly dishonored by the U.S. government, helped set the stage for government actions such as the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Indian nations who resisted treaty attempts found themselves facing forced removal further westward to "Indian Territories."
By 1858 the Dakota in Minnesota had been reduced to a narrow strip of land on the south side of the Minnesota River. In the summer of 1862 the U.S. government, being distracted by the Civil War elsewhere in the country, had not distributed food and money allotments to the Dakota people as promised by the treaties. The event which began the 1862 war was an incident of young Dakota men trying to steal eggs from a farmer-- a desperate measure for a people who were starving even as locked government storehouses on their reservation were overflowing with food.
The 1862 War:
The war, not supported by all the Dakota, ignited the burning of white settlements in New Ulm and Upper Sioux Agency to the ground. There were tragedies, faults and slaughter of innocents by both sides during the next few months that summer and into the fall of 1862. After five weeks of combat, the surviving Dakota were rounded up and held in a prison camp at Fort Snelling before being shipped out of the state. The government imprisoned the Dakota men in a federal penitentiary in Iowa and later hanged 38 of them in Mankato. This remains the largest mass hanging in American history. The reverberations of that disastrous chapter in Dakota history can still be felt. For some Dakota people, the war seems like it was yesterday.
The Aftermath
The United States government established the Crow Creek Agency in 1863 in central South Dakota as a “repository”, a prison camp, for the Dakota, in the aftermath the war. These people were the survivors. From 1863 to 1866 approximately 300 died at Fort Thompson (on the Crow Creek Reservation) suffering from starvation, sickness, disease, exposure, hardship, and heartache. The settlement of Fort Thompson, on the Crow Creek reservation, was on the rich Missouri River bottoms where the majority of the people lived. Eventually a self-sufficient community arose there.
In the years following 1863 bands of Dakota Chiefs including Sisseton and Wahpeton were forced and ordered to settle on the Crow Creek reservation by the U.S. Government. Dakota from other bands including the Mdewakan, Hunkpapa, Yanktanai and Tetons also settled on Crow Creek when they were not allowed annuities at other reservation agencies.
The Great Sioux Nation scattered, some to Canada and others surrendered to the reservations. The people finally surrendered after being cold and hungry and moved on the reservations. The government insisted buying the Black Hills from the Lakota people. The Sioux Nation refused to sell their sacred lands. The United States Government introduced the Sell or Starve Bill or the Agreement of 1877, which illegally took the Black Hills from the Great Sioux Nation. The Dakota/Lakota people starved but refused to sell their sacred land. The Allotment of 1887 also allotted Indian lands into 160 acre lots to adult male heads of household and 80 acre lots to adult males to further divide the nation. The Act of 1889 broke up the Great Sioux Nation into smaller reservations, the remainder of which exist today at about one half their original size in 1889 due to Homestead Acts allowing white settlers to locate within the reservation boundaries.
1944
The Pick–Sloan Missouri Basin Program, formerly called the Missouri River Basin Project, was initially authorized by the Flood Control Act of 1944, which approved the plan for the conservation, control, and use of water resources in the Missouri River Basin.
The U.S. government constructed a series of large hydropower and flood control dams on the Missouri River, including the Big Bend Dam in 1959 at Fort Thompson, SD. This had the most devastating and immediate effects on the Crow Creek Sioux’s independence, subsistence, economy, food, geographical landscape, and natural resources.
The result of the construction of the Big Bend Dam was the flooding and loss of the only well wooded areas on the reservation, the lush Missouri River shoreline. The entire community of Fort Thompson-- schools, farms, hospital, homes, cemetery, churches, was forced to relocate to higher ground north of the original site. The community infrastructure, schools and hospitals were never rebuilt as promised, and the free electricity promised by the U.S. government in exchange also was never realized.
In South Dakota, politicians and other proponents of the Pick-Sloan Program and dam construction had promised 1 million acres of irrigation as “appropriate compensation” for lost land. As of 2016, poverty remains a problem for the displaced populations in the Dakotas, who are still seeking compensation for the loss of the towns submerged and the loss of their traditional ways of life. The Crow Creek Sioux lost over 16,700 acres of land under the Pick-Sloan Act.
Since 1959
Over the decades, with diminishing reservation borders, encroachment by non-native homesteaders, introduction of alcohol, drugs, and a general loss of an entire culture and language, Crow Creek became afflicted with poverty, crime, a high rate of suicide, high unemployment, conflicts between tribal families, and irresponsible and corrupt tribal leadership.
Today the majority of the reservation population lives in the community and district known as Fort Thompson. The other two reservation districts are Big Bend and Crow Creek.
The Tribe’s major economic occupation is cattle ranching and farming for 20 tribal operators. The Tribe operates a large irrigated farm under the Big Bend Farm Corporation, guided hunting for small & big game and a goose camp operation. The Tribe also operates the Lode Star Casino. The majority of employment is provided by the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, Lode Star Casino, Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service.
Social activities such as powwow, rodeos, and races are celebrated in the summer months. Special powwows are held for individuals who accomplished a stage in their lives such as graduation or acceptance into the armed forces with traditional honoring ceremonies, "give-always", and feasts to celebrate. The oral tradition is still passed down from the elders to the youth.
Sources:
Hunkpati Investments site: http://hunkpati.org/
Akta Lakota Museum site: http://aktalakota.stjo.org/site/PageServer?pagename=alm_homepage
AAA Native Arts.com: www.aaanativearts.com
Diamond Willow Ministries site: http://www.d-w-m.org/#/welcome
MN Historical Society site: http://www.mnhs.org/ See http://usdakotawar.org/history/war