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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 22:16:49 GMT -5
SITTING BULL part 1
THE TRUE STORY
By Christiane Whiteswan Sterne
This book honors Unci Tatanka Iyotanka as a true Grandfather of Turtle Island. May this writing be used to declare December 15th (date of assassination) a national holiday, restoring dignity to the Lakota youth!
ONGWHEHONWHE -- The People of Reality!
"Our future, our children’s future, the very quality of life on earth now depends upon an expanded understanding of the world around us. Certain of the angelic tribes rarely interact with the Earth or her inhabitants. Others have been intimately involved with this planet from her inception, being, in fact, the agents and overseers of her organic development.
Within this second category of angels long associated with biological life is a highly specialized circle of beings who are responsible for the education of humankind. Each of them views the whole from a different point along the different circumference of the Great Medicine Wheel of eternal being."
From - Return of the Bird Tribes by Ken Carey
TATANKA IYOTANKA - SITTING BULL
In the early 1800’s life on the Great Plains was good for the Lakota; the land provided everything. There were bison which provided meat to eat, skins for shelter and clothing, and bones for utensils; even the sinew served the buffalo hunter as bow strings. There were respected enemies against whom to provide one’s valor: Absaroke, Flatheads, Assiniboine, Omaha, Chippewa, and Pawnee. If life was good for the Lakota people, it was especially good for the youth. There were ponies to ride and creeks in which to swim; no boy could have asked for more.
In the year of 1831, in the Dakota, Hunkpapa division of the Teton Sioux Tribe, a son was born to (some claim Chief Jumping Bull; some claim Hunkpapa warrior Returns-Again). In time, the world would come to know the child as Tatanka-Iyotanka (Sitting Bull); which describes a buffalo bull sitting intractably on its haunches. It was a name he would live up to throughout his life. Some say he was born on the headwaters of Elk Creek; others say he was born in a place called “Many Catches” by the Lakota, for the number of food storage pits they had dug there, (present name “The Grand River Valley Region); nevertheless, both places are in the Black Hills of present-day South Dakota.
The night he was born the heavens were dark. His first wail was loud and strong, piercing the air, as befitted a future leader. The full moon sailed from behind the clouds and an owl hooted; so it was predicted he would become a great man. His first name was "Jumping Badger". (According to Lakota tradition, it is quite common for an individual to receive several namings and titles during the course of a lifetime; added in accordance with accomplishments, characteristics, responsibilities, etc.)
Returns-Again was a mystic, as his son would be. On occasion he could communicate with animals. It was a gift of particular significance when it involved the revered buffalos, considered by the Sioux to be spiritual beings as well as the principal source of food, clothing and most things useful to man.
One night, while on a hunt, Returns-Again and three warriors were squatting over a campfire when they heard strange sounds—a muttering vaguely like speech. As the noise came nearer they saw that it emanated from a lone buffalo bull which had approached their fire. After brief puzzlement, Returns-Again understood that the bull was repeating, in a snuffling sort of litany, four names: Sitting Bull, Jumping Bull, Bull Standing with Cow, and Lone Bull. As the only man present who grasped the message of the beast-god, he concluded that he was being offered a choice of new names to take for himself or give to others; he promptly adopted the first, Sitting Bull.
As an infant, Jumping Badger, from habit of always being deliberate, careful and well calculated in his speech and actions in seizing food or objects; was re-named "Hunkeshnee" or “Slow”; and kept this name into the first years of adolescence. The fact that he was born displaying extreme fearlessness, gained him early recognition from his tribe, the Hunkpapas. His uncle, “Four Horns” agreed as well, that his brother’s only son, Hunkeshnee, was destined for greatness as a warrior and a man of vision.
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 22:17:22 GMT -5
part 2
“Pretty Feather” was the name of his oldest sister. His first memories were as a papoose, hanging in his cradleboard from his mother “Her Holy Door’s” back, or fastened to the side of her horse as they jogged over the prairie at camp-changing times. She sang to him songs of bravery.
The Sioux moved their belongings on the trail by means of the travois, an indigenous device made by attaching two lodge poles to the withers of a pony or the sides of a dog. A basket was then formed by fastening a robe of hide between the poles. Young children were then placed to ride inside them. On one occasion, at the early age of three summers, Hunkeshnee rode in a travois attached to a dog. Suddenly, the dog became in hot pursuit of a jack rabbit, which sent the travois bouncing wildly, hurtling the boy across the prairie. The runaway dog was finally stopped. Hunkeshnee was not frightened, but instead laughed and said “Fun! Fun! Hunkeshnee want more fast ride.”
At the big campfire in the center of the circle of tipis, chiefs, councilors and warriors were nearest the fire; and women and children formed the outermost circle. Buffalo meat was stewed in a hide pot. “Wasna” is ground meat mixed with berries and marrow. A meal was chunks of buffalo meat mixed with wild onions, roots and water placed in pouches made from buffalo stomachs and heated with hot stones. Cups and bowls were made of the shell of a small turtle; and sthingys of horn. Meat was speared out with an arrow. They ate cross-legged in a circle around the central fire. Dried buffalo meat was usually stored on a rack.
After eating, the young sat hugging their knees while the hunters and warriors stood up in turn to tell of their deeds of bravery; stories of valor and heroism of the great men among the tribe. The children were then required to retell the stories. In this way, the history of the Sioux was preserved—by handing down from father to son. In time, sons grew up in the warrior tradition of the Sioux, feasting on battle tales of older men.
Telling stories of their achievements was not considered boasting; it was their method of keeping record. The main purpose of tribes activities was the promotion of manly qualities in boys. Each phase in a man-child’s development; first word; first step; first animal brought down in a hunt, were celebrated by feasts and speech making. In this manner, the achievements of braves made a matter of public record.
Native Americans did not lie; they acquired this from white man. They rose to leadership or chieftainship by qualities of bravery, quick thinking and daring. The boys had ponies. His friend “Flying Hawk” owned a white pony; Hunkeshee’s pony was spotted. He had captured it and broke it himself; and rode it bareback with bridle and rawhide hobbles. They ran races and hunted small game in the forests with bows and arrows. They were required from an early age to develop a sense of smell of each animals distinctive scent. They learned to observe and read signs of turned blades of grass, broken twigs, nervous birds, a bit of hair, overturned stones, footprints, and told stories to alert the Sioux.
In training his son to be ready for emergencies, Jumping Bull would periodically test Hunkeshnee in the night, by letting out a wild war whoop; each time the boy springing to his feet, seized his bow and arrows displaying readiness to battle any enemy. One night when Hunkeshnee was eight snows old, Jumping Bull sent him after water, and asked Four Horns to give a wolf howl and rustle the bushes. Again, he showed no fear. Jumping Bull considered wealthy among the Sioux because he owned many horses, had a feast in honor of his boy, and thanked his tribesmen for attending; moved among the Hunkpapas as they stood in preparation to dance, quietly designating this one and that one to whom he was giving a pony, as was customary for Sioux to give presents on every occasion. To Hunkeshnee, he gave a strong bow and quiver of pointed arrows.
In the winter sleds were made of buffalo ribs tied together with rawhide thongs—bone discs were shot across the ice to see who could send his the farthest—the snowball game had teams of equal numbers; anyone who was hit was dead and out of the game. The young boys then counted coup on those they hit. “Che-hoo-hoo” was the free-for-all wrestling game. “Hu-ta-na-cu-te”, one end of a buffalo rib was whittled to a round point. The other end was squared off, the marrow cleaned out and two feathers inserted in the groove. The object was to throw the stick as far as possible over the ice. In the summer there were foot or pony races. Tug-of-war using a rawhide rope was also popular. His father taught him to make a good bow--cedar cracked; willow was strong enough for boys; but warrior bows were made of ash. It was smoothed on rough rock and bent into shape over a small fire. It was then polished until it was glossy and smooth. The back was then covered with strips of wet sinew for extra strength. When the sinews were dried, Tatanka Iyotanka himself decorated it with tassels of dyed horsehair and wavy red and black painted lines. He then made arrows of twigs of wild currant bushes. Each arrow had three feathers in the end. His father had a war shield, a parfleche holding a war bonnet of eagle feathers; pictographs on the tipi depicted his father’s deeds.
He practiced leaping on his pony’s back and sliding to one side, clinging only with one heel to a braided loop on the pony’s neck. The ceremonial hunt was during the moon when the buffalo bulls were fat. Hides were gathered, for at this time the hair was thin and easier to remove when the skins were cured. Black Moon, Brave Bear, Running Bull and Many Horses were scouts. “Co-o-o” was called to awaken and move camp. “Hoppo”, here they come. Tipi poles were tied to the sides of the ponies. Buffalo robes, horn bowls and sthingys, stone tools and willow beds were packed and stowed on travois or ponies backs. The order of march was: the four old-man councilors went ahead. Behind them rode the sub-chiefs and some of the Akicita; then the people of the village and the travois, followed by pony herds. At the sides and rear rode more “Akicita” to keep order and guard the people. They rode until the scouts gave the signal that they were as near the heard as they could get without frightening the bulls standing guard. Camp was then set up. Children gathered the rocks to hold down edges of the tipis; women and older boys erected lodge poles. Lodges of the chiefs were in the center along with councilors and their families. The outer ones were in a ring, with each door facing the rising sun. The women spun sticks between their palms over small boards until smoke came. The fire was then carefully fanned and piled over with dry grass. The children brought parfleches of dry buffalo chips for fuel. Dogs were tied to trees so they would not disturb the hunt. The first arrow is aimed at the shoulder blade. The animal is butchered by cutting it at the large joints so women could handle the meat. The muscles were not cut, allowing large slabs for drying. Buffalo was used for food, tipi covers, robes and clothes. The bones used as tools and weapons, horns for sthingys. parts were used to even tan hide; bones to make awls to pierce the hide and sinew from his back to sew with.
