A Posthumous Paper - Fifteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to
the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1893-1894, Government
Printing Office, Washington, 1897, pages 205-244

by James Owen Dorsey
Title: Siouan Sociology

Author: James Owen Dorsey

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...

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(4) says:


    The chieftainship is of modern date, there being no chiefs hefore
    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.