Bull Bear and his family

Dietmar,
I re-read the former messages of Wendyll, and he doesn't mentioned that Bull Bear had a daughter.....only sons.
So to whom is Bear Robe a child of???
Henri

I believe the dates are slightly ajar-this Bear Robe is the daughter of Bull Bear b 1769 married to a Brule woman and married Henry Chatillon Sr b abt 1797
The husband of She Who Wears a Bear Robe could have been only Henry Chatillion Jr, the guide of Francis Parkman
miller7513

A German website visitor asked me to post these questions about the Kuhinyan division of the Oglalas. I think it fits best in the Bull Bear Family thread:

I am particularly interested in the history of the Oglala's and its "tiyospayes".

Can someone help me?

Which tiwahes belong to the Kuhinyan-division and to the Hunkpatila-division of the Oglala in the period 1820-1840?

Had "Bull Bear" the Kuhinyan from his father's family ("Stone Knife tiwahe" = Kiyuksa) split off? How can we explain that "Little Wound" led the Kuhinyan tiwahe later, although his grandfather had lead the Kiyuksa tiwahe?

Which were the families (tiwahe) of "One Eye" and "Whirlwind" ("brothers" of Bull Bear)?

In 1839 Nicollet estimated the Kuhinyan band as comprising 100 lodges, approximately 750 people.

By that time at least two significant sub-bands had joined the core Kuhinyan tiyoshpaye that I identified above. In 1804, I believe following the hunka reformation described by James R. Walker's Oglala informants, a wichoti joined the Kuhinyan that I propose was cored on the family of Little Bull, the putative paternal grandfather of Whistler (aka Little Bull), prominent in the period 1865-72. Some of these families may have come from the Miniconjou.

In 1820 I believe a second camp came from the Brules to augment the Kuhinyan. My feeling is that, like the Stone Knife-White Swan tiyoshpaye, they had been part of the Oglala tribe from about 1776, but joined or rejoined the Brule circle at the end of the 1790s. There was a strong Kiyuksa band within the Brule hoop (associated closely with the Wacheunpa/Meat Roasters band) and the various Kuhinyan tiyoshpaye 'floated' btw the Brule and Oglala summer ceremonial loci. The 1820 incomers comprised two tiyoshpaye, those of Two Arrows-Lone Man-Red Cloud, and of Man Afraid of His Horse II.

Meanwhile, the sons of Stone Knife-White Swan were marrying extensively and tightening around them a new cluster of tiyoshpaye. As an example Iron Hatchet formed a new group called Payabya, perhaps through deep intermarriage with the Man Afraid of His Horse family. As I indicated above, many Oglala proper were being drawn into this network, as were people from the Shiyo maximal band, that dissolved early in the 1830s, a part joining the Brule hoop. I suspect that the Shiyo remnant that stayed with the Oglalas, attaching to both Oglala proper and Kuhinyan maximal bands, may be ancestral to the later Spleen band.

Dietmar,

I don't know whether to accept Parkman's statement literally, that Le Borgne was the brother of Bull Bear. Le Borgne was over 80 in 1846, according to Parkman, so born c. 1765. Bull Bear's exact birthdate is not known, but he was two or three decades younger than Le Borgne. (The statement attributed to Little Wound by Walker, that his father Bull Bear was not yet born at the time of the hunka reformation, 1804-05, I think must be a misunderstanding on the part of Walker or his interpreter. Wislizenus in 1839 met Bull Bear and considered him "rather aged". Marcel Bull Bear's date of 1790 should be close.) I wouldn't rule out the possibility that Bull Bear and Le Borgne shared a parent, but we just don't know. This could be a case of the children of a man's brothers are classed as his 'sons'. I sometimes wonder if we have two or three brothers, ie. Bull Hoop, Stone Knife, White Swan, born across the frame c. 1740-1760, all of whom were classed as the 'fathers' of Bull Bear.