Droppings were used for fuel for fires. The skull was set to face the rising sun. Sioux custom was to greet the rising sun; face the source of all life each morning, and stand for a moment or uplifted silence before beginning the day’s activities. Jumping Bull was a great warrior, but he was not a chief. Medicine Men, shamans, were regarded greater than chiefs, for they possessed supernatural powers.
The little one learned to use a small boy’s bow and at the tender age of ten, killed his first buffalo. When he was twelve snows old in the year of many buffalos, a buffalo calf charged “Hunkeshnee”. He leaped on it’s back, seized it’s ears with his hands and pulling with all his might, fearlessly rode the buffalo calf until the hind quarters of the calf sank bringing it to it’s haunches. He then proceeded to ride the buffalo calf, demonstrating he was a born rider; thus earning recognition. When “Jumping Bull” heard of his only son’s exploit, he had a feast that night in honor of him.
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 22:18:03 GMT -5
part 3
As the boy grew into a young man, he desired to prove himself to his people, demonstrating both skill and courage distinguishing himself from an early age as a leader. The Akicita’s task was to protect a hunt from being spoiled by reckless young men; making sure there were only full-fledged hunters. Tatanka Iyotanka acquired unusual skill with bow and arrow and was an expert horseman. He was on his pony so much his legs became permanently bowed. The only discipline exerted upon him was to become like the men, which sprang from his own desire for achievement.
He was so eager to be part of the hunt, he rode to the rear of hunters; attempting to be included in buffalo hunts unnoticed. He would follow, watch the kill, and play the hunting game with the buffalo calves; staging a mock hunt, attempting to strike calves with his arrows; and striking them with his hands in the Native American method of “counting coup”. He displayed leadership qualities by, imitating elder’s occupations, suggesting interesting things to do, and straightening out quarrels. Because of his sense of humor, he spoke quietly and calmly in an amusing manner, with an air of self-confidence; and using good judgment inspiring confidence in his companions as well.
When he was 14, his father gave the boy a coup stick, the slender wand with which he could gain prestige by touching or striking an enemy in battle. During his youth, he went to battle and joined his first war party in usual tribal raid for horses on the Assiniboin, and the Absaroke, Hunkpapa (Lakota’s traditional enemy; known later to washichu as the Crow). The Absaroke were formidable and themselves mighty warriors. The chance to use his coup stick came when a 20-man war party set out on a raid to capture horses from a traditional enemy, the Crows. The boy painted his gray pony red and himself yellow, and sneaked away on the raiders” wake. When the enemy was sighted, Hunkeshnee dashed ahead of the older warriors. A Crow dismounted to aim an arrow at the charging boy, but slow struck him with his coup stick and galloped unscathed out of range. This was all he had wanted: first physical contact with the enemy; he left the actual killing to his elders.
Back in camp, his father, filled with pride, formally divested himself of his own new name and bestowed it on the boy: “ My son has struck the enemy,” he cried. “He is brave! From this time forward his name will be Ta-tan-ka I-yo-tan-ka”. The boy had “counted coup” by touching a Crow warrior; thus gaining a reputation for fearlessness in battle.
In 1847, at the age of fifteen, he received his first serious battle wound in a single combat with a Crow during a horse-stealing raid. He and the Sioux warriors drove a large number of horses from the enemy camp under cover of night, but the infuriated Crows caught up with them in the morning. When battle was joined, Tatanka Iyotanka galloped past the skirmish line, laughing and taunting them in spite of the shower of arrows and hail of Flathead bullets directed at him. He went after a Crow who wore a red shirt with ermine trimmings—the garb of a chief. Both men dismounted, guns and buffalo-hide shields in hand. The Crow shot first; his bullet ripped through Tatanka Iyotanka’s shield and plowed a furrow through the sole of his left foot. Then Tatanka Iyotanka fired. The Crow fell and Tatanka Iyotanka finished him off with a knife—but for the rest of his life he walked with a limp.
This display convinced all that, not only was this young man courageous; his medicine was powerful as well, causing the warrior societies to consider him as a brother. The warrior societies of the Lakota have often been called “the finest light cavalry in the world.”
Young Tatanka Iyotanka was not handsome, but women liked him, finding him courteous and gentle. He would marry nine times. Paradoxically, one of the first human beings he killed was a woman; but he took her life as an act of mercy. She was a Crow, a captive taken in a raid. Ordinarily she might have been adopted into the band, but the women of the camp came to the conclusion that she was a sleeper. Puritanical about sexual matters, they lashed her to a pine tree, heaped brush around her and set it afire.
But before the flames reached her, Tatanka Iyotanka, then only 17, fitted an arrow to his bowstring and killed her.
Only a few favored were able to communicate with the winged and animal people. He had learned this and gave evidence when he was a small boy. As an adolescent, he became aware of special ties to the spirit world, and in manhood it bloomed as a widely admired talent. He would go out alone and simply put himself in complete harmony—feeling strongly the sense of kinship with them. His spiritual upbringing was a feeling of sensitivity and rapport with all forces and beings of nature; understanding what they said, he would imitate songs of birds. While taking a rest during a hunting foray in the Grand River bottoms, a bird warned him to be still and urged him to play dead a grizzly bear was poised over him. Opening his eyes and discovering this to be true, he froze. The grizzly, after snuffling at him, wandered away.
“Pretty bird you have seen me and took pity on me/amongst the tribes to live, you wish for me/ye bird tribes from henceforth.” He once asked a woodpecker if he was to become a leader among his people. The bird thingyed his head, turned his eyes upon Tatanka Iyotanka, went racing around the tree tapping out a message “yes, you will become great because you talk with bird people.” He then began a rapid hammering warning Tatanka Iyotanka “danger behind you!” He grabbed his bow and arrow, and whirled to see a grizzly bear lumbering to its feet. He showed no fear, stood his ground and waited until the bear rose on its hind legs. He then sent his arrow straight to the four-legged’s heart. The cry of the bear was almost human. It lunged forward a few steps, fell and thrashed about for several moments, then lay silent. Tatanka Iyotanka then turned to thank his little friend woodpecker for warning him. He then cut off the bear’s claws. This entitles him to wear an eagle feather for his coup and a most cherished treasure, a grizzly-bear necklace.
Later, at a lake in the Black Hills, he heard a call from a spot high on a rocky crag. He climbed the butte and found an eagle perched there. He interpreted the experience as a prophecy that he would one day rise to lead all his people.
Once he came upon a wolf wounded by two arrows. The wolf said, “If you will relieve me, your name shall be great”. He pulled out the arrows and washed and dressed the wounds.
He had much love and high regard for children; was unfailingly kind, generous, humble and wise; virtues admired by his tribe. He counseled always to be kind, even to people who hate you; give food to the needy; to love the tribe; and to seek peace, by ending quarrels; be kind to animals and birds and make sure they are fed as well. He treasured his “cannupa” (pipe), most sacred of ceremonial objects, an essential medium for communing with Wakan Tanka. He filled his “cannupa”; held it to the front, stem upright with his right hand on the bowl pointed the pipe in each of the four directions, and called Wakan Tanka to aid the tribe through all troubles, promising in return to give buffalo hides, tobacco, and his flesh in Sundances. "Itanchan" chief, Tatanka Iyotanka, a Lakota Medicine Man in times of peace; he was a great warrior in time of war. He employed his talents for the benefit of all people. As a young man, he became a leader of the Strong Heart Warrior Society and Kit Fox societies that made war against the enemies of his Lakota people; and later, was a well-respected distinguished member of the powerful “Silent Eaters”, a select group concerned with tribal welfare. As a tribal leader, he helped extend and successfully increased Sioux hunting grounds westward into what had been the territory of the Shoshone, Crow, Assiniboin, etc.. A member of the Buffalo Society fraternity of Heyoka, he dreamt with sacred content of thunderbirds and attained visions of powerful spiritual meaning and could foretell future events. A thunderbird dream has no greater honor nor no more fearsome obligations. Failure to perform Heyoka Ceremony attracted lightning strikes that could kill. The thunderbird dreamer had to abase himself publicly through dress and behavior inviting ridicule by acting the fool and conducting himself in ways opposite of normal--could even thrust arms in a boiling kettle of soup. Tatanka Iyotanka painted his face with lightning as a result of dreaming of a thunderbird. He composed a thunderbird song to end drought. Considered Wichasa Wakan (a sacred holy man) of incomprehensible power, dreams and visions; as well as having gifts of leadership, wisdom; and the knowledge to perform sacred ceremonies and rituals to drive out malevolent spirits; a Medicine Man, he understood and carried roots for doctoring, herbs to relieve maladies, and a sacred stone to aid in finding items.
