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Show l 'By ELMO SCOTT WATSON A MERICAN INDIAN DAY, f which is observed on the A third Friday in Septem-j Septem-j ber in many states, has h&jf 1,1 added touch of inter-' inter-' . . T est this year because of I J the announced plan for vL honoring a great leader in a new way. Sitting Bull, the Sioux, is to be made the subject of a poetry contest to be conducted con-ducted by Pasque Petals, South Dakota Da-kota poetry magazine. C. N. Herried of Aberdeen has offered -a cash prize for the best 40-line poem on Sitting Bull, to be submitted to the magazine before December 1 of this year. "From my viewpoint, Sitting Bull was one of the truly great among the many notable no-table Sioux of the Dakotas, in spite of the fact that he has been misunderstood misun-derstood and maligned." Mr. Herried has declared. There- are many students of history who will confirm Mr. Herried's estimate. esti-mate. So far history's verdict on Sitting Sit-ting Bull has been handed down mainly main-ly by white men who saw in him only troublemaker, Irreconcilable to the fate Imposed upon his race by the white men under the name of civilization. civili-zation. If ever the red man Is called upon to hand down a verdict, he will probably find In the fact that Sitting Bull was irreconcilable a kimj of racial ra-cial patriotism that can only be admired, ad-mired, misguided though it may have been. It is doubtful If the name of any other Indian is so well known to the average American as is the name of this warrior and tribal leader of the Hunkpapa Teton division of the great Sioux or Dakota confederacy. And a corollary to that statement Is that It Is also doubtful If there have ever been told about any other Indian so many wild tales, and If there has ever been Included in them so much sheer bunk as have been told and written about Tatanka Yotanka (Tatanka Buffalo Bull; Yotanka Sitting). Here are a few of the choice bits of mis-Information mis-Information that have at one time or Mother been given out as fact, and s such have been accepted by some so-called historians: (1) Sitting Bull was a half-breed, nd after receiving a good education from French-Canadian priests, returned ' his people and "went back to the blanket." (2) Sitting Bull was a graduate of wst Point, who gradually drifted, back Into savage life. He had various "olid acquirements, could speak French like Parisian, was a close student ' Napoleon's campaigns, etc., etc. 3) Sitting Bull was a Mason, knew tl Masonic ritual and lodge work as WH as the emblems and on at least 'wo occasions saved the lives of white m8n, captured by his warriors, because they wore Masonic emblems. ) Sitting Bull was commander In hlef of all the Indians at the Battle ot the Uttle Big Horn where Custer was killed, and he gave toa. missionary mission-ary who had been adopted Into his tribe a complete account 'of how he planned the battle which ended so disastrously dis-astrously for the soldiers. This involved in-volved placing dummy figures in front of the lodges in the village to deceive the soldiers. After thus setting the stage he retired to the hills with his warriors, having first sent the women and children to a place of safety. Before Be-fore the soldiers could recover from the surprise at finding the village deserted, de-serted, Sitting Bull fell upon them from the rear and destroyed most of them. (5) Sitting Bull visited West Point in 1859, there met Cadet Custer, and such a warm friendship sprang up between be-tween the red man and white that Sitting Sit-ting Bull made Custer his "blood brother." Accordingly, the day before the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Sitting Sit-ting Bull called a council, told his warriors war-riors that they were to fight Custer the next day, but that since Custer was his "blood brother," they were not to harm him. And then the cavalry cav-alry leader foiled the , Indian's kind purpose by committing suicide when he saw that all was lost! From the most authoritative sources of Information available, the patent absurdities of these statements can be disposed of as follows : (1) Sitting Bull was a full-blood Sioux, born on the Grand river, S. D., about 1834, the son of a subchief of the Hunkpapa, named Four Horns, who changed his name to Sitting Bull when he "made medicine" in 1857. As a boy Sitting Bull (the younger) was first known as Jumping Badger. When he was fourteen he accompanied his father on the warpath against the Crows and counted his first coup on the body of a fallen enemy. On the return of the party his father made a feast, gave away many horses and announced that his son had won the right to be known by his name. (2) This