Tribes - The Great Sioux Nation

The Lakota, Nakota and Dakota Nation (also known as the Great Sioux Nation) descends from the original inhabitants of North America and can be divided into three major linguistic and geographic groups: Lakota (Teton, West Dakota), Nakota (Yankton, Central Dakota) and Dakota (Santee, Eastern Dakota). In North America, their territory covers some 200,000 km in the present day state of South Dakota and neighboring states.

The Lakota are the western-most of the three groups, occupying lands in both North and South Dakota. The Nakota, the smallest division, reside on the Yankton reservation in South Dakota, the Northern portion of Standing Rock Reservation, and Canada (the Stoney and Assiniboine), while the Dakota live mostly in Minnesota and Nebraska.
The Lakota, also the largest of the three groups, came from the western Dakota of Minnesota who, after the adoption of the horse, became part of the Great Plains Culture with their Minnesota Algonkin-speaking allies, the Tsitsistas (Cheyenne). Living in the northern Great Plains, their culture centered on the buffalo hunt with the horse. They are divided into seven bands: the Oglala, Sicangu or Brulé, Hunkpapa, Miniconjous, Sihasapa or Blackfoot, Itazipacola or Sans Arc, and Oohenupa or Two Kettle.

The original Dakota people migrated north and westward from the south and east into Ohio, then to Minnesota. The Dakota were a woodland people who thrived on hunting, fishing and subsistence farming. Migrations of Anishinaabe/Chippewa people from the east in the 17th and 18th centuries, with rifles supplied by the French and English, pushed the Dakota further into Minnesota and west and southward, giving the name "Dakota Territory" to the northern expanse west of the Mississippi and up to its headwaters.

The western Dakota obtained horses, probably in the 17th century, and moved onto the plains, becoming the Lakota, subsisting on the buffalo herds and corn-trade with their linguistic cousins, the Mandan and Hidatsa along the Missouri. In the 19th century, the railroads hired hunters to exterminate the buffalo herds, the Indians' primary food supply, in order to force all tribes into sedentary habitations. The Dakota and Lakota were forced to accept white-defined reservations in exchange for the rest of their lands, and domestic cattle and corn in exchange for buffalo, becoming dependent upon annual federal payments guaranteed by treaties, which were seldom kept.
The name Sioux was created by the French Canadians, who abbreviated the Algonquin compound Nadouéssioux (from nadowe ("Iroquois") plus siu ("snake"/the massasauga rattler), by which a neighboring Ojibwa tribe referred to the Dakota to the west and south. This term is popularly interpreted as an insult but it could refer to a time when the Dakota people, like other southeastern tribes, were known to revere serpents.

Today many of the tribes continue to officially call themselves 'Sioux' which the Federal Government of the United States applied to all Dakota/Lakota/Nakoda people in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Sioux are a proud people with a rich heritage. They were the masters of the North American plains and prairies, feared by other tribes from the Great Lakes to the Rockies. Though they were known as great warriors, the family was considered the center of life. Children were called "Wakanisha", which meant sacred, and were the center of attention. The roles of men and women were clearly defined with the men expected to provide for and defend the family. Hunting was taken very seriously and infraction of the hunting rules could lead to destruction of a man’s teepee or other property. Women were the matriarchs, ruling the family and domestic lives of the band.
The Sioux were a deeply spiritual people, believing in one all-pervasive god, Wakan Tanka, or the Great Mystery. Religious visions were cultivated and the people communed with the spirit world through music and dance. Like many of the People, the Sioux practice Christianity as well as traditional spiritual beliefs today, and there is a growing return to the traditional among the young.

Information taken from the following:
www.crystalinks.com/sioux
www.hanksville.org