Sitting Bull

[Diane Merkel]

Here's an excerpt from a short biography of Sitting Bull in the New York Post:

SITTING BULL - HOLY MAN AND FEARLESS WARRIOR

The great Sioux leader fought for the rights of his people to keep their land and their way of life until the end.

The leader and holy man known as Sitting Bull was born in 1831 in South Dakota. His name was Tatanka Iyotanka, which means ''buffalo bull sit down.''

The young man demonstrated strong leadership ability at an early age and went into his first battle at 14. His courage became legendary among his Lakota people - one of the three main groups of the Sioux nation - and even among his enemies. He was also known for his beautiful singing voice.

Article: tinyurl.com/2txbae

[ladonna]

I have been doing Sitting Bull background for the tribe so i watch what is written out there in the world.

[Dietmar]

Today I found this article from 2001 about Sitting Bull and his relationship to a Michigan family at Fort Randall:

www.michiganhistorymagazine.com/extra/joseph/sitting_bull.html

"Captain Horace Quimby, a New Hampshire native, was the regimental quartermaster at Fort Randall when the Lakota arrived. Living at the post with Quimby was his wife, Martha, originally from Richmond, Indiana; his wife's sister, Margaret Smith; and the Quimbys' two daughters, eighteen-month old Belle and five-year-old Alice. Two other children, Charles and Helen, were back East attending school.

Martha Quimby, Maggie Smith and Alice often visited the Hunkpapa encampment. They soon struck up a friendship with Sitting Bull and his family, sometimes bringing them gifts of food and other items to supplement the regular supplies provided them by the government. Martha believed she taught Sitting Bull to write his name, but evidence suggests that he had already learned from a trader while living in Canada. Perhaps she helped him improve on his signature, or perhaps the chief did not want to offend her by telling her he already knew how to write his name.

During one of their visits to the Lakota encampment, Martha noticed some sketches Sitting Bull had drawn for the Indian agent. She asked him if he would draw some for her. He agreed. Sitting Bull was particularly fond of children and he especially liked Alice. She may have been one of the reasons he agreed to Martha's request. After acquiring a ledger book from the Indian agent's headquarters, Sitting Bull went to work.
(...)

Sitting Bull completed twelve drawings for the Quimbys before Captain Quimby was transferred to another post in 1882. One the day the family departed, Sitting Bull came to the steamboat with a thirteenth drawing, which was unfinished. It was of a horse without a rider. He handed it to Martha and said that his "heart was bad," sorrowful that it wasn't completed.
(...)

The Quimbys must have been saddened by the news of Sitting Bull's death. At the time, Martha Quimby was living in Niles with her children. Captain Quimby passed away in 1883. Martha died thirteen years later after slipping on the sidewalk and fracturing her skull. Alice inherited the Sitting Bull drawings and other Indian artifacts the family collected while stationed out west. When Alice died in Niles in 1947, the collection was given to the city's Fort St. Joseph Historical Association Museum. Today, the complete collection of pictographs is on display at the Fort St. Joseph Museum."

Hope you like it.

Dietmar

[Dietmar]

...here´s another article... an old one from 1954, but still a good read:

www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1964/4/1964_4_18.shtml

[Diane Merkel]

Here's a great history (presumably accurate!) of Sitting Bull's grave locations. It even has a photo of our LaDonna!

Now a historian for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, [LaDonna] Brave Bull Allard is playing a key role in efforts to improve Sitting Bull’s grave, which has suffered more than a century of neglect and vandalism since his burial in 1890.

Earlier this year, the Standing Rock Sioux took ownership of the gravesite. And this summer, the tribe will erect interpretive signs, plant grass and start other landscaping enhancements to honor the leader regarded as the chief architect of the Lakota victory against Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Article: tinyurl.com/3c4ztg

[apsalooka]

Diane...when I hit the link you mentioned..I got nothing to see or read.

Henri

[Diane Merkel]

Sorry, Henri. It is apparently a subscription site. You will have to register to read the article. Registration is free, and the article is worth it.

Diane

[ladonna]

www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?id=168383

Lakota leader’s legacy is being restored after years of neglect
Patrick Springer
The Forum - 06/10/2007
Fort Yates, N.D.

