Post by clw on Jul 16, 2008 10:25:30 GMT -5
I find myself using these boards as a sort of online filing system, serving as a backup to my computer for records I want to maintain. In looking through my files for such things, I remembered this. It was written by a Lakota friend of mine and provides a great perspective.
It occurs to me also that we share information about many facinating NDN people, but we rarely mention the most famous. Yet there is much conflicting information about them and what better place to gather it all and sort through it? So I'll begin a thread on Tatanka Iyotake (or Iyotanka) with this contemporary Mnicoujou view...
It occurs to me also that we share information about many facinating NDN people, but we rarely mention the most famous. Yet there is much conflicting information about them and what better place to gather it all and sort through it? So I'll begin a thread on Tatanka Iyotake (or Iyotanka) with this contemporary Mnicoujou view...
Sitting Bull was born to a father of the same name and his mother was Her-Holy-Door. There has always been alot of debate about when and where he was born. But oral history says he was born in March of 1831 at Many Caches, on the south side of the Grand River .
He was first given the name Psica Hoka..... Jumping Badger but no one called him anything but Hun'kesni which means slow when you work or walk, or sickly. So he would have better been called Iwastela, for his slow careful way of considering everything from the time he was even a baby it is said.
Sitting Bull did not hate the whites, he just loved his own people more. When Sitting Bull was a boy, there was no thought of trouble with the whites. He was acquainted with many of the early traders, Picotte, Choteau, Primeau, Larpenteur, and others, and liked them, as did most of his people in those days. All the early records show this friendly attitude of the Lakota/D/N, and the great fur companies for a century and a half depended upon them for the bulk of their trade. It wasn't until the middle of the last century that they woke up all of a sudden to the danger threatening their very existence. And at that same time many of the old chiefs had been already depraved by the whisky and other vices of the whites, and in the vicinity of the forts and trading posts at Sioux City , Saint Paul, and Cheyenne, there was general demoralization. The drunkards and hangers-on were ready to sell almost anything they had for the favor of the trader. The better and stronger element held aloof from all this. They would not have anything of the white man except his hatchet, gun, and knife. They utterly refused to cede their lands; and as for the rest, they were willing to let him alone as long as he did not interfere with their life and customs, which wasn't long.
It was in 1865 and 1866 when he met a Canadian half-breed, Louis Riel, who was the instigator of two rebellions, who had come across the line for safety. In fact at this time he harbored a number of outlaws and fugitives from justice. His conversations with these, especially with the French mixed-bloods, who inflamed his prejudices against the Americans, all had their influence in making Sitting Bull a determined enemy to the white man. While among his own people he was always affable and genial, he became boastful and domineering in his dealings with the now hated race. He once remarked that "if we wish to make any impression upon the pale-face, it is necessary to put on his mask."
No he did not lead the charge at Greasy Grass. But he did recieve the vision of Custer's fall before the battle took place. Many claims have been made that day calling him a coward.... saying he fled the scene entirely! It is known that most of the serious fighting was done by the younger men of the tribes. In most cases "active warrior" status occurred between the ages of 15 to 40. Anyone surviving years of intertribal warfare and encounters with the U.S. Cavalry became more notable for the wisdom that they had acquired over the years and many had become leaders as medicine men and chiefs. It was up to the willing young men of the tribes to prove themselves in the field of battle and to provide for the safety of their people. At the time of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Sitting Bull was about 45 years old, somewhat over the warrior age. But he had already long been known by some and feared by others for his many brave deeds in the face of the enemy. Sitting Bull was very much involved with the events of that day. He had to be... it was the Hunkpapa circle, at the southern end of the encampment that was first to come under attack. Sitting Bull, at the first alarm that Reno's men were at the edge of the camp, did gather up his mother and most of his relatives and took them to safety in the foothills to the west of the river, but then he quickly returned to gather his war equipment and head out against Reno's men. He invoked courage in the hearts of many of the young warriors that day and joined the action on the east side of the Reno skirmish line near the patch of timber where the soldiers retreated after the line was broken by the charging Lakota's. Sitting Bull was charging and shooting with the others, and after the bulk of Reno's men had "charged" out of the timber to the bluffs across the river, Sitting Bull crossed the river and went up the ravine to help contain the soldiers by holding a steady rain of rifle fire on them. Now that Reno's men were contained, he proceeded across the bluffs to Weir Point and down into the Medicine Tail coulee from where he could see that the battle was going well for his people. He then crossed the Little Big Horn and went to the areas where the women and children had gathered in order to protect them from harm if soldiers should appear from the north. In none of his actions that day did he show cowardice or fear, but only the calm, forceful leadership of a general overseeing the battle! He was right there, in the thick of things defending his people and their way of life as he so often had to do in the past.
