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Show "And Thus It Was Thai Taianha i-Votanka, (Sitting Bull) Chief of the S ioux, Died fly ELMO SCOTT WATSON (lifleased by Western Newspaper Union.) THE scene was Soldier Field on Chicago's lake front, but on this particular partic-ular occasion that huge stadium sta-dium had been temporarily transformed into the "circus lot." We sat in the shade of a dressing tent a little distance away from the "big top" while all around us surged and eddied the multifarious activities of the "world's greatest show" getting ready for an afternoon performance. perform-ance. And in that setting which in time, distance and atmosphere was far, far removed re-moved from the Indian fighting fight-ing days of the old Wild West I took part in one of the most unusual interviews in all my experience as a newspaper news-paper man. It was an interview with an Indian, and all of my questions and all of his answers were translated trans-lated through the medium of that universal language of the Plains tribes, the "sign talk." The Indian In-dian was John Sitting Bull, the deaf-mute son of Tatanka i-Yo-tanka (Sitting Bull), famous chief of the Hur.kpapa Sioux, and my finger - flipping, hand - waving "translator'' was Col. Tim McCoy, Mc-Coy, adopted member of the Arapaho tribe and protege of Gen. Hugh L. Scott (in his time the white man best versed in the sign language). Today McCoy is one of the few white men who can carry on an extended conversation con-versation in that language. I had brought with me a number num-ber of photographs, taken back in the eighties and nineties by D. F. Barry, famous for his pictures of the old-time Sioux. The eyes of John Sitting Bull lighted up when I showed him the picture of the four women standing in front of the log cabin, for one of these women was his mother. I asked him many questions about them and about his early life and one of these questions was answered in a singularly dramatic fashion. "Do you have any recollection of the big fight on the Greasy Grass (Little Big Horn river in Montana) when Long Hair (General (Gen-eral Custer) attacked your father's fa-ther's camp and he and all of his pony soldiers were killed?" With a grim smile on his face, John Sitting Bull reached down and pulled up one of his buck- --t mura -c--:: . ...... ....... - NPt-'i" ' 3 r - ?J - 'J i s - , ' . -h -Xr' : y i; 4 " ' : 'fit' f ' " ' If' skin leggings. Just above the ankle an-kle was a long white scar. "That's why he remembers the Custer battle, although he was only four years old at the time," McCoy explained quickly. "When Reno's detachment of Custer's command struck the Hunkpapa lodges at the lower end of the village, the Indians were thrown into a panic at first. In all the confusion the little boy became separated from his mother. A bullet broke his leg, so he was unable to flee with the other children chil-dren and their mothers. He crawled into some bushes and was found there after Reno's men had been driven across the river and taken refuge on the bluffs above. That scar is his reminder of the Battle of the Little Big Horn." It might be mentioned in passing pass-ing that the scar is more than John Sitting Bull's reminder of that famous frontier fight. It also helps refute one of the many lies which the white men have told about his father in relation to the battle. Stanley Vestal in his "Sitting "Sit-ting Bull, Champion of the Sioux" (published by the Houghton Mif- s. ? ; -" . v ' ' ;' ,x ' . V , U nh ,1 " .: v Vi y v V ". 4 V , ;.- - V John Sitting Bull "sign talks" with Col. Tim McCoy. flin company in 1932) comments on that particular one as follows: They said he was making medicine during the battle, "skulking in the hills" . . . They said he ran away from the fight . . . that he was so excited that he forgot to take his small son with him. and that the chiki was therefore named The-One-Who-Was-Left. All this is poppycock. poppy-cock. The boy's name, properly translated, means Left-on-the-Battle-Field. It was given him by Four Horns. Sitting Bull's uncle, in commemoration of the time when he himself had been left for dead on the field during a fight with the Crows, an event so famous that it was used to mark the year 1843 In the Hunk-papa Hunk-papa calendar. The One-Who-Was-Left grew up to bear the name of his father, Sitting Bull. According to his story, sto-ry, told in the sign talk and translated trans-lated for me by Tim McCoy, it was the "men with red coats" (Royal North-West Mounted Police Po-lice of Canada), who "live north of the boundary line" (indicated by reaching down as though putting put-ting stones on the ground at regular regu-lar intervals, i. e., boundary stones) who conferred his father's name upon him. Later someone added "John" to that name, so he is now commonly known as John Sitting Bull. Willing as he was to "talk" about his childhood days with his brother. Crowfoot, and his sister, sis-ter, Standing Holy, his attitude quickly changed when one event in his life was mentioned. His reluctance to recall it is quite understandable. un-derstandable. For that event was the death of his father which took place just 50 years ago. So one must turn to the pages of Stanley Vestal's biography of Sitting Bull for the true story of that tragic affair. It is told by a historian free from the usual white man's prejudices against the Indian, especially those prejudices preju-dices which existed while Sitting Bull was alive. It is the story of an Indian patriot, made distrust- The Indian women pictured above are (left to right) : Has-Many-Horses (or Captures Horses), Sitting Bull's daughter; Good Heart, his younger wife; Four Times, his older wife, mother of John Sitting Bull; and Standing Holy, John Sitting Bull's sister. This photograph was taken by 0. F. Barry in front of Sitting Bull's cabin on the Grand river, North Dakota, in 1890, and the women in it were identified (possibly for