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 22:18:44 GMT -5
part 4
In a society that esteemed warfare as life’s central activity, Tatanka Iyotanka advanced with the bravest fighting men. By the age of twenty-five, he became leader of the “Strong Heart Warrior Society’, an elite military society. The position entitled him to wear a long red sash around his shoulders. During a battle, he was required to choose a point in the midst of the melee, stake himself there by pinning one end of the sash to the ground, and never retreat unless another Strong Heart released him. The office was a worth-while role for a man of Tatanka Iyotanka’s temperament. His peers observed that he was like the buffalo; headstrong, fearless, opinionated, incapable of surrender—in sort, bull-headed. In a winter blizzard the buffalo never turned tail as domestic cattle do; instead they faced the gale and plowed ahead.
ENTER WASHICHU (Whiteman)
Trouble always followed when the ever-expanding American frontier brought white traders, the trappers, and settlers into contact with the First Nations. Although the Lakota Nation had met white traders earlier, troubles between them and the whites heated up in the early 1850’s. The Lakota (Sioux) had begun to feel the pressure of the white expansion into the Western United States. Increased contact led to cultural conflict and contamination boiled into violence. Treaties were made and as quickly broken as the whites sought the desirable lands occupied by the Native Americans.
Tatanka Iyotanka was designated the chief of the Hunkpapas in the 1860’s, just when the greatest issue facing his people—the encroachment of the whites—was coming to a head.
Because the Hunkpapa lived and hunted north of the early routes of western travel, Tatanka Iyotanka had little contact with whites and did not participate in the resistance until the Santee Sioux uprising in Minnesota, 1862. Violence and bloodshed was the rule. Overpowered by the superior numbers of whites, the defeated Minnesota tribes retreated and were driven west onto the plains.
He heard from them what life was like on a reservation. In June 1863, Tatanka Iyotanka saw his first encounter in a skirmish with white soldiers in a broad campaign mounted by the U. S. Army in retaliation for the Santee Sioux Rebellion in Minnesota, the “Minnesota Massacre”, in which Tatanka Iyotanka and his people were not involved. The United States Army made little distinction between the Minnesota bands and other bands—Hunkpapas included—who were indigenous to the area. The warfare between the Sioux and the whites became general.
In 1864, Tatanka Iyotanka was one of the defenders and fought U. S. Troops when General Alfred Sully used artillery against a Teton Encampment at the “Battle of Killdeer Mountain.” It was during this period that Tatanka Iyotanka formed his resolve to keep his people away from white man’s world and never sign a treaty that would force them to live on a reservation.
September 2nd of that same year, he sustained a bullet wound on his lift hip. The wound occurred during an attack on a wagon train near present-day Bowman, Montana. The warfare continued.
With other Sioux leaders he soon took his followers to the pristine valleys of the Powder and Yellowstone rivers where buffalo and other game were abundant. He continualy warned his followers that their survival as free Native Americans depended upon the buffalo. During this time, Red Cloud of the Oglala subtribe was the leader of the Tetons, but Tatanka Iyotanka’s influence as a holy man was steadily growing. Beginning in the summer of 1865 columns of U. S. soldiers repeatedly invaded the Powder River country. Tatanka Iyotanka had occasional encounters with the U. S. troops, learning their ways; their strengths and weaknesses; and in 1865 he led an unsuccessful siege operation against the newly established Fort Rice in present-day North Dakota.
For the next 5 years he was in frequent hostile contact with the army, which was invading and threatening the Hunkpapa Sioux hunting grounds and bringing ruin to the Native American Economy. Tatanka Iyotanka attempted to save his people from the threat of extinction and headed the battle in defense of this. In 1866 he became principal chief of the northern hunting Sioux with Crazy Horse, Leader of the Oglala Sioux, and his vice-chief.
Preoccupied by the Civil War, the United States Army could not afford to concentrate its attentions on the Great Plains. On December 21, 1866, the Oglala Lakota under Red Cloud achieved a great victory over the army in what the whites call “Fetterman Massacre” and which the Lakota call the “Hundred Soldiers Killed Fight.” It must have been obvious even to Washington bureaucrats that the struggle for the Great Plains was to be no easy matter. Sporadic warfare continued to be the rule. Tatanka Iyotanka was an extraordinarily brave man who set an example for all Lakota warriors to emulate. In his deeds in traditional warfare with the enemy; he symbolized the valor and greatness of the plains warrior.
Respected for his courage and wisdom, in 1867 he was named chief of the entire Teton Sioux Nation, under whom the Sioux tribes united in their struggle for survival on the North American Plains. Later, Tatanka Iyotanka became the last known head of the “Cante Tinza” society.
During the middle of the decade, some of the finest Sioux buffalo grounds were being disrupted by a heavy traffic of miners along the new Bozeman Trail, which led from Fort Laramie on the Oregon Trail northwestward to Virginia City and other gold camps in Montana Territory. Chief Red Cloud of the Oglalas, whose people resided in the path of these intruders, attacked the traffic along the trail so ferociously and persistently that, by 1868, the government was ready to make peace at a high price.
Washington offered the Sioux, along with some northern members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, a spacious reservation encompassing the entire western half of present-day South Dakota. Moreover, the proposal — to be known as the Treaty of Laramie — declared that the Powder River Country, immediately to the west of the reservation and reaching as far as the Big Horn Mountains, “shall be considered unprecedented Indian Territory” and that “no white person or persons shall be permitted to settle upon or occupy any portion of the same.” In other words, this region was to be reserved for the exclusive use of the Native Americans, who were explicitly guaranteed that it would be a sanctuary where they could hunt for as long as the buffalo roamed there.
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 22:19:40 GMT -5
part 5
After Red Cloud signed the Fort Laramie treaty of 1868, and agreeing to live on a reservation, his influence waned. In 1868 the Sioux accepted peace with the U.S. government on the basis of the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie, which guaranteed the Sioux a reservation in what is now southwestern South Dakota, the Black Hills to the Lakota in perpetuity; yet tensions continued.
In May 1868, Jesuit missionary Father Pierre Jean De Smet, who for decades had worked among Western Native Americans, visited Tatanka Iyotanka’s camp near the mouth of the Powder River and tried to persuade him to accept the agreement. Tatanka Iyotanka was unimpressed by the terms; he focused on the fact that the treaty, while generous-sounding, would considerably diminish the vast ancestral range of the Sioux.
In an impassioned speech, he told the priest: “I wish all to know that I do not propose to sell any part of my country, nor will I have the white cutting our timber along the rivers, especially the oaks. I am particularly fond of the little grove of oak trees. I love to look at them, and feel a reverence for them, because they endure in the wintry storms and summer’s heat, and — not unlike ourselves — seem to thrive and flourish by them.”
He refused to sign, although many other Sioux chiefs, including Red Cloud, accepted the terms and retired to the reservation—so large that it was serviced by five separate agencies. In 1868, widely respected for his bravery and insight, Tatanka Iyotanka became head chief of the Lakota nation. His disdain for treaties and reservation life soon attracted a large following not only from the Sioux but from the Cheyenne and Arapaho.
Over the next few years, both the reservation Sioux and those who, like Tatanka Iyotanka, chose to remain in the unceded area, discovered that the Treaty of Laramie was by no means the last word in the disposition of the old Sioux range. Predictably, the unceded territory suffered the first incursion. In 1872, surveyors for the Northern Pacific Railroad, seeking the most economical route from Duluth, Minnesota, to the Pacific, decided that the tracks should follow the south back of the Yellowstone River, in lands not ceded by Native American. Officials in Washington expressed no objections; on the contrary, the Army supplied troops to protect the surveyors as they located the tracks where they desired.
Tatanka Iyotanka’s legendary courage so often displayed in warfare against other Indians was no less apparent when he fought the whites. In August, the summer of 1872, a Lakota Sioux force led by Tatanka Iyotanka and Crazy Horse formed a Lakota war party, led a battle and mounted several brisk attacks where a guardian detachment of 500 U. S. Army soldiers were protecting a white survey team party of engineers and railroad workers on the Yellowstone River at its junction with Arrow Creek. At the height of the fire fight, Tatanka Iyotanka led four other warriors, strode out into the opening between the lines of the two forces, seated himself on the ground, filled his pipe, set it alight with flint and steel; sharing his cannupa with them, he sat there smoking while the bullets ripped and buzzed around and past them. He did not budge until the pipe was finished. With soldiers in full view, carefully reamed the pipe out; and the bowl scraped clean, when they were finished, casually walked away; once again displaying legendary courage. The battle was not decisive.
Such sporadic combat would inevitably have ripened into full-scale war had the railroad survey been followed up by actual construction. Disaster was temporarily averted, however, when the U. S. economy sank into depression in 1873 and the Northern Pacific found itself without the funds to build tracks.
The next year, the federal government itself set its sights on a precious chunk of the Sioux reservation. The Army decided that, to guard Northern Pacific workers when the construction got under underway, a new fort should be erected in the Black Hills—a well-watered and heavily timbered region of granite crags on the western edge of the reservation. A reconnaissance team under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer was sent out to locate a suitable site.
The stage was set for war between Tatanka Iyotanka and the U. S. Army, when Custer, a reckless glory-monger, found a way to win himself national headlines while on the mission, when geologists with the party detected traces of gold and confirmed that gold had been discovered in the Black Hills of Dakota Territory, an area sacred to the Lakota as well as many tribes and placed off-limits to white settlement by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.
