Volume 3 Number 1
October 1963

Vernon D. Malan

More than eighty years have elapsed since several bands of Dakota Indians decisively defeated the Custer forces on the Little Big Horn, foolishly led to their death by the egotistical General. The victors in this famous frontier battle on June 25, 1876, were very soon forced to surrender, not as much to military superiority as to the threat of starvation. The Dakota bands reluctantly yielded to the momentum of settlement and expansionism, and they finally submitted to strict military control on reservations, in return for government food rations needed for their survival. During the early reservation days the policies of their conquerors were coercive, designed to dissect and destroy Dakota institutions, and approached genocide. In some government agencies the policies seemed to promote the generally expressed belief that the Indians were a "disappearing race."

During the intervening years the Dakota Indians have been surveyed, investigated, analyzed, reconnoitered, prosecuted and even massacred. They have submitted apathetically to pilot studies and pilot programs, and even some which were "impilot." Social scientists have studied reservation conditions, collected voluminous field notes, statistics, and source materials to supplement the exhaustive official records and documents compiled by the functionaries of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The overwhelming conclusion from the vast amount of economic evidence accumulated was that most of the problems of the Reservation Indians stemmed from their condition of extreme poverty. Studies of considerable merit, although more segmental and detailed than comprehensive and analytical, proved that which was obvious to the most superficial observer. The Dakota Indians were surviving on the lowest subsistence level.

It can be contended that many reservation residents have been surveyed to the point where they know the "right" answers, and that the responses on a questionnaire may be more likely to express the views of the interviewer than the interviewee. Field work has reached a point of diminishing returns, and Bureau enumerators and statisticians have become surplus employees. Research has completed its first cycle, and all the conventional economic surveys could as well be used in the nearest outhouse. But the social scientist still has a major task before him, and this may be the most significant and perilous undertaking upon which he has dared to venture. This is the chore of critically evaluating the accumulated data and presenting logical reasons for the economic plight of the Reservation Indian.

Unbiased examination of the historical facts, after they have been collected, sifted, classified and placed in generic relationship, revealed that the story of the Dakota Indians could be told in a single proposition: human welfare was secondary to financial gain or profit. Monetary pressures, both legal and political, were designed to relieve the Dakotas of their land and resources, on the one hand, and on the other to assist them with just enough material aid to make certain that they would remain indigent. The economic program of the American frontiersman was copied from colonial systems elsewhere that have been adequately described as "exploitive."

The history of colonialism consistently follows the theme of exploitation, but this thesis does not provide the perspective and integrity required in a comprehensive picture of Dakota society. If our purpose is broader than simply reporting events, attention must be given to weaving the economic factors into the variegated reservation social system. Thus there must be a union of all the social sciences which cannot be put asunder. The trend toward specialization in the social sciences only too frequently reminds one of a peasant leading a donkey cart, loaded with manure, which is intended to fertilize his own narrow field. When the donkey balks he dumps the manure in the nearest ditch, breaks up the cart for a stick to use in beating the donkey to death. This series of events is unsmilingly labeled, "the process of re-evaluation of existing theory."

If he is ever going to use a reasonable approach to the study of cultural minorities, the social scientist has the compelling duty of organizing the theoretical principles from all the social sciences into a consistent and relevant pattern. The historical antecedents of the Dakota Indians require that his material welfare receive first consideration, because the unquestioned evidence reads in big, black, bold letters: THE EXPLOITIVE PRACTICES OF AMERICAN SOCIETY HAVE RESULTED IN EXTREME POVERTY FOR MOST DAKOTA INDIANS LIVING ON RESERVATIONS. From this baseline, it is possible to hypothesize this sequence of logical principles:

What were the leading ideas, the motive forces, and the dominant ways of thinking in Dakota society? Although there can be no final and complete answer to this question for any social entity, careful analysis of the question reveals three subdivisions embracing the major assumptions underlying the idealogical orientation of any human group: (1) What is man’s relationship to his material world? (2) What is man’s relationship to his fellow men? and (3) What is man’s relationship to his spiritual world? In each area a partial answer may arise from consideration of the leading ideas which seemed to pervade that section of Dakota social organization.