After the LBH, the Lakota people fled north to Canada to escape retaliation. There, Sitting Bull met one of the few white men he ever trusted, a Major in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, James Morrow Welsh. But the United States pursued these 'fugitives' ...even offering a "full pardon" if the Lakota agreed to settle on a reservation.Although Sitting Bull had no intentions of returning to live on a reservation, increased hunting of buffalo had drastically reduced their numbers.
To avoid starvation, he and his people returned to the United States in 1881. While his people were settled on Standing Rock, Sitting Bull served 20 months as a prisoner at Ft.Randall. Surrounded by whites day in and day out, he became more convinced of the vast differences between whites and his own people. When he returned to his people, he lived in a cabin, tried his hand at farming, and even worked for one season in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.
And of visions, Sitting Bull favored the Ghost Dance but derived little comfort from it, because he had had a vision that he would die soon... at the hands of his own people. In a very short period, the way of life of the Plains peoples had almost died out. There were no buffalo to hunt, and the People had to subsist on government handouts of beef and other provisions, mainly things they weren't even familiar with. Without buffalo skins, even the very clothes on their backs were handouts. There were no more raids to steal horses, no battles. So when the government started recruiting young Native Americans to act as police officers on the reservation, Sitting Bull approved. His feeling was that it was the only rite of passage the young men had left. But on December 15, 1890 the government tried to arrest Sitting Bull. They sent one of his own ..one of the police he approved of for the young men. They entered his cabin at daybreak, woke him from a sound sleep, helped him to dress, and led him unresisting from the house. But when he came out in the gray dawn of that morning, to find his cabin surrounded by armed men and himself led away to he knew not what fate, he cried out loudly:
'They have taken me: what say you to it?"
Other men poured out of the neighboring houses, and in a few minutes the police were themselves surrounded with an excited and rapidly increasing crowd of men. They harangued the crowd in vain... Sitting Bull's blood was up, and once again he appealed to his men. His adopted brother, the Assiniboine captive whose life he had saved so many years before, was the first to fire. His shot killed Lieutenant Bull Head, who held Sitting Bull by the arm. Then there was a short but sharp conflict, in which Sitting Bull and six of his defenders and six of the Indian police were killed, with many more wounded. The chief's young son, Crow Foot, and his "brother" died with him. They sent 43, FORTY THREE! Lakota policemen to bring him in. One of the Lakota policemen put a bullet through Sitting Bull's head. I won't give his name here.... don't want any arguments with HIS ancestors! Sitting Bull was buried without honors of any kind..the soldiers put him in a hole and threw chemicals over his body so he would rot faster. Meanwhile a big ceremony with full honors was held at the Catholic church for those who were killed in the skirmish of taking him prisoner.
He is remembered among the lakota not only as an inspirational leader and fearless warrior but as a loving father, a gifted singer, a man always affable and friendly toward others, whose deep religious faith gave him prophetic insight and lent special power to his prayers.
And I will end this by saying he accepted in good faith the treaty of 1868. After his dinner with President Grant he considered that the life of the white man as he saw it was no life for his people, but hoped by close adherence to the terms of this treaty to preserve the Big Horn and Black Hills country for a permanent hunting ground. When gold was discovered and the irrepressible gold seekers made their now 'historic' dash across the plains into the Black Hills, then his faith in the white man's honor was gone forever, and he took his final and most persistent stand in defense of his nation and home. His bitter, but at the same time well-grounded and philosophical dislike of the conquering race is well expressed in a speech made before the purely Indian council before referred to, upon the Powder River.
I have given it in brief...... "Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love! Every seed is awakened, and all animal life. It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even to our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves to inhabit this vast land."
"Yet hear me, friends! We have now to deal with another people, small and feeble when our forefathers first met with them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possessions is a disease in them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break, but the poor may not! They have a religion in which the poor worship, but the rich will not! They even take tithes of the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule. They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse. They compel her to produce out of season, and when sterile she is made to take medicine in order to produce again. All this is sacrilege."
"This nation is like a spring freshet; it overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path. We cannot dwell side by side. Only seven years ago we made a treaty by which we were assured that the buffalo country should be left to us forever. Now they threaten to take that from us also. My brothers, shall we submit? or shall we say to them: 'First kill me, before you can take possession of my fatherland!"'