The Lakota Doll Making Tradition

It was the tradition for the Lakota grandmother to make the first doll for the granddaughters, just as it was the tradition for the Lakota grandfather to make the first bow and arrow for the grandsons. The materials used in the before-times would have been natural materials like buffalo fur and hide, bone and the like.

The Lakota

The Lakota [lakxo'ta] came from the western Dakota of Minnesota who, after the adoption of the horse, _sunkawakan_ [s^uN'ka-wakxaN'] ('power/mystery dog'), became part of the Great Plains Culture with their Minnesota Algonkin-speaking allies, the Tsitsistas (Cheyenne), living in the northern Great Plains, which centered on the buffalo hunt with the horse. There were 20,000 Lakota in the mid-18th century. The number has now increased to about 70,000, 20,480 of whom still speak their ancestral language. (See Languages in the United States).

Because the Black Hills are sacred to the Lakota (who refer to them as the Paha Sapa, they objected to mining in the area, which has been attempted since the 19th century. In 1868, the US government signed a treaty with them exempting the Black Hills from all white settlement forever. Four years later, gold was discovered there, and an influx of prospectors descended upon the area, abetted by army commanders like General George Armstrong Custer. The latter tried to administer a lesson of noninterference with white policies. Instead, the Lakota with their allies, the Arapaho and the Cheyenne, defeated the 7th U.S. Cavalry in 1876 at the Battle at the Greasy Grass/Battle of the Little Bighorn, known also as Custer's Last Stand, since he and all 300 of his troopers perished there.

See the entire entry for the Lakota at wikipedia.com