|
Post by emilylevine on Mar 23, 2024 16:44:19 GMT -5
Graham
Your 3rd link appears old---any chance you have a fresh one? Thanks!
And thanks to all of you for this info as I poke about the Otoe, my local tribe.
|
|
|
Post by emilylevine on Nov 20, 2023 16:54:07 GMT -5
Hi Rod
Where is this piece?
|
|
|
Post by emilylevine on Nov 19, 2023 15:27:38 GMT -5
Anyone familiar with this image?
|
|
|
Post by emilylevine on Aug 8, 2022 13:15:47 GMT -5
Hi Kingsley
I was asked to submit a chapter for the new edition of The Atlas of Sandhills, "something about Indians." (eyeroll)
I chose to tell the story of Little Wolf and the Cheyenne Exodus 1878-79, how they hid all winter at Lost Chokecherry Lake, and how the story was first researched and told by Mari Sandoz. How she identified the lake out of the zillion possibilities---and it turned out to be on her brother's land.
I did A LOT of research but had to end up cutting the "chapter" down to almost nothing, as they're going with more of a coffeetable book now, not an atlas. I think it's now just called The Sandhills. Sadly they are only using three of the six illustrations I had already culled my choices down to.
Out next year from NU Press.
I hope I'm not too lazy to develop my original chapter into a full article and get it published somewhere . . . .
|
|
|
Post by emilylevine on Aug 8, 2022 13:08:25 GMT -5
Thanks, Deitmar. I used a lot of their images for Witness, but hadn't thought to look for Little Wolf there. Thanks so much!
|
|
|
Post by emilylevine on Aug 4, 2022 12:22:14 GMT -5
As the captions says, that is Little Chief. (On the Pine Ridge rez.)
Not the Cheyenne Little Wolf.
|
|
|
Post by emilylevine on Aug 3, 2022 17:09:10 GMT -5
I wasn't sure where to post this question, but here seems like a good place. There are only a handful of known images of the Cheyenne chief Little Wolf. Two were taken by Gardner at Ft. Laramie in 1868. This is the one you see most often. The only place I've seen it credited to "Signal Corps Photo, Nat. Archives." But a search of the National Archives and Records Services yields nothing. I am hoping to publish a detail of this image and don't have time to get permissions. Hence I would prefer to cite NARA and not deal with the Newberry (even if they have it). Thanks! Em
|
|
|
Post by emilylevine on Apr 2, 2022 11:04:00 GMT -5
This is a great thread! Thanks everyone.
|
|
|
Post by emilylevine on Jan 22, 2022 14:54:45 GMT -5
Thanks for posting those drawings, Graham! Andrew Fox's are particularly striking and bold.
Hampton was obsessive in tracking their students after they returned home. The "Letter" you posted and other sources were of great help when I was working on Witness.
|
|
|
Post by emilylevine on Dec 9, 2021 16:23:56 GMT -5
The same to you Mr. Thomas. The bit I read about Steps in Waggoner's manuscripts really intrigued me----hence my trip down the rabbit hole and long explanatory note.
The best to you and yours this holiday season. Emily
|
|
|
Post by emilylevine on Dec 9, 2021 13:56:12 GMT -5
And here is what Waggoner wrote:
Soon after arriving at Woody Mountain in the spring of 1877, a band of Chief Joseph’s Nez Perces reached the camp of Sitting Bull. The Nez Perces had spent a terrible winter in the Rocky Mountains and several had frozen to death. There was a Nez Perce by the name of Steps who had both legs frozen so badly that his legs had to be amputated by the military in Canada. He remained with the Sioux in Shoot the Bear’s camp, and came down with the Húŋkpapȟaya in the boats which brought them down to Fort Yates. Steps was a very good horseman, rode wonderfully well although his legs were amputated below his knees so that he walked sometimes on his knees. He was quite a character around Fort Yates and learned to play poker from the soldiers. Many a soldier lost his money to Steps in the games on payday. He was shrewd and swift. Steps died on Oak Creek from pneumonia in the spring of 1903.6
|
|
|
Post by emilylevine on Dec 9, 2021 13:50:36 GMT -5
My explanatory note on Steps for the Josephine Waggoner book:
6. Many people are familiar with the famous 1882 Bailey, Dix, & Mead photograph of Steps or the image taken by D. F. Barry, but little is known about the man. The most complete information that we have comes from an appendix in Yellow Wolf: His Own Story by Lucullus Virgil McWhorter: Seeskoomkee, sometimes pronounced Eskoomskee or Askoomskee, has also been defined as ‘Cut Off.’ His tribal origin was uncertain. All that is known of his prewar life was given to the author by the late Chief Tomio Kamiakun, son of the famous Yakima war chief, Kamiakun. Chief Tomio spoke in Nez Perces.
