While no political organization has been known to exist within the historic period over the whole Dakota nation, the traditional alliance of the "Seven Council-fires" is perpetuated in the common name Dakota, signifying allied, friendly.
Among the Dakota it is customary for the rank and title of chief to descend from father to son, unless some other near relative is ambitious and influential enough to obtain the place. The same is claimed also in regard to the rank of brave or soldier, but this position is more dependent on personal bravery. While among the Omaha and Ponka a chief can not lead in war, there is a different custom among the Dakota. The Sisseton chief Standing Buffalo told Little Crow, the leader of the hostile Santee in the Minnesota outbreak of 1862, that, having commenced hostilities with the whites, he must fight it out without help from him, and that, failing to make himself master of the situation, he should not flee through the country of the Sisseton.
Regarding chieftainship among the Dakota, Philander Prescott[1] says:
The chieftainship is of modern date, there being no chiefs before the whites came. The chiefs have little power. The chief's band is almost always a kin totem which helps to sustain him. The chiefs have no votes in council; there the majority rules and the voice of the chief is not decisive till then.
On the death of a chief, the nearest kinsman in the right line is eligible. If there are no kin, the council of the band can make a chief. Civil chiefs scarcely ever make a war party.
The Dakota woman owns the tipi. If a man has more wives than one, they have separate tipis, or they arrange to occupy different sides of one. Sometimes the young man goes to live with his wife's kindred, but in such matters there is no fixed rule.
- ↑ School-craft, Indian Tribes, vol. II., 182, Philadelphia, 1852.
