Steps - Seeskoomkee - Bannock/Shoshone and Nez Perce

[grahamew]

According to Jean Louis Lagere, Steps was actually a "Shoshone-Bannock man...(Eskoomskee or Seeskoomkee means "Cut Off" but he was also called No Feet or Steps, which, to add to the confusion, was sometimes spelled as Steppes; his original name, however, was Attween or maybe Kepgavants Wewowwow), who had gone through the war of 1877 with the Nez Perces." (https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/nepe/greene/chap14d.htm) He had been taken captive by the Nez Perce and fought at Big Hole and Bear's Paw in 1877. After Joseph's defeat, he fled to Canada with White Bird and found refuge among Sitting Bull's people, joining White Dog's family, according to Ephriam's The Sitting Bull Surrender Census, though a note there points out that White Dog and his family "slipped away from army control at Fort Randall in June 1882. No further information is known" but Steps must have continued to live with Sitting Bull's band because he winds up at Standing Rock where he's photographed by Barry a few years later.

The best I can work out, he had lost both feet and his right hand to frostbite during a severe winter storm sometime around 1860, but Jerome Greene tells another version: he had been bought by the Yakima as a slave and was "disciplined for thievery by being left outside one night in subzero temperatures, his hands and feet secired in metal traps, and Steps lost both feet and his right hand." At some point, the Yakima freed him from his obligations as a slave and he went to live with the Nez Perce, fleeing to Canada to live with the Lakota and marrying into the tribe.

Yellow Wolf/McWhorter flesh this story out, reciting the tales told by Tomio, the Yakima leader and son of Kamiakun. Steps was already a slave captive and was purchased by his father on one of his trading trips to the southwest (i.e. California) and it was Kamiakun who left him outside as punishment for stealing. He notes, "It cured him of theft." According to Tomio, after a purchased slave had served his owner long enough to pay off the cost of purchase, he was freed and when Kamiakun sent three visiting Nez Perce back to their village with a gift of cattle, he sent Steps along to help and told him he didn't have to return, so he lived among the lower Nez Perce - supposedly amiong White Bird's Lamtama band - and made a living breaking wild horses.

While he lived with the Lakota, he married into the tribe, but he had a fight with a young man who he fatally stabbed. The dying man said Steps wasn't to blame and dissuaded his father from taking revenge.

McWhorter points out that in another version of the tale, Steps was at no point a slave and he originally came from the Lower Snake River.

There are several photographs depicting this man. I think the earliest are credited to Bailey, Dix and Meade (though WR Cross was the photographer) and were taken at Fort Randall when he was living with Sitting Bull's band who had just returned from Canada.


1882


The reverse of the Cross image - the text fits the story above.


1882



1882

He was also photographed by D.F. Barry at Standing Rock, sitting up against one of the photographer's props:





The Barry photo has to be from 1883 at the earliest and possibly a two or three years later. Note how the story on the image's reverse is different: he was separated from the Nez Perce in a blizzard and the Lakota saved him, so he remained with them - the implication is that the events happened more recently than 20 years previous. Note also the reference to him being Joseph's brother - presumably just hyperbole to sell the images but perhaps it has some basis in some kind of adoption ceremony.

Finally, we have this photo by an unknown photographer:


I don't recognise this backdrop. It's not Barry and I don't think it's Gilbert or Scott. Any ideas? Here -  the statemuseum.nd.gov/database/photobook/index.php?content=photobook-itemdetails&ID=PH_I_154329&CollectionNmbr=1952&PBID=94046 - it's credited to Fiske, as is the Barry photo it's combined with, but Fiske didn't arrive at Standing Rock until years later and copied and sold images by Barry

A while back, Dietmar posted this photo:

After a little digging, this is Gregor's summary of the events behind the photo:

"After Sitting Bull’s killing Hunkpapa families fled their Grand River camp. They were badly frightened and were fleeing for safety.

On December 21, Indian Police and Agency Farmers stopped them at the Cheyenne River. 37 of them were brought to the Agency by the Farmers, the others were brought in by Lieut. Hale.

Army reports indicate “… Lieut. Hale …effected the surrender of 294 Indians, including 227 Uncapapa Sioux of Sitting Bull’s Band (81 men, 72 women, and 74 children), 69 Minniconjou Sioux belonging to the Cheyenne River Reservation, 148 ponies and 4 wagons.”

The night of December 22 the group camped at Dupree’s ranch and the next night at Cook’s Camp, twenty-three miles from Fort Bennett. Hale and the Indians, including Hump and his family, arrived at Fort Bennett on December 24.

Among them were tiyospaye elders Sleep, Medicine Man, Crow Indian, His Running, Old Bull, Standing Cloud, Pretty Bear, Old Crow, Kills the Enemy, Yellow Earring, In the Mouth and Afraid of the Hawk.

The Standing Rock Indians were transferred to Fort Sully on the 30th [December?] ultimo as military prisoners, by orders of the Department Commander, numbering 227—81 men, 43 boys, 72 women and 31 girls—148 ponies and 4 wagons, for which the commanding officer, Fort Sully receipted. They remained for five months and Lieutenant Hale was put in charge of the prisoners’ camp at Fort Sully.