LaDonna Brave Bull Allard’s parents used to let her outside to play with a stern warning: Stay away from Sitting Bull’s grave.

There really was little about the burial site to draw a child’s forbidden interest. It was scarcely more than a forlorn slab of concrete, topped by a boulder and rimmed by fence gone ramshackle with age.

Now a historian for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Brave Bull Allard is playing a key role in efforts to improve Sitting Bull’s grave, which has suffered more than a century of neglect and vandalism since his burial in 1890.

Earlier this year, the Standing Rock Sioux took ownership of the gravesite. And this summer, the tribe will erect interpretive signs, plant grass and start other landscaping enhancements to honor the leader regarded as the chief architect of the Lakota victory against Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

“We’ll be seeing improvements,” Brave Bull Allard says during a recent visit to the gravesite once forbidden to her. She bemoans the loss of cottonwood trees that stood near the grave until Sitting Bull’s old nemesis, the U.S. Army, through its Corps of Engineers, cut them down a decade ago to maintain a nearby d**e.

“They just ran these big bulldozers through the site without notifying us,” she says. “We were really upset.”

The bulldozer was merely the latest insult to Sitting Bull’s grave.

As a child growing up during the 1960s, Brave Bull Allard rode her bike on the d**e bordering the grave, and later played softball and ran track on nearby fields. But there was little about the grave to invite attention.

Some people even said Sitting Bull’s grave was empty; that grave robbers came along in 1953, three years before Brave Bull Allard was born, and stole Sitting Bull’s bones.

About 55 miles to the south, in Mobridge, S.D., Rhett Albers recalls the day 13 years ago when one of his neighbors drove him across the Missouri River to see one of the area’s hidden attractions.

The sightseeing trip came soon after Albers moved to Mobridge, a town noted as a fishing haven. The two men drove down a winding road until reaching a grassy bluff high above the riverbank.

There, perched on top of a polished stone pedestal, stood a granite bust of Sitting Bull gazing across the wide Missouri.

Underneath the monument, entombed below 20 tons of concrete and steel to keep the grave undisturbed: Sitting Bull’s second final resting place.

“It was just trashed,” Albers says. “Beer bottles all over the place. At that time I thought, ‘This is just amazing.’ ”

Albers soon learned the macabre history of Sitting Bull’s bones, a story that begins in the early 1950s with a group of Mobridge businessmen who decided Sitting Bull deserved a more fitting burial site.

The businessmen bought a 40-acre parcel of land across the river from the city, within the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, with plans for a monument. They approached the sculptor of Crazy Horse Mountain in the Black Hills to ask him to carve a bust of Sitting Bull.

Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski agreed, on several conditions. The project must have the approval of Sitting Bull’s heirs, and it must be done in a respectful way, not merely as some crass tourist attraction.

So the business leaders found an elderly man named Clarence Grey Eagle, who was 16 years old in 1890 when reservation police officers went to arrest Sitting Bull at his cabin along the Grand River, a tributary whose mouth enters the Missouri across from Mobridge.Supporters of Sitting Bull balked when the police tried to take him away. A gun battle erupted, killing Sitting Bull, seven of his followers and six police.

Grey Eagle senior was, in fact, one of the police officers who had gone early one morning to arrest Sitting Bull, regarded as a threat during a time of high tensions. The elder Grey Eagle also was an in-law of Sitting Bull, which made his son a distant descendant in the eyes of the Mobridge Chamber of Commerce.

Clarence Grey Eagle, who spoke no English and required an interpreter, agreed to assume power-of-attorney for Sitting Bull’s family and to request an exhumation permit. Three of Sitting Bull’s granddaughters also agreed to the reburial and the promise of a more suitable monument.

There was just one problem: North Dakota health officials wouldn’t grant a permit to exhume the remains. They said the grave was an important historic site and should not be disturbed.

But the Mobridge group found a bureaucratic loophole. They obtained a letter from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, which owned the gravesite in Fort Yates, determining that the decision of Sitting Bull’s proper burial site should be left to the family.

