Dakota Culture and Relationships with the French and Other Tribes In the early 17th century, France had began to develop a strong foothold on territory in North America and present day Canada. This territory, known as New France, was able to expand through a series of French expeditions, and French participation in North American fur trade became a major determining factor of the prosperity of their settlements. One way for the French to take part in this thriving trade business was to provoke the involvement of the natives, such as the Sioux, the Algonquins, the Montagnais, the Huron, the Ottawa, and the Ojibwe. At the time, the Dakota, a subdivision of the Sioux tribe, lived in the northern regions of the Dakotas and near Lake Superior. The first recorded encounters between Dakota, the eastern Sioux tribe, and the French occurred in 1659 and 1660 between Pierre Radisson and his …show more content…
In the early 17th century, France be Before French contact, the Dakota, the Eastern tribe of the Native American Sioux, sustained a culture built on close family ties, community, gift-exchange, hunting and gathering, but also frequent conflict with neighboring tribes. These cultural ideologies allowed the Dakota to forge strong trade alliances with the French and other tribes, however, the Dakota’s new access to trade opportunities and technologies, such as weaponry, threatened the traditional Dakota lifestyle in a way that the Dakota developed more aggressive commercial-based society. The Sioux, in the beginning of the 17th century, occupied present day Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. And according to one