The Same Language, Usages, And
Superstitions Form The Sole Bond Between Them.
They do not unite
even in their wars.
The bands of the east fight the Ojibwas on the
Upper Lakes; those of the west make incessant war upon the Snake
Indians in the Rocky Mountains. As the whole people is divided into
bands, so each band is divided into villages. Each village has a
chief, who is honored and obeyed only so far as his personal
qualities may command respect and fear. Sometimes he is a mere
nominal chief; sometimes his authority is little short of absolute,
and his fame and influence reach even beyond his own village; so that
the whole band to which he belongs is ready to acknowledge him as
their head. This was, a few years since, the case with the
Ogallalla. Courage, address, and enterprise may raise any warrior to
the highest honor, especially if he be the son of a former chief, or
a member of a numerous family, to support him and avenge his
quarrels; but when he has reached the dignity of chief, and the old
men and warriors, by a peculiar ceremony, have formally installed
him, let it not be imagined that he assumes any of the outward
semblances of rank and honor. He knows too well on how frail a
tenure he holds his station. He must conciliate his uncertain
subjects. Many a man in the village lives better, owns more squaws
and more horses, and goes better clad than he. Like the Teutonic
chiefs of old, he ingratiates himself with his young men by making
them presents, thereby often impoverishing himself. Does he fail in
gaining their favor, they will set his authority at naught, and may
desert him at any moment; for the usages of his people have provided
no sanctions by which he may enforce his authority. Very seldom does
it happen, at least among these western bands, that a chief attains
to much power, unless he is the head of a numerous family.
Frequently the village is principally made up of his relatives and
descendants, and the wandering community assumes much of the
patriarchal character. A people so loosely united, torn, too, with
ranking feuds and jealousies, can have little power or efficiency.
The western Dakota have no fixed habitations. Hunting and fighting,
they wander incessantly through summer and winter. Some are
following the herds of buffalo over the waste of prairie; others are
traversing the Black Hills, thronging on horseback and on foot
through the dark gulfs and somber gorges beneath the vast splintering
precipices, and emerging at last upon the "Parks," those beautiful
but most perilous hunting grounds. The buffalo supplies them with
almost all the necessaries of life; with habitations, food, clothing,
and fuel; with strings for their bows, with thread, cordage, and
trail-ropes for their horses, with coverings for their saddles, with
vessels to hold water, with boats to cross streams, with glue, and
with the means of purchasing all that they desire from the traders.
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