Living with Strangers: The Nineteenth-Century Sioux and the Canadian-American Borderlands

4. The Migration of the Sioux to the Milk River Country

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 [First Page] [31], (1) Lines: 0 to 17 ——— 8.82pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [31], (1) 4. THE MIGRATION OF THE SIOUX TO THE MILK RIVER COUNTRY The migration of Dakota peoples out of Minnesota and into the borderlands continued throughout the 1860s. By the end of the decade other Sioux groups were likewise shifting territory. Some were migrating up the Missouri River to its junction with the Yellowstone and, beyond that, the Milk River. Other Dakota groups occupied the country south of Milk River. 1 Several bands of Upper Yanktonais, originally from the area around Fort Rice, migrated up the Missouri to the area surrounding Fort Buford. According to Lieutenant Colonel Henry A. Morrow at Fort Buford, the Yanktonais were interlopers, but, having established themselves north of the Missouri and above the post, they had to be treated as permanent residents.2 Santees and Yanktons from the southern part of the Dakota Territory joined them in the area.3 The Santees, Yanktonais, and Yanktons were also joined by northern bands of Lakotas who were, during the same years, moving from the area southwest of the Missouri toward the lower Yellowstone country and from it to the mouth of Milk River. The various groups communicated and cooperated freely. The Santees,Yanktonais , and Yanktons frequently camped and traveled together, and the Lakotas often crossed the Missouri River and hunted with them. The Santees and Upper Yanktonais also formed ties to Red Stone’s Lower Assiniboines, whose agency would later be at Wolf Point. Fellows D. Pease, the American agent to the Crows, reported that many Santees, Cutheads, Yanktonais, and other Sioux were married to Assiniboines and that the Assiniboines usually divided their annuities with them.4 Several Dakota groups established themselves north of the Forty-ninth Parallel by mid-decade, although they too remained in contact with Sioux on American territory. Little Crow’s Mdewakantons and Little Six’s and Medicine Bottle’s Mdewakantons and Wahpetons camped from Sturgeon Creek to the White Horse Plains and farther west to Poplar Point and Portage la Prairie. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 [32], (2) Lines: 17 ——— 0.0pt ——— Normal PgEnds: [32], (2) H’damani’s followers lived at Turtle Mountain. Tahampegda’s andWhite Eagle’s Wahpetons camped on the Assiniboine River. White Cap’s people lived peacefully with the Assiniboines at Moose Mountain (people who had extensive ties to Red Stone’s Assiniboines) before moving to the northwest as far as the North Saskatchewan River by the end of the decade. Mahpiyahdinape moved directly to the neighborhood of Fort Ellice (a Hudson’s Bay Company [hbc] fort) after the Sioux were attacked by General Alfred Sully’s troops at Killdeer Mountain in July 1865.5 There was a great deal of intercourse between camps, and some groups, notably that of Standing Buffalo, had yet to settle on either side of the boundary. Standing Buffalo’s and White Cap’s people were invariably mixed with Yanktonais and Yanktons. Indeed, the mixed identify of these camps was often reflected by commentators identifying these leaders and their followers as Yanktons.6 The migration of various Sioux into the Milk River country has been all but ignored by American and Canadian historians, Raymond DeMallie’s extended essay on the Sioux in Dakota and Montana Territories being the only study on the topic.7 Moreover, historians of both countries have overlooked the transboundary dimension of these events. Studies of the Sioux in Canada, for example,mention only in passing that leaders like Standing Buffalo remained in the borderlands and crossed and recrossed the Canada–United States boundary many times. Such studies give the impression that those Dakotas who entered Rupert’s Land after the Dakota Conflict did not return to American soil. Such was not the case. Sioux leaders negotiated with governments on both sides of the boundary to discover which would accord them better treatment, and Sioux who traded with Americans at Fort Peck also tried to open a trade with the hbc. Sioux continued to trade with Métis, whose wintering camps in the...