(1) Harmony with Nature--The mainspring of Dakota society was to be embodied in the concept of "harmony with nature." When the essence of all that was meaningful in Dakota customs and beliefs was abstracted, the unity of man and nature emerged as the original idea. It was an idea contrasting sharply with the individualism, the spiritualism, the "chosen people" view, exemplified in Western man’s belief that he was a creature set apart from nature, a spiritual rather than a human being, and that nature must be shaped to his "will." Briefly, this latter view held that the world existed only in the mind of man, while the opposing view conceptualizes man existing only in the reality of nature.

If men were regarded as an integral element in the natural world, the Dakota’s relationship to all other material things was one of equality and respect. Thus the bison, for example, was regarded as a "generous brother," willing to sacrifice his own life, to provide the food, clothing, and shelter which made is possible for his people to sustain life. Likewise the earth was "mother" and the sun "father," and all that grew on the earth was the offspring of their beneficient union. The rivers, the hills and plains possessed a life and spirit that caused the Dakotas to feel akin to them. When a "holy man" went into the Black Hills to meditate and seek inspiration, he prayed for unity with his natural surroundings, in order that he might receive the guidance of universal supernatural forces.

In the days when the Dakotas were masters of the Great Plains, the kingdom of nature stretched lavishly before them, belonging to no one, unconquerable. The hunter of the bison herds was both lord and servant to the land, but if he understood the vagaries of climate and adapted to the conditions of his natural environment, he was, likewise free and unconquerable. His semi-nomadic existence shaped his character and his culture, but it left the hills, steppes and flatlands unchanged. The land was rested, abundant, and fertile; occupied by a people of calm dignity.

(2) Kinship--The brotherhood of man with nature had its counterpart in human society. The motive force in human association had its locus in the kinship complex. In this second case (man’s relationship to man), blood ties, determined by the principles of consanguinity, were fundamental. In the family pattern of Western society the relationships of blood were secondary to the bond established between the married couple, but the reverse was the case in Dakota society where affinal attachments were subordinated to the associations in the extended kinship group. The camp circle was essentially a large clan held together by consanguine concern, and position in the circle was symbolic of the unity of this family organization.

Without his kinsmen the Dakota individual would have been the most wretched of human beings, alone, defenseless, as good as dead. Any man who refused to defend the rights of his tiyospaye was expelled, and without the protection of this kinship group his only hope for survival was to throw himself on the mercy of some other family band or respected leader and beg to be adopted.

The duties incumbent upon a member of the extended Indian family emphasized the permeation of kinship to all areas of life. The warrior was the protector, and the huntsman the provider, not for himself, but for the women, children and old people. Marriage and procreation were duties, because the more numerous they were, the more power and influence the band possessed. If necessary, the Dakota warrior would gladly sacrifice his life to perpetuate his kinship group. Battle was necessary and hence honorable. The rules of combat were based on man-to-man retaliation; vengeance was a virtue, but so was sacrifice, generosity, and mercy. Many other cultural patterns intimately associated with the kinship complex were little appreciated by the frontiersman; veneration of the aged, hospitality, animistic worship and mourning, valour bordering on foolhardiness, and above all, that kind of scrupulous integrity that was only known to the person who owned his own soul, but was clever enough to take advantage of the man who was willing to "sell his birthright for a mess of pottage." They were aware that scruposity among saints was paltry innocence.

(3) Animism--Unity with nature and kinship were bound together in the spiritual way of Dakota life. The third question--man’s relationship to the spiritual world--was tentatively expressed in the Dakota concept of animism. The world and everything in it possessed a living, dynamic force for good and/or evil. Man and every species of plants and animals, mountains, lakes and rivers, celestial bodies, thunder and lightning, sun and earth, and the four winds possessed this mysterious force which waxed and waned at special seasons and for certain events and which was predictable in some cases and promiscuous in others. The world of spirits completed and imitated the circles of nature and kinship.

