Ithanktunwanna

The Ithanktunwanna, anglicized as the Yanktonai or 'little village at the end', were the second Western Dakota tribe of the Sioux Seven Council Fires, sharing with the Yankton the name Wičhíyena. They fell into two sub-groups, the Upper and Lower Yanktonai, the latter also called the Húŋkpathina.

Eighteenth-century accounts place them in the Minnesota River country around Mankato and the Blue Earth River, the same hunting grounds as the Yankton. They drifted west with the rest of the Dakota under Ojibwe pressure; the Ojibwe seized the Leech Lake and Mille Lacs country from the Dakota in 1736. After horses reached the Sioux around 1700 they lived increasingly by mounted bison hunts on the prairies.

With the Yankton they were the traditional quarrymen and guardians of the Pipestone Quarry, cutting the pipestone from which the Sioux made sacred pipes.