Dakota is either

• the related tribes in Minnesota known as Dakota Oyate (Nation), or Santees, and means ""allies"", including the Prairie Island (Mdewakanton and Wahpekute) Indian Community, the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux (Dakota) Community, the Lower Sioux Mdewakanton Indian Community, and the Upper Sioux Dakota Indian Community; or
• the meta-tribe that includes all Dakota, Lakota and Nakota people and bands, commonly called ""the Sioux""; or
• that meta-tribe's "'d'" dialect of the Siouan language, or
• a territory that existed from 1858 until 1889. That territory had formerly been the western half of the territory of Minnesota. In 1858 the eastern half of the territory of Minnesota became the present state of Minnesota. In 1889 the territory of Dakota was bifurcated into the present states of North Dakota and South Dakota, see Dakota Territory; or
• a truck made by Dodge; or
• an aircraft, the DC3 or C-47 Dakota, or
• a distinctive and famous apartment building in New York City, The Dakota.
• Betty Spaghetty's pet horse, Dakota
• an actress, Dakota Fanning
• the towns of Dakota, Illinois, Dakota, Minnesota, and Dakota, Wisconsin

The Dakota

The original Dakota people migrated north and westward from the south and east into Ohio then to Minnesota. The Dakota were a woodland people who thrived on hunting, fishing and subsistence farming. Migrations of Anishinaabe/Chippewa people from the east in the 17th and 18th centuries, with rifles supplied by the French and English, pushed the Dakota further into Minnesota and west and southward, giving the name "Dakota Territory" to the northern expanse west of the Mississippi and up to its headwaters. The western Dakota obtained horses, probably in the 17th century, and moved onto the plains, becoming the Lakota, subsisting on the buffalo herds and corn-trade with their linguistic cousins, the Mandan and Hidatsa along the Missouri. In the 19th century, as the railroads hired hunters to exterminate the buffalo herds, the Indians' primary food supply, in order to force all tribes into sedentary habitations, the Dakota and Lakota were forced to accept white-defined reservations in exchange for the rest of their lands, and domestic cattle and corn in exchange for buffalo, becoming dependent upon annual federal payments guaranteed by treaty.

In 1862, after a failed crop the year before and a winter starvation, the federal payment was late to arrive. The local traders would not issue any more credit to the Dakota and the local federal agent told the Dakota that they were free to eat grass. As a result on August 17, 1862, the Sioux Uprising began when a few Dakota men attacked a white farmer, igniting further attacks on white settlements along the Minnesota River. The US Army put the revolt down, then later tried and condemned 303 Dakota for war crimes. President Abraham Lincoln remanded the death sentence of 285 of the warriors, signing off on the execution of 38 Dakota men by hanging on December 29, 1862 in Mankato, Minnesota, the largest mass execution in US history.