The spiritual life of Western man seemed to be compartmentalized from the rest of his life--from his social traditions and ethics--by a wall of porous plastic which was strong enough, yet elastic enough to withstand the swirling waters of contradiction, indifference, and hypocrisy, but at the same time permitted some infiltration of inspiration into the life of the thirsting individual. In contrast the existence of the Dakota people rested on a spiritual foundation. Based on concensus built up by gradual stages over many generations, animism bad forged Dakota institutions into a moulded sphere securely entwined and cemented by respect for fundamental values. In a society thus constructed, tradition was such a powerful force that individual aberrations were ineffectual and negligible in the expression of the general will.

Dakota society was predicated on the pillars of unity with nature, kinship, and animism. But these were never discrete or unrelated concepts. They were, in fact, unifying, interrelated ideas which bound their society into a single, complete circle of life. Social organization was not hierarchal. Differences were tolerated, but concensus demanded precedents for an behavior. It was not an unchanging society, but one in which changes moved slowly in almost imperceptible stages. Resistance to change was not a tradition, but tradition suggested agreement. In a more dynamic society, the process of social change isolates conservative minorities and past-oriented individuals; then as new stresses arise, the old social structure begins to show cracks, and the minds of these minority members are confused by conflicting counsel. This difficulty became crucial for the Dakotas during the reservation era when they were exposed to novel practices superimposed from without. Since these methods did not spring from interior habits gradually accumulated, the older generations were unable to live through the evolution of these new ways of thinking. What was transmitted to them remained superficial, demanding as it did conformity to alien values that were not in harmony with these ideas of unity with nature, kinship, and animism upon which their society rested.

The value system of the preliterate plains residents made them wise prophets. They cautioned the frontier ploughman that he was turning the "wrong side up." They warned the farmer not to sacrifice his freedom to the gods of wealth; not to become a serf, paying fiefs to the lords of the community, the state and the nation. Even if a few exploited the prairies, extended their provinces, and became richer than the prophets, they never enjoyed the pleasures of the unfettered mind and conscience, because they were chained in the prison of gold. The others were bowed down in virtual slavery, working for the benefit of their masters, or migrated from the land to live in the confining existence of the rural village or the deadening routine of the urban industrial metropolis.

Those few who escaped the clutches of agrarian life, avoided the small town and the slum, gained the security of wealth and power of position, and assumed the trappings of the chief, performed like bigots. The Dakota warriors watched them, shunning this new invention, this conception of American leadership which made hypocrisy a virtue. In their eyes a great man must act like a servant, but live like a chief, looking up to the sun rather than the earth, content to have his feet touch the dirt, if his head was in the sky.

While the agriculturalist fixed his eyes anxiously on the earth, despondent if the elements caused its desolation, and united in settled communities to protect himself better from the elements, the warrior regarded land exploiters with disdain and apprehension. The warrior raided and terrified, and the sober citizens of the settled communities distrusted him and labeled him adventurous, primitive, and savage. It was distrust of himself which caused the settler to seek shelter in his community institutions as a buffer against unpredictable nature where families could replace love; churches replace faith; businesses replace charity; and governments replace God.

Tall and lean, gaunt and bony, a man who had eaten too little "because it was good to starve a little," the Dakota Indian warrior stood beside his pony, bronze-brown, athletic, but with a glow of glimmering gold about his weather-worn skin. His fine visage, the jutting cheek bones, the high brow, the dominating, deep-set, hunter’s eyes, the aquiline nose, the wen-marked, eloquent mouth, and firmly set jaw, were the admiration of the winter painter and sculptor. Every muscle, every sinew, every bone of these magnificent features seemed to project patience and silence, courage and prudence, dignity and simplicity. Here was the original portrait of the man dependent upon his own resources, never trusting fate, but perpetually at the mercy of its freaks; a man living out his whole life on the same grand scale as a few unusual ones live only in their youth.