Assiniboine

Names

The Europeans and Americans adopted names that other tribes used for the Assiniboine; they did not until later learn the tribe's autonym, their name for themselves. In Siouan, they traditionally called themselves the Hohe Nakota. With the widespread adoption of English, however, many now use the name that became common in English. The English adopted Assiniboine, used by the Canadian French colonists. It was a transliteration into French phonetics of what they heard the Ojibwe use as a term for these western people. The Ojibwe name was asinii-bwaan (stone Sioux). The Cree called them asinîpwâta (asinîpwâta ᐊᓯᓃᐹᐧᑕ NA sg, asinîpwâtak ᐊᓯᓃᐹᐧᑕᐠ NA pl).

In the same way, Assnipwan comes from the word asinîpwâta in the western Cree dialects, from asiniy ᐊᓯᓂᐩ NA – "rock, stone" – and pwâta ᐹᐧᑕ NA – "enemy, Sioux". Early French traders in the west were often familiar with Algonquian languages. They transliterated many Cree or Ojibwe exonyms for other western Canadian indigenous peoples during the early colonial era. The English referred to the Assiniboine by adopting terms from the French spelled using English phonetics.

Other tribes associated "stone" with the Assiniboine because they primarily cooked with heated stones. They dropped hot stones into water to heat it to boiling for cooking meat. Some writers believed that the name was derived from the Ojibway term Assin, stone, and the French bouillir, to boil, but such an etymology is very unlikely.

Language

Assiniboine is a Mississippi Valley Siouan language, in the Western Siouan language family. In the early 21st century, about 150 people speak the language and most are more than 40 years old. The majority of the Assiniboine today speak only American English. The 2000 census showed 3,946 tribal members who lived in the United States.

Assiniboine are closely linked by language to the Stoney First Nations people of Alberta. The latter two tribes speak varieties of Nakota, a distant, but not mutually intelligible, variant of the Sioux language.

Early history

The Assiniboine, along with the Stoney of Alberta, share a common ancestry with the Sioux nation. While it was formerly believed that the Assiniboine originated among the Yanktonai division of the Dakota Sioux, linguistic analysis indicates that the Assiniboine and Stoney together form a group coordinate with that of the Santee, Lakota, and Yankon-Yanktonai, and that they are no more related to one of these subdivisions than another. The separation of the Assiniboine from the Sioux must have occurred at some time prior to 1640, as Paul Le Jeune names them along with the "Naduessi" (Sioux) in his Jesuit Relations of that year.

The Assiniboine and Sioux were both gradually pushed westward onto the plains from the woodlands of Minnesota by the Ojibwe, who had acquired firearms from their French allies. Later, the Assiniboine acquired horses via raiding and trading with neighboring tribes of Plains Indians such as the Crow and the Sioux on their south.

The Assiniboine eventually developed into a large and powerful people with a horse and warrior culture; they used the horse to hunt the vast numbers of bison that lived within and outside their territory. At the height of their power, the Assiniboine dominated territory ranging from the North Saskatchewan River in the north to the Missouri River in the south, and including portions of modern-day Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Manitoba, Canada; and North Dakota and Montana, United States of America.

Contact with Europeans & fur trade

The first person of European descent to describe the Assiniboine was an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company named Henry Kelsey in the 1690s. Later explorers and traders Jean Baptiste de La Vérendrye and his sons (1730s), Anthony Henday (1754–55), and Alexander Henry the younger (1800s) confirmed that the Assiniboine held a vast territory across the northern plains, including into the United States (which achieved independence in 1783 but did not acquire the plains until 1803 in the Louisiana Purchase from France.)

The Assiniboine became reliable and important trading partners and middlemen for fur traders and other Indians, particularly the British Hudson's Bay Company and North West Company, operating in western Canada in a vast area known then as Rupert's Land. During the later 18th century and early 19th century, south of the border in what became Montana and the Dakota territories, the Assiniboine traded with the American Fur Company and the competing Rocky Mountain Fur Company. The Assiniboine obtained guns, ammunition, metal tomahawks, metal pots, wool blankets, wool coats, wool leggings, and glass beads, as well as other goods from the fur traders in exchange for furs. Beaver furs and bison hides were the most commonly traded furs.