By the time of their journey back to Standing Rock (May 1891), the number of Hunkpapa POWs would increase to 254. At least five children were born at Fort Sully according to a letter by May 16, 1891.

In a letter (May 13, 1891) to Commissioner of Indian affairs McLaughlin wrote:

“Yesterday I sent transportation to Cheyenne Agency to bring to this Agency the 254 Standing Rock Indian prisoners now at Fort Sully and expect their return in about 10 days.”"

Is Steps the man kneeling at the left of the photo wearing an army cap and some kind of military coat? According to Jerome Greene, he was living among Hump's followers on Cheyenne River in 1890 though left there for Fort Bennett before the fighting broke out.


There is a reference to Steps being at Fort Bennett in The New York Herald on NOvember 24, 1890. Does anyone have any idea what happened to him?

[Dietmar]

a better version of the one already posted above (note the skunk!):




I can´t say who the photographer was.

[grahamew]

Thanks. That's great quality

[rodthomas]

Grahamew, thanks! So in 2010, I gave a presentation at the annual Order of the Indian Wars conference on the battle art of the Nez Perce depicting the 1877 campaign. One of my sources was a ledger known as "The Cash Book" collected at the Idaho State Historical Society and in those drawings is one of Itskimzekin. Itskimzekin is his name in Nez Perce and is recorded as such in the ledger. Attached is the depiction of him at the Battle of the Big Hole. "Seeskoomkee" according to Scott Thompson, the author of the primary reference "I Will Tell My War Story: A Pictorial Account of the Nez Perce War" published by the University of Washington Press in 2000, means "ends cut off" or "no hands or feet." Steps was one of the first to discover the soldier attack at White Bird Canyon and was instrumental in the Big Hole fight.

Thompson says that while a slave, acquired by trade or force, he was accused of theft. Punishment found him bound in iron shackles and cuffs and suffered severe frostbite resulting in amputation of both legs and right hand. Despite his loss, the Nez Perce found him extremely talented around horses and it was while in guard at the White Bird Canyon camp that he alerted the camp to the soldiers.

The source Scott gives for the slavery story is in Robert Ruby and John A. Brown, Indian Slavery in the Pacific Northwest, Arthur Clark company in 1993, pages 232, 247.

He did indeed live out his life with the Sitting Bull's band, staying with them even when they returned from Canada.

I highly recommend Scott's wonderful book on the ledger. It is considered a classic in these parts...Puget Sound and all!

I do hope all is well with everyone given the challenges that seem to be a constant in our lives now...weather, virus, war...take care everyone and please have a great day...

Regards, Rod Thomas...

Attachments:

Scan_Pic0023.tif (1.65 MB)

[grahamew]

Thanks, Rod. I have "I Will Tell My War Story: A Pictorial Account of the Nez Perce War" somewhere and never thought to look at it until you reminded me!!

Take care!

[grahamew]

One more - another Cross from Fort Randall:





The more I look at these, the more convinced I am that it is Steps wearing the military cap and coat in the picture of the refugees at Fort Bennett. camp

A slightly different variant on the Barry photo posted above:

[emilylevine]

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.

[emilylevine]

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

[rodthomas]

Emily, good day and thank you for adding to and clarifying more about Steps! Hope all is well with you and please enjoy the upcoming holidays...

Regards, Rod Thomas

[emilylevine]

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

[grahamew]

Thanks, Emily.

[grahamew]

This was on Cowan's auction site, where the date given is 1891 and the photographer is J. Pitcher Spooner based in Stockton California. However, Mr Spooner's stamp is also on this: 


... and we know this isn't his photo. The backdrop seems to be the same as in the photo posted by Dietmar, where he wears the white hat and has a skunk skin on his wrist. I have no idea who the actual photographer is (or whether the date is correct) but Spooner was obviously selling copies of other people's work as well as his own photographs.

[grahamew]

The backdrop on the photo posted by Dietmar...


...is the same as the one I posted:



The photographer's name on the one above is the same as on this photo of Sitting Bull and his family, which was likely taken at Fort Randall or shortly after his time there:



As I said above, J. Pitcher Spooner was based in Stockton, California and had presumably bought the rights to sell these photos.

Here we have a Lakota man whose name I don't know, taken against the same backdrop seen in both those photos of Steps;


Note the credited photographer is J. Pitcher Spooner, a man working from 1870 to 1892 and beyond. Presumably, it's yet another image he was distributing.

The style of hat Steps and the man above wears is similar; in fact, it may be the same hat. The brim has been trimmed, the crown pulled out of shape to resemble a cone and a strip of fur threaded through it to make it snug.

There was obviously a bit of a fad for these; you can see them in Cheyenne art: Arrow's Elk Society Ledger (edited by Mike Cowdrey), for example...


and the Coe-Cheyenne Ledger shows one in a kind of inventory of warrior equipment...



This example supposedly belonged to Spotted Elk/Big Foot Spotted Elk and was taken from Wounded Knee. It's now at the South Dakota Cultural Heritage Centre:



Here's another example, one of Sitting Bull's people at Fort Ellice in 1881 by the artist known as GWC. At first, I thought this man was meant to be Steps due to the fact he seems to have a truncated figure...

[grahamew]

Not Steps, but a image taken by the same photographer as discussed above:


Lakota woman and child