Note 120 — VIII THE INKPADUTA BAND

Following the murder of Tasagi, Inkpaduta either through choice or fear became an exile from the band of Tasagi. His flight to the band of his father had automatically made him one. Doane Robinson in his Sioux Indian Courts in the South Dakota Historical Collections, Vol. V, pp. 404, 405, thus describes how a Wahpekuta became an exile:

“If the offense was peculiarly repellent to the better sentiment of the camp the court might insist upon the summary infliction of the sentence imposed. This might be the death penalty, exile or whipping; or it might be the destruction of the tepee and other property of the convict.... For some offenses a convict was exiled from the camp, given an old tepee and a blanket, but no arms, and was allowed to make a living if he could. Sometimes he would go off and join some other band, but such conduct was not considered good form and he usually set up his establishment on some small hill near the home camp and made the best of the situation. If he conducted himself properly he was usually soon forgiven and restored to his rights in the community. If he went off to another people he lost all standing among the Sioux and was thereafter treated as an outlaw and a renegade. The entire band of Inkpaduta, once the terror of the Dakota frontier, was composed of these outlaws.” It was Inkpaduta’s flight to his father’s band at this time that lost, for him, all standing with the followers of Tasagi. See also Robinson’s A History of the Dakota or Sioux Indians in the South Dakota Historical Collections, Vol. II, pp. 343, 344.