On July 30, Horatio Nelson Ross, a member of Custer’s expedition discovered gold in the Lakota sacred land. Custer sent glowing reports to the east which led the press to hail his discovery as the new gold center; thus ending any hope of a peaceful, reasonable settlement to the plains conflict.
Despite the ban, by the middle of 1875, a rush of nearly a thousand white prospectors invaded lands guaranteed to Native Americans by the treaty, and illegally camped in the Black Hills, which the Sioux regarded as a sacred dwelling place of Wakan Tanka. This outrage the Lakota would not tolerate—provoking them to defend their land!
When government efforts to purchase the Black Hills failed, the Fort Laramie Treaty was set aside; November 1875, President Grant (known to Native Americans as “The Great Father”) — ordered that those Sioux who had been resisting whites’ incursions were to return and settle onto their reservations. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, following his instructions, added that if the order was disobeyed, “they shall be deemed hostile to the U. S. and treated accordingly by the military force.”
Federal officials opened the Black Hills for mining, never mind the land belonged to the Lakota Nation and not the United States of America.
Washington’s answer to this problem of their own creating was to demand that Tatanka Iyotanka lead his people onto the reservation. Even had he been willing to comply, he could not possibly have moved his village 240 miles (390 kilometers) in the bitter cold by the specified time. He declined the invitation. Tatanka Iyotanka and his people held their ground. The die was cast.
TATANKA IYOTANKA vs. GEORGE A. CUSTER
Although the two men were superficially similar—both were cavalry leaders of great personal bravery, Tatanka Iyotanka and George Armstrong Custer stood for very different things. Tatanka Iyotanka stood for in inalienable right of the Lakota people to exist on the Great Plains as a sovereign and free nation; Custer defended the right of his people to invade and occupy the Lakota country. Although numerous treaties guaranteed these lands to the Lakota in perpetuity, “wasichu” continued to build roads and forts into Lakota territory. Even a railroad was under construction through Lakota land. The Lakota would not tolerate this invasion, and the United States government was pressured politically to provide protection for their citizens in Lakota country, never mind the nature of their trespass. War was inevitable, and swift in coming.
Tatanka Iyotanka was known for his stubborn determination to resist domination by white man leaving a note that read: “You scare all the buffalo away. I want to hunt in this place. I want you to turn back from here. If you don’t, I will fight you again.”
Tatanka Iyotanka and most other off-reservation chiefs ignored the ultimatum. In March, 1876, three columns of federal troops under General George Crook, Gen. Alfred Terry and Col. John Gibbon, moved into the area; took to the field with ten companies of cavalry and two of infantry to make good the Indian commissioner’s threat. Their forces attacked an Indian encampment of about 100 tipis under a high bluff on the Tongue River; they set fire to the tipis, but hampered by a late-winter blizzard, failed to win a clear victory. Ironically their victims were Cheyennes, who, hearing of soldiers abroad, had been hastening across the Sioux range to find safety on the reservation. In the past this Cheyenne band had been friendly to whites, but after the unprovoked assault; they became implacable enemies.
PREPARATION FOR THE BATTLE
In May, 1876, all 12 companies of the Seventh Cavalry joined up at Fort Abraham Lincoln. A force under the command of General Terry rode out of Abraham Lincoln on May 17. On May 29, General George Crook’s troop rode out of Fort Fetterman.
Tatanka Iyotanka summoned the Lakota; took in some Cheyenne refugees. Calling a council, he said, “We must stand together or they will kill us separately. These soldiers have come shooting; they want war. All right, we’ll give it to them.” He sent couriers to every Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho camp, both on reservation and off, summoning them to his camp, a rendezvous, at Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory. Hundreds of men, weary of reservation life, sensing the Black Hills too would be lost if nothing were done, needed the call. Now, in June, they were joined in a single great Indian army—and the soldiers were coming to meet them.
Three hordes of bluecoats were converging on the Indian camp. Nearest to them was General George Crook—known to the Indians as “Three Stars”—advancing with 1,047 soldiers from Fort Fetterman in the south and 262 Shoshoni and Crow scouts acquired while en route. From the west, following the Yellowstone River, approached Colonel John Gibbon with some 450 men out of Fort Ellis in Montana Territory. And from the east, out of Fort Abraham Lincoln on the Missouri in Dakota Territory, came 925 men under the command of General Alfred Terry. Terry’s force included the 7th Cavalry under the impetuous Lieutenant Colonel Custer, who had brought on much of this trouble by his ballyhoo of gold in the Black Hills. General Alfred Terry and Colonel John Gibbon moved into the area, took the field against the hostiles, Tatanka Iyotanka responded by summoning the Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne, and certain Arapaho to his camp on Rosebud Creek in Montana Territory. On June 7, Terry and Custer reached the Powder River estuarial plain.
TATANKA IYOTANKA HAS A WAKAN VISION
Early in June of that bloody year 1876, Tatanka Iyotanka of the Sioux made ready to supplicate the diety, Wakan Tanka (Great Mystery) the lodges of the Lakota and Saheila (Cheyenne) stretched along the banks of Rosebud Creek in southeastern Montana. He scrubbed all paint from his face. High above the encampment, taking three witnesses with him, having climbed a lonely butte, sat Tatanka Iyotanka. I n his hands were his Cannupa; the stem bound with springs of fresh picked sage. He alternately smoked and prayed, sending a sacred voice skyward and to the sun. “Wakan Tanka, save me and give me all my wild game animals. Bring them near me, so that my people may have plenty to eat.”
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 22:20:38 GMT -5
part 6
These things he had asked many times, but now he wanted a more immediate favor. The Sioux were facing a showdown with the U. S. Army, and he wished for divine aid in battle—and perhaps even a portent of how the fighting would go. I n hopes of winning his god’s blessing, he made a vow to sponsor a Sundance, the most solemn of religious ceremonies. The great man further promised to offer up, during its performance, “a scarlet blanket”— sacrifice a copious flow of his own blood for a vision that would guide THE PEOPLE; and his vision came. He saw many, many bluecoats ( white soldiers who had been sent to protect the gold prospectors) attacking the encampment.
General George Armstrong Custer and a regiment of the 7th Cavalry attacked the seven bands of the Lakota Nation along with several families of the Cheyenne and Arapaho. The attack was clearly a violation of their treaty.
All that could be done to ensure success in war had already been done. From this bluff along Rosebud Creek about 60 miles south of its confluence with the Yellowstone River, Tatanka Iyotanka overlooked an awesome assemblage of Sioux-perhaps 15,000 souls, among them some 4,000 fighting men. Most of the bands here belonged to the Teton Sioux tribal division that, for nearly a century, had dominated a range extending from the western portion of present-day North and South Dakota deep into Montana, Wyoming and Nebraska.
The great camp had no acknowledged supreme leader, but one man claimed the deference of every warrior present: Tatanka Iyotanka, chief of the Hunkpapa band, who could count more than 60 coups. True, there were chiefs who credentials as warriors were as great or greater. For instance, Crazy Horse or the Oglala band was considered a fighting man without peer. But Tatanka Iyotanka was something more, something extraordinary. He was said to be a familiar of the spirit world, which spoke to him in dreams or through animals. A member of his own band said with stark simplicity, Tatanka Iyotanka was “big medicine.”
He needed all his gifts now, and all the guidance the his offering of blood might win, for the whites intended to crush the Sioux once and for all. Surveying almost three miles of tipis stretched out before him, Tatanka Iyotanka prayed: “Let good men on earth have more power, let them be of good heart, so that all Sioux people may get along well and be happy.”
SUNDANCE
And so the time had arrived for Tatanka Iyotanka to sacrifice the scarlet blanket on his people’s behalf and to arrange to lead his people in Sundance ritual, offering prayers to Wakan Tanka, Great Spirit and slashing his arms one hundred times as a sign of sacrifice.
First, men noted for their bravery were sent out to select a symbolic a suitably forked cottonwood tree which they ceremonially struck with their coup sticks. Then a group of chaste women went to the spot and helped to fell the tree. Once down, its branches were trimmed away as high as the fork. Finally, the tree was carried back to camp by the men; they had to bear the burden on poles, since contact with the symbol was forbidden to everyone except the priests who presided over the ritual and those who had previously danced the Sundance.
Preparation entailed painting the tree red on the west side, blue on the north, green on the east and yellow on the south, then erecting it in a hole. At the top were bound a red robe, offerings of cherry wood sticks and tobacco, and two pieces of dried buffalo hide, one cut in the shape of a buffalo and the other in the shape of a man.
At daybreak on the day of Tatanka Iyotanka’s sacrifice, the priests who supervised the ceremony went to summit of a nearby hill and prayed for blue skies on that day; Tatanka Iyotanka would be called upon to stare at the sun, periodically shifting his gaze to the bottom rim of the sun to avoid blinding himself.
Tatanka Iyotanka could not have underestimated the ordeal ahead. He was 45 years old that summer of 1876, and he had been through this blood-letting ceremony before, as scars on his chest and back attested. However, since the idea of sacrifice held a very intense and personal meaning to a devout Sioux, he must have felt something bordering on grim ecstasy. Moreover, there was the very real, mundane need to retain the respect and prestige he had already earned; only by constant demonstration could a leader lay valid claim to greatness.
