Tribal Backgrounds

Assiniboin (uh-SIN-uh-boin) tribes made up the northern-most boundaries of the Great Plains. Their namesake means "one who cooks by the use of stones." They are of the Siouan people who likely originated in the lower Mississippi Valley and gradually moved northward though Ohio ending up near the Lake Superior region. By the seventeenth century, the Assiniboin settled near Lake Winnipeg. Since the eighteenth century, they have lived in present-day Montana and Saskatchewan.

Records and diaries show the heavy use of Assiniboin tribe members as "go-betweens" in trade with the Plains Indians to the west. At the end of the seventeenth century, the British-owned Hudson's Bay Company was established and relied on many Assiniboin to help in trade. Again, like the Mandan, the great amount of contact with Europeans exposed them to smallpox. A second epidemic in 1780, following an earlier one in 1737, caused a drastic depletion of the Assiniboin.

James Thompson