Chief Iron Bear

[Diane Merkel]

From a website visitor:

My great, great grandfather was Chief Ironbear. He fought at the Little Bighorn Battlefield. I would like Information about him. Thanks

I have a lot of Iron-somethings listed but not Iron Bear. Can anyone help this gentleman?

[Dietmar]

There´s an Iron Bear in the "Crazy Horse Surrender Ledger". He is listed there as head of a lodge of three women and six children (two male and four female) in Yellow Bear´s Melt (Spleen) band.

[grahamew]

I was going to mention that there was a Yankton headman called Iron Bear but thought it was unlikely he would've been there, until I found reference to him here: www.friendslittlebighorn.com/LBH%20Warriors.pdf

It's feasible, therefore, that this may be your man, photographed by Thomas Smillie when a member of a delegation in 1904:



There's an Upper Yanktonai at Standing Rock in 1885 as a head of family who received rations in August of that year :http://www.primeau.org/StandingRock1885families.html

[grahamew]

There's a Wanamaker/Dixon photograph in the Mather Museum of World Cultures (http://www.indiana.edu/~mathers/collections/photos/sioux.html#Yanktonai) of a Yanktonai Iron Bear - maybe the same man who was at Standing Rock - taken in 1913 at Greenwood, Yanktonai Sioux Res., SD.

As Dietmar has suggested, there was also an Iron Bear on Pine Ridge; for example: freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mikestevens/SURNAMES/i0017662.htm#i17662

Maybe this is the same man as in the Crazy Horse Surrender Ledger?

[Dietmar]

As stated in another thread, the Spleen band of Yellow Bear was not at the LBH in 1876 but at the agency. That don´t mean that some individual members of this band couldn´t be there... but I think it is more possible that the Yankton/Yanktonais Iron Bear is the man who we look for.

[Diane Merkel]

grahamew said:

I was going to mention that there was a Yankton headman called Iron Bear but thought it was unlikely he would've been there, until I found mention of him here: www.friendslittlebighorn.com/LBH%20Warriors.pdf

Interesting. That segment of the Friends listing has changed quite a bit since I printed it in July 2004. It is indeed a work in progress.

In addition to Iron Bear, it also now lists Iron Dog, another Iron Hawk, Iron Shell, and Iron Tail, and it has removed the Lakota Iron Man. It's nice that they give references so that you can check the source yourself.

[herosrest]

^Ducemus

Indian Views of the Custer Fight: A Source Book by Richard G. Hardorff, The Arthur Clark Co. Spokane, WA 2004, p 87 - 92. Interview of Thunder Bear with Edward S. Curtis, circa 1907.

Thunder Bear and Iron Bear reportedly brought first news of the Battle of the Little Bighorn to Fort Peck.

The Yanktonai were camping at Old Fort Peck in 1876. Four of us decided to visit Sitting Bull's camp on Pezhi sda wak-pa, Grease Grass river. So I, Medicine Cloud, Iron Bear, and Long Tree, with Medicine Cloud's wife, started in the first part of June. We struck Powder river below where Miles City is now and followed the trail leading southwest.

We had been in the big camp about twenty sleeps when one morning the women who had been gathering turnips came riding in all out of breath and reported that the soldiers were coming. The country, they said, looked as if filled with smoke, so much dust was there. There were four big circles of Sioux and one of Cheyennes in the camp.

The soldiers charged right up to the edge of the camp, dismounted, and began fighting. The horses became wild and we were still trying to catch them. Very few of us fell. But soon we gathered and charged. It was like a cloud of mosquitos. We rode right up to the soldiers' skirmish line. Indians and horses fell everywhere, some right among the soldiers. But more were there and finally we made them run. Then right among them we rode, shooting them down as in a buffalo drive.They [Custer's battalion] ran to the top of a knoll and dismounted, one man holding four horses. We dismounted, too, and filled the gullies that the running water had made in the side of the hill. From there we could shoot straight up at the soldiers. Many of them fell, but the others kept shooting and killing some of us. The fighting continued, and what horses had not been killed, stampeded and rushed down the hill across the river, where the women and children were. The women captured them.

All the time we kept closing in on them. One crowd of the soldiers left the hill and ran down into a deep ravine, but we gathered on the edge and shot them. Pahinhanska was killed in the middle of his men. We all knew him. His long hair had been cut off. We did not cut him up, or even scalp him.

After the fight was over and we returned to camp, I heard a bugle and saw on a hill three troops of cavalry, one with blacks, one with bays, one with white horses. They were a lot of our young fellows, dressed up in the uniforms of the soldiers and mounted on their horses. After this the young men made ready to charge Reno's men, but just then scouts came from down the river, reporting that a big lot of soldiers were coming.

The Cheyennes, being at the other end of camp, got their horses first and did most of the fighting that occurred near the camp and in the retreat. A black man half-breeds and Bloody Knife, the chief scout of the Arikara, were the first ones killed. At the end [of Custer's fight] we rushed among the men on the hill and killed them with clubs and arrows. Even the women, some of them, were there. There was such confusion that no honors could be counted, but we took some scalps from those whose hair was long enough. The Cheyennes got most of them.

Chagha, Ice, [or Ice Bear, or White Bull] a medicine man, was chief of the Cheyennes. Sitting Bull, Tatanka Iyotanka, was chief of the Sioux. His chiefs were Shunka Hanska, Long Dog; I-to-ma-gho-zhi, Rain in the Face; Pizi, Gall; Mato Washte, Pretty Bear; Wi Sapa, Black Moon; Don't Paint His Face; Wanaghi Ska, White Ghost; Tatanka He Geleshka, Spotted Horn Bull; Tashunka Witko, Crazy Horse, [and] Wopide [or Wopiye], Medicine Bag That Burns. 

This last man's [Wopide or Crow King] two brothers were killed on the hilltop, and his sisters came with axes and knocked the brains out of some wounded soldiers. One soldier got down to the river and lay there on his back in the water with only his nose showing. Some Indians watched him for a while and one shot him with a six-shooter. Sitting Bull was not in the fighting. He walked up and down, talking to the warriors.

After the fight the Indian soldiers said nobody was to leave camp, for there were many from other agencies and they did not want the fight reported. But Iron Bear and I got away in the night and came back to Fort Peck. Rain in the Face was the bravest man there.

Nineteen Sioux and seventeen Cheyennes were killed; but a great many were wounded. Seven Sioux and two Cheyennes were killed by Reno's men. Many horses were killed. Many soldiers shot wild into the air. That is why we think they were drunk. If they had not been they would have killed more of us. There were more than 2000 tipis in the camp, and in every one three or four young men, besides the older men.

The first charge on the camp was about noon and lasted less than two hours.