In Parkman's original journal by the way Red Water is indicated to be about 60 years old (not 80). He and Le Borgne were listed as the chiefs of the Minishala (Red Water) band by Nicollet in 1839, when it was still rated as Brule. In November 1841 David Adams names "the born" as one of four headmen in the Kuhinyan or Southern Oglala village on Chugwater Creek. So 1840 looks right as the year of the move to the Oglala hoop.

"Which tiwahes belong to the Kuhinyan-division . . . . . in the period 1820-1840?"

I gave my thoughts above about what were the constituent tiwahes within the Oglala proper or Hunkpatila in the period 1820-40. Turning to the Kuhinyan (later also known as Kiyaksa) they were a later 18th c. offshoot from the Kiyuksa village I mentioned above, originally a Santee group that went west (c. 1725-50) and, breaking up, attached itself (c. 1750-75) by individual bands and camps to various Yanktonai and Teton groups. At the founding stage of the Kuhinyan (c. 1775+) a large admixture of Cheyennes married in, c. 1782 (Makula statement to Mekeel). In the years immediately following (c. 1785-1800) I think that they became extensively intermarried with the True Oglala band of Oglalas, creating a hybrid camp the Tashnahecha. At this stage they constituted one group within the maximal Oglala proper band. The Kuhinyan however through population growth became increasingly independent during the first third of the 19th c., creating by growth and controlling new hunting grounds a new maximal band of their own.

I should think by the 1820s that the core family lines within the Kuhinyan now looked like this:

1. Stone Knife-White Swan. Through the marriages of its sons, Bull Bear and the rest, this group was rapidly growing in this period. See Lawrence Bull Bear statement in post above. By this process this family line is drawing in large numbers of people from other Oglala bands (e.g. Oglala proper, Shiyo), and also from other Teton tribal divisions - Brule and Miniconjou are mentioned by Mekeel's informants - and the Cheyenne.

2. Little Bull. Chief of this name noted by Joshua Pilcher in 1835, he is possibly the grandfather of Whistler.

3. Two Arrows-Lone Man-Red Cloud.

4. Man Afraid of His Horse II.

Family groups 3 and 4 seemingly constitute one camp (wichoti), suggesting they had made extensive intermarriages in the generation c. 1785-1810. After 1810 I think this camp, which was in the period 1798-1810 running with the Brule, begins making marriage ties with the Stone Knife-White Swan group (no. 1 above), which results in a shift back to the Oglala hoop complete by 1820. An example: perhaps Mad Dog, Bull Bear's brother, marries a sister of Red Cloud-Lone Man, and their son is the Red Cloud killed by the Pawnees c. 1837. Another example: Iron Hatchet, the eldest (?) brother of Bull Bear, begins making marriage links to the Man Afraid of His Horse tiwahe, beginnning the process described by Lawrence Bull Bear above: the formation of a separate sub-band called Payabya. Note also that brothers Red Cloud then Lone Man married Walks As She Thinks, a sister of Smoke, the latter a 'brother' (i.e. cousin) of Bull Bear in the Tashnahecha camp, creating important new connections that will ultimately result in the re-chartering of a revived Bad Face band.

Various Oglala proper families had become attached to the Kuhinyan in the period 1805-34. These included, as I opined above, the Sitting Bear and Bad Face tiwahes from True Oglala; and the No Water tiwahe from Tashnahecha. In addition the Shkokpa band, recalled as of Brule origin by Charles Turning Hawk (statement to Mekeel), aligned itself to the Kuhinyan.

As Wendyll Smoke has shown us, 1834 marks the beginning of a crisis phase in relations within the band. Smoke, born into the Tashnahecha but now associated (by marriage?) with the Bad Face family group, and appointed a tribal Shirt Wearer (1824?), led the group opposed to Bull Bear. Smoke's following across the period 1834-45 realigns itself back to the Oglala proper maximal band. Connected somehow to this process was the movement of Man Afraid of His Horse III ('Old' Man Afraid, 1808-1889) to the Hunkpatila camp of the Oglala proper. He seems to have moved there around the time of the birth of his son (Young Man Afraid), c. 1835-36. Important to recall that he had existing family ties there already through the Yellow Eagle tiwahe, kinsmen of his father.