‘My father,’ said Chief Tomio, ‘often traded with the tribes to the southwest, sometimes going as far as California. On one of these distant trips he purchased No Feet, who was a slave captive. I do not know his tribe. His true name was Attween; I do not know the English meaning. Maybe it has none. . . . A still earlier name was Kepgavants Wewowwow.
‘Askoomskee would steal. One winter while we were living at Tekam. . . , my father, to punish him—after he had been warned repeatedly to reform—one night put steel traps, not heavy ones, on his ankles and wrists, and put him outside the lodge. My father left him there too long in the freezing cold and that caused the loss of both feet and one hand. It cured him of theft. ‘A law among the tribes was that after a purchased slave had served his owner sufficiently to repay the cost of his purchase he was given his freedom. So when three visiting Nez Perces were to return home, my father gave them some cattle and sent Askoomskee along to drive them. My father told him that he need not return unless he chose to, that he was now free to go wherever he wished. Askoomskee remained with the Lower Nez Perces. Though crippled, he was a splendid horseman, and made his living breaking wild horses.’. . . When the Nez Perce camp was attacked at the Big Hole, No Feet escaped from the thick of the confusion by alternately hobbling on his one hand and knees, and rolling, until he gained a shallow depression on the eastern edge of the camp. No Feet is the Indian spoken of by J.B.M. Genin, missionary apostolic, in picturing the pitiful plight of the Nez Perce refugees from the last battlefield, as they fled toward Chief Sitting Bull’s camp in Canada. . . . [Genin tells a different and inaccurate story of how Steps lost his feet].
Reaching Sitting Bull’s village, No Feet remained ever afterward with the Sioux. He was given ‘a good horse, blankets and clothing,’ and eventually married into the tribe.
The Nez Perces later understood that No Feet, in an altercation with the son of a Sioux chief, fatally stabbed the young man. The latter, before dying, exonerated No Feet from blame, and successfully importuned his father not to hold the deed against him. It has been averred—without verification, however—that No Feet was never at any time a slave, and that he came from the Lower Snake River country (52-53).
Yellow Wolf himself told this story: “After supper three men went back on the trail to watch if soldiers followed . . . . One . . . had been a bad Indian, a thief. He was not a Nez Perce. Before coming to us, he was a slave. For stealing, his master put steal traps on his wrists and ankles, then placed him outside the tepee in a winter night. He must have been left out too long. Both feet and one hand died and came off. We called him Seeskoomkee [No Feet]” (50).
Further information on Steps comes to us in two letters from the Thomas O’dell Collection at Black Hills State University, E. Y. Berry Library: The first, written to O’dell by Mrs. Louise Sturgis states, “Nez Perce Indian Step was hired by my brother Ed to break horses and he can handle horses with his hands and feet off, wrapped in rags. The wild horses would be so gentle with Step but they would get wild again, so my brother thought he doped the horses, and discharged Step, and I never know where he went or what became of him after he left our place. We were living at Antelope Creek 12 miles south of Fort Pierre . . . . Step was a mean man, I remember one time he tried to whip me with his quirt that he hangs on his arm all the time because I was talking to one of my father’s hired men. ‘White men no good’ he said, and this is all I remember of him.” The second letter, from the Superintendent of the Tongue River agency, Charles H. Jennings, brings us to the conclusion of Steps’ life (a wholly different version than Waggoner’s): “We have consulted some of our older Indians and find that the man in question was known to have come with a group of Sioux Indians who seem to have come here for a visit. We are informed that this Nez Perce Indian died about 1896 on Rosebud Creek near the allotment of Ridge Walker. It seems that Steps was living at this place with old man Bear Claws who at that time lived on Rosebud Creek. He is said to have been buried near the place where he died.” I am grateful to Donovin Sprague for bringing these letters to my attention.
|
|
|
Post by emilylevine on Apr 10, 2021 23:04:09 GMT -5
Yes, it was always good to see her posts here. I knew people here would want to know and maybe hadn't heard. Although, of course, news spreads fast on social media . . .
