Native Americans & Settlers
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Native Americans Meet the Challenges:
The Lakota, Ponca, & Cheyenne

Sioux War Party
Start of a Sioux War Party. Photo by Edward S. Curtis.
The Lakota (Sioux)
By 1800, what became South Dakota was labeled as "Lakota land" on maps, even though they had been pushed onto the Plains during the 1700s. Their population numbered in the thousands. The Lakota began raiding Pawnee villages in central Nebraska in the 1830s. The Lakota were also fighting with the Crow on the buffalo range in eastern Wyoming.

The Lakota were also the master hunters of the region. Next to corn, bison meat was the main food for the Lakota. One bison provided enough meat to feed one person for one year. But, by the 1800s, the Lakota were also involved in commercial hunting of bison, selling hides to European traders.

The Ponca
The Ponca faced difficult times in the nineteenth century. In the 1820s, they forged a precarious alliance with the Brulé Lakota. The Ponca abandoned their villages and experimented with nomadic buffalo hunting. The alliance and the experiment both failed. In 1858, they settled on a reservation in what would become Boyd County. The Lakota began to attack them with increasing ferocity, and nearly a fourth of the Ponca died trying to defend themselves.

The Cheyenne
By 1800, the Cheyenne had acquired horses and abandoned village life to become buffalo hunters on the plains of Wyoming. Here the tribe divided. Part of the Cheyenne continued southward into Colorado. The Northern Cheyenne, who remained behind, fought to keep the whites out of their new homeland and after 1850 made several raids along the Overland Trail well into eastern Nebraska. In 1877, the Northern Cheyenne surrendered to the U.S. Army and were forced to join the Southern Cheyenne on a reservation in Oklahoma.