h a crude agriculture sprang up whenever a tribe tarried long in one
spot. No native stock is more interesting than the great Siouan group, and
none save the Algonquian and Iroquoian approach it in wealth of literary
and historical records; for since the advent of white men the Siouan
Indians have played striking roles on the stage of human development, and
have caught the eye of every thoughtful observer.

The term Siouan is the adjective denoting the "Sioux" Indians and cognate
tribes. The word "Sioux" has been variously and vaguely used. Originally
it was a corruption of a term expressing enmity or contempt, applied to a
part of the plains tribes by the forest-dwelling Algonquian Indians.
According to Trumbull, it was the popular appellation of those tribes
which call themselves Dakota, Lakota, or Nakota ("Friendly," implying
confederated or allied), and was an abbreviation of _Nadowessioux_, a
Canadian-French corruption of _Nadowe-ssi-wag_ ("the snake-like ones" or
"enemies"), a term rooted in the Algonquian _nadowe_ ("a snake"); and some
writers have applied the designation to different portions of the stock,
while others have rejected it because of the offensive implication or for
other reasons. So long ago as 1836, however, Gallatin employed the term
"Sioux" to designate collectively "the nations which speak the Sioux
language,"(2) and used an alternative term to designate the subordinate
confederacy--i.e., he used the term in a systematic way for the first time
to denote an ethnic unit which experience has shown to be well defined.
Gallatin's terminology was soon after adopted by Prichard and others, and
has been followed by most careful writers on the American Indians.
Accordingly the name must be regarded as established through priority and
prescription, and has been used in the original sense in various standard
publications.(3)

In colloquial usage and in the usage of the ephemeral press, the term
"Sioux" was applied sometimes to one but oftener to several of the allied
tribes embraced in the first of the principal groups of which the stock is
composed, i.e., the group or confederacy styling themselves Dakota.
Sometimes the term was employed in its simple form, but as explorers and
pioneers gained an inkling of the organization of the group, it was often
compounded with the tribal name as "Santee-Sioux," "Yanktonnai-Sioux,"
"Sisseton-Sioux," etc. As acquaintance between white men and red
increased, the stock