|
|
|
Post by emilylevine on Apr 10, 2021 15:07:56 GMT -5
It is with a heavy heart that I pass on the news of the passing of our friend LaDonna Brave Bull Tamakawastewin Allard, historian of the Standing Rock Huŋkpapȟa and Yanktoŋais. For many around the country and around the world, LaDonna became known to them in 2016 when she created Sacred Stones Camp on her land along the Cannonball River at the northern border of the reservation as part of the fight to protect the water from the Dakota Access pipeline. But to me and many here in this group, we knew her as a brilliant historian and genealogist. I met LaDonna at Fort yates in about 2007 while on a research trip while working on Josephine Waggoner's manuscripts. Although she had just lost her son, she was gracious and welcomed me. Over the years I worked on that book, she answered so many questions and helped me with translations I could not figure out. I also saw her in 2014 when I gave a presentation about the book at Timber Lake on the Cheyenne River rez. A lot of relatives of Waggoner's came from across the country, as we were also going to Lemmon and Fort Yates to lay two to rest. LaDonna came to my book talk with Miles and I remember her talking for a long time to Mr. Bickell, a local rancher and historian. He had brought a saddle that had belonged to Mary Crawler (Moves Robe Woman) and they were discussing it---and much more. One that same trip I was taking all of Waggoner's manuscripts up to Bismarck to be housed and the State Historical Society and I stopped at Fort Yates along with two of Waggoner's great granddaughters to meet LaDonna at the Sitting Bull tourist center on the college campus there so that she could look at and spend time with the manuscripts. I always felt---and I told her---that in my eyes she was the heir to Josephine as the tribal historian. Josephine would have been so proud of her. We all went to eat at My Auntie's and talked and talked. We have lost a remarkable women. Smart and brave and hardworking. A truly great historian. A friend.
|
|
|
Post by emilylevine on Sept 10, 2020 17:11:37 GMT -5
Josephine Waggoner has a page or two about Turning Bear in her book, published as Witness:
Chapter Fifty-Seven Matȟó Kawíŋǧe Turning Bear <IMAGE 72 verso>
Chief Turning Bear was born the year called Šúŋgleškáota Awičáglípi, When Many Spotted Horses Were Brought Home. This was 1840 and these horses were taken from the southern tribes. He was of the Hiŋháŋšuŋ Wapȟáha band; this band was later called Wágluȟe for hanging around the garrison. They were accused of trading their daughters to the white man for loaves of white bread. The hostiles who did not want to mix their blood with the whites made the accusation. Turning Bear was of the Brulé tribe of Sioux. He was with Red Cloud, Swift Bear, and Spotted Tail when they were sent out into Wyoming to bring in Crazy Horse. Turning Bear swore allegiance to Crazy Horse and gave his word that he would stay by him no matter what happened. These promises proved futile when the time came for Crazy Horse to be imprisoned. Turning Bear could not bear the thought of imprisonment. After Crazy Horse’s speech at Fort Robinson, he was escorted by soldiers toward a building which proved to be a guardhouse. When Turning Bear saw the windows and door he stopped short and exclaimed, “Why, this is a guardhouse!” Little Big Man, a Brulé warrior who was there said, “Crazy Horse, do not disgrace yourself by entering a prison. Remember what you are and what you have been to your people. To an Indian, an honorable death by an enemy is better than an ignoble imprisonment of shame and disgrace.”
Crazy Horse was a proud chieftain, a born leader in battle, too proud to be subdued by an enemy race. It was never intended that he should grovel in the dust while the enemy stood on his neck. He was a true son of his ancestral forefathers who had died fighting for what God had given them as a natural heritage. It was right that he should die at the point of a sharp instrument—in those days a racial claim for all who would die defending their nation.
After a guard stabbed Crazy Horse through the body for refusing to enter the guardhouse, he was placed in a hospital tent where hourly messages were sent to General Lee by scouts on duty. Louis Bordeaux was the interpreter.1
Turning Bear tried to rally the hostiles to action, but they were held to their promise for peace by the agency Indians and the scouts. Half the Indians were for fighting and half were against it. All the chiefs had to talk a good deal to keep their men from breaking out. The Indians had been disarmed, so there were no weapons to avenge this deed, and it was Crazy Horse’s wish that his life be the only one to be sacrificed. He wanted peace among his people.
Turning Bear lost his life while crossing a railroad track at Valentine, Nebraska in 1896. He was fifty-two years old.2
(Information from Susan Bordeaux Bettelyoun)
My note: 2. Hardorff gives us the following “capsule biography of the Brulé leader: ‘Turning Bear . . . enlisted in the U.S. Indian Scouts in 1877. In 1880 he was indicted for the killing of a Nebraska citizen, but was released because civilian authorities did not have legal authority over Indians. It is further known that he took a leading part in the Ghost Dance hostilities that broke out in 1890. Turning Bear was killed by a train in 1912 while waiting for his son’s arrival from Carlisle Institute at the railroad station in Valentine, Nebraska” (114).
|
|