Bull Bear and his family

[hreinn]

OK.
Good to have this confirmed.
This is the third person we have a name for of those who were killed in this fight in 1841.

Out of 8 who were killed in this most unfortunate and horrendous fight between these close relatives we have the following names:
1. Bull Bear
2. Mad Dog
3. Yellow Lodge (Red Cloud's brother according to Hyde in Red Cloud's Folk)

It would be good to know the names and family background of the other 5 persons who were killed.
I am sure that modern Lakhota people know the names of them all.
At least the families of those who were killed in this fight know the name of their beloved family member.

Hreinn

[dado]

Kingsley, thanks for the many and great information. Thanks also for the great effort in research.
Another division (Oiyuphe) from about 1810 to 1830 adds the Oglala tribal circle. Which families (tiwahe) belong to Oiyuphe Division (in addition to the "Wakan", "Maka", "Oiyuhpe proper" and "Siksicela")?
To which families may be the chiefs "Tobacco", "White Earrings" fall into?
Culbertson in 1850 mentions the "Old skin band necklace" (Chief Standing Bull), the "Night Cloud Band" (Chief Yellow Eagle) and the "Red Lodge Band". In what context you order this one?
Thanks again in advance!

dado from Germany

[Dietmar]

Willkommen dado,

seems we have got several new members from Germany during the last weeks.

Regarding the Oyuphe:

Please look here:

amertribes.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=oglala1&action=display&thread=1251


Beste Grüße

Dietmar

[hreinn]

Of course, Joseph N. Nicollet's rich information from 1839 is invaluable.

BUT.
Nicollet's information about leaders of 2 out of 3 Oglala divisions are not in coherence to other information.

a) Mad Dog was the leader of Ku-Inyan according to Nicollet.
But not Bull Bear as most often considered.
For example we always refer to Bear people but not Dog people.
The feud was between Bull Bear and Smoke but not Mad Dog and Smoke.
As I understand the matter, Bull Bear would have been oldest of the brothers/"brothers" Bull Bear, Iron Hatchet, Mad Dog and Self-Met.
So most likely the head of Ku-Inyan.

b) Yellow Eagle was the leader of Onkp'hatinas (Hunkpatilla) according to Nicollet.
But not Smoke nor Old Man Afraid of His Horse as most often considered.

Is this an inaccuracy on Nicollet's behalf ?
Or due to the fluidity of leadership among the Lakhota ?
Or due unfortunate happening that the "expected" chiefs of Hunkpatilla and Ku-Inyan were not in camp when Nicollet was among the Oglala (for example on hunting) ?

Can we rely on Nicollet's information that White Earrings was the leader of Oyurpe (Oyuhpe) ?


What does the name Self-Met (Iye itcila) mean ?
Is there any additional information available for this man ?


Hreinn

[kingsleybray]

hreinn, I really don't think we can be so dogmatic and say there must only be one chief for each band. E. T. Denig wrote some perceptive words that we should bear in mind:

"In each and all the bands mentioned there are several men bearing the character, rank,and name of chiefs. But he only is considered as chief of the band who heads and leads it. Yet this power does not give him a right to tyrannize over any of the other chiefs, or dictate to them any course they would not willingly follow; neither does it detract from their dignity and standing to acknowledge him as the head. Some one must be the nominal leader, and as this place involves some trouble and action and is not repaid with any extra honors or gifts it is not in general much envied."

So, no I don't think it's inaccuracy by Nicollet, his information is among the best we have and he was a very sensitive observer. By the way, his information on chiefs and bands was derived from conversations with traders and Lakotas at Ft Pierre in July 1839. He did not visit any Oglala camps, did not meet the chiefs he mentions. Perhaps this is a weakness, but at the end of the day we are very fortunate to have this source.

Not sure if Bull Bear was the eldest of those brothers. Lawrence BB lists them in the order Iron Hatchet, Mad Dog, Bull Bear - possibly that reflects the birth order?