His hands and feet had been painted red by the priests, and across his shoulders were blue stripes in token of the sky. Now there was the matter of the scarlet blanket he had promised Wakan Tanka, and he was about to offer it up.
He strode to the sacred tree and sat on the ground, legs outstretched, leaning against the trunk. He began to pray, a wailing singsong petition. His chosen assistant was Jumping Bull, an adopted Assiniboine brother. Years before, the Sioux had killed all the members of a family except Jumping Bull, then an 11-year-old boy, who had excited Tatanka Iyotanka’s admiration by fighting fearlessly in the face of death. Sparing the boy, he had raised him up as a Hunkpapa warrior and given him one of the names derived from his father’s vision. Today he called upon Jumping Bull to serve in his immolation.
With a needle-pointed awl in one hand and a sharp knife in the other, Jumping Bull knelt beside his brother. He began to draw blood at Tatanka Iyotanka’s right wrist, piercing the skin with the awl and lifting a matchhead-sized bit of tissue, which he sliced off with the knife. The blood came immediately. Jumping Bull moved up the arm with quick precision: pierce, lift, cut—50 cuts from wrist to shoulder. The vigilant witness could attest that Tatanka Iyotanka’s expression did not change and that there was no alteration in the monotonous wailing of his prayer. Jumping Bull turned to the left arm and duplicated the scarification. Soon the blood covered both arms, dripping from the motionless fingers. Slashing his arms 100 times in sacrifice; this was Wakan Tanka’s scarlet blanket. The blood gradually congealed, but the chief’s agony was only beginning.
The young dancers had leather thongs inserted through incisions in their chests or backs. There remained the performance of the sun-gazing dance. Tatanka Iyotanka rose from his place against the sacred trunk, stood facing the sun and began bobbing up and down on his toes in a rhythmic dance that lasted all day. He prayed as he danced and, from time to time, looked straight at the sun as it ascended toward the zenith, coursed down toward the west and disappeared in the ground haze above the crests of the Big Horn Mountains.
He continued dancing and dancing, with no food or water to replenish his energies, through the hours of darkness and into the next morning, driving himself to a state of utter exhaustion that would bring on the rite’s climax. That moment arrived around noon, when Tatanka Iyotanka staggered a few steps and sank to the ground. He had fainted—or, in the Sioux interpretation, actually died a passing death. When he emerged from the trance, consciousness began to creep back. Out of the mists around him he heard a disembodied voice and saw human forms taking shape and moving against the blackness of his delirium. They were soldiers of the white man’s army, entering the great Sioux encampment. But surely they were not coming as conquerors; these were men in defeat, their heads bent and campaign hats falling.
When he became conscious again, Tatanka Iyotanka knew there was to be a victory and so informed the Sioux. He received a vision of soldiers falling into Lakota camp like grasshoppers falling from the sky. But he was nonetheless troubled, because the vision had also carried a warning. “These soldiers are gifts of Wakan Tanka,” he told his people. “Kill them, but do not take their guns or horses. If you set your hearts upon the goods of the white man, it will prove a curse to this nation.”
After the ceremony’s completion, the great camp was moved. While boys rounded up the stock, the women took down the tipis, folded the heavy hide covers, and packed household goods and children on horse-drawn travois—simple sledges that were made of poles. Before night had fallen the campground was empty. The chiefs and the massed bands were traveling westward together, up and over a hilly saddle and on toward their established encampment into the valley of the Little Bighorn River, which the Native Americans called the Greasy Grass.
On June 18, the tribes united in their struggle for survival on the Northern Plains, remaining defiant toward American military power and contemptuous of American promises to the end.
They were not fleeing, even though General Crook was almost upon them. The Sioux had not foregathered only to run away, and they confident in their numbers and their pride. This time they would strike first and in force. The warriors painted their faces and bodies for war, and took up their coup sticks, weapons and shields of buffalo hide. About half of the warriors had guns. A few carried modern repeating rifles, but most possessed only old Muzzle-loaders. The rest were armed with bows and arrows, lances and war clubs.
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 22:21:12 GMT -5
part 7
Inspired by Tatanka Iyotanka’s vision, the Oglala Lakota war chief, Crazy Horse set out for battle with a band of 500 warriors. Led by Crazy Horse, a scout reported the presence of General Crook’s troops; the warriors left camp and rode back across the saddle toward Rosebud Creek and southward. It was then—early in the morning of June 17—that they took Crook’s troops by surprise at the Battle of the Rosebud. In a brilliant display of generalship, unprecedented in Crook’s experience of Native American-style warfare, Crazy Horse launched wave after wave of mass attacks; a bitter day of fighting that cut deep into the white army’s disorganized defenses. When a twist of fate and the skill of Crook’s Indian scouts deflected the Sioux onslaught, Crazy Horse made an orderly withdrawal from the battlefield. After the engagement, Crook claimed a victory, but it could not have been a very satisfactory one. Crazy Horse’s assault drove Crook’s force to stop his advance in its tracks, forcing him to halt, regroup from the encampment, and wait for supplies and reinforcements. He fought no more that month.
Tatanka Iyotanka did not participate in the combat at Rosebud Creek. He may have been there—accounts differ—but on that day, only the third after the Sundance, his racked body was in no condition for battle. In any event, no matter how the Battle of Rosebud was viewed, it certainly could not be regarded as the fulfillment of his prophecy. The 28 white men who were killed there, and the 50 or so wounded, had in no way been brought to disgrace.
Crook was stopped; his troops were forced to retreat in the Battle of Rosebud; but Gibbon and Terry were still coming. Custer was under orders to circle about and swing up on the Native Americans from the south, pinching them against Gibbon’s force, but he threw strategy to the winds when he came across the broad trail left by the moving Sioux encampment. The men of the 7th Cavalry were rousted from the bedrolls at midnight on June 25th, 1876. The troops marched until two o’clock a.m. After dawn the next morning, Custer’s Crow Indian scouts reported the location of the Indian encampment.
To celebrate the victory of Rosebud, the Lakota had moved their camp to the valley of the Little Bighorn River and were joined by 3,000 more Native Americans who left their reservations to follow Tatanka Iyotanka.
Uninterested in sharing the glory of a victory with the other commanders, George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry of badly outnumbered troops, raced after the Native Americans, following the trail that led toward the Little Bighorn River. When he found them, he committed a disastrous error of judgment. Against a numerically superior enemy, he split his force, sending Major Marcus Reno and about a fourth of the men to create a diversion, while he took five companies of cavalrymen to strike the Sioux camp from another angle.
Custer was reckless; the Sioux were overconfident. Despite several sightings of the approaching enemy, they failed to realize the immediacy of their danger. Not the first military force to relax after and illusory victory, they might have been caught unprepared but for two Hunkpapa boys out looking for stray horses. These youths crossed the cavalry’s trail and found a pack shucked by a mule during the night’ march. They broke it open and were breakfasting on the hard bread it contained when an Army patrol, looking for the lost pack, stumbled on them. One boy was killed; the other got back to the encampment to raise the alarm.
Even so the Native Americans were not fully ready when Major Reno’s diversionary attack came across the river, striking the southern Hunkpapa sector of the great camp. The boy’s warning caught Tatanka Iyotanka in the council lodge; he hurried to his own tipi and took up his weapons, a .45 revolver and an 1873 model Winchester carbine.
One Bull, his 23-year-old nephew, joined him, and they galloped from the camp to meet the soldiers. Tatanka Iyotanka sat on his war horse and watched as Reno’s men began to fall. Within minutes, the major was trying to withdraw. “There were plenty of warriors to meet them,” Tatanka Iyotanka said afterward. Indeed, Reno, against perhaps 1,000 warriors, never had a chance. When the disorganized force plunged back across the river after about 45 minutes of fighting, almost half of Reno’s 150 men were killed, wounded or missing. Custer had divided his command into three elements. This was a serious mistake in view of the great concentration of warriors.
Thus the fulfillment of the prophecy began to unfold. There were indeed plenty of warriors, and there was no need of Tatanka Iyotanka’s maimed arms that day. Nor was his advice needed in matters of tactics; Crazy Horse and other war chiefs would make his vision come true. So, when One Bull quirted his horse into the stream to follow Reno’s retreating men, Tatanka Iyotanka called him back. It was time, he told his nephew, to make provision against the likelihood of more bluecoats returning to attack the women and children. He first looked after his family, then made medicine for the warriors.
They rode north, downstream through the encampment, until they came upon a scene of wild confusion. Boys were rounding up horses from the pack herd; barking dogs and excited children were everywhere underfoot; and hundreds of women milled about, uncertain whether to stay or flee. Confusion became pandemonium when a line of soldiers on gray cavalry mounts—Custer’s troopers—appeared along the crest of the low hills across the river.
Tatanka Iyotanka looked on from a distance, as a great mass of Sioux, exultant after cutting up Reno’s force, gathered to overwhelm Custer. Commanded by Lt. Col. G. A. Custer, troopers rode into the valley; charged and rushed the encampment! Mounted Sioux and Cheyenne warriors began to appear on both flanks of the cavalry; firing broke out--the battle began! They were quickly driven away to a low eminence and made a stand on a nearby ridge, now known as “Last Stand Hill.” Instead of charging, the troopers dismounted. The deadly drama was hidden in a great cloud of dust; but the chief had seen the outcome before, in his vision.