With the letter as justification, the men from Mobridge swiftly went to work, driving to Fort Yates in the wee hours of the morning on April 8, 1953. Under the supervision of a retired mortician, they used a tow-truck hoist to remove a concrete slab over the grave and removed the bones.

Then they hurriedly drove 55 miles south, reburied the bones on the site overlooking the river, and announced that Sitting Bull now had a proper grave.

The removal ignited a bitter feud between the sister states that dragged on for several years, with North Dakota officials clamoring for Sitting Bull’s return, then declaring that the “grave robbers” had taken the wrong bones.

To protect against a reprisal raid, “braves” – including descendants of the Indian police officers who went to arrest Sitting Bull – were posted at the new burial site until it could be crowned with concrete.

Several months later, on a hot and windy Labor Day weekend, Mobridge hosted a two-day dedication ceremony.

A poster promoting the ceremony promised a “Most Stupendous Spectacle of Indian Dancing” and “the Beating of Tom-Toms And The Weird Songs of the Sioux” and boasted $600 in cash prizes for the dancers.

A crowd estimated at 5,000 turned out for the unveiling of the larger-than-life sculpture, including South Dakota’s governor, but the sculptor stayed home.

But those who moved Sitting Bull’s bones didn’t foresee a complication caused by the rising floodwaters backing up behind the Oahe Dam, located near Pierre, S.D., and dedicated in 1961.

Massive Lake Oahe required a new bridge to allow U.S. Highway 12 to span the Missouri River at Mobridge.

The new bridge was several miles to the north, forcing the rerouting of Highway 12, which ran right past the Sitting Bull monument when it was built. So by the time Albers came along in the 1990s, the second gravesite – rendered remote and largely forgotten – had fallen prey to neglect and vandalism.

Because the monument was on private land, Bureau of Indian Affairs police had no jurisdiction. And because the monument was more than 60 miles from the sheriff’s office, and far from lands under its jurisdiction, deputies never patrolled the area, either.

“It had become a party spot,” Albers says. “Kids from all over would come to party there. It was a standard thing. You’d hear about the senior keg at Sitting Bull. Party at Sitting Bull.”

Albers, an environmental engineer who consulted with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe on sanitation, was bothered by the litter-strewn gravesite. So was Bryan Defender, a member of the tribe who worked for the sanitation service.

Several years ago, when nobody else seemed to be doing anything to protect the site, the two men began negotiating with the owner of the property, a man in Washington state who was the son of a Mobridge banker, a key figure in moving the bones, to buy the 40-acre site and granite bust of Sitting Bull.

Defender and Albers told the man to name a price. Finally, after three years of on-again, off-again talks, the man’s lawyer in Mobridge called unexpectedly to say he had a sales offer waiting for them in his office. They went down immediately and readily agreed to the asking price for the land and bust: $55,000.

Soon after the purchase, in 2005, the pair formed the nonprofit Sitting Bull Monument Foundation, and began consulting with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other native groups, as well as Sitting Bull descendants, about what should be done to make a proper tribute.

Last year, they got the monument listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, a distinction that the original grave has yet to hold.

The historic marker at Sitting Bull’s grave in Fort Yates concludes with this observation: “He was buried here but his grave was vandalized many times. This marker is directly over the grave site.”

Gravesite, not grave. In fact, the first documented time Sitting Bull’s grave was opened came in 1895, when two men dug up a wooden coffin, and later reburied the bones in a wooden box inside the coffin.

One of the men, Frank Fiske, kept what he thought was a thigh bone as a souvenir.

Ultimately, the bone was acquired by the State Historical Society of North Dakota, whose director announced in 1958 that the bone Fiske saved as a keepsake actually was an upper arm bone – and probably belonged to a young, short woman.

North Dakota officials seized on that finding as an indication that the Mobridge group moved the wrong bones. They also noted that the grave diggers found loose bones, not bones in a box or coffin, as noted in accounts of Sitting Bull’s burial and reburial by Fiske.

Also, records kept by the tribe indicate that there were many Indian burials where Sitting Bull was laid to rest, in a plot outside the fort’s fenced Christian cemetery, in unmarked graves.

