Wajaje Winter Count 133 FIG. 13 (below): Glyph for the year 1794–95—We Spent the Winter with Wasicun Traders. Wasicun is the early Lakota term for Euro-Americans, and specifi cally for the French, who were the fi rst non-Indian people they encountered. Various, latter-day defi nitions have been suggested, often with political intent, but the great linguist of the Lakota language, Rev. Eugene Buechel, creator of the fi rst dictionary of Lakota, thought the term derived from wa (one)–sica (bad)–un (to use, have, wear): “one wearing bad or short (to the Indian eye) clothing” (Buechel, 1970: 551). The later term specifi cally for White Americans is mila hanska, “long knives,” for the swords carried by nineteenth-century soldiers (Buechel, 1970: 336). When France lost the French and Indian War in 1763, it was ejected from North America by the English and Spanish victors. Spain gained the vast territory of French Louisiana, which included all of the Upper Missouri River homeland of the Sioux. The French residents remained, however, and leading citizens were employed by the Spanish as offi cers for the Territory of “Upper Louisiana.” By the 1790s, traders from north of the Canadian line were sending expeditions south to illegally poach the Indian trade. The new French lieutenant governor in St. Louis, Zenon Trudeau, was anxious to prevent British incursions, so he supported a consortium of St. Louis investors who formed a new trading business. In 1794, the ... Missouri Trading Company commissioned Jean-Baptiste Truteau to lead a trading and exploring expedition up the Missouri River. ... Truteau, accompanied by Jacques Clamorgan ... and a small party set out from St. Louis on June 7, 1794, traveling up the Missouri by canoe with trade goods. In what is now South Dakota, the expedition encountered Sioux (Dakota, Lakota, Nakota) Indians, with whom they traded for beaver pelts ... Truteau and his party spent the winter of 1794–95 at a fort they established on the Missouri and returned to St. Louis at the end of summer, 1795 (Waldman & Wexler, 2004). The specifi c location of Truteau’s Post was “at a place in the later Charles Mix County, South Dakota, a little above and opposite the site of the later Fort Randall, on the left bank of the Missouri. They began the construction of winter quarters on November 11 ... The winter was not an enjoyable one ... yet Truteau did manage to obtain some furs during the winter by trading with the Sioux.” (Nasatir, 1952: 88). This winter count documents that the specifi c Lakota with whom Truteau dealt were the Wajaje. The Truteau expedition was the only party of traders that wintered in the Lakota country during 1794–95. Jacques D’Eglise, also working for the Missouri Trading Company, wintered with two others at the Arikara village on Cheyenne River, but operated as a guest, living in one of the earthlodges. It is certain, therefore, that Truteau’s Post is the one depicted here. With the exception of a very rudimentary copy on the Rosebud Winter Count (Greene & Thornton, 2007: 119), the glyph seen here is the only eye-witness depiction of this important trading post, the initial incursion into the Lakota country during the Spanish Regime. NOTE * Since a year for the Lakota might vary from ten to thirteen months, in the latter case spanning two years in the Euro-American calendrical system, we have used two calendar years to designate each of the glyphs on the winter count: “1794–95,” “1795–96,” etc. CITED REFERENCES Buechel, Rev. Eugene, S. J. (Rev. Paul Manhart, S.J., ed.), 1970. A Dictionary of the Teton Dakota Sioux Language. Pine Ridge, SD: Red Cloud Indian School. Corbusier, William H., 1886. “The Corbusier Winter Counts.” In Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1882–83: 127–147. Washington, DC: Government Printing Offi ce. Curtis, Edward S., 1908. The North American Indian, vol. 3: Teton Sioux, Yanktonai, and Assiniboin. Cambridge, MA: University Press. Greene, Candace and Russell Thornton (eds.), 2007. The Year the Stars Fell: Lakota Winter Counts at the Smithsonian. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Howard, James Henri, 1976. “Yanktonai Ethnohistory and the John K. Bear Winter Count.” Plains Anthropologist, vol. 21, no. 73, part 2, memoir 11: 1–78. Hyde, George, 1961. Spotted Tail’s Folk: A History of the Brule Sioux. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 2nd ed., 1974. Mallery, Garrick, 1893. “Picture Writing of the American Indians.” In Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1888–89: 266–328. Washington, DC: Government Printing Offi ce. 2nd ed., 1972, 2 vols. New York: Dover Books. Nasatir, Abraham P., 1952. Before Lewis and Clark: Documents Illustrating the History of the Missouri, 1785–1804. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Paul, R. Eli, 1998. The Nebraska Indian Wars Reader, 1865– 1877. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Sundstrom, Linea, 2006. “History in Pictures: Father Buechel and the Lakota Winter Counts.” Online at: www. sfmissionmuseum.org/exhibits/wintercounts/documents/ buechel_winter_counts.pdf Waldman, Carl and Alan Wexler (eds.), 2004. “Truteau, Jean-Baptiste.” In Encyclopedia of Exploration, vol. I. New York City: Facts on File. FIG. 14 (right): Glyph for the year 1809–10— Little Beaver’s Post Was Destroyed. “Little Beaver” is the name that the Lakota gave to the French trader Regis Loisel, who had come into their country in 1797–98 (Hyde, 1961: 25). His log cabin post was located “on Cedar Island in the Missouri, below the present Chamberlain, South Dakota” (Curtis, 1908: 169). The fort caught fi re and the stock of gunpowder exploded. It is likely he was married to a Lakota woman, so the event was considered “within the tribe” and therefore relevant to the winter count. The event was also a serious loss of munitions for the Wajaje and Brule. Several of the winter counts kept by individuals on the Rosebud Reservation (Ring Bull, Walking On Sky; Sundstrom, 2006), and therefore arbitrarily categorized as “Brule,” begin in this or the preceding year. It is clear from their rudimentary draftsmanship and materials (brown wrapping paper, canvas) that they were copied from an earlier record. As these almost exactly follow events of the much earlier Wajaje Winter Count discussed here, it is obvious that all of these Rosebud Reservation records derive from that original source. .
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