The Sioux Nation was a proud and independent people that subsided on hunting and gathering for their entire existence until the Euro-American invasion of their traditional lands. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, until contact with Euro-American settlers, the Sioux enjoyed a nomadic sustenance lifestyle, hunting bison and gathering what they needed. The Sioux could not maintain their own traditional lifestyle because of the overhunting of bison herds, the spread of small-pox, and their forced movement onto reservations.
In 1818, an epidemic of small-pox hit the Sioux. As Europeans flooded the continent and subsequently headed west, new diseases came with them. The Sioux’s immune system had experienced nothing like smallpox and therefore could not combat it. After the initial rash of smallpox, the Sioux experienced further outbreaks in 1845 and 1850. Smallpox easily spread, and this epidemic would crush the Sioux nation.
In 1854, after a Brule Sioux killed a white immigrant’s cow, an Army lieutenant overreacted, led his men to the Indian village, demanded the Sioux hand over the killer, and subsequently opened fire. The clash resulted in death for the lieutenant and his men. Upon hearing the news, General William Harney marched his men and destroyed a village at Ash Hollow in Nebraska. This would be the opening salvo to over twenty years of warfare between various elements of Lakota and Dakota Sioux nation, and American forces. Between 1866 and 67, Chief Red Cloud fought the American Army to a brief standstill and relative peace would ensure. This, however, would not last long. In 1876, General Custer was famously defeated at Little Bighorn. The Indian forces that prevailed that day, but the response at Wounded Knee resulted in their destruction and the end of Sioux resistance in Dakota Territory.
The American plains bison, commonly referred to as buffalo, were crucial to all plains Indians’ ways of life, and none more so than the Sioux. The Sioux relied upon the migration of giant bison herds for not only their primary source of protein but also the animals hide for clothing and shelter. As American settlers migrated west into the plains, they too hunted bison, and soon this great creature would nearly become extinct. As the Americans built railroads, the bison became a nuisance. The railroads would scare off the bison and if a herd was migrating along the tracks, it could delay a train for several days. In 1871, a Pennsylvania tannery found that buffalo hides could be used to manufacturer belts for industrial machinery. By 1873, only a few thousand bison survived.
With their traditional means of hunting and gathering now eliminated, it was much easier for the United States government to put the Sioux tribes onto reservations. Facing starvation, the reservation looked more and more enticing. Moving to reservation presented new and daunting challenges for Sioux bands. Gardening and small-scale farming were new to the Sioux. Cattle ranching, while not the same as hunting buffalo on the open plain was not as difficult for them to learn. Their adaptation to using the horse would help them learn to handle cattle.
It reduced this once proud and independent people, who ruled the northern plains of the Americas, to a poor and dependent group living under the subjugation of American ideology. A shadow of its former self. The outbreaks of smallpox, overhunting and near extinction of the American Plains bison and their clash with American immigrants and the United States Army all led to the demise of their way of life. While finding success in farming and cattle ranching on the reservations, the Sioux could never achieve the same societal success they had enjoyed before the Euro-American immigration west through the great plains.
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