When Hunkpapa Lakota, including Sitting Bull descendants, gathered in 1990 on the centennial anniversary of his death, they chose the original gravesite as the location to honor his memory.

Last December, when the Standing Rock Sioux asked to obtain Sitting Bull’s Fort Yates grave site, the State Historical Society of North Dakota, which had been given the plot in 1956 by the federal government, readily agreed.

The transfer took place in January, in a ceremony near an exhibit of ghost dance shirts from Standing Rock. In recent years, the state was uncertain about how to improve the gravesite because it is a sacred site.

“Now was the time,” Merl Paaverud, the State Historical Society’s director, said in a recent interview. “I think it will be well taken care of. We want Sitting Bull’s story told. It’s best done, I think, by his people.”

The furor over which state can rightfully lay claim to Sitting Bull’s bones has subsided. Now the focus is on how best to pay tribute to the man and preserve both grave locations. The tribe and foundation are working together.

The Sitting Bull Monument Foundation will launch a fundraising campaign for a planned $12.7 million visitor’s center, located above the burial site on the bluff. Backers envision exhibits depicting Sitting Bull’s life, from boyhood until he rose to be a unifying force in the struggle against the encroachment of Lakota lands.

“I think it’s a project that’s going to be beneficial to our community,” says Defender, 35, who began his sanitation career on the back of the truck and several years ago bought the company.

His cleanup crews hauled away more than three large truckloads of trash, including refrigerators, car tires and beer cans. Lots of beer cans.

“You name it, it was there,” Defender says. “It’s better now,” but his crews and volunteers still patrol for trash.

Defender and Albers inevitably are asked, “Where is Sitting Bull buried?”

“Honestly, we don’t really know,” Albers says. “We really don’t care. It’s about history and honoring the legacy. We can tell people the story, and they can make up their own mind. They’re both sacred sites, and they should be maintained.”

Brave Bull Allard, who likes what she’s seen of the plans to improve the South Dakota monument site, agrees.

“Both graves are important to us,” she says. “We honor both graves. We respect both graves, and both graves have Indian people in them.”

The matter of Sitting Bull’s bones, as a detective story, probably defies a tidy ending. But the long controversy over his remains seems laid to rest.

How you can help

- Donations to help preserve and improve the South Dakota Sitting Bull gravesite can be made to Sitting Bull Monument Foundation, P.O. Box 729, Mobridge, SD 57601-2112. For more information, e-mail [e-mail].

Online

- Standing Rock Sioux Tribe: www.standingrocktourism.com

- Sitting Mull Monument Foundation: www.sittingbullmonument.org

- Sitting Bull College: www.sittingbull.edu

Readers can reach Forum reporter Patrick Springer at [phone]

Patrick Springer
Reporter
The Forum
P.O. Box 2020
Fargo, N.D. 58107-2020
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

[ladonna]

Here's a sidebar story on Sitting Bull as a symbol who many find inspiring:

www.in-forum.com/articles/printer.cfm?id=168384


Sitting Bull biography is ‘story of a legend’
Patrick Springer
The Forum - 06/10/2007
Sitting Bull remains a durable symbol of stubborn resistance in the face of daunting odds.

In Germany, he’s also an energy drink and a bicycle seat – a name still associated with rebellion, but now also embraced by youth culture.

Long before there was Che Guevara, the famous Latin-revolutionary-turned-

T-shirt-icon, there was Sitting Bull.

The Hunkpapa Lakota leader, who died 117 years ago, was a global celebrity long before television and radio became part of the cultural landscape.

In 1885, nine years after Custer’s defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull went on tour with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show.

Sitting Bull rode out on a horse during the opening of the show, circled the arena and took a statesmanlike bow, then hung around offstage to sign autographs afterward.

He charged 50 cents for a photograph

– $1 if he included his autograph – roughly a day’s wage for a farm laborer who worked 12 hours. But Sitting Bull was famous for giving much of his money away, and charging for autographs and photographs was an important source of income to support his family.

“He was media savvy, which is why he did interviews and toured,” said Mark Halvorson, a curator with the State Historical Society of North Dakota. “He sort of kept in the public eye. He became, for the lack of a better word, sort of a lightning rod.”