Increased contact with Europeans resulted in Native Americans contracting Eurasian infectious diseases that were endemic among the Europeans. They suffered epidemics with high mortality, most notably smallpox among the Assiniboine. The Assiniboine population crashed from around 10,000 people in the late 18th century to around 2600 by 1890.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition was mounted by the United States in 1804-1806 to explore the Louisiana Territory, newly acquired from France. The expedition's journals mention the Assiniboine, whom the party heard about while returning from Fort Clatsop down the Missouri River. These explorers did not encounter or come in direct contact with the tribe.

Noted European and American painters traveled with traders, explorers, and expeditions for the opportunity to paint the West and its Native American peoples. Among those who encountered and painted the Assiniboine from life were painters Karl Bodmer, Paul Kane, and George Catlin.

The Iron Confederacy

The Assiniboine were a major part of an alliance of northern Plains Indian nations known as the Iron Confederacy, or Nehiyaw-Pwat, as it is known in Plains Cree. The Iron Confederacy were allies in the fur trade, particularly with the Hudson's Bay Company. Members included the Assiniboine as well as the Plains Cree, Saulteaux, Plains Ojibwe, Métis, and individual Iroquois people who traveled west as employees for the fur traders. Other Indian peoples on the northern plains, such as the Gros Ventre, were occasionally part of the confederacy.

The confederacy became the dominant force on the northern plains. It posed a major threat to Indian nations not associated with it, such as the Shoshone and Crow further south. Its members also attacked European-American settlements on the Plains. The eventual decline of the fur trade and overhunting of the bison herds by Canadian and American hunters, which destroyed the Confederacy nations' most important food source, led to the defeat and breaking up of the confederacy. It engaged in military action with Canada during the North-West Rebellion.

Lifestyle

Traditionally the Assiniboine were semi-nomadic people. During the warmer months, they followed and hunted the herds of bison. The women processed and preserved the meat for winter, and used hides, tendons, and horns for clothing, bedding, tools, cord and other items. Every part of the animal was used by the people. The men hunted on horseback using bow and arrows. The tribe is known for its excellent horsemanship. They first obtained horses by trading with the Blackfeet and the Gros Ventre tribes. They worked with the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara tribes.

Subgroups and bands

The bands of chief Manitupotis (also known as Wankanto - Little Soldier) and Hunkajuka (Hum-ja-jin-sin, Inihan Kinyen - Little Chief), together about 300 people with about 50 warriors, on June 1, 1873 were victims of the Cypress Hills Massacre. An estimated 25 to 30 Assiniboine were killed by American Wolfers to take revenge for horse-stealing Cree in Montana. This massacre led to the development of the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP), later known as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

Present situation

Today, a substantial number of Assiniboine people live jointly with other tribes, such as the Plains Cree, Saulteaux, Sioux and Gros Ventre, in several reservations in Canada and the United States. In Manitoba, the Assiniboine survive as individuals, holding no separate communal reserves.

Montana, United States

In March 2012, these two reservations has received 63 American bison from Yellowstone National Park, to be released to a 2,100-acre game preserve 25 miles north of Poplar. There are many other bison herds outside Yellowstone, this is one of the few genetically pure ones, in which the animals were not cross-bred with cattle. Native Americans celebrated this action for restoration of the bison. It came more than a century after the bison were nearly destroyed by overhunting by European Americans and government action to destroy the food source of the powerful Plains Indians. The Assiniboine and Gros Ventre tribes at the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation will also receive a portion of this herd.

Saskatchewan, Canada

Namesakes

Canada Steamship Lines named one of their new ships the CSL Assiniboine.

"Fort Assiniboine" was a name given to trading posts opened in 1793 in Manitoba and in 1824 in Alberta.

The Assiniboine River drains much of Saskatchewan and Manitoba into the Red River of the North, which, in turn, flows into the Hudson Bay via Lake Winnipeg and the Nelson River.

Notable Assiniboine people