Years ago I compiled some biographical data about White Thunder for a German magazine. This is a quick translation
White Thunder
Brulé / Wazhazha
(1838 – 1884)
Wakinyan Ska
About 1838 Wakinyan Ska or White Thunder , a later Brulé Chief, was born in a Wazhazha camp. Almost nothing is known about his parents and his childhood. About the year 1866 we find white Thunder in one oft he Loafer camps around Fort Laramie.
According to Susan Bordeaux Bettelyoun White Thunder, who was a cousin of her mother Huntkaluta Win, was born in the winter „canhasan wakpala el titanka wan kagapi“ („When the Sioux build a dirt lodge on White Cottonwood Creek“), which must have been around 1838, as mentioned before. In his younger years Wakinyan Ska often took part in war parties with a good reputation as warrior and later as a leader or blotahunka.
In 1855 or 1857 White Thunder accompanied a Lakota war party – Wazhazhas and Brulés - under Spotted Tail down the Loup River. Also present were the prominent Brulé wariorrs Two Strike and Iron Shell. Their destination was a Pawnee or Omaha village, where they hoped to find prized mexican horses. The Lakotas succeeded in obtaining some horses. On their way back home, they were pursued by Omahas. When it came to a fight, White Thunder killed a noted Omaha – halfbreed interpreter Logan Fontenelle (1825 – 1855/57).
In the aftermath of the Sand Creek Massacre and its retribution by a Cheyenne-Lakota alliance, U.S. military leaders decides to remove the Lakota loafers from Fort Laramie to Fort Kearney, where they would be away from the war zone. By early June 1865 about 1,500 Lakotas camped in the vicinity of Fort Laramie. On June 11, these friendliy Lakotas and a number of white traders with their mixed-blood families left nonvoluntary the post with an escort of about 20 Cavalry troopers under the command of Captain William Fouts.
On June 13 the caravan camped at Horse Creek, near the site of the Fort Laramie Treaty Council of 1851. Captain John Wilcox reported on June 21, 1865 to his headquarter what happend next: „Late in the evening the Indians had a dog feast, and three hundred and eighty-two warriors sat in secret [?] council.“ At that council the majority oft he chiefs and headmen decided not to move on and to live unprotected close to their Pawnee enemies.
When Capt. William D. Fouts ordered decampment the next morning, the Lakotas did not respond and remained in camp. And when Fouts interfered in an persisting argument between the opportunist and resistance party, the morning ended in disaster. In later times Brulés reported that head soldier White Thunder turned around and fired at the high tempered and unlucky commander. Fouts was shot in the his head and immediately killed. All of the remaining Lakotas left the camp ground in a hurry and fled north. This incident got known as the battle of Horse Creek. During the next months, Spotted Tail’s Brulés and the Loafers kept themselves away from the whites, hovering over the Powder River country.
In 1870 Spotted Tail and Brulé chiefs visited Washington, where peace negotiations led to the first Lakota reservations. At that time the Brulés were allowed to move their camps to the upper White River, where the new “Whetstone Agancy” was established. About this time (1871) White Thunder was a scout for General George Crook and later a Police Officer.
Later White Thunder also was involved in the arrest of Crazy Horse in 1877 in Spotted Tail‘s camp. Together with Black Crow, Spotted Tail’s son-in-law, he guarded Red Bear‘s Sans-Arcs camp, where Crazy Horse stayed overnight. On the morning of September 5, 1877, White Thunder accompanied Crazy Horse, Lieutenant Jesse M. Lee and others on their way to Camp Robinson, where Crazy Horse met his fate. According to military records, he died before midnight on September 5.
In August 1879 Captain Richard H. Pratt, the founder oft he new training school for Indians in Carlisle, visited Rosebud Agency. In the end he succeeded in persuading the Rosebud chiefs to entrust him their children to his care. According to Luther Standing Bear, White Thunder sent his son Wica-karpa or Knocked-It-Off to Carlisle. One day Knocked-It-Off complained that he felt sick and he stayed out of school. After two days Knocked-It-Off died. White Thunder was infuriated. When he visited Carlisle in June 1880 he demanded that the corpse of his son should be transfered to Rosebud, which was denied. Later he requested to place a tombstone over the grave. But the school authorites would take no action.
On August 5, 1881 Spotted Tail was assassinated by Crow Dog. This murder was a starting signal for a lasting power struggle for Brulé leadership on Rosebud Reservation. The main opponents were Young Spotted Tail (Sinte Gleska Cikala) and White Thunder. Neither of them could fill the gap Spotted Tail had left. The rivalry escalated in 1884 when Young Spotted Tail eloped with White Thunder’s young wife (Rosa White Thunder?). In retaliation White Thunder stole Young Spotted Tail’s horses and killed them all. That was the last straw. On May 29, 1884 Young Spotted Tail and fellow Thunder Hawk rode up to White Thunders camp at Scabby Creek and lured the older chief and his father into a trap, killing both. In later years Susan Bordeaux Bettelyoun claimed that Spotted Tail was instigated by Turning Bear, who told him that he was cheated out of his rightful heritage.
White Thunder was a tall handsome man, with long wavy hair and light complexion. His fellows held him in high esteem, as an unusually courageous and brave warrior. After 1868 he was regarded as a progressive on the reservation. But reservation life gnawed on his health. When Alice Cunningham Fletcher visited the Rosebud reservation, she wrote down in her fieldwork diary for October 15, 1881:
„White Thunder. Lives in a large log house. He is not well, has not been since in Washington. Mr. Tibbles said inflammation of the left lung and malaria. He prescribes quinine. … White Thunder was on the bed. …. A young comely girl came in, brought in meat and looked bright and pleasing. This was the wife’s younger sister, had been at Carlisle school. She is about eighteen years old. [Rosa?] …I understand that White Thunder wants to marry this girl as his second wife. She declines.“
For his immediate band White Thunder was a good and caring chief. But his abilities to lead a larger unit were small. He never succeeded to gain the position of Spotted Tail Senior.
Sources:
George E. Hyde
A Sioux chronicle, University of Oklahoma Press, 1993
Spotted Tail's folk: a history of the Brulé Sioux, University of Oklahoma Press, 1974
Susan Bordeaux Bettelyoun
With My Own Eyes: A Lakota Woman Tells Her People's History (with Josephine Waggoner and Emily Levine), University of Nebraska Press, 1999
Kingsley M. Bray
Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life, University of Oklahoma Press, 2008
Sidney L. Harring
Crow dog's case: American Indian sovereignty, tribal law, and United States Law in the nineteenth century, Cambridge University Press, 1994
Luther Standing Bear
My People the Sioux (with Earl Alonzo Brininstool,Richard N. Ellis), University of Nebraska Press, 1995
Cunningham Fletcher
… and of course:
www.american-tribes.com/introduction.htm