Sioux history now returns to the West, where an uneasy peace held in 1870, although new leaders were emerging: Black Moon (Hunkpapa), Gall and Crazy Horse (Oglala), and a spiritual leader among the Hunkpapa – Sitting Bull. Red Cloud and Spotted Tail were now agency chiefs. Active hostilities resumed in 1871 during the survey for a railroad in an area still claimed by the Sioux. In 1872 there were Sioux attacks on the military at Pryor’s Fork, Montana, and Fort Abraham Lincoln.
Delegation of Brulé Sioux to Washington, DC, from the Whetstone Agency under Capt Poole, May-June 1870: (left to right) Fast Bear, Spotted Tail, Swift Bear and Yellow Hair. Spotted Tail was born in about 1823; not a chief by birth, he rose to that rank by prowess in battle. He probably took part in the Grattan fight in August 1854 during depredations on the Oregon Trail. (Lt John Grattan was sent from Laramie to arrest a brave of Conquering Bear’s Brulé band who had killed a Mormon’s cow. In the resulting fight he and all but one of his men were killed by the Brulés, who had been joined by some Oglalas.) Spotted Tail was certainly present when Gen Harney took his revenge at Ash Hollow. He signed the 1868 Laramie Treaty; thereafter he was leader of the Brulés at the Rosebud Agency, near which he was murdered by Crow Dog in 1881. Today a college on the Rosebud Reservation perpetuates the old chief’s name, Sinte Gleska. (Author’s collection)
In 1873 rumours of gold in the Black Hills galvanised many hopeful whites into journeying west, as they had earlier to the Californian and Montana goldfields. These prospectors broke the thin military cordon which had surrounded the Black Hills in accordance with the 1868 agreement. The government ordered a US Army expedition into the Black Hills. The chosen leader despatched to Fort Abraham Lincoln was the controversial LtCol George Armstrong Custer, commanding the US 7th Cavalry. He had a reputation as an Indian-hater who had butchered the Cheyennes (including Chief Black Kettle) on the Washita River, Oklahoma, on 27 November 1868.
Touch-the-Clouds, son of the Minneconjou patriarch Lone Horn who died on the Cheyenne River in 1875; he was born in 1836 and died in 1905. A legendary warrior, standing nearly seven feet tall, he was one of the Minneconjou chiefs at the battle of the Little Bighorn. He is seen here wearing the famous shirt worn by several Sioux chiefs for photographs, and which survives in the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming (see page 45). Photograph by Julius Ulke, 1877.
The expedition of 1874 confirmed the presence of gold ore. The government concluded that it could only control the situation by prevailing on the Sioux to renegotiate the 1868 treaty and cede the Hills; they offered $6 million, but the Sioux refused. The military response was to withdraw troops from the approaches to the Black Hills, allowing miners to pour in. Some Sioux retaliated by killing miners and leaving the agencies for the remaining buffalo-hunting grounds to the west in the Yellowstone, Powder and Rosebud river country, outside the ring of forts which had encircled their lands.
The US Army strategy for 1876 was to force these Sioux and their Cheyenne allies back to the agencies by encircling the Indians in south central Montana with three columns of troops: one under Col John Gibbon moving east from Fort Ellis at Bozeman, the second under Gen Alfred Terry (with Custer) moving west from Fort Abraham Lincoln near Bismarck, and the other under Gen George Crook moving north from Fort Fetterman on the North Platte. However, each column had only about 1,000 troops, some of dubious quality, who faced long marches to reach the area of the Rosebud, Tongue and Bighorn Rivers where the Indians were ranged. The plan received a major setback on 17 June on the Rosebud when Crook’s 1,300-strong column was defeated by Crazy Horse, forcing him to withdraw to his base near present-day Sheridan, Wyoming; Crook took no further part in the campaign.
Terry and Gibbon met on the Yellowstone at the mouth of the Powder on 8 June, and conferred again on 21 June on the steamer Far West near the mouth of the Rosebud. Custer was despatched thence on 22 June, south down the Rosebud, with orders to swing north-west to the forks of the Bighorn and Little Bighorn, where Terry and Gibbon would be waiting. Custer tracked the pony hoofprints of the Indians west to a point now known as the Crow’s Nest, a ridge about 15 miles from where a huge Indian village stretched along the Little Bighorn River. Custer’s Arikara and Crow scouts reported the village early on 25 June, but they underestimated the numbers of hostiles in the vicinity.
Gall (Pizi), Hunkpapa Sioux; born on the Moreau River, South Dakota, in 1840, he died at Oak Creek, South Dakota, in 1894. One of the principal military leaders at the Little Bighorn on 25 June 1876, he probably led the charge which finished Custer’s command. He moved to Canada with Sitting Bull, but surrendered in Montana in 1881 and settled as a farmer on the Standing Rock Reservation, becoming a judge and a friend to the whites.
Although a recent examination of the Custer battlefield using modern forensic techniques has yielded new details, much basic information about this action remains unknown – including even Custer’s exact route to his ‘last stand’. The battle actually took place in the lands of the Crows, and the site is on the present-day Crow Reservation. Sitting Bull is known to have been present or nearby, and the following chiefs and bands took part: Hunkpapas under Gall and Black Moon, Oglalas under Crazy Horse, Minneconjous under Fast Bull, Sans Arcs under Fast Bear, Blackfoot under Scabby Head, Cheyennes under Two Moon and Ice Bear, Santees, Yanktons and Yanktonais under Inkpaduta.
Custer attacked at once, dividing his 7th Cavalry into three parties. Captain Frederick Benteen, with Companies D, H and K, was sent south to scout and report Indian movements; Maj Marcus A.Reno led Cos. A, M and G against the southern edge of the village. Custer himself would advance northwards with Cos. C, E, F, L and I, some say following the line of a ridge running parallel to the village, which was scattered along the wooded valley to his left on the west bank of the Little Bighorn River. He then apparently swung west over the crest of the ridge, intending to cross the river and attack the northern end of the village. All we really know of the Custer attack is from Indian accounts recorded much later, and these are often confused. At what point he crossed the ridge or even if he ever reached the river remains in dispute. His column was certainly repulsed and cut to pieces, some succeeding in retreating to a rise since named Custer Hill, where a monument now stands. Custer was outnumbered and totally overwhelmed by fresh and probably better-armed warriors frantic to defend their women and children.
With him died 214 men, including his brothers Tom and Boston, a nephew and a brother-in-law. Mutilated corpses were found in four groups strewn on Calhoun Ridge, and another about half a mile north. Some 40 men had fallen with Custer on the hill which bears his name, and about 30 bodies were found near the river in a ravine. To the south, Maj Reno hit the village but halted his charge when confronted by an enormous number of warriors; he formed a skirmish line, from which he later retreated across the river, to be rejoined by Benteen’s battalion, ultimately on a site now known as Reno Hill. Here fighting continued until 26 June; no serious attempt was made to break out of this defensive position, although a few made brave dashes to reach water, and one of Benteen’s officers, Thomas B.Weir, moved to a vantage point from where his troops caught glimpses of the Indians through the smoke of battle to the north. After losing 47 killed, Reno was relieved by Terry on the 26th, shortly after the great Indian camp had broken up, setting fire to the grass – the Indians knew retribution was bound to follow.
During the high summer and autumn of 1876 Crook returned to the field, where his subordinates Col Wesley Merritt (5th Cavalry) and Capt Anson Mills (3rd Cavalry) gained victories over the Sioux at Warbonnet Creek, Nebraska, and Slim Buttes, South Dakota, respectively; in the latter fight Chief American Horse was killed. In October Col Nelson Miles held a meeting with Sitting Bull which ended in a running battle. During the following winter Cols Miles and Mackenzie (4th Cavalry) harassed the Cheyennes and Sioux, until by May 1877 most had returned and surrendered to the agencies.
However, the flow of fortune-hunters into the Black Hills did not diminish despite the fighting. Another government commission was charged with the task of obtaining the Black Hills by a treaty change to the western boundary of The Great Sioux Reservation. Although the agency chiefs Red Cloud, Red Leaf, Spotted Tail and John Grass signed, many did not; but the articles of the agreement were passed by Congress in February 1877. Sitting Bull crossed into Canada with High Bear and Gall, but Crazy Horse and his Oglalas and Cheyennes were defeated by Col Mackenzie; Crazy Horse surrendered in the spring of 1877, and was imprisoned and murdered. Gall and Sitting Bull returned to the Standing Rock Agency in 1881.
The Sioux believed that all natural and cultural phenomena could be transformed; those permanently transformed are collectively Wakantanka, glossed as ‘Great Spirit’, ‘Great Mystery’ or ‘God’ – but have a collective meaning. Man is considered powerless when confronted by nature, and cries out for pity when help is required. He addresses Wakantanka in the metaphor of kinship, Father or Grandfather. Those who are answered or transformed are Wakan (holy). Wakantanka has aspects of fours: four times four or four times seven, i.e. four seasons, four phases of the moon, four directions. The energy of the universe can be controlled by Wakantanka or Wakansica (evil sacred); man is subordinate to both. There are 16 aspects of Wakantanka in groups of four in descending importance: Sun, Sky, Earth and Rock; Moon, Wind, Falling Stars, Thunder Being; Buffalo, Two-legged (Bear or Man), Four Winds, Whirlwind; Shade, Breath, Shade-like and Potency. In addition there are other supernatural beings, some benevolent and some malevolent: Spider, Old Man, Wizard and Old Woman.
Those who mediate between supernatural beings and powers and ordinary people are glossed as ‘holy’ men or women (Wakan people), who can be distinguished from those who administer herbal medicine, Pejuta Wicasa, glossed as ‘medicine man’. The Wakan people received visions to intercede for good hunting, predicted the outcome of war parties, found lost objects, and were interpreters of sacred myths and directors of ceremonials.
Dream societies were formed by men who received the same or similar visions of an animal. The Heyoka Society received visions of Thunder Beings; it was required that members acted opposite to normal, e.g. dressed heavily in summer, scantily in winter, spoke backwards or acted as clowns. The Elk Dreamers were imbued with special powers over women. Other animal cults were Bear, Black-tailed Deer, Wolf, Buffalo, Mountain Sheep; there were also a Berdache Cult and Double(-faced) Woman Cult with the power to seduce men.
Holy people were separate from ordinary people by their ability not only to interpret a sacred knowledge but to share this knowledge with the supernatural and other holy people by means of a sacred language. The legend of the coming of the White Buffalo Calf Woman to the Sans Arc band probably coincides with the reformation of Teton religion, which seems to have occurred about the same time as the Teton were increasing in numbers and power in about 1800. She gave directions for a number of rites to influence the supernatural beings to a band of Sans Arc under Standing Buffalo, after meeting two of his scouts out looking for buffalo. She presented a sacred calf pipe bundle to them, directing them in the use of the sacred pipe in the rituals. It is believed that the bundle (or a form of it) still exists amongst Sans Arc descendants on the Cheyenne River Reservation, South Dakota, to this day. She gave instructions for various rituals, briefly as follows:
(1) The Adoption rite or The Making of Relatives – Hunkalowanpi, or simply Hunka. Its purpose was to bond men together ceremonially, involving the use of special wands often decorated with feathers and horsetails.
(2) Sun Dance – Wiwayankwacipi. A calendrical ceremony during the early summer when several bands were together for a common buffalo hunt, undertaken to fulfil the vows of various men by praying for the tribal well-being. The ceremonial is performed in a large lodge of posts and rafters with brush to form areas of shade. The rafters adjoin a centre pole which was ‘captured’ by warriors (regarded as enemy), erected vertically in a hole around which the lodge is completed, usually about 25 yards in diameter. Within the lodge rituals are performed over a number of days (see below – also Plate B).
(3) Vision Quest – Hanbleceyapi. Usually performed during adolescence to seek a vision or to gain power.
(4) Spirit-Keepers or Ghost Keeping – Wakicagapi. The spirit of the deceased was ‘kept’ ritually before travelling south to the Milky Way, sometimes for up to two years before the soul was released.
(5) Throwing of the Ball – Tapawankayeyapi. Based on the legend of a buffalo calf who grew into a woman who had a ball made which symbolically represented the universe and was used in ritual games.
(6) Girls’ Puberty Ritual, also known as the Buffalo Rite – atankalowanpi. During the buffalo supernatural’s guard over a pubescent girl, which established her relationship to the sacred White Buffalo Calf Woman.
Santee Sioux Grass Dancers photographed at Fort Totten, North Dakota, c1900. Note the ‘hairpipe’ breastplate (right), massive necklaces (centre/left), mirror board (right), and the pipe-tomahawk held by the central dancer. The Santee generally had narrower heads than the Teton, clearly shown in this photograph.
(7) The Sweat Lodge, the Rite of Purification – Inipi. Communal purification in a heated sweat lodge, a small circular dome-shaped lodge with hot stones (see Plate B).
Winter counts tend to confirm that the White Buffalo Calf Woman legend dates from about 1797-98, so we can conclude that these ceremonials are of no great age, perhaps late enough to have been influenced by white missionaries.
The Sun Dance was the most important ceremony of the Plains Indians; the name is misleading, although the male dancers do gaze towards the rising morning sun. Its purpose was a world re-creation or renewal rite, and it followed the vows of those who had received visionary commands to sponsor a dance. After the lodge was built the skull of a buffalo or buffalo and human cut-out effigies and other offerings were fixed to the centre pole. The public phase of the ritual saw the formal procession of barefooted dancers into the lodge, gazing at the centre pole or Sun, blowing their eagle-bone whistles, bending their knives at the beat of a drum. They kept dancing for several days and nights, hoping for a vision or to arouse the pity of Wakantanka. Finally – amongst the Teton – several participants who had vowed to do so would have themselves pierced through the pectoral muscles by skewers by means of which they would be tethered to the centre pole. They would dance back and forth, attempting to tear themselves free, to gain supernatural aid through their ecstasy of pain and the pity of Wakantanka.
Although the Sun Dance was banned in 1881, after 1934 it was officially reinstated and attenuated versions are still performed, despite attempts by non-traditionalists to commercialise the ritual in the 1960s. Only the girls’ puberty ritual and Throwing of the Ball game are no longer performed; the other rites survive amongst a few traditionalists.
An important night cult amongst the Teton was Yuwipi, which survives amongst traditionalist Indians, for curing sickness, finding lost objects or missing persons, predicting future events, giving advice and offering protection. The cult appears to be a variant of the Shaking Tipi Rite of the northern Indians (Ojibwa and Cree), used for aid in hunting, whereby spirits were induced to search for moose and deer.
Sitting Bull, Hunkpapa, 1884. This tribal leader and holy man, born on the Grand River, South Dakota, in 1834, took an active part in the Plains wars of the 1860s, including a raid on Fort Buford in 1866. A member of the Strong Hearts warrior society, he presided at a Sun Dance on the Rosebud River in mid-June 1876 and had a vision of soldiers falling into his camp, which was taken as a prediction of the forthcoming battle on the Little Bighorn a few days later. His presence in the Rosebud country attracted many warriors who took part in the defeat of Custer’s command. He fled to Canada and joined Black Moon, but surrendered at Fort Buford in 1881, and was confined at Fort Randall until 1883. He then settled at Standing Rock Agency, but was killed by Indian police during Ghost Dance disturbances in 1890. A few descendants of Sitting Bull’s band who remained in Saskatchewan, Canada, still live near Wood Mountain. He is seen here wearing a buckskin jacket with floral beaded designs, holding a tobacco bag and pipe. Photograph by Palmquist & Jurgens.
The decade of the 1880s was a traumatic time for the Western Sioux. The Great Sioux Reservation – all of present-day South Dakota west of the Missouri River – had been set aside for the seven western Sioux bands by the treaty of 1868. It was reduced in size by the Black Hills cession of 1877, and again in 1889 when the Sioux surrendered nine million acres and were forced to accept six separate reservations in place of the single large one. Using the control of rations the Indian agents sought to destroy the old Indian social and religious customs, including discouraging Indian dress and hairstyles. The nomadic warrior-hunter culture had gone, and the Sioux were to become farmers, ranchers and Christians; many were dependent upon agency rations for food, as the last of the buffalo had gone by 1884. The Sioux were no longer in control of their own destiny.
In 1889 the Sioux heard of a new cult which derived from earlier forms amongst the Paiute Indians of Nevada. Sioux pilgrims visited the cult leader Wovoka at Walker River, and on their return described him as Messiah, having returned from heaven with a message of peace and reconciliation. The Sioux, however, added their own interpretations: a new earth, the return of the buffalo, and the belief that wearing ritual clothes painted with symbols would protect the wearer if shot by white soldiers. The Ghost Dance rituals – so-called because it was claimed that the ghosts of ancestors would return – aroused great excitement on the Sioux agencies in 1890, both amongst the Indian converts and the military. The agent at Standing Rock, James McLaughlin, ordered the Indian police to restrict Sitting Bull, whose ardent followers had been Ghost Dancing for weeks. In the confrontation which followed outside Sitting Bull’s cabin on 15 December 1890 the chief was shot dead by Red Tomahawk, an Indian policeman.
Each of the Teton bands (or ‘hoops’) was further divided into smaller bands known as tiyospaye or ‘camps’, each led by chiefs called itancan, with political power vested in the ‘Chiefs’ Society’ of seven foremost leaders – wicasa itancan, ‘Chief Man’. These tiyospaye consisted of extended and continually changing bilateral and bi-local kin groups called wicoti.
Teton political life began at the beginning of each summer, when bands unable to live together during the winter because of lack of game convened in a huge encampment of tipis pitched in the form of a large circle (sacred hoop) with an opening (door) on the east side. Smaller bands were assigned certain places; the favourite was at the entrance (horn) opposite the tipi of the head chief. The council lodge was pitched in an open space at the centre of the hoop.
The overall picture of well-developed social and military societies with elaborate initiation ceremonies and other rites, a complex order of chieftaincy with gradations in rank and defined roles, and institutions such as councils and akicita (camp policemen, who assumed a great deal of authority) is probably inaccurate. The political and ceremonial associations of the Teton were established so late, and flowered so quickly – as a result of the horse-rich economy, trading links, and offensive warfare – that perhaps only during the observance of major ceremonies such as the Sun Dance did such organisations function successfully. The rise in population after the acquisition of the horse, through attracting eastern bands to the Teton and particularly to the Oglala, resulted in shifting loyalties and self-made band chiefs; others were hereditary figures who displayed leadership qualities. Violent attacks between band members, selfishness, and even tyranny were only sometimes tempered by conspicuous generosity. Amongst the Oglala, a schism opened in 1841 following a confrontation between chiefs Bull Bear and Smoke and really never healed. The Oglala council or chiefs’ society Tezi Tanka (‘Big Bellies’, i.e. men over 40) delegated authority to four younger men, so-called ‘Shirt Wearers’ (from their badge of office); they also appointed others who determined where camps would be located and hunting permitted.
The decisions were carried out by akicita, members of warrior or soldier societies noted amongst all Sioux groups including the Santee. The akicita ‘soldiers’ were members of various age-graded warrior societies such as the Kit Foxes, Crow Owners (referring to a special type of feather dance bustle), Badgers, Bare Lance Owners, Owl Feather Headdress, White Horse Riders, and Strong Hearts (famous for their unique ermine-decorated horned bonnets, worn only in battle). The Silent Eaters, of which Sitting Bull was a member, were another version of the Big Bellies confined to the Hunkpapas. The societies which were designed as fighting groups each fought as a unit whenever possible, and each had its own chief, heralds or criers, and coterie of four virtuous young women. In 1878-79 when the Oglalas were moved to Pine Ridge Agency the seven tiyospaye located in various parts of the agency formed some conservative Indian communities which survive to the present day.
Curley, the famous Crow scout who brought the news of Custer’s defeat to the US Army headquarters on the steamer Far West, thereafter becoming something of a celebrity. Here he wears a loop necklace, and holds a shield trimmed with eagle feathers. Unknown photographer, c1900. (Photograph, author’s collection)
A band of Ghost Dancers from Cheyenne River under Big Foot, heading south for the Bad Lands presumably to join Kicking Bear and Short Bull, was intercepted by Maj Whitside and escorted to Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation. By a twist of fate the troops who now held Big Foot’s band were from the 7th Cavalry, cut to pieces on the Little Bighorn 14 years earlier. On 29 December 1890 the soldiers, now under the command of Col Forsyth, surrounded the Indian camp; and during the confrontation that followed soldiers using rifles and howitzers killed 300 men, women and children. The dead were buried in a common grave, which remains today a memorial to the long sufferings of the Sioux people over the past three and a half centuries.