Sitting Bull betrayed by Nawizi Wicasa

Part two of a series
To unravel the history behind the 1890 massacre of more than 300 Mnicoujou and Hunkpapa Lakota men, women and children at Čhaŋkpé Ópi Wakpála (Wounded Knee Creek) and uncover the identity of the victims, one must revisit the circumstances leading up to one of the worst crimes against humanity in American History.

Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake, the great Hunkpapa Lakota Chief Sitting Bull, whose resistance to the white man’s ever pressing encroachment on the indigenous homelands of the Oceti Sakowin is legendary.

Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake’s celebrity amongst not only the Wasicu but also amongst his own people would be cause
for some at Standing Rock to become Nawizi (jealous) of him, which would unfortunately lead to his demise
and set off a chain of events that would forever change history.

In 1887, shortly after Sitting Bull had returned from touring with the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show he was invited to be in the company of the Queen of England, for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. In Stanley Vestal’s book titled, “Sitting
Bull, Champion of the Sioux” Vestal writes, “He had hobnobbed with Presidents, and generals, mayors and members of parliament and one and all had called him Chief!”

Instead Sitting Bull refused to go because he states, “It is bad for our cause for me to parade around, awakening the hatred of white men everywhere. Besides, I am needed here; there is more talk of taking our lands.”

Sitting Bull had resigned to a life in a log cabin with his wives and children on his homeland near his birthplace
along the Grand River. He farmed, raised cattle and chickens, and had even asked that a school be built for his children near his home.

However, the issue of more land theft had been on his mind and for six years he had used his influential position to prevent the cession of more Indian lands. In the end he would lose because, under the cover of darkness, four rival chiefs, Hunkpapa’s John Grass and Gall, and Yanktonais’ Mad Bear and Big Head conspired with the Indian Agent McLaughlin to get the needed signatures.

Sitting Bull and his followers, the Silent Eaters, were stopped by a blockade formed by the Yanktonais and the  Indian Police led by Lieutenant Bull Head from entering the most important council meeting in their history, where John Grass, Chief Gall and Chief Bear Face would sign away another eleven million acres of land.
When someone asked what he thought about Indians losing more of their indigenous homelands Sitting Bull replied, “Indians! There are no Indians left but me.”

Vestal writes that after Sitting Bull’s failure to block the cession of ’89, “his enemies closed round him like wolves around a dying buffalo; his rivals took new heart and kept pressing their master, McLaughlin, to let them get at the chief.”

Not only had more land been stolen from his tribe, but in 1889 Congress had slashed the annual Lakota rations budget. When combined with a harsh winter and the drought of 1889–90, the tribe was pushed to the brink of starvation which left many of the children susceptible to disease. Sitting Bull himself had lost a daughter to disease.
So, in 1889 when an Oglala Lakota man named Kicking Bear brought word to the Hunkpapa about the Ghost Dance, which taught that if the people would dance a Messiah would come “in the flesh of an Indian,” bringing with him all their dead relatives along with the buffalo and horses, they took notice. The Messiah would also remove the white man and the Indians living and dead would live on a regenerated earth. All that was required is that they practice the Ghost Dance regularly until he came.

Sitting Bull showed trepidation in believing such a story, “It is impossible for a dead man to return and live again.” However, Sitting Bull and his people were willing to try anything once. “And in this new dance, they were told, people fell dead (fainted) and saw their dead relatives.”

Fearing reprisal from U.S. Troops as they had with the Sun Dance, Sitting Bull was reluctant to dance. However, Kicking Bear reassured him that he need not fear if the dancers wore sacred garments, Ghost Shirts, painted with the sun, moon, stars, the eagle and the buffalo. Kicking Bear also claimed the Ghost Shirts were bullet-proof.

“Sitting Bull danced with the others, hoping to go into a trance and see the beloved daughter he was mourning,” Vestal writes. However because his daughter did not come to him he was reluctant to believe, “though he was pitifully eager to, and listened with close attention to the reports of more favored dancers…McLaughlin declares that Sitting Bull did not believe but allowed his people to dance.”

Fearing the Ghost Dance was a prequel to an Indian uprising, McLaughlin and other rivals seized the practice of the Ghost Dance as an opportunity to have Sitting Bull arrested.

Vestal writes, “Although the Indian Bureau had, very properly, ignored McLaughlin’s request to have Sitting Bull arrested, leading men of the agency faction kept hounding the agent to let them go after Sitting Bull. And at last, the agent called a meeting and told the Policemen that it looked as though they might have to arrest Sitting Bull. Immediately the police force fell to pieces. Some felt that the arrest was impossible, others that it was unjustified. Many had relatives down there and were reluctant to start a fight in which blood would be shed, and those who had families demanded who would care for their widows and orphans. They knew that Sitting Bulls followers, though obedient to the white men, would never endure to have Yanktonais and Blackfeet Sioux come and carry him out of a Hunkpapa camp. Crazy Walking, Captain of the Police, resigned; Grasping Eagle, Big Mane, Standing Soldier, all turned in their guns and uniforms. One Bull was discharged because of distrust; he was known to love his uncle.”

Also resigning were Old Bull, Strikes-the-Kettle, Black Fox, Two Crow. However, Lieutenant Bullhead was more than eager to arrest Sitting Bull.

“Let me pick my own men, I’ll pick men who will stick.” He chose White Bird, One Feather, Good Voiced Eagle, Running Hawk, Weasel Bear, Iron Thunder and Black Pheasant.

Shortly before his death, Sitting Bull received an unlikely message from his old friends the Zintkala which foretold his eventual demise at the hands of his own people.

“Sitting Bull did not expect evil from the white men. His danger lay elsewhere. For one day, when he was out looking for the old circus horse, which was hiding from him in the breaks, a meadowlark sang a new song to him: ‘The Sioux will kill you!’”

(Contact Ernestine Anunkasan Hupa at cahunpigiwin@gmail.com)

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