Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
60 free Sioux trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Sioux trivia quiz covers the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, the Seven Council Fires of the Dakota and Lakota peoples of the Great Plains. It starts with names and origins: what 'Sioux' actually means and who coined it, the seven Lakota bands, the emergence story at Wind Cave, White Buffalo Calf Woman and the Seven Sacred Rites, and the arrival of the horse that made the Lakota masters of the northern plains. Then it follows the wars and the treaties: Red Cloud's victory, the Fetterman Fight, the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, Custer's gold expedition, the Greasy Grass, Sitting Bull's exile in Canada, Crazy Horse's death at Fort Robinson, the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee, the Mankato hangings of 1862. It ends in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with Black Elk Speaks, the Crazy Horse Memorial, the 1973 occupation, the billion-dollar Black Hills award the Sioux refuse to accept, and the water protectors of Standing Rock. Our Native American history quiz covers the wider story. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Sioux, the Lakota, their leaders and the events named, and each explanation adds one more detail.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the Sioux name for their own nation, Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, mean?
Seven Council Fires
Each fire stands for one oyate, or people, within the nation.
Q 02The word 'Sioux' comes from a French rendering of a term in which language?
Ojibwe
Nadowessi is often said to mean 'little snakes' or 'enemy'; the French added their plural -oux and later clipped it.
Q 03What do the words Dakota and Lakota translate to?
Friend, ally
The two names reflect dialect differences within the same nation.
Q 04Which people are correctly called Nakota, a label often wrongly applied to the Yankton Dakota?
The Assiniboine and Stoney
They live in western Canada and Montana.
Q 05Around which Great Lake did the Santee Dakota live before the 17th century?
Superior
An 18th-century war with the Ojibwe pushed them west into southern Minnesota.
Q 06Which animal's 18th-century arrival made the Lakota a dominant power on the Northern Plains?
The horse
By the 1850s they controlled a vast territory west of the Missouri.
Q 07How many bands or sub-tribes make up the Lakota?
Seven
They include the Brulé, Miniconjou, Sans Arc, Two Kettles and Sihasapa (Blackfeet).
Q 08The Lakota origin story says the people first emerged into the world from which Black Hills site?
Wind Cave
The national park built around it in 1903 was the first created specifically to protect a cave.
Q 09Which figure in Sioux tradition brought the sacred pipe and taught the Seven Sacred Rites?
White Buffalo Calf Woman
She acted as an intermediary between the Great Spirit and humankind.
Q 10What is Wakȟáŋ Tháŋka?
The Great Spirit
It is believed to have created the universe and to embody everything within it as one.
Q 11Which of the Seven Sacred Rites is the purification lodge?
Inípi
Haŋbléčheyapi is crying for a vision, and Wiwáŋyaŋg Wačhípi is the Sun Dance.
Q 12The Yankton Dakota kept a treaty role as caretakers of which Sioux cultural site where pipe stone is dug?
Pipestone Quarry
The soft red stone is carved into ceremonial pipes.
Q 13Whose 1866-68 campaign left the Lakota as the only nation to defeat the US on American soil?
Red Cloud
He signed the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty and later led his people onto the reservation that became Pine Ridge.
Q 21To which country did Sitting Bull lead his band in May 1877 rather than surrender?
Canada
He stayed near Wood Mountain in what is now Saskatchewan until 1881.
Q 22In 1885 Sitting Bull spent a season performing with which touring show?
Buffalo Bill's Wild West
He then returned to the Standing Rock Agency.
Q 23Who killed Sitting Bull on 15 December 1890?
Indian agency police
They were trying to arrest him because officials feared he would join the Ghost Dance movement.
Q 14The Fetterman Fight of December 1866, in which all 81 soldiers died, is known to the Lakota by what name?
Battle of the Hundred-in-the-Hands
Crazy Horse led the decoy party that lured Captain Fetterman out of Fort Phil Kearny; at the time it was the Army's worst defeat by Native Americans.
Q 15The 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie set aside the Black Hills as part of what?
The Great Sioux Reservation
It barred all non-Indigenous settlement of the Hills 'forever'.
Q 16Whose 1874 expedition into the Black Hills set off the gold rush that broke the 1868 treaty?
George Armstrong Custer
The government then failed to keep miners and settlers out of the Hills.
Q 17By what name do the Lakota know the 1876 clash at the Little Bighorn?
Battle of the Greasy Grass
It was fought on 25-26 June 1876 along the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory.
Q 18Before the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull had a vision of soldiers 'as thick as grasshoppers' doing what?
Falling upside down into the Lakota camp
His people took it as a foreshadowing of a great victory.
Q 19Which regiment did the Lakota and their allies destroy at the Little Bighorn?
The 7th Cavalry
Its dead numbered 268, including Custer.
Q 20What was the only verified survivor of Custer's own command at the Little Bighorn?
A horse named Comanche
The horse belonged to Captain Keogh and became a regimental mascot.
Q 24Which Lakota band did Sitting Bull belong to?
Hunkpapa
The name means 'Camps at the End of the Camp Circle'.
Q 25Crazy Horse was a war leader of which Lakota band?
Oglala
His lighter complexion and wavy hair earned him the childhood nickname Curly Hair.
Q 26What did Crazy Horse avoid throughout his life, in keeping with his personal humility?
Being photographed
No authenticated photograph of him exists.
Q 27How did Crazy Horse die in September 1877?
Bayoneted by a guard
He had surrendered at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, that May and was being confined to the guardhouse.
Q 28The Ghost Dance was founded by which Northern Paiute prophet, also known as Jack Wilson?
Wovoka
He was said to have had his vision during a solar eclipse on 1 January 1889.
Q 29The Wounded Knee Massacre took place on 29 December 1890 on which reservation?
Pine Ridge
Soldiers of the 7th Cavalry were trying to disarm Spotted Elk's band of Miniconjou.
Q 30Roughly how many Lakota were killed at Wounded Knee?
250 to 300
Most were women and children; the Army was firing four Hotchkiss guns.