The Nakoda (Stoney and Assiniboine) feared their Plains Lakota rivals for their fighting spirit. By the early 1700s migrating Ojibwe had forced the Lakotas’ ancestors (the Teton, part of the Oceti Sakowen Confederacy, or Sioux) from the woodlands to the plains. They learned to depended on buffalo (the Tonka) and horses brought from the south changed the buffalo hunt and warfare. The Assiniboine in the Red Deer River region became affiliated with the fur trade, and the Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) nicknamed them “Nadouessioux” (little snakes), shortened by French traders to “Sioux”.

To the north, their old Ojibwe and Nakoda rivals had joined the Cree in the Iron Confederacy, and the Blackfoot Confederacy guarded the land east of the Rockies. The Lakota attacked the Cheyenne people of the Black Hills in South Dakota, and claimed that territory by 1776. However, the sale of the Louisiana Territory by Napoleon to President Jefferson began a period of violent expansion. Lewis and Clark expeditions, American migrants destroying buffalo, the Grattan Massacre, the Bozeman Trail, the Battle of Platte Bridge, the Fort Laramie Treaty, and the discovery of gold in the Black Hills were just some of the events the Lakota endured in their fight for survival. Their courage earned the fame across the globe.