Between June 25 and June 26, 1876, in fulfillment of Tatanka Iyotanka’s vision, the Lakota Sioux, and Cheyenne, with the aid of other tribes, under the battlefield leadership of Crazy Horse and Gall, attacked Custer and his 7th Cavalry contingent of badly outnumbered troops; destroying them to the last man-- annihilating the punitive expedition.
Nobody has ever been able to determine with certainty how Custer himself was killed, except that his body was found with a bullet wound in the head and one in the chest. Another of Tatanka Iyotanka’s nephews, 26-year- old White Bull, a formidable fighting man, believed he was the slayer. A tall soldier with yellow hair and moustache saw me… When I rushed him, he threw his rifle at me without shooting. I lashed him across the face with my quirt, striking the coup. He hit me with his fists on the jaw and shoulders, then grabbed my braids with both hands and tried to bite my nose off. He drew his pistol. I wrenched it out of his hand and struck him with it three or four times on the head, knocked him over, shot him in the head and fired at his heart.” Custer’s death was only one satisfaction of many. In the space of an hour, the Sioux had virtually destroyed the core of the 7th Cavalry. Custer’s contingent of 215 men was completely wiped out. Indian losses were not recorded; but whatever the total, the victory was worth it.
It is not known whether Tatanka Iyoanka offered up any particular thanksgiving to Wakan Tanka for the day’s outcome; he may have felt that he had already fulfilled his part of the bargain with his offering of the scarlet blanket. Nevertheless, he had reason for new concern before the day was out. He had told the Sioux that Custer’s troopers were gifts from their god to be slain, but he had warned against looting. The warning went unheeded. By nightfall the camp was laden with booty—cavalry saddles, uniforms, pistols, carbines and about 10,000 rounds of cartridges.
The battle had ended, and neither Tatanka Iyotanka nor his people would ever witness another day like it. It was a triumph, but it was also the beginning of the preordained end. His followers believed that his magical powers had brought the victory! Following the success of the Battle at Big Horn, Sioux tribes scattered.
In the aftermath of the defeat, strong public among whites at the military catastrophe resulted in stepped-up military action bringing thousands more cavalrymen into the area, and over the next year they relentlessly pursued the Lakota, forcing Native American chief after chief to give up and surrender; but Tatanka Iyotanka did not and could not; surrender was not his way.
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 22:22:07 GMT -5
part 8
About a month later, Lietenant Colonel E.S. Otis, who was escorting supply wagons along the Yellowstone a written communication that was evidently sent by the Hunkpapa chief. “I want to know what you are doing on this road,” it said. “You scare the buffalo away. I want to hunt in this place. I want you to turn back from here. If you don’t, I will fight you again.”
Otis’ superior officer, the veteran Indian-fighter Colonel Nelson Miles, decided to meet with the chief for a talk, hoping that he could persuade Tatanka Iyotanka to go peaceably to the reservation agency. The parley, arranged through an intermediary, began in a civil enough manner but soon degenerated into mutual angry suspicion. “No Indian that ever lived loved the white man,” Tatanka Iyotanka declared, “and no white man that ever lived loved the Indian.”
The meeting broke up and there was an exchange of shots. The soldiers, who had been the first to fire, drove the Sioux from the parley site and engaged them in a running battle that lasted for two days. The Native Americans counterattacked vigorously, setting fire to the grass and on one occasion forcing their pursuers into a trap-like hollow. But Colonel Miles had artillery, which he employed with skill to keep Tatanka Iyotanka’s forces from pressing too closely, and the 42-mile chase ended in a Sioux route. In their flight, the Native Americans abandoned camp equipment, tons of meat and broken-down ponies.
In September Tatanka Iyotanka witnessed proof the looting of Custer's men would bring grief to the Sioux. The great assembly had split up in order to hunt buffalo more efficiently. General Crook's men attacked 37 lodges of Oglala, Brule and Miniconjou Sioux at Slim Buttes, only 30 miles from the Hunkpapa encampment on Grand River, northeast of the Black Hills. By the time Tatanka Iyotanka arrived at the campsite with a relief force, it was to late! The village had been destroyed! There were many corpses—young men, old men, and women, children, babies—and the soldiers had also scalped some of the Native American dead. At Slim Buttes, the army recovered much of Custer property, including the 7th Cavalry’s once-proud Guideon.
On October 27, a discouraged group of Miniconjou and Sans Arc chiefs approached Miles and attempted to surrender with 2,000 of their people. Miles, however, was not able to feed so large a number. Instead, he accepted five chiefs as hostages against the guarantee that the Sioux bands would turn themselves in at the Cheyenne River Agency. On November 30, about 40 lodges of Native Americans—the immediate following of the five chiefs—gave themselves up. The rest of them joined Crazy Horse.
The Sioux at the agency signed documents relinquishing all claims to the Black Hills and the Powder River country—about a third of the lands that had been guaranteed to them. They had little choice: Congress had ordered the suspension of rations and other subsistence until the Native American bowed to the white demands.
Even Crazy Horse, the brilliant Oglala leader, decided that the war was hopeless. He surrendered, although he did so with characteristic panache. He and perhaps 1,500 followers rode into the reservation the following spring decked out in war paint and feathers, carrying their shields and weapons in plain view and singing their war songs. It was a hollow gesture. Later that year, the authorities, hearing rumors that Crazy Horse was planning to make trouble again, ordered him to be locked up in the Fort Robinson guardhouse. When soldiers tried to seize him, the war chief resisted. He was stabbed in the abdomen with a bayonet and died a few hours later.
The Sioux emerged the victors in their battles with U. S. troops, but though they might win battle after battle, they could never win the war. They depended on the buffalo for their livelihood, and the buffalo, under the steady encroachment of whites, were rapidly becoming extinct. The Lakota were finally forced by hunger and firearms to go to white man’s reservations and given a deadline of January 31, 1877 to surrender. Anyone who did not comply was considered hostile.
In 1877, the U. S. Army continually harassed the plains nations. Although Tatanka Iyotanka survived and remained defiant, an aroused and vengeful army was forcing his to flee. In May 1877 he turned northward toward his last refuge and led his remaining band of followers across the border and into Canada, the land ruled by the “Great Mother”—Queen Victoria and beyond the reach of the U. S. Army; but the Canadian government refused to acknowledge responsibility for feeding a people whose reservation was south of the border. General Terry traveled north to offer him a pardon in exchange for settling on a reservation. Grandfather Tatanka Iyotanka refused his offer and sent him away.
After 4 years later; finding it impossible to feed his people in a world where, buffalo being almost extinct; plus a particularly the harsh winter of 1881; famine and destitution of his people; his following dwindled steadily, forcing Tatanka Iyotanka and those still with him returned south to surrender to the United States army. On July 19, 1881, Tatanka Iyotanka ordered his young son to hand over his rifle to the commanding officer of Fort Buford, Dakota Territory, explaining that in this way he hoped to teach the boy “that he has become a friend of the Americans.” Yet, at the same time, Tatanka Iyotanka also saying, “I wish to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle.” He requested the right to cross back and forth to Canada whenever he wished as well as a reservation of his own on the Little Missouri River near the Black Hills. These requests were not honored—he was instead sent to Standing Rock Reservation. His reception there raised fears of yet another uprising and subsequently was sent further down the Missouri River to Fort Randall . He was considered the last Sioux to surrender to the U. S. Government, and was held at Fort Randal, South Dakota Territory (in violation of his surrender agreement) where he and his followers were held prisoner of war for nearly two years.
Finally, on May 10, 1883, after two years, he was allowed to rejoin his tribe at Standing Rock Agency Reservation where he continued to use his influence to keep Sioux lands from being taken by the government in North Dakota. The Indian agent in charge of the reservation, James McLaughlin, denied the great chief special privileges; forcing him to work the fields-- hoe in hand. Tatanka Iyotanka, knowing his own authority, vainly opposed the sale of tribal lands and spoke forcefully though futilely against a delegation of U. S. Senators who came to discuss their plans to open part of the reservation to white settlers.
WITH BUFFALO BILL CODY
In 1885, partly to get rid of him, the Indian agents released Grandfather Tatanka Iyotanka. He was allowed to leave the reservation to join Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, traveling for a season, touring throughout the United States, Canada and Europe including England; thus gaining international fame. Doubtless earning $50 a week to ride once around the arena, in addition to whatever he could charge for his autograph and picture was incentive. The great man also probably jumped at the chance to escape reservation life for awhile. Staying with the show only four months was all that he could stand! Unable to tolerate white society any longer; being hissed at by the audience as a villain; though in that time he did manage to shake hands with President Grover Cleveland, which he took as evidence that he was still regarded as a great chief.