the first time in history) by John Sitting BuU in an interview in-terview with the author of this article in 1936. ful of the whites by broken treaties trea-ties and unfulfilled promises, determined de-termined to maintain his authority authori-ty as a chief of his people and to save them from losing all of their ancestral homes to the land-hungry whites. The climax of this struggle came early in the winter of 1890. The Ghost Dance excitement which had swept the Sioux provided pro-vided a convenient excuse for the government authorities to act. Professing to believe that Sitting Bull was about ready to lead an uprising of the fanatical Ghost Dancers, Lieut. -Col. W. F. Drum, commander at Fort Yates, was ordered to arrest the old chief at his home near the Grand river on the Standing Rock reservation. But Maj. James McLaughlin, agent at Standing Rock and the chief instrument of the Indian Bureau Bu-reau in its contest with Sitting Bull, persuaded the army officers to let him make the arrest with a force of his Indian police (among whom were some of Sitting Bull's bitterest enemies), with the troops in reserve, to be called upon if needed. So on the night of December 14, 1890, a detachment of Indian police, led by Lieutenant Bullhead Bull-head and Sergeants Eagle Man, Shave Head and Red Tomahawk, quietly entered Sitting Bull's camp and surrounded the log cabin cab-in in which he, his wife and his son, The One-Who-Was-Left, were sleeping. Just before dawn they forced open the door, dragged the chief, naked, out of his bed and, none too gently, tried to help him get dressed. At first Sitting Bull made no effort to resist. But he soon became be-came angry at the indignities he was suffering and refused to budge from the cabin, whereupon the policemen picked him up and, half-carrying, half-pushing, started start-ed him toward the door. By this time the whole camp had been alarmed and an angry throng of Sitting Bull's warriors came running run-ning from their tents with guns in their hands to resist the attempt at-tempt of the "Metal Breasts" (police) (po-lice) to take their chief away. Of the scene outside the door Vestal writes : Sergeant Eagle Man. unusually noisy that night, tept shouting "Stand backl Make way! Get out of here!" and shoving shov-ing against Sitting Bull's deaf-mute son. who very much excited pulled and shoved Eagle Man. making horrible noises in the darkness. And as the police po-lice forged slowly forward, the terrible wailing of women was mingled with the deaf-mute's unearthly gibberings. A moment later Sitting Bull shouted to his followers, "Come on! Come on! Take action! Let's go!" Instantly Catch-the-Bear, chief soldier of the camp and commander of Sitting Bull's bodyguard, threw up his rifle and shot Lieutenant Billhead in the leg. As the policeman went down, he twisted around and shot upward up-ward at Sitting Bull, who was trying try-ing to pull loose from his captors. As the chief reeled from the impact im-pact of the bullet, Sergeant Red Tomahawk shot him from behind and Sitting Bull dropped dead in his tracks. For a little while there was a fierce melee of hand-to-hand fighting fight-ing between the police and Sitting Sit-ting Bull's warriors. Then the fire of the "Metal Breasts" drove the warriors back into the timber and the police took refuge in Sitting Bull's cabin, bringing their dead and wounded with them. Then, writes Vestal: While they were moving the mattress to make a bed for Bullhead, the police found Crowfoot. Sitting Bull's son, hidden hid-den there. Crowfoot was a schoolboy of 17 winters. A Metal Breast called out, "There's another one in here." The boy sprang up, crying, "Uncle, I want to live! You have killed my father! Let me go!" They called to Bullhead where he lay, covered with blood, mortally wounded. "What shall we do with him?" Bullhead answered. "Kill him. they have killed me." Red Tomahawk struck Crowfoot: the blow sent the boy sprawling through the door. Those outside shot him dead. They showed no mercy: their hearts were hot that day. A short time later, the troops, which had been sent from Fort Yates under the command of Capt. E. G. Fechet to support the Indian Police if needed, arrived ar-rived on the scene and rescued the survivors in Sitting Bull's cabin. Otter Robe . . . acted as interpreter for some of the soldiers. He heard Sitting Sit-ting Bull's wives crying, went into the smaller cabin, and found them and some other women seated in a row on the bed. They would not get up, and so the soldiers pulled them off. Under that bed they found Sitting Bull's deaf-mute son and another lad. The soldiers searched these lads to disarm them, found that one of them had a jack-knife with a broken blade, and took that. It made Otter Robe laugh . . . When the police and soldiers started back to the fort, there was a dispute among the Metal Breasts. They did not wish to put Sitting Bull's body In the same wagon with their own dead. But Sergeant Red Tomahawk had strict orders or-ders to bring In the chief dead or alive, and he said they must do it; there was only one wagon for the dead. Then the policeman decided to throw the chief In first, and lay their dead comrades on top of him. This was done . . . And thus Sitting Bull was carted like a dead dog toward the stronghold of his enemies, ene-mies, with four dead men riding his mangled, man-gled, blood-soaked body over the prairie ruts. Perhaps, even though half a century has elapsed since that cold winter morning, John Sitting Sit-ting Bull still remembers the scene in the log cabin as the "Metal Breasts" dragged Chief Tatanka i-Yotanka toward the door; perhaps he has an all-too-vivid recollection of his brother, Crowfoot, with hands uplifted, begging for mercy; perhaps he sees again in memory his father's fa-ther's last journey "over the prairie prai-rie ruts." So his reluctance to "talk" about the events of December 15, 1890, is quite understandable! |