Everyone was fascinated by the man who played a leading role in the shocking defeat of Custer’s 7th Cavalry – an accomplishment that brought him both admiration and animosity.

“Sitting Bull became a symbol,” said Jute Winchester, a curator at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo. His stature as a symbol of resistance made him a target of officials who wanted to subdue the Lakota, and he was seen as a threat, she said.

“He became this polarizing figure,” Winchester said. Today, the controversy surrounding Sitting Bull has mostly worn off, and he is widely viewed as a champion of his people, the Hunkpapa and other Lakota Sioux, a quality with broad appeal.

Markus Linder, a German scholar who has written extensively about the many photographs of Sitting Bull, said the leader’s tragic death, at the hands of Indian police officers sent to arrest him, added to the aura he already had acquired for his role in Custer’s shocking defeat.

“Sitting Bull’s tragic death completed the story of a legend in a perfect way – not to forget that this was the starting point of the massacre at Wounded Knee,” whose victims included Sitting Bull followers who fled after his death. “The history of Sitting Bull is interwoven with many historical events.”

On Sitting Bull’s Standing Rock Reservation, he is remembered for his generosity to his people and his determination to keep their hunting lands and traditions, said LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a historian for the tribe.

“His importance is what he stood for, what he never gave up,” she said. “But most of all he was a good man. He was a good father. He was kind to children, all children. Today he’s kind of an image that we want our children to follow.”

Sitting Bull’s bones: A chronology

- Dec. 15, 1890: Sitting Bull dies from two simultaneous bullet wounds when Indian police try to arrest him at his cabin along the Grand River in South Dakota.

- Dec. 17, 1890: Sitting Bull’s body is buried in a pine coffin at Fort Yates, N.D., in an Indian burial ground outside the fort.

- 1905: Frank Fiske, a Fort Yates resident who had known Sitting Bull, digs up the grave to determine whether the remains had been moved, as some rumors suggested. He later reports finding bones, a decayed wooden coffin and rotting pieces of canvas. Fiske keeps what he believes to be a thigh bone.

- 1908: The U.S. Army removes graves from Fort Yates, which was abandoned earlier as a military post, and reburies soldiers in another location. Sitting Bull’s coffin reportedly is removed, but the government Indian agent orders his remains reburied.

- 1932: The State Historical Society of North Dakota pays to have Sitting Bull’s grave fixed up because a tombstone over his grave was broken. The casket is dug up under the supervision of the Standing Rock reservation superintendent. Inside the coffin, they find a small box containing what appears to be a complete skeleton except for a thigh bone. The report of a box is consistent with Fiske’s claim that he reburied the bones in a box inside the coffin. The bones are reburied under a concrete slab.

- 1951: The North Dakota Legislature passes a resolution urging federal officials to take immediate action to provide a suitable marker for Sitting Bull’s grave, but the request went unheeded.

- April 1953: Businessmen from Mobridge, S.D., with the support of several Sitting Bull descendants, exhume bones from Sitting Bull’s grave and rebury them across the river from Mobridge on the Standing Rock Reservation – under tons of concrete and steel.

- 1956: The U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs transfers ownership of Sitting Bull’s Fort Yates gravesite to the State Historical Society of North Dakota.

- 1958: State Historical Society of North Dakota officials reveal that they acquired the thigh bone taken by Fiske. A state archeologist determines that the bone actually is an upper arm bone – from a young adult female who stood no more than 5 feet, 5 inches tall.

- 1962: Workers building a d**e accidentally uncover a nearby grave, exposing a coffin of similar dimensions to the one Sitting Bull was buried in. Inside the coffin, a smaller wooden box – matching the description of Fiske’s box – containing some bones.

- 1984: Curator Robert Hollow of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, after examining historical accounts and records, concludes the “preponderance of evidence” supports the claim that the South Dakota group missed most or all of Sitting Bull’s bones. But the Mobridge group remains convinced that they got Sitting Bull’s bones.

- 2005: Two men buy Sitting Bull’s South Dakota burial site and establish the nonprofit Sitting Bull Monument Foundation with the intent to build an interpretive center to honor the Hunkpapa Lakota leader.