Smoke in 1841 was noted by David Adams as a "brav" in the Oglala village on Chugwater Ck., where the chiefs were listed as Le Borgne, Bull Bear, Fast Whirlwind, and Lone Man. So I reiterate his main affiliation BEFORE December 1841 was the Kuhinyan maximal band. He was born into the Tashnahecha tiyoshpaye (of a Sihasapa father) which was created out of intermarriage btw the True Oglala and Kuhinyan. After 1841 he moved his camp of 20-odd lodges (the Bad Face band) to the Oglala proper-

Old Man Afraid of His Horse was not the chief of the Hunkpatila until 1842 or 1843. He was noted as the "brav" of that band by Adams in Nov. 1841, the first contemporary reference I can find to him. His father seems to have been already dead before this. The main members of the council in Hunkpatila at this period were likely Yellow Eagle (born c. 1780, a 'father' to Old Man Afraid?), Standing Bull (SB II, born c. 1770), and Makes the Song (paternal grandfather to Crazy Horse, born c. 1785). The latter's 'brother' Black Elk II was an akichita leader in 1825, possibly another civil leader by the frame 1835-45.

And, yes, very much - we must never under-estimate the fluidity of Lakota leadership!!

[dado]

Hyde mentioned in his book “Spotted Tail’s Folk, A History of the Brule Sioux” (Chapter 4 “The Praire on Fire”) 15 Southern Oglala subchiefs and 10 Brule Sioux subchiefs who lived south of the Platte River (source Agent Twiss, October 28, 1859).

We presume this chiefs:

Brule tiwahe:

Little Thunder & Spotted Tail (Ring Band),
Swift Bear (Corn Band), Standing Elk (Corn Band),
Dog Hawk (Orphan),
Brave Heart (?)

Southern Oglala tiwahe:

Bad Wound (Gopher),
Whistler (Cut off or Oglala Orphans?),
Pawnee Killer (Spleen Band),
Man who walks under the Ground (?),
Medicine Eagle (?),
Big Head (?),
Standing Cloud (?)

Who can help to complete this list? Which were the extended families of the headmen / subchiefs?

Thanks.
Dado

[dado]

We try it again!

Another division (Oiyuphe) from about 1810 to 1830 adds the Oglala tribal circle. Which families (tiwahe) belong to Oiyuphe Division (in addition to the "Wakan", "Maka", "Oiyuhpe proper" and "Siksicela")?
To which families may be the chiefs "Tobacco", "White Earrings" fall into?
Culbertson in 1850 mentions the "Old skin band necklace" (Chief Standing Bull), the "Night Cloud Band" (Chief Yellow Eagle) and the "Red Lodge Band". In what context we can order this one?
Thanks again in advance!

dado

[dado]

I read somewhere that John Colhoff recorded in 1949 that in the White Clay District the leader of Siksicela band was Red-Horn-Bull. Perhaps he is same with the akicita Red-Horn-Bull in Big Roads Oiyuhpe band in 1880 at Ft. Keogh.
Red-Horn-Bull is also mentioned in the Custer Battle, he led a charge on Reno's troops.
Has anybody more information about Red-Horn-Bull or the Siksicla band as part of Oglala Lakota?

Happy Christmas from Germany wish dado!

[kingsleybray]

This time last year dado posted a question on this thread, bearing on the leadership of the Southern Oglala. Here is part of dado's question:

Hyde mentioned in his book “Spotted Tail’s Folk, A History of the Brule Sioux” (Chapter 4 “The Praire on Fire”) 15 Southern Oglala subchiefs and 10 Brule Sioux subchiefs who lived south of the Platte River (source Agent Twiss, October 28, 1859).

Read more: amertribes.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=oglala1&action=display&thread=1268&page=2#ixzz2SAN5tMkt

The Hyde quotation, p. 95 of the 1974 2nd ed. of Spotted Tail's Folk, actually mentions a report by Agent Twiss in which Twiss asks for funds for presents to be made, at a treaty council pencilled for the following summer, to Bad Wound and "his fifteen subchiefs", and to Little Thunder and his "ten Brule subchiefs". The original document also asks for funds for gifts to Little Owl and his seven Arapaho subchiefs and to White Cow and five Cheyenne subchiefs.

dado asked to help identify the composition of Bad Wound's Southern Oglala council. Recently I found a new source, a set of interviews by anthropologist Donald Collier at Pine Ridge in 1939. They are housed in the Fred Eggan collection of the University of Chicago, Special Collections.

Collier spoke at greatest length to a Southern Oglala named Lone Bull. born c. 1856 according to his statement. He told Collier that in the 1860-65 period (his childhood) there were three sub-camps of the Southern Oglala or Kiyaksa: the Kiyaksa proper, the "Guhiya" (Kuhinyan), and the Skokpa (also known as the Spleen band). Each of these camps fielded a council of four headmen, as follows:

Kiyaksa proper:
Little Wound (chief)
Broken Arm
Stabber
Slow Dog

Kuhinyan:
Big Brain (chief)
Whistler
Spotted Horse
Bluffing Bear

Skokpa:
Yellow Bear (chief)
Weasel Bear
One Crow
Red Horse

He also said that Pawnee Killer (of Skokpa, a paternal uncle to Yellow Bear), was reccognized for a number of years as the overall chief of the Southern Oglala. At a later date, perhaps c. 1875, he passed on this status to Little Wound.

Lone Bull omits to mention Bad Wound and his sub-camp. I suggest that this camp, the Tashnahecha, should be added as a fourth constituent of the Southern Oglalas, and I would reconstruct from contemporary documents that the following four leaders may be identified as the headmen:

Tashnahecha:
Bad Wound (chief)
Black Warbonnet
Standing Cloud
Walks Underground (killed 1868).

Maybe a little too neat but here is a Southern Oglala council c. 1860 comprising Bad Wound (the ranking chief as recognized by the government) and fifteen "subchiefs". Interesting!

[dado]

Thanks Kingsley, our understanding of the circle of the Oglala tribe grows more and more.

Our questions and assumptions are:

• In your list, we cannot confidently classify the Minisha and the Wablenicha. The Minisha were certainly part of the Kiyaksa proper and the Wablenicha part of the Skopa? Is this correct and who were the headmens?

• Prior to 1865 Blackfoot and Two Face were regarded as the chiefs of the Tapisleca Band. The Tapisleca were still part of the Oglala proper or Hunkpatila maximum band. Does this mean that the Tapisleca have joined the Skopas under Yellow Bear II after the death of Blackfoot and Two Face? Or maybe, the Melt Band was divided by the cholera disaster of 1849? A portion joined to the Oglala proper (Skopa/Tapisleca under Yellow Thunder, the father of the famous Little Big Man), a further (Skopa under Black Hawk) joined to the Kiyaksa / Kuhinyan?

• Whistler or Little Bull was born ca.1833 and seems to be the successor of Big Brain or Big Head as Chief of the Kuhinyan. Is there an evidence of kinship between the families of Whistler, Two Crows (chief in the 1830s) and Big Brain? According to an Oglala Winter Count a Little Bull was killed in 1817. Obviously, this was an ancestor of the later Whistler!?

• Stabber is named by Lewis and Clark in 1804 as one Chief of the Oglala proper. Parkman met a chief named Stabber in 1846. But he did not assigned him as an Oglala or as a Brule. Hyde named a son or a successor with the same name as one subchief in Conquering Bear's Wazhaza Band. This is contradictory, unless this Stabber and his family has joined the Southern Oglala (Kiyaksa proper) after the death of Conquering Bear!?

Thanks, dado

[kingsleybray]

Extremely perceptive questions, dado. I don't propose to answer them all in detail in this post, but I think we can propose a persuasive connection linking the Skokpa in some way to the Minisha band. Lone Bull told Collier that the Sans Arcs, Itazipcho were when Lone Bull "was very small, part of Pawnee Killer's band", i.e the Skokpa; but that they "broke off and went up north under the leadership of Yellow Thunder." This must date to the later 1850s, Lone Bull being born c. 1856.

As you will know, the Minisha among the Brules and Oglalas were ultimately branched off from the Sans Arcs. In my history of the early Lakota, I will propose that was an event of the 1760s. In fact, Minisha was the name for the Sans Arcs before the latter name was coined. Rated among the Brule (Sichangu) by Tabeau, Lewis & Clark (1804), and Nicollet (1839), part of the Minisha, led by Le Borgne and Red Water (c. 30 lodges total), joined Southern Oglala relatives in 1839-40. So what Lone Bull is referring to, I feel sure, is the return of certain families of the Minisha band from the Southern Oglala camp circle to rejoin relatives among the Sans Arcs. Note how this fits with Hyde's proposal (RED CLOUD'S FOLK p. 311) that the Minisha may have joined the Sans Arcs at the end of the 1850s, thus explaining the disappearance of the name among the Oglalas before reservation times.

The fact that Lone Bull equates his offshoot Sans Arcs with Pawnee Killer's sub-camp suggests strongly that Skokpa was in some sense a continuation of the older Minisha grouping. It is worth noting that Charles Turning Hawk told Scudder Mekeel that the Skokpa were originally derived from the Brule. This suggests established connections between the Minisha and the Skokpa. Either they were part of the 30 lodges that joined the Oglalas in 1840 or (more likely, I think), they were already rated Oglala but intermarried strongly with the Minisha in the 1840s and '50s, creating a unitary camp.

Two Crows: his family, with his brothers Poor Elk, Broken Arm, Lone Bull I, and sister Eagle Comes Out, constituted a leading tiyoshpaye within the Kiyaksa proper.

Whistler, according to Lone Bull, was originally a Lower Brule, but his "chum" (kola), Bluffing Bear, was a prominent Kuhinyan, the son of Hole in the Head (brother to Big Brain). He visited frequently among the Kuhinyan, and eventually married a Kuhinyan girl (daughter of Bearskin Robe) and settled permanently. Two of his daughters later married Pawnee Killer.

There is good evidence that the Stabbers were identified with the Wacheunpa (Roaster) tiyoshpaye. This group floated between the Wazhazha and the Kiyuksa. Lone Bull does equate Stabber with the Kiyaksa proper. I think he is referring to the headmen Parkman met. There was a sequence of Stabbers going back to the 18th c. and forward to today.

I will add more and address your other questions, not forgetting the Shiyo problem. Please can you refresh me on the winter count reference to Little Bull in 1817?

[kingsleybray]

dado, I've had reason to rethink the Minisha-Skokpa connection. I can't rehearse all my reasoning right now, but I believe that in 1839-40 the Brule Minisha band divided, with half (c. 30 lodges) joining the Oglalas (Bull Bear's village). This looks like three tiyoshpaye, associated with chief Red Water (born c. 1785), the aged headman Le Borgne (Ishtakpe, One Eye; a 'brother' of Bull Bear), and with the family of Calfskin Robe, a famous holy man. Lone Bull (to Collier) recalled the latter as Wears Young Buffalo Robe. This latter tiyoshpaye was the Skokpa. Calfskin Robe was survived by three sons, Long Bear, Running Enemy, and Pawnee Killer. In 1845 part of the tiyoshpaye rejoined the Sans Arc tribe, from which the original Minisha band had budded off in the 1760s. In 1849 the Skokpa suffered severely in the cholera epidemic (Makula winter count statement). So things looked bad for the Skokpa, but in the 1850s Pawnee Killer emerged as the principal war leader (blotahunka) among all the Southern Oglalas. Late in the 1850s part of the Minisha remaining among the Oglala returned to the Sans Arcs, leaving Skokpa the most important tiyoshpaye in their sub-camp of the wider Kiyaksa or Southern Oglala division.

Good question about the other half of the Spleen band - the Tapishlecha. The way I see it is that two 'brothers', Two Face and Blackfoot, who belonged to the True Oglala, married into Skokpa in the early 1840s. Calico, born c. 1844 and the 'son' of one of these brothers, was (again this is from Lone Bull to Collier) the son of one of Pawnee Killer's sisters. They generated their own tiyoshpaye, the Tapishlecha, which was connected to Skokpa as a sister band. But as you say, they seem to have more 'northern' Oglala contacts than Skokpa - reflected in their settling at Pine Ridge on White Clay Creek near Payabya, Loafer, Bad Face etc.; while Skokpa settled easr of Kyle near the Kiyaksa.

Hope this makes sense.

[hreinn]

Interesting discussions.

I have never before noticed that the Spleen band was also known as Skokpa.

Even though there exists at least 2 different stories about the origin of the name Sans Arc.
It is tempting to connect the names Sans Arc and Skokpa.

skokpa (škókpá) = concave, hollow, bowl-shaped
which could be used to describe the shape of a bow, therefore referring to a bow.
So when part of the people forming Skokpa split off, it is easy to see the logic behind the name Sans Arc for the group which went away.
Where Sans Arc is from the French language and means; No Bows or Without Bows.



Additional detail:
In the Lakota language, Skokpa is not another word for Sans Arc nor Spleen.

Sans Arc = Itazipacol = Itázipčho
where:
itázipa = a bow
čhóla = without


Spleen = Tapisleca = Tĥaphíšleča
where:
tĥa = a ruminant (for example a buffalo)
phíšleča = spleen


The words:
a) Skokpa (Kingsley Bray's version in reply #25)
b) Skopa (Dado's version in reply #24)
seems to be more or less equal, according to Ullrich's New Lakota Dictionary.
where:
Skopa (škópA) = to be bowedor arched, warped, to be bent in a gentle curve
Skokpa (škókpá) = concave, hollow, bowl-shaped

Hreinn

[dado]

Kingsley,

a lot of new information and details that are quite logical. Thank you!

Here are our first thoughts and speculations on the whole:

We can assume that the Southern nation (Itokaga oyate) disintegrated 1775/76 (1785?) – see Victor Douville and the Amercan Horse Winter Count.

Who were the Oglala tribal circle around 1785?
- True Oglala (Sitting Bear/Three Bears & Yellow Eagle I families),
- Hunkpatila (Standing Bull I family),
- Oyuhpe with roots in the Hunkpapas?,
- Kiyaksa (Stone Knife/White Swan family) with roots in the Santees,
- Kuhinyan (Two Arrows & Man-Afraid-of-His-Horse I families) with roots in ?,
- Shiyo (roots in the True Oglalas and Cheyenne ?, or from the Brules – see Victor Douville).

By population growth and marriages with other Cheyenne and Sioux the tribal circle grows up to 1800/05. More new bands were:
- Tashnacecha (Black Rock/No Water/Bad Wound family) from marriages between the True Oglala and Kuhinyan,
- Bad Faces (Fast Whirlwind/Brave Bear family)
- Kapozha (old group name in the Santees - Black Elk I family) from marriages between Kiyaksa and Hunkpatila).

However, between 1785/90 to 1805/1820 the Kiyaksa and Kuhinyan had joined the Brule tribal circle.

Would be interesting to continue the above list until the reservation time.

Shortly our other thoughts:

Exciting would be the question: In which period the family of the first Little Bull moved to the Kuhinyan? 1805-1820 or 1830-1835, as Bull Bear moved to Fort William with Oglala and other Lakota groups? The family seems to have roots in the Miniconjous as well in the Brules.

Unfortunately we have not found the source again after a Little Bull was killed in 1817. We look further, we may also have misinterpreted something. Sorry, ..

Knife Chief seems to been the successor or headman of the Roaster band after Stabber in the reservation time.

Greetings from Germany,
dado

[dado]

Shortly a further thought:

By 1800 we can expect about 10 to 15 extended families (1000 Oglalas). We found 9-10 in the above list.
In the winter counts and Pike to be mentioned:
- White Blanket (1805, chief named by Pike) and
- Shade and / or Mad Shade / Soul (1787, No Ears Winter Count "Shade's father was killed", 1825 Atkinson treaty "head-warrior of Ghost Boy's band).
Room for further speculation and suggestions!