Dakota

Dakota, self-designated Dakhótiyapi, is the eastern member of the Dakota-Lakota continuum within the Siouan-Catawban family, spoken by the Santee and Yankton-Yanktonai divisions of the Seven Council Fires, commonly called the Sioux. It is mutually intelligible with Lakota, while Assiniboine and Stoney form the related Nakota speech. The word Dakota means ally or friend.

Before the seventeenth century the Santee lived around Lake Superior, but wars with the French-armed Ojibwe through the 1700s pushed them west into Minnesota and then onto the Great Plains, where they took up horses and the bison hunt.

Dakota pictographs recorded winter counts, calendars of yearly events painted on hides. John Marsh compiled the first dictionary in 1827, and from 1836 the Pond brothers, Stephen Riggs and Thomas Williamson devised a Latin-based orthography for translating hymns and scripture.