- Jan. 5, 2007: The State Historical Society of North Dakota gives the Fort Yates burial site to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which plans to improve and restore the gravesite.

Sources: Forum files, the “Saga of Sitting Bull’s Bones,” Associated Press

The life and death of Sitting Bull

Sitting Bull is possibly the best-known American Indian figure, known to the world as the mastermind behind the Lakota Sioux victory over Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

The Hunkpapa Lakota leader and holy man was branded as “hostile” by the U.S. government for his resistance to treaties and a life confined to a reservation.

Late in his life, he traveled with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show and was photographed many times, and sometimes charged for his autograph.

He befriended sharpshooter Annie Oakley and gave money to poor street children.

After the defeat of Custer at Little Bighorn in Montana in 1876, Sitting Bull and his followers fled north to Canada, out of reach of the pursuing

U.S. Cavalry, where the government granted him sanctuary.

But eventually buffalo became scarce on the Canadian plains, and hunger and hardship ensued, so Sitting Bull led his followers in 1881 to Fort Buford, near present-day Williston, N.D., and surrendered.

He was held for several years at Fort Randall, S.D., before he was allowed to join his people at Standing Rock Reservation.

Sitting Bull was born along the Grand River in South Dakota, although the year of his birth is uncertain, with most accounts settling on 1831.

As a boy he was named Slow, reflecting his deliberate manner and slightly bow-legged gait.

As a young man, he earned the name Sitting Bull, suggesting an immovable bull buffalo showing no fear in battle.

In 1890, the messianic ghost dance religion was sweeping the Plains tribes and became popular on Lakota reservations, including Standing Rock, where believers danced for the return of their dead ancestors and the disappearance of the white intruders.

The reservation agent ordered Sitting Bull’s arrest, fearing that ghost dance fervor would reignite resistance, and a party of more than 40 Indian police officers went to his cabin along the Grand River early on the morning of Dec. 15.

His supporters balked, and a gun battle flared, killing Sitting Bull, seven of his followers and six police.

After Sitting Bull’s death, his followers scattered. Some fled south, to Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where an estimated 300 Lakota were killed Dec. 29 by the 7th Cavalry, Custer’s old unit.

Readers can reach Forum reporter Patrick Springer at [phone]

Patrick Springer
Reporter
The Forum
P.O. Box 2020
Fargo, N.D. 58107-2020
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

[ladonna]

I post both articles from the Fargo Form that Pat sent to me.

[apsalooka]

Found this article of Ernie LaPointe about recieving Sitting Bull's leggings and hairlock.

www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2007/11/18/news/topnews/doc4740501ceed53025680234.txt

Henri

[Diane Merkel]

I wonder if it's just a coincidence that the items were returned on George Custer's birthday.

Museum returns Sitting Bull items

WASHINGTON - Mementos of Sioux Indian Chief Sitting Bull were returned to his family yesterday at a quiet ceremony at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

"I appreciate from my heart what the Smithsonian has done," said Ernie LaPointe, Sitting Bull's great-grandson. He said he would hold a ceremony at his home in Lead, S.D., on Dec. 15 with a medicine man to help determine what should be done with the artifacts.

A leader of the Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux, Sitting Bull became famous as the leader who defeated Lt. Col. George Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. Sitting Bull was killed while being arrested in 1890. A lock of hair and leggings were obtained, without permission, by an Army doctor, who later donated them to the museum.

- AP

Source: www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20071206_In_the_Nation.html

[brock]

