Sheila, One should take care with family histories handed down, but that does not mean that if you take the whole package and don´t pick out just one incident, that they are not mostly true. I don´t think you have to say it was either Sioux or Gypsy. I have not heard much about gypsies in early frontier days but I am almost certain it was not Sioux. The basic story may be true, but the ethnic roots mixed up. Another possibility is that gypsie was used as a descriptive term. You did not mention where your ancestors were, but it is well known where the Oglala Sioux were. http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/tribes/siouan/oglalahist.htm "Oglala ('to scatter one's own'). The principal division of the Teton Sioux. Their early history is involved in complete obscurity; their modern history recounts incessant contests with other tribes and depredations on the whites. The first recorded notice of them is that of Lewis and Clark, who in 1806 found them living above the Brule Sioux on Missouri river, between Cheyenne and Bad rivers, in the present South Dakota, numbering 150 or 200 men. In 1825 they inhabited both banks of Bad river from the Missouri to the Black Hills, and were then friendly with the whites and at peace with the Cheyenne, but enemies to all other tribes except those of their own nation. They were then estimated at 1,500 persons, of whom 300 were warriors." Needless to say, unless your ancestors were a part of the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1806, you have to evaluate your family history and decide for yourself. Duane Mills >Commentary #1: Horse-Trading Stories. > > I have seen (multiple times) on genealogy websites that a Native >American named Nancy BROWN was full-blood Ogala Sioux & was “traded >to a Cherokee for a horse”. We have this Nancy BROWN also; but no >one in my branch of the family tree seems to know about the Sioux >info. > >Sheila Gibson > Honored to be known as "SpiritHawk"