Two Sticks - From Wounded Knee to the Gallows

[grahamew]

Anybody read this yet?

[Dietmar]

I got it this week and will start reading it very soon. Two Sticks' story has nearly been forgotten.

Great to find two very rare photographs of Two Sticks and the Lakota prisoners in it.

[grahamew]

Yes, they'really good. It's a strange book, though. I'll post my thoughts later.

[grahamew]

Okay... On the positive side, it goes into considerable detail about the graft, corruption and lying that permeated the politics of the region and particularly on the reservations; it also highlights the breakdown in Indian/White relationships, especially on Pine Ridge, where you had inept and corrupt agents unable to act and relying on the aid of the redoubtable Young Man Afraid and then not giving him any credit. You can also see this looking at the group which composed the rebels, the group who were continuing to Ghost Dance, despite the oft-repeated assertion that this was all over after the surrenders in 1891, a view still found in otherwise excellent books like Rani-Henrik Andersson's A Whirlwind Passed Through Our Country. Many of these men previously had a good relationship with the whites, like No Water, No Flesh and Moccasin Top. The fractious state of play on the frontier post-Wounded Knee is also often overlooked - but not here. Unfortunately, there's a nod to the present day as he examines the appalling nature of the press coverage of events. The authors add detail about the trials of Plenty Horses and Few Tails that aren't in the Di Silvestro book on the former and unlike that author, they don't spend half the book giving readers a potted history of Lakota-White relations before getting down to the years around Wounded Knee; it's also interesting to see photos of the men on trial, including what looks like a prison line-up of the younger men and some of their associates stripped to breechclouts and necklaces/neckerchiefs for the photographer.

Without wishing to spoil it, a few things I didn't like: guessing what people would have said on occasion; missing some obvious sources (using Sandoz instead of Kingsley Bray when putting No Water in context by discussing his relationship with Crazy Horse; in fact, the primary source material has been published too so that could have been directly referenced); not looking - at all - at Bad Heart Bull's version of events (he does, after all, put himself in the midst of the affair and provides drawings, including one showing how the bodies were found, which aren't mentioned in the book); not giving us more on Two Sticks himself, possibly because the writers have stuck largely to 'official' sources; providing a rather pat conclusion that after the hanging (and he seems to have been hung for instigating the killing of the four cowboys because it was the younger men who actually killed them), 'blatant racism was no longer tolerated' - a phrase repeated within the space of four lines, which looks like bad editing and is highly contentious, to put it mildly...

[kingsleybray]

don't know whether this picked up on in the new book: the earliest reference I've found to Two Sticks is in a military report from March 1874. It transcribes a list of "Indian Lodges that drew Rations at Whetstone [Agency], winter of 1873 and 1874". Among the "Minneconjou & Northern" tally is an entry for Two Sticks, a headman leading 5 lodges.

Note: Whetstone Agency was renamed Spotted Tail Agency later in 1874.

[grahamew]

According to this, he was a Brule from Two Strikes' band and was known as Red Elk until an accident somewhere between 1888 -1890 when he fell from a horse and while he was healing he used two sticks to get around. After Wounded Knee, he attached himself to No Water's village, which later hosted Short Bull when he returned from travelling with Cody.

It's interesting you mention Miniconjou because I'm pretty sure that's how he and his sons are described in Bad Heart Bull and the authors of this book align him with the Broken Arrow band, who were Miniconjou, weren't they?

Sounds a little confused; perhaps the result of a marriage at some point.