Recently got back from DC and filmed the repatriation of Sitting Bull's scalp lock and leggings back to Ernie LaPointe and his sisters who attended a later ceremony in the Black Hills. Very moving. The scalp lock (the lock that held his feather up near the crown of his head was cut off by the post surgeon at Fort Yates, Dr Deeble as a souvenier along with the leggins he was wearing...post surgeons also acted as the post undertaker in those days). Both Dr Deeble and the Standing Rock agent McLaughlin both reported in official correspondance that Sitting Bull's body was not mutilated or disfigured, however Dr Deeble in separate a 1893 correspondance to a Dr Shufeldt stated that he had 'reserved' (his word not mine) the leggins and Sitting Bull's scalp lock for himself. Dr Shufeldt said the body was not autopsied.
In another separate piece of correspondance that was found in a letter dated May 21, 1897 by the Fort Yates hospitable steward, Dr von Clossman says that there was much more disfugurement.
"When brought to the hospital old Bull's head was covered with the usual long hair, as worn by all the Indians, but next morning, although the door was locked & the windows nailed down, I discovered on enetering the room, that during the night, he had been dispoiled of his hair & his head was bare as a billard ball. I never could find out, who stole his hair."
On June 19, 1896 Dr Horace Deeble loaned the Smithsonian Sitting Bull's scalp lock and leggins. Dr Deeble had no descendants.
According to the Repatriation Act the hair is human remains. The leggins were stolen. So they were in need of repatriation. In 1999 the Smithsonian sent out letters to all the Lakota tribes looking for the closest living descendants. In February of 2001 a gentleman named Don Tenoso submitted a request for repatriation of the items. During a visit to the Smithsonian office he identified himself as a great grandson of Oscar One Bull, the blood nephew of Sitting Bull, who he claimed that Sitting Bull 'adopted' One Bull as his son in a 'Hunka' ceremony. Don Tenoso was then asked to submit the names of any descendants that should be notified of the request. In late November Ron Little Owl, a member of the Three affiliated tribes of North Dakota, sent a letter identifying Ernie LaPointe and his sisters Marlene Little Spotted Horse-Anderson, and Ethel Little Spotted Horse-Bates as close lineal descendants of Sitting Bull. A new letter was sent to Ernie and his sisters and after Ernie's response in Feb 2002 and after more than five years of research it was determined that Ernie and his sisters were indeed the closest lineal descendants to Sitting Bull.
The debate over the adoption of One Bull raged for quite sometime but no proof that it ever actually happened was offered. However there is mention of Oscar One Bull that seems to implicate him as a member of the police force at the time of Sitting Bull's death. In a letter dated August 18, 1922 sent by superintendent Mossman (McLaughlin was still the senior pulling the strings at the reservation until July 1923 when he took ill and was taken back to DC where he died in August of 1923) it states,

"For your information, I will say that Sitting Bull has practically no relatives on this reservation. His nearest of kin now living here (Standing Rock) are One Bull, a nephew, and the wife of Grey Eagle. One Bull while his nephew was one of the men who went as police to arrest Sitting Bull at the time of his death. Grey Eagle is the brother in law of Sitting Bull, and while he was not a policeman at the time he was present for the purpose of assisting in the arrest Sitting Bull.
After the death of Sitting Bull, his immediate family practically all went to Pine Ridge where his wife number two and daughters and grand children are now living."

This should have been intuitive to researchers but it wasn't. After all on a human level when a close family member is killed by your neighbors do you continue to stay in the same neighborhood or do you move? I have found the same true with the Clown family and the killing of Crazy Horse by 'neighbors'.

There was an attempt at reconcilation between family members as Four Robes (one of Sitting Bull's wives) and William Sitting Bull attempted to re-enroll at Standing Rock. Seen By Her Nation (the other Sitting Bull wife) never forgave Grey Eagle for holding the horses while the police went into arrest her husband. However they were turned down in a letter dated May 2, 1908 from the Acting Commissioner named Larralee. The letter states:

"Inspector James McLaughlin, in a letter dated April 29, 1908, concurs in your recommendation that the family named be not transferred and enrolled at the Standing Rock Agency. He says that he is well acquainted with the history of William Sitting Bull, and discusses the case as follows:
A reference to the records of the Department will show that the noted Indian, Sitting Bull, father of this William Sitting Bull, was a disturbing element and a source of much trouble on the Standing Rock Reservation. His attitude throughout his life was detrimental to the advancement of the Indians among whom he lived and should this son of his be transferred to the Standing Rock Agency I am fearful that the former adherents of his father would make an effort to install him their leader thereby fostering disaffection among the former followers of Sitting Bull who are now well disposed and steadily advancing in civilization.
The family of Sitting Bull together with about two hundred followers left the Standing Rock Reservation from time to time after the death of Sitting Bull during the Ghost Dance troubles in 1890 and 1891 and were duly enrolled at the Pine Ridge Agency where they have since resided, and I believe that it would be better for the Standing Rock Indians if William Sitting Bull be required to remain at Pine Ridge where he now lives and where he has resided for the past 17 years.
In view of your recommendation and that of Inspector McLaughlin, the office is very unwilling to permit the transfer of William Sitting Bull and family, consisting of himself, wife and child, and his mother, from the Pine Ridge to the Standing Rock Agency."