Returning to Standing Rock Reservation, Tatanka Iyotanka lived in a cabin on the Grand River, near where he had been born. He refused to give up his old ways as the reservation’s rules required, still living with two wives and rejecting Christianity, though he sent his children to a nearby Christian school in the belief that the next generation of Lakota would need to be able to read and write. Soon after his return, Tatanka Iyotanka had another mystical vision, like the one that had foretold Custer’s defeat. This time he saw a meadowlark alight on a hillock beside him, and heard it say, “Your own people, Lakotas, will kill you.” Nearly five years later, this vision also proved true. Tatanka Iyotanka remained a powerful force among his people, and upon his return to the U. S. would counsel the tribal chiefs who greatly valued his wisdom. He kept records of his people in a roll-book, which had once belonged to a regiment artillery. The federal government again wanted to break up the tribal lands. They persuaded several "government appointed chiefs" to sign an agreement, whereby the reservation was to be divided up and subsequently distributed among the tribal members. Missing from the list of recipients was Tatanka Iyotanka's name.
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 22:22:24 GMT -5
THE GHOST DANCE—THE END In the fall of 1889, a Miniconjou Lakota named Kicking Bear, appeared at the Standing Rock Reservation. He came to Tatanka Iyotanka with news of the rise of a new spiritual movement that had begun among the desert peoples of the Southwest--the “Ghost Dance”, introduced by Wovoka (a tribal religion and ceremony that promised to rid the land of white people and restore the Native American way of life). “If all red men followed this path,” Kicking Bird said, “the whites would be covered up and the world would be as it used to be”. Proclaiming that all whites would disappear and deceased Native Americans and buffalo would return. This understandably created great excitement among the Native Nations and brought him into disfavor with government officials. Lakota had already adopted the ceremony which was already being practiced at the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations, and Indian agents there had already called for troops to bring the growing movement under control. Grandfather Tatanka Iyotanka embraced the Ghost Dance ritual. There was nothing left to lose but life. And what was life without freedom to one who had known the freedom of the open plains? The year 1890 saw the spread of the Ghost Dance religious movement, which prophesied the advent of an Indian messiah who would sweep away the whites and restore the Indians’ former traditions. The Ghost Dance movement augmented the unrest already stirred among the Sioux by jealousy, hunger and disease. The white authorities became suspicious of Ghost Dancers. Because Tatanka Iyotanka made no effort to stop the dancing, an agent at Standing Rock, a rogue named Major James McLaughlin, feared that because of his defiant spirit, Tatanka Iyotanka (still revered as a great spiritual leader) would join Ghost Dancers. As a precaution, he sent 43 Lakota tribal policemen and soldiers to arrest the chief and bring him in. Before dawn on December 15, 1890, seized on the Grand River, the policemen burst unto Tatanka Iyotanka’s cabin and dragged him outside. As he was being led away, his followers gathered to protect him. In the melee over the objections of his supporters, a gunfight erupted, during which Tatanka Iyotanka and twelve others were killed. One of the Lakota policemen shot a bullet through Tatanka Iyotanka’s head. His son, Crowfoot and his Assiniboine adopted brother Jumping Bull, were reported to have been murdered by tribal police as well, while the attempting to rescue him. Six Indian police were also reported to have died. Tatanka Iyotanka was buried at Ft. Yates, ND. As a sort of bizarre footnote to Grandfather Tatanka Iyotanka’s momentous life, today the states of South Dakota and North Dakota each claim to have possession of his body! North Dakota claims that Grandfather Tatanka Iyotanka’s remains lie at Fort Yates, where he was shot down and killed! But South Dakota admits that in 1953, they stole Grandfather’s body, hauled it to South Dakota, to an isolated grave west of Mobridge, South Dakota; reburied his remains, where a granite shaft marks his grave. This gravesite is controversial since he was originally buried in Fort Yates, ND, exhumed and buried in massive amounts of concrete. Some believe that the body exhumed was not that of Tatanka Iyotanka. UNCONFIRMED GENEALOGY Twin Children: The-One-That-Was-Left, The-One-That-Was-Taken Nephew: Clarence Grey Eagle 6th Generation: Joseph Alfred McNeil Jr., Ina Mae Brown (Mother) Daughter of Chief One Bull: Margaret Tremmel of Rapid City, SD Tatanka Iyotanka’s Sister: Lady Pretty Feather Nephew: One Bull, Lady Pretty Feather’s Son Direct Descendant: Casey Kicking Bear of Fort Meade Granddaughters: Sarah Spotted Horse, Angeline La Point, Nancy Kicking Bear, James White Bull Possible Descendant: Barry Patterson, Wagner, SD Tatanka Iyotanka was an extraordinary man. In his epic battle for the rights of his people had served them for 59 years. He was, without a doubt, one of the greatest Lakota leaders ever. The Lakota mourned him as well he deserved. He is remembered as an inspirational leader, fearless warrior, loving father, gifted singer; a man always affable and friendly toward others, whose deep religious faith gave him prophetic insight and lent special power to his prayers. Many whites heaped scorn upon his memory because he had stood in their way for so many years. But Grandfather Tatanka Iyotanka had not lived his life to please “wasichu”. Rather he had lived to serve his people, the Lakota Nation, in whose bosom his memory is sacred. His death is a grim story of false arrest, when there was no one to defend the Native American; his name should never be forgotten. Upon the death of their leaders, the Sioux tribes ceased their struggle against the white man. THE DEATH OF SITTING BULL A NEWSPAPER ACCOUNT December 15, 1890. The text below is excerpted from “Looking Back at Wounded Knee 1890” by Prof. Robert Venables, Cornell University. Published in “Northeast Indian Quarterly” Spring 1990. The following quotes were printed in “The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer,” a weekly newspaper published in Aberdeen, South Dakota. The first was published immediately after Sitting Bull’s assassination by Indian Police Dec. 15, 1890. “Sitting Bull, most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead. He was an Indian with a white man’s spirit of hatred and revenge for those who had wronged him and his. In his day he saw his son and his tribe gradually driven from their possessions: forced to give up their old hunting grounds and espouse the hard working and uncongenial avocations of the whites. And these, his conquerors, were marked in their dealing with his people by selfishness, falsehood and treachery. What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by years of subjection, should still revolt? What wonder that a fiery rage still burned within his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining vengeance upon his natural enemies. “The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroism. “We cannot honestly regret their extermination, but we at least do justice to the manly characteristics possessed, according to their lights and education, by the early Redskins of America.” The editorial is ambivalent at first, but concludes by calling for the extermination of American Indians. The editor and published of “The Aberdeen Pioneer” who advocated genocide is well known: L. Frank Baum. Only a decade after the massacre at Wounded Knee, Baum’s book “The Wizard of Oz” (1900) would become an American classic. QUOTES FROM CHIEF SITTING BULL: "A child is the greatest gift from Wakan Tanka (Great Mystery), in response to many devout prayers, sacrifices and promises". "Let us put our minds together and see what kind of life we can make for our children". "I want to tell you that if the Great Spirit has chosen anyone to be chief of this country, it is myself." "I am here by the will of the Great Spirit, and by his will I am chief. I know the Great Spirit is looking down upon me from above, and will hear what I say…He put in your heart certain wishes and plans; in my heart, he put other different desires." "When I was a boy the Sioux owned the world. The sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are out lands? Who owns them? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am Sioux? Because I was born where my father lived? Because I would die for my people and my country?" "Now that we are poor, we are free. No white man controls our footsteps. If we must die, we die defending our rights". "In my early days, I was eager to learn and to do things, and therefore I learned quickly. "You think I am a fool, but you are a greater fool than I am." "What white man can say I stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say that I am a thief. What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian. What white man has ever seen me drunk? Who has ever come to me hungry and left me unfed?" "Who has seen me beat my wives or abuse my children? What law have I broken?" “God made me an Indian. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man, he would have made me so in the first place. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows". "If a man loses anything and goes back and looks carefully for it, he will find it, and that is what the Indians are doing now when they ask you to give them the things that were promised them in the past. And I do not consider that they should be treated like beasts, and that is the reason I have grown up with the feelings I have. I feel that my country has gotten a bad name, and I want it to have a good name. It used to have a good name, and I sit sometimes and wonder who it is that has given it a bad name". “What treaty that the white man ever made with us have they kept? Not One.” SITTING BULL - IN MEMORY TATANKA IYOTANKA by Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner Mrs. Fanny Kelly was taken captive in July, 1864 by a war party of Hunkpapa Sioux in Wyoming. During most of the five months she was held prisoner, Mrs. Kelly stayed in the lodgings of Sitting Bull, the famous leader “as a guest, of his family, “and I was treated as a guest,” she wrote. “He was uniformly gentle, and kind to his wife and children and courteous and considerate in his (interactions) with others. During my stay with them food was scarce more than once, and both Sitting Bull and his wife often suffered with hunger to supply me with food. They both have a very warm place in my heart.” This surprising warm friendship with a woman who had every reason to hate and fear him, characterized Sitting Bull’s interactions with whites. A teacher and missionary among Sitting Bull’s people, Catherine Weldon, once described him. “As a friend…sincere and true; as a patriot, devoted and incorruptible; as ahusband and father, affectionate and considerate. As a host, courteous and hospitable to the last degree." The Ashcroft family, white settlers who lived nearby, valued Sitting Bull as "one of their oldest friends." They often told the story of how, on one of his frequent trips to buy produce and chickens from Grandmother, he stopped for potatoes and dragged them up to the house for Sitting Bull. He was so pleased that he promised her a pony, and soon a little bay horse was delivered to her. He was named ‘Two-John’ and she had him until she was married to Jack Jacobs in 1896.” Yet when Sitting Bull was killed on December 15, 1890, newspapers throughout the nation echoed the Minneapolis Tribune whose one regret was that he “should have been hung higher than Hamar [Hamar should read Haman. Haman was the villain of the biblical story of Esther who was hung on a specially prepared gallows 50 cubits (a measure of length approximately equal to the length of a forearm) high.] and with less ceremony that is observed by a Texas lynching party towards a horse thief.” 