statement is too ridiculous on the face of It to warrant denial. As for his ability to speak French, it is possible that he picked up some words and phrases from French Candian traders trad-ers and others with whom the Sioux came into contact, but more than that the story of his linguistic ability Is undoubtedly fictitious. (3) Possible but highly improbable. Neither of the two cases are sufficiently sufficient-ly authenticated to be accepted seriously seri-ously It may have been mere coincidence coin-cidence that two men whose lives he spared were Masons. There is said to be a similarity between some of the secret signs of Masonry and some of the Indian sign language in universal use among the Plains tribes and a similarity sim-ilarity between some of the Masonic ceremonies and certain Indian ceremonials. cere-monials. These similarities may have been one of the origins of this yarn (?) The part of Sitting Bull at the Custer battle Is at best an equivocal one Although his being the son of a subchief would give him some hereditary heredi-tary right to leadership, he had risen , to prominence among the Sioux as a medicine man and a councilor because he possessed "accuracy of judgment knowledge of men, a student-like disposition to observe natural phenomena phenom-ena a a deep insiB:ht 'nt , among Indians and such white people aThe came into contact with." Before the Custer battle he had predicted a great victory for the Indians and at fhTopening of the fight he retired to he "lis s?me distance away and was here during the engagement. But therl was no especial disgrace at- tached to Sitting Bull, the medicine man, doing this. Diplomats and statesmen states-men of other nations who bring about wars are usually far from the firing line. As for "commander in chief of the Indian forces" there was none In that battle. An Indian chiefs authority over his followers was only nominal, and of all the thousands of Sioux (Oglala, Hunkpapa, Brule, Miniconjou, Sans Arc and Sihasapa) and Northern Cheyennes on the Little Big Horn that day, few, except possibly the members of Sitting Bull's immediate band of Hunkpapa, would have acknowledged his authority. The Indian leaders who were principally responsible for the tactics which resulted in the defeat of the Seventh cavalry, were first and foremost, Gall of the Hunkpapas, and then Crazy Horse of the Oglalas and Two Moons of the Northern Cheyennes. (6) So far as there is any authentio record, the first visit Sitting Bull ever paid to the Bast was in 1868 when he, Red Cloud of the Oglalas and Spotted Tail of the Brules went to Washington, where they were received by President Grant. If he visited CuBter at West Point or ever had any contact with that officer, it is indeed curious that Custer himself in his writings, Mrs. Custer in hers (notably her books, "Boots and Saddles," "Following the Guidon" and "Tenting on the Plains," or any of the accurate and painstaking painstak-ing biographers of the leader of the Seventh, never have mentioned the fact. So this Incident can be dismissed as pure fiction, as can Sitting Bull's Instructions that Custer's life should be Bpared. The "Custer suicide" story has been repeatedly disproved by men who saw his body soon after the battle. In stating that Sitting Bull was more noted as a medicine man than a war leader, It should not be supposed sup-posed that he was lacking In ability as the latter, even though there has been some dispute on this point. Col. James McLaughlin, agent on the Standing Hock reservation where Sitting Sit-ting Bull spent his last years, has always al-ways maintained that he was a physical phys-ical coward, and others have pointed to his actions at the Custer battle as evidence of that fact Dr. Charles A. Eastman, the noted Sioux author, as the result of his Investigations among his own race, has recorded several incidents in-cidents of Sitting Bull's valor in battle, bat-tle, and It is reasonable to suppose that Doctor Eastman could come nearer near-er getting the truth about Sitting Bull than any white man. So a final summing up of Tatanka Yotanka and perhaps some of the entrants In the South Dakota poetry contest may voice it In their verse-would verse-would write him down as a brave warrior war-rior in his youth, at a later period the most sagacious and powerful med- Icine man the Sioux ever had and an embittered "caged eagle" In his last years. From the white man's point of view he was a malcontent; from the Indian's, a patriot These were the words of Sitting Bull once when j he was being questioned by an Im- I portunate American newspaper man: : "I am," said he, crossing both hands upon his chest, slightly nodding, and smiling satircally, "a man I" |