William Sitting Bull was a deaf mute.

These letters were obtained following Ernie LaPointe's oral history and from his oral history knowing where to look and what to look for. Ernie said his mother told him of a chance meeting between Standing Holy and Oscar One Bull in which his mother was present. Standing Holy and William Sitting Bull and Angeline LaPointe were in a buggy out on the plains when a rider approached. It was Oscar One Bull. Standing Holy wrapped a blanket around her head and told One Bull to go away. One Bull tried to be nice, Standing Holy wouldn't stand for it and finally One Bull left. When Angeline questioned her mother about the man, Standing Holy told her "it was because of him that your grandfather was killed". According to Ernie, One Bull was the spy in Sitting Bull's camp and whenever Sitting Bull held council One Bull would ride immediately afterwards to the school house in Little Eagle and telegraph to McLaughlin the results. Sitting Bull became suspicious that there was a spy so when he decided to leave the Rez for Pine Ridge to discuss what to do about the Ghost Dance with Red Cloud he held the council at night and proposed to leave early the next morning. The schoolhouse was closed so One Bull rode all night to Fort Yates to inform McLaughlin and then rode back (killing his horse in the process) but made it back to his tipi before the police could arrive. Later it was said he was teamstering in Bismark, but with the family fleeing to Pine Ridge, I surmise McLaughlin needed a family member on his side to help sell his story to the remaining Sitting Bull followers still on the rez to keep peace.
However in a bit of irony one of the greatest advocates for returning the hair and leggins to Ernie was a worker at the Smithsonian from Standing Rock who happened to be the step great granddaughter of Bullhead (the leader of the police that killed Sitting Bull).

Bringing things back to the present the scalp lock had no grey hairs...however out of respect there will not be any pictures of the scalp lock and the hair will be returned to Sitting Bull however I will not say at this time how that will happen. The leggins were in excellent condition. They were dark blue with a red zigzag sewn down the seams...I do have video of this along with his rifle which will not be repatriated because it is a weapon which will appear in Ernie's DVD on Sitting Bull in Part Two. One of the leading DNA experts in the world from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark (he is a big Sitting Bull fan and has posters of Sitting Bull at home, he is also the expert working with an the Oregon dig that found human dung dated back 40-50,000 years whose DNA was Native American specific which the findings will be published in the very near future, most likely in some anthropology journal) is performing the DNA link between Ernie and his sisters and the lock of hair, providing the hair was not treated while being preserved with any chemicals that might destroy the DNA molecules. This DNA will be on record for not only any challenges to Ernie and his sisters but it will be on record to dispell any stories about whose bones lie in Mobridge.

Until next time....

[crzhrs]

Wasn't Sitting Bull's body beaten (with a yoke) by an opposition Indian right after SB was killed during his attempted arrest?

[brock]

Crzhrs, according to what Ernie learned from his Mom, Sitting Bull's body was beaten to a pulp. After exhuming the bones in 1953, in the autospy which was attended by Ernie's Mom Angeline LaPointe, Clarence Grey Eagle, and Clarence Grey Eagle's interpreter whose name I do not have (Clarence Grey Eagle did not understand English well enough to be without an interpreter) observed the front part of his skull was missing due to a beating with a blunt instrument. There was quite a bit of canvas with the body collaborating the story of his body being put into a canvas sack to keep it all together. Also one of the upper arm bones was missing of the major bones (many of the smaller bones were not recovered as it seems as though the emphasis was on recovering the main skeletal bones). This seemed to collarorate the story told by photographer Frank Fiske on the link below as reported by the Fargo Forum on April 12, 1953.

www.rootsweb.com/~nalakota/mbbsjttwbb/sittingbullsbones_ff041253.html

Later....