2 As the press whipped-up hatred of the Indians, the fact was lost that Sitting Bull had been residing in friendship and peace with his white neighbors, with his only “crime” taking part in a religious worship, the Ghost Dance, labeled the “Messiah craze” by the press. His greater “crime,” of course, was that he was “an obstructionist, a foe to progress.” “Progress” was defined as white settlement on Indian land, and the previous year the Dakota (Sioux) Indians had received enormous pressure to approve the sale of one-half of their remaining land. Not all accepted. According to United States law (as expressed in the Treaty of 1868) the signatures of ¾ of the adult males of the Sioux nation were required before land could be sold. Sitting Bull resisted, He “never signed a treaty to sell any portion of his people’s inheritance, and he refused to acknowledge the right of other Indians to sell his undivided share of the tribal lands,” according to his friend, Catherine Weldon, who contended that Sitting Bull was killed in order “to silence exposures which he could have made.” There was enormous double-dealing to expose, including the doctoring of census records to reduce the number of Indians required to sign, and the gathering of signatures illegally to reach the necessary number. Mrs. Weldon was not alone in her belief that Sitting Bull had been silenced. In the New York World on December 21, 1890, Rev. W.H.H. Murray charged, “The land grabbers wanted the Indian lands. The lying, thieving Indian agents wanted silence touching past thefts and immunity to continue their thieving.” The World’s editor interjected, “Mr. Murray’s characterization of the killing is sustained by the report sent yesterday by Corporal Gunn of the Eighth cavalry. The affair is one which should receive a searching inquiry, as it stands now it was organized butchery, and one of the most shameful incidents in our ‘century of dishonor’ towards the Indians.”3 Sitting Bull’s death was a political assassination by the United States government, insisted the head of the Nebraska National Guard, General Leonard Colby, who wrote that there was an “understanding between the officers of the Indian and military departments that it would be impossible to bring Sitting Bull to Standing Rock alive, and even if successfully captured, it would be difficult to tell what to do with him. It is therefore believed that there was a tacit arrangement between the commanding officers and the Indian police, that the death of the famous old Medicine man was much preferred to his capture, and that the slightest attempt to rescue him should be the signal for his destruction.” To have him killed by Indian police allowed the government to avoid responsibility in the matter. Sitting Bull, like Martin Luther King, was a man of vision. “The great hope and purpose of his life was to unify the tribes, and bands of the Dakotas, (Sioux) and hold the remaining lands of his people as a sacred inheritance for their children,” wrote his friend Catherine Weldon. “This fact,” she maintained, “made him unpopular with all who saw in his policy and influence obstruction to their selfish schemes, hence they demanded his removal.” There was never an official investigation into Sitting Bull’s murder, nor have the assassination charges been disproved. Reverend Murray believed that a day would come when Sitting Bull would be revered for the visionary man of peace that he was: “I read that they have buried his body like a dog’s,” Rev. Murray wrote, “without funeral rites, without tribal wail, with no solemn song or act. This is the deed of to-day. That is the best that this generation has to give to this noble historic character… Very well. So let it stand for the present. But there is a generation coming that shall reverse this judgment of ours. Our children shall build monuments to those whom we stoned and the great aboriginals whom we killed will be counted by the future American as among the historic characters of the Continent.”5 Who knows? Perhaps Reverend Murray was right, and as the world grows more enlightened, we may one day celebrate Sitting Bull Day as we now do Martin Luther King Day. Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner, a Research Affiliate at the University of California, Davis, and Aberdeen native, has just completed the third volume of her Daughters of Dakota series: “Stories of Friendship between Settlers and the Dakota Indians” with guest editor, Vic Runnels. The Ashcroft story is from that book. FOOTNOTES: 1. Sally Roesch Wagner, Daughters of Dakota 11: Stories from the Attic. Carmichael, CA: Sky Carrier Press, 1990,p.166. 2. Minneapolis Tribune, cited in Robert C. Hollow, “The Sioux Ghost Dance of 1890.” The Last Years of Sitting Bull. Bismark: State Historical Society of North Dakota, 1985, p. 43. 3. Bland, p. 27. 4. Colby, “Sioux,” p. 151. 5. Bland, p. 27. POEM In June, 2002 at Lead, South Dakota, a demolition crew closed a gold mine that extended well over eight miles into the earth. The following poem is dedicated to this most auspicious occasion: LEAD, SOUTH DAKOTA Lead you are dead! Town built on deceit and bloodshed, Be buried forever! Our mother eight miles down— Her heart throbs for her sons. They fought; they died; They surrendered themselves, To protect life. Tatanka Iyotanka, Red Cloud, Crazy Horse Stand atop these Black Hills; Ghost Dance and make closure to her rape! ~ Whiteswan ~ “As the world grows more enlightened we will one day celebrate December 15, as GRANDFATHER TATANKA IYOTANKA DAY, as we do MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY.” Aho, Mitakuye Oyasin, Whiteswan MORE READING American Indian Art; Feder, Norman A Boy Called Slow: True Story of Sitting Bull; Bruchac, Joe Custers Fall; Miller, David Humphrey; From the Little Bighorn to Wounded Knee I Am Looking To The North For My Life; Lakota - Wise Words - Chief Sitting Bull; Western History/Genealogy Department, Denver Public Library Return of the Bird Tribes; Carey, Ken Sitting Bull - Champion of His People; Garst, Shannon Sitting Bull - Courageous Sioux Chief; Shaughnessy, Diane Sitting Bull - The Story of An American Indian; Knoop, Faith Yingling The Genius of Sitting Bull; Murphy, Emmett C. The Lance and the Shield; Utley, Robert M. The Old West, The Great Chiefs; Time-Life Books The Saga of Sitting Bull's Bones; Dewall, Robb Wind on the Buffalo Grass; Tillett, Leslie www.dickshovel.com/sittingbull.html members.tripod.com/~Rfester/lakota.html www.historychannel.com/link below- www.manataka.org/page55.html
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Post by mdenney on Mar 5, 2007 20:39:18 GMT -5
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Post by mdenney on Mar 5, 2007 21:09:23 GMT -5
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Post by mdenney on Mar 7, 2007 0:54:23 GMT -5
Death in Dakota County This Talks of old Betsz and more Death in Dakota County This December 1995 looks at the evolution of obituaries and tombstones and explores what meaning they have to Geneologists. "Death in Dakota County" is a fascinating look at the evolution of a dismal trade. link below- www.dakotahistory.org/downloads/OTYDec1995.pdfAnd here the link to the site www.dakotahistory.org
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Post by mdenney on Mar 11, 2007 16:49:01 GMT -5
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Post by mdenney on Mar 13, 2007 22:08:06 GMT -5
memory.loc.gov/master/gc/mtfgc/2102/5560546.txt ... and the upper bands of Sioux inhabiting the country on the north ... held in high estimation alike by the half-breed hunters and by the Sioux Indians. ...memory.loc.gov/master/gc/mtfgc/2102/5560546.txt link below-and below the link the storey memory.loc.gov/master/gc/mtfgc/2102/5560546.txt546 appendix. Hqdes. Dist. of Minnesota, Dept. of the Northwest, St. Paul, Minnesota, September 16, 1863. General : I have the honor to report for your informa- tion certain facts which have lately transpired, that may, and probably will, have a most important bearing upon the future relations between the government and the upper bands of Sioux inhabiting the country on the north and east of the Missouri river. My previous dispatches have fully advised you of the great concentration of Indian warriors, to oppose the column under my command in penetrating the immense prairies between the Red Eiver of the North and the Missouri river, and their utter rout and retreat across the latter stream, with the loss of their subsistence, clothing, and means of transportation, which fell into my hands and were destroyed. The state of destitution in which they found themselves, and their utter inability to contend with our disciplined troops in the open field, have so terrified the large majority of these savages that they have expressed a fervent desire to re- establish peace with the government at any price. Standing Buffalo, a leading chief of the Sisseton Sioux, and who has been consistent in his opposition to the hostilities initiated by the Minday, Wakomton, and Wakpeton bands in 1862, lately visited St. Joseph, near the British line, accom- panied by several deputies from the other upper bands, and held a conference with Father Andre, a Catholic priest, who is held in high estimation alike by the half-breed hunters and by the Sioux Indians. So far as I can ascertain, these depu- ties represented all those powerful bands not immediately implicated in the murders and outrages perpetrated on the Minnesota frontier during the past year, but who participated with the refugees from Wood lake in the engagements with the expeditionary force under my command in the month of July last. In fact, in the communication made to me by Father Andr6, he distinctly states as one of the happy results of the expedition, that "judging from the anxiety displayed by these men (the deputies), the greater portion of the Sioux are desirous of an opportunity to offer their submission, and the murderers, once abandoned by the other Indians, can be easily reduced." The combination of Indians defeated by my column in the late engagements may be thus classified: Minnesota river
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Post by mdenney on Mar 13, 2007 22:26:37 GMT -5
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