Sioux Vsii\ or Dakota or Lakota Any of a number of North Ameri¬ can Plains Indian peoples living mostly in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Nebraska, U.S. They comprise the Santee (Eastern Sioux), Yankton, and Teton (Western Sioux), each of which in turn has lesser divisions (e.g., Blackfoot, Oglala). Their languages belong to the Siouan language stock. The name Sioux is a French derivation of an Ojibwa name for “enemy” or “snake.” They call themselves Dakota, meaning “Friend.” In the 17th century the Sioux lived in the area around Lake Superior, but attacks from the Ojibwa drove them west into Minnesota. They adopted a Plains way of life, hunting buffalo, living in tepees, emphasizing valour in warfare, and practicing the sun dance. Sioux women were skilled at porcupine-quill and bead embroidery. The Sioux were resolute in resist¬ ing white incursions. In 1862, white treaty violations led the Santee to mount a bloody uprising under Little Crow; after their defeat, they were forced onto reservations in South Dakota and Nebraska. Serious fighting between U.S. troops and the Yankton and Teton Sioux in the 1860s and ’70s culminated in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, a great Indian victory. Eventually, however, the Sioux surrendered and were forced onto reservations. In 1890 the Ghost Dance religion inspired many Sioux to take up arms, leading to the massacre at Wounded Knee. The Sioux num¬ ber about 75,000. See also Sitting Bull.
Sioux Falls City (pop., 2000: 123,975), southeastern South Dakota, U.S. Founded in 1857, the area was abandoned in 1862 following an Indian uprising. With the establishment of Fort Dakota on the site in 1865 the settlers gradually returned. Sioux Falls is the state’s largest city, and it is a commercial and financial centre in a livestock-farming region, with one of the largest livestock markets in the U.S. Nearby was one of the world’s first commercial nuclear power plants, decommissioned in 1967. The Earth Resource Observation Systems (EROS) Data Center is located in the city.
Sippar \si-'par\ Ancient city, Babylonia. It is located southwest of mod¬ ern Baghdad on the Euphrates River. From the 3rd millennium bc, it was a centre of worship of the Sumerian sun-god Shamash. It was subject to the 1st dynasty of Babylon, but little else is known about the city before 1174 bc, when it was sacked by the Elamites. It recovered from its defeat but was later captured by the Assyrians. Excavations, begun in 1882, have uncovered the remains of a large temple and thousands of religious and historic clay tablets.
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Siqueiros ► Sita I 1759
Siqueiros \se-'ka-r6s\/ David Alfaro (b. Dec. 29, 1896, Chihuahua, Mex.—d. Jan. 6, 1974, Cuernavaca) Mexican painter. A Marxist activist from his youth, he fought in the Mexican Revolution alongside Venus- tiano Carranza, who rewarded him by sponsoring his studies in Europe. Back in Mexico (1922), he began his lifework of decorating public build¬ ings with murals and organizing unions of artists and workers. With Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco, he cofounded the renowned school of Mexican mural painting. His activism interrupted his career several times when he was imprisoned, chose self-imposed exile, and fought in the Spanish Civil War. His murals are marked by great dynamism, monumen¬ tal size and vigour, and a limited colour range subordinated to dramatic effects of light and shadow. His easel paintings (e.g.. Echo of a Scream, 1937) helped establish his international reputation. In 1968 he became the first president of the Mexican Academy of Arts.
Siracusa See Syracuse
Siren In Greek mythology, a creature, half bird and half woman, who lures sailors to their doom with her sweet singing. Homer placed Sirens near the rocks of Scylla; in the Odyssey, Odysseus has his men plug their ears with wax and has himself tied to his ship’s mast so he can hear the Sirens’ singing without endangering the ship. In one tale of Jason and the Argo¬ nauts, Orpheus sings so sweetly that the crew do not listen to the Sirens. According to later legend, the Sirens committed suicide after one or the other of those failures.
Sisley Vsiz-le, ses-'la\, Alfred (b. Oct. 30, 1839, Paris, Fr.—d. Jan. 29, 1899, Moret-sur-Loing) British-French landscape painter. Bom in Paris to English parents, he began painting as an amateur. His early style was much influenced by Camille Corot. He became associated with Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir and with them became one of the founders of Impressionism. His works, mostly landscapes, are distinguished from those of his colleagues by their softly harmonious values. His fam¬ ily was ruined by the Franco-Prussian War, and his life was a constant struggle against poverty. Not until after his death did his talent begin to be widely recognized.
Sismondi \ses-m6 n -'de,\ English \sis-'man-de\, J(ean-) C(harles-) L(eonard) Simonde de (b. May 9, 1773, Geneva, Switz.—d. June 25, 1842, Chene, near Geneva) Swiss economist and historian. He worked in a French bank from 1789, then moved to Tuscany in 1794 with his family to farm. Living in his native Geneva from 1800, he wrote his His¬ tory of the Italian Republics in the Middle Ages (1809-18), which inspired the leaders of the Risorgimento. In his influential New Principles of Politi¬ cal Economy (1819), he criticized capitalism and argued for regulation of economic competition and for a balance between production and con¬ sumption. He urged social reforms to improve working-class living con¬ ditions. His theories influenced later economists such as Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes.
Sissle, Noble See Edward Blake
Sirius \'sir-e-os\ or Dog Star Brightest star in the night sky (apparent magnitude -1.44), a binary star about 8.6 light-years from the Sun in the constellation Canis Major. The bright component of the binary is a blue- white star 23 times as luminous as the Sun, about twice the size, and con¬ siderably hotter; its companion was the first white dwarf star discovered. Its name probably comes from a Greek word meaning “sparkling” or “scorching.” The ancient Egyptians used its predawn rising to predict the annual flooding of the Nile. The ancient Romans associated the rising of the Dog Star at dawn with the hottest part of the year, called the “dog days.”
Sirk, Douglas orig. Claus Detlef Sierck (b. April 26, 1900, Ham¬ burg, Ger.—d. Jan. 14, 1987, Lugano, Switz.) German-U.S. film director. He was artistic director of theatres in Bremen (1923-29) and Leipzig (1929-36), Ger., and made several films before fleeing the country in 1937. He arrived in Hollywood in 1939, and in 1943 he directed his first American film, Hitler’s Madman. He joined Universal Pictures in 1950, where he directed comedy, western, and war movies but was best known for popular melodramas such as Magnificent Obsession (1954), There’s Always Tomorrow (1956), Written on the Wind (1956), and The Tarnished Angels (1957), in which frightful emotional warfare lurks beneath the facade of upper-middle-class life. After directing his greatest success, Imitation of Life (1959), he retired to Europe.
sirocco \s9-'ra-ko, shi-'ra-ko\ or scirocco Warm, humid wind over the Mediterranean Sea and southern Europe, where it blows from the south or southeast and brings rain and fog. It is produced on the front sides of low-pressure centres that travel eastward over the southern Mediterra¬ nean. It originates over North Africa as a dry wind and picks up mois¬ ture as it crosses the Mediterranean.
Sirte, Gulf of See Gulf of Sidra
sisal Vsi-solV Plant (Agave sisalana) of the agave family, and the fibre from its leaves. The fibre is made into ropes and twines for marine, agri¬ cultural, shipping, and general industrial use, as well as into matting, rugs, hats, and brushes. Though sometimes referred to as sisal hemp, it is not related to true hemp. Growing to a height of about 3 ft (1 m) and a diam¬ eter of about 15 in. (38 cm), the stalk bears fleshy, rigid, gray to dark green, lance-shaped leaves in a dense rosette. Tanzania and Brazil are the main producers of sisal.