Historical Record On Beaver Creek

WA NA TA, THE CHARGER, Grand Chief of the Sioux, by Charles King Bird.
Missing Narrative In North Dakota
Historical Record On Beaver Creek
By Dakota Wind
Linton, N.D. (The First Scout) – There is a great long gradual rise on the vast open prairie between the Mnišóše (The Water-Astir, or “Missouri River”) and Čhaŋsáŋsaŋ Wakpá (White Birch River, or “James River”). The Iháŋkthuŋwaŋna (Little End Village, or “Yanktonai”) who occupied this region for hundreds of years call this rise Ȟé Mníšoše, the Water-Astir Ridge. The French called it the Coteau du Missouri.

The Očhéthi Šakówiŋ often know places by two or more names. An everyday name for everyday things like hunting or gathering. A site may have a special or spiritual significance. The Middle Dakhóta called the Water-Astir Ridge, just that, when they hunted and gathered. When they prayed there, when they put their relatives to rest on the coteau, they called it Wanáǧi Tȟamákhočhe, or Country of the Spirits.

For the Dakhóta, the Water-Astir Ridge begins in the north by Šuŋk’óthi Pahá, or Wolf Den Butte, which is today called Dogden Butte. The coteau reaches southwest to a point near the North Dakota-South Dakota border by Forbes, ND. A creek across the border meanders across the plain and serves as a natural boundary of the coteau. This creek has two names in Dakhóta, and if that weren’t enough, it has two designations in English. 

The Battle of Whitestone Hill, as it appeared in Harpers Weekly, October 31, 2863.

A gulch six miles west-southwest of Forbes, ND is known to the Iháŋkthuŋwaŋna as Šúŋka Wakȟáŋ Wičháktepi, or Where Their Horses Were Killed, in reference to the horses that were wounded in the 1863 Whitestone Hill Conflict carried survivors to this point and laid down to rest.

This creek is known by the Middle Dakhóta as Wíŋkta Wakpána (Hermaphrodite Creek) or Dakhóta Núm Wakpá (Two Dakota Creek). The Corps of Discovery called it Stone Idol Creek. The modern population in the vicinity of Pollock call it Spring Creek. This stream originates about nine miles south-southeast of Ashley, ND.

Another stream that bears re-examination is Čhápa Wakpána, or Beaver Creek. It rises at Bdé Čhápa, or Beaver Lake, and flows out of the coteau about 108 miles west to join the Mnišóše by the Beaver Creek Recreation Area by HWY 1804.

In the fall of 1839, Waná’ata, the Charger, led his band of Dakhóta to make their winter camp. It was his last winter. The camp spread out for miles along the creek. The Charger was a veteran of the War of 1812. He was commissioned a captain by British Indian Agent Col. Robert Dickson. The Charger led several hundred Dakhóta people at the battles of Fort Miegs and Fort Stephen in Ohio. He was so influential on the field, his bravery so renowned, that President Martin Van Buren met with the Charger and commissioned his likeness in a portrait. The Charger also met with King George III. Was the Charger an important and influential figure in the history of the American West? A president and a king seemed to think so.

In 1818, at Fort Snelling, the Charger became a devoted proponent of the United States.

The Charger led a command of hundreds of Dakhóta and Lakȟóta warriors in the first ever punitive campaign against a Plains Indian people, the Arikara, in the Arikara War of 1823. 

U.S. General Land Office Map, No. 12, 1878, details Grant's executive order extending the boundaries of Standing Rock Agency into present-day Emmons County.

President Grant extended the boundary of the Standing Rock Agency in his Executive Order, dated March 16, 1875, from west of the Missouri River, east of the agency along Beaver Creek to about where 19th Ave SE, Linton, ND is located, and south into North Campbell, SD. This boundary set aside land for the Iháŋkthuŋwaŋna Dakhóta people. The people who fought on the side of the United States were recognized for their service and dedication by the federal government and the president set aside land for them in perpetuity.

There’s plenty of cultural and occupational history in Emmons County. If only there were some kind of in-depth historical Class III survey that could document these significant events.

Terrible Justice, A Book Review

Whitestone Hill, this image appeared in Harper's Weekly, based on a pencil drawing by Gen. Alfred Sully. 

Terrible Justice, A Book Review

No Detail Too Grim Left Out

By Dakota Wind

Chaky, Doreen. Terrible Justice: Sioux Chiefs and U.S. Soldiers on the Upper Missouri, 1854-1868. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. 2012. $39.95 (hardcover). 408 pages. Illustrations, maps, photographs, bibliography, and index.

Chaky’s Terrible Justice begins with the Ash Hollow conflict of 1854, as settlers migrated across the Great Plains to better lives on the west coast or in the Rocky Mountains. Her research was sparked after participating in an archaeological survey at Fort Rice, and she soon realized that as much as the story of adventure belonged to the soldiers, it was a story that ultimately belongs to the Sioux. She was not satisfied that so little was published about the military’s role in Manifest Destiny there at Fort Rice and across the plains.

An example of an outstanding feature in Terrible Justice is Chaky’s use of Little Crow’s actual name, which is Taóyate Dúta (His Red Nation), and her continued use of his real name throughout her book. She doesn’t mince words in her description of the punitive military campaigns – Generals Sibley and Sully were sent to make war, take prisoners, destroy food resources, and secure Dakota Territory for white settlement.

Chaky carefully constructs the 1863 Sibley campaign on the orders of General Pope and his orders to secure Dakota Territory from President Abraham Lincoln. Sibley’s march is an invasion, and the conflict between the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (the Great Sioux Nation) and Sibley's command began when his campaign left from Camp Pope on the Minnesota River, not when a young man from the band of Íŋkpaduta (Scarlet Point) shot and killed Surgeon Weiser.

Terrible Justice isn’t an apologist’s narrative. Chaky describes in great detail the gory violence and destruction committed by men, native and non-native; scalps taken by soldiers and warriors. But, she draws close when she includes brief remembrances of Pvt. Phebus, Sgt. Martin, and acting Gov. Hutchinson, several years after the Whitestone Hill massacre.

Federal “Indian Policy” has always been one of dispossession and displacement. As settlers advanced west into Indian Country, tensions erupted in an escalating conflict until the military came in to secure the peace by forcing first nations to sign treaties (land cessions and reservations). Treaties were generally signed by a majority of grown men, sometimes not even by that (ex. Treaty of New Echota).

The Sibley-Sully campaigns were pre-emptive. The Yanktonai, who, at that time yet lived in their homeland, were killed, imprisoned, and forced west across the Missouri River without ever signing a treaty to cede their lands. The land between the Missouri River and the James River is still unceded Yanktonai territory.

Chaky signed my copy, “Dakota, I hope I’ve represented the Sioux properly with this book. I enjoyed doing it very much. Doreen Chaky, 7/28/13.” It’s a book that’s not hard to read, but it’s straight content and elaborate description make it hard to read. These are my people. Chaky began her narrative that this was “the story of the Sioux.” A quick review of her bibliography reveals six recognizable works by first nations, and one hopes a second edition of Terrible Justice would draw on more the surviving oral tradition. 

Recognizing that there are many, many books available for purchase on the subject of the Little Bighorn conflict, Chaky brings her work to a tidy close, by barely mentioning that fight (one sentence). Wounded Knee receives no mention. That’s all right, not every history book about the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ needs to include that tragedy. Chaky focuses on the conditions of peoples, native and settler, of the Great Plains. 

It's a good book. Go get yourself a copy. The maps are a great visual aid.

Dakota Wind is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. He is currently a university student working on a degree in History with a focus on American Indian and Western History. He maintains the history website The First Scout.

The Killdeer Mountain Conflict

A painting of the Killdeer Mountain Conflict of 1864 by Carl Boeckman. 

General Sully’s 1864 Punitive Campaign

Conflicts In Dakota Territory

By Dakota Wind

KILLDEER, N.D. – “Four Horns was shot in the Killdeer Battle between Sioux and General Sully’s troops…some time after the fight, his daughter cut out the lead bullet,” One Bull said to Colonel Alfred Welch on hot July day in 1934 at Little Eagle, S.D. “The report [that] the soldiers killed hundreds of Indian dogs is untrue,” said One Bull, “because Indian dogs, half wild creatures, would follow the Indians or run away long before soldiers would come up within range.[i]

The Killdeer Mountain conflict occurred on July 28, 1864. Sully was under orders to punish the Sioux in another campaign following the September, 1863 massacre of Dakȟóta and Lakȟóta peoples at Pa ÍpuzA Napé Wakpána (Dry Bone Hill Creek), Whitestone Hill.[ii]

The Lakȟóta and Dakȟóta knew Killdeer Mountain as Taȟčá Wakútepi (Where They Hunt/Kill Deer), Killdeer. The hunting there was good and dependable, and the people came there regularly, not just to hunt but to pray as well. The plateau rises above the prairie steppe allowing for a fantastic view of the landscape, and open sky for those who came to pray.

A hand-tinted photo of Matȟó Watȟákpe by Frank Fiske.

Matȟó Watȟákpe (Charging Bear; John Grass), led the Sihásapa (Black Sole Moccasin; Blackfeet Lakȟóta) on the defensive at Killdeer. The Sihásapa had nothing to do with the 1862 Minnesota Dakota Conflict. “In this surprise attack the Indians lost everything… soldiers destroyed tons of food, etc.,” Matȟó Watȟákpe told Welch, and added that great suffering followed the fight and hatred against