Lahkota

The Lahkota, better known as the Lakota or Teton Sioux, were the westernmost of the three divisions of the Sioux nation, the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ or Seven Council Fires. Before the 1650s they lived east of the Red River on the woodland-prairie edge of southern Minnesota, hunting and gathering like their kin.

Their winter counts recall horses among them by 1700, and as mounted bison hunters they began to dominate the prairies east of the Missouri by the 1720s. The tribe split into the Saône and Oglála-Brulé groups, both of which had crossed the Missouri by about 1760.

In 1776 they defeated the Cheyenne and made the Black Hills their home and spiritual center, and in 1804 their bands faced down the Lewis and Clark expedition on the river. By the 1820s they had allied with the Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho and were fighting the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara for control of the Upper Missouri.