Living Bear and his son Plenty Horses

[dormouse]

Living Bear (Oglala) or Gray Eagle (Hunkpapa) ????

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[dormouse]

Mar 3, 2013 6:59:13 GMT -5 dormouse said:

Living Bear (Oglala) or Gray Eagle (Hunkpapa) ????

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[Dietmar]

Welcome dormouse,

I agree that he is Living Bear, but I´m not sure to call him Oglala. Kingsley wrote earlier about Living Bear aka Liver Bear:

"Liver Bear, i.e. Living Bear - said to be cousin of Two Strike, and father to Plenty Horses (killer of Lt. Casey). He lived in the Two Strike camp southwest of Rosebud Agency. He is visibly the same man as the Living Bear photographed with Red Dog and other Oglalas (Washington, 1870?), an NAA photo that I'm sure Ephriam posted a while ago. He is listed in Col. Smith's report on the 1870 Oglala delegation (Olson mistranscribed the name as "Swing Bear")."

see: www.american-tribes.com/Photographers/BIO/Grabill.htm

[dormouse]

Thanks Dietmar.
Perhaps it Sicangu?

[sunparrot]

Who are the other men shown in the "Plenty Horses' Trail Indians" photograph posted by dormouse? I can read the names Bear-That-Lays-Down, He Dog, & White Moon, but not the last name (ID'd on photo as No. 8). The names are listed out of order - I don't know which name goes to which person. Also can't read the photographer's name. Thanks.

[Dietmar]

Here´s the Plenty Horses Trial photo with IDs:

[sunparrot]

Dietmar, you are wonderful!! Thanks for the IDs! I just realized that the image says "Plenty Horses' Trial, Indians" - not "Plenty Horses' Trail Indians." Oops! Help me out with the photographer and date. Is it L. C. Butterfield, 1891?

I'm putting photos into iPhoto, hoping that the software will eventually do some of the identification for me. (fingers crossed)

What was the trial about?

[gregor]

Hi, this is some information on Plenty Horses and his trial:

In 1891 Tasunka Ota, Plenty Horses, was a youth of twenty-two. His family belonged to the band of old Two Strike, since the death of Spotted Tail the most important chief of the Brulé Sioux tribe. Plenty Horses’ father, Living Bear, a well-to-do rancher on Rosebud was a cousin of Two Strike and a respected headman of the band. Plenty Horses himself - tall, handsome, with broad shoulders and deep chest, low forehead, prominent nose, and large brown eyes - looked the very embodiment of the ideal Sioux warrior.
When finally the government permitted him to return to the reservation, many Lakota no longer accepted him, perceiving him as tainted by white contact. It probably did not help that his command of the Lakota language was frozen by Carlisle school at the level of a 14 year old. ''Five years I attended Carlisle and was educated in the ways of the white man,'' he would say later. ''When I returned to my people, I was an outcast among them. I was no longer an Indian.'' Local whites were not interested in him either. He was never offered the jobs that Carlisle teachers had led him to expect.

As the news of the slaughter [the Wounded Knee massacre] spread across the reservations, young warriors took up weapons, mounted horses, and rode off in pursuit of U.S. troops, determined to protect their families and elderly from another attack. Among the warriors rode 21-year-old Tasunka Ota who had lost a cousin in the gunfire along Wounded Knee Creek. The whites translated his name usually as Plenty Horses or Young-Man-With-Plenty-Horses although the real meaning of Tasunka Ota “Many Horses” was. Right after the shooting at Wounded Knee, he had joined the warriors to fight back the U.S. soldiers. On the morning of January 7, 1891 he became his chance and Plenty Horses later stated, “I was out from the camp watching that no troops came to harm my father and relatives. Of course I was in a bad frame of mind“

Plenty Horses was one of a party of about forty Sioux that chanced on Lieutenant Edward W. Casey and two Cheyenne scouts, White Moon and Rock Road, on the slope of a low hill about two and a half miles north of the No Water camp. During a conversation Plenty Horses had slowly backed his horse out of the circle and posted himself about three or four feet behind Casey. As the officer wheeled his horse to depart Plenty Horses took his Winchester from under his blanket, calmly raised it to his shoulder, and fired one shot. The bullet went right into the back of Casey’s head and came out under the right eye.

The Indians at Pine Ridge assumed that the peace relieved Plenty Horses of any threat of reprisal. The killing had occurred in time of war, when everyone was on edge of an attack. On February 19 Lieutenant S. A. Cloman and a troop of Oglala scouts found Plenty Horses in a small camp of Corn Man’s band, north of the agency.

[gregor]

The INDIAN HELPER - January 30, 1891:

"The despatch [sic] which has been sent out over the county, saying that a son of No-Water ‘and a graduate of the Carlisle School' was the slayer of Lieut. Casey, is utterly false, so far as it relates to Carlisle. No-Water's son has never been a student of this school, and inquiry among our Sioux students has developed the fact that No-Water has never sent his children to school anywhere. Furthermore, there are but two Sioux in the county, who can produce diplomas of graduation from Carlisle school. One is George W. Means, now a clerk at the Pine Ridge Agency, and the other is Nellie Robertson, who is now here, attending Metzgar Institute for young ladies, in Carlisle."

This article appeared just after the Wounded Knee massacre, in response to the charges that a cavalry officer had been killed by Plenty Horses, a former Carlisle graduate. The school administration denied that Plenty Horses had ever been a Carlisle student, let alone a graduate. That wasn't an outright lie...Plenty Horses' Carlisle name was changed to Plenty Living Bear (after his father, Living Bear).

The INDIAN HELPER - October 14, 1898

"Mr. and Mrs. Vance, of Orangeville, visited our school on their wedding tour last Friday. The groom is the son of Mr. Vance with whom Plenty Livingbear, Joel Tyndall and others lived for a time."

There is a photograph of Plenty Living Bear in the Cumberland County Historical Society's photo collections. The photo is included in an album with other children from Carlisle, and the likeness to his later photos is unmistakeable. There's also a photo of him with his father, Living Bear, in an article written by Robert Utley. Plenty Horses was known at Carlisle as Plenty Living Bear.

The Carlisle Indian School's denial of Plenty Horses' Carlisle years is clearly a smokescreen. By saying that the son of No Water "was never here" is technically the truth. There was no person by the name of No Water. No Water was the place where the young men had gathered in safety during the Wounded Knee period. Plenty Horses was among them. It's not clear who authored the article denying Plenty Horses' enrollment at the school and there seems to be no account for how that denial was received by students at the school who knew the truth.

In the following days Plenty Horses was arrested, charged with murder in Federal District Court and held prisoner at Fort Meade while awaiting trial. On March 13th, 1891, Plenty Horses was indicted at a term of the United States District Court at Deadwood, S. D., and charged with the murder of Lieut. E. W. Casey. On the 24th day of April, 1891, the trial of Plenty Horses commenced in the United States court room in Sioux Falls. He took the stand in his own defense but testified in the Lakota language although he spoke English fluently.

During the trial, an agent from Pine Ridge recalls Plenty Horses telling the jurors:
"I am an Indian. Five years I attended Carlisle and was educated in the ways of the white man. I was lonely. I shot the lieutenant so I might make a place for myself among my people. Now I am one of them. I shall be hung and the Indians will bury me as a warrior. They will be proud of me. I am satisfied."

The trial lasted six days and in the end the case was submitted to the jury and resulted in a disagreement.
The Court immediately fixed upon the 25th day of May following, for a second trial. At this trial the real character of the acts of war occurring during the Indian outbreak was clearly shown by the defense [and with the support of general Miles via press media]. And when the testimony was all in, Judge Shiras directed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty; holding that at the time of the killing of Casey there existed in and about the Pine Ridge Agency an actual state of warfare. So the judge ruled that Plenty Horses had killed Lieutenant Casey as a combatant in times of war and the jury dropped the murder charges.

[gregor]

Plenty Horses did not make a place for himself among his people. Today old Indians on the Rosebud Reservation dimly remember him as a lonely figure living quietly with his wife, Josephine, and son, Charles, in a one-room log cabin on Oak Creek, “quite unloved” by neighbors and acquaintances.
Agency files record his death on June 15, 1933, a year after the death of his wife and son. For Plenty Horses the fame he had sought with his people had flashed as briefly as it had brightly.

Sources:
In the Shadow of Wounded Knee: The Untold Final Story of the Indian Wars
By Roger L. Di Silvestro

"History of Minnehaha Co." by Bailey's History (1899), Chapter 13, pages 230 to 237.


Toksha ake
Gregor

[Dietmar]

There is a photograph of Plenty Living Bear in the Cumberland County Historical Society's photo collections. The photo is included in an album with other children from Carlisle, and the likeness to his later photos is unmistakeable. There's also a photo of him with his father, Living Bear, in an article written by Robert Utley.

I tried to find these photos without success. Does anybody have them available? The Utley article is online, but unfortunately without pictures:

www.americanheritage.com/content/ordeal-plenty-horses?page=show

[gregor]

The Name is listed on the Choate photo index of the Cumberland County Historical Society Photograph Collection as

Living Bear, Plenty 1-64

But the index says:
"Keep in mind that many of these photos are of large and small groups. A single name on the list does not necessarily indicate an
individual portrait"
Maybe he was only on a group photograph

[sunparrot]

gregor,

Thanks for all of the great information on Plenty Horses. Good to know!

[Dietmar]

A picture of Plenty Living Bear (aka Plenty Horses) as a student in Carlisle is now available online at the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center:

carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/images/plenty-living-bear-c1886


Plenty Living Bear by John Choate, ca. 1886

[grahamew]

So the photo at the top is a mere five years after that one at Carlisle? He seems to age quickly.

Here he is at an Omaha dance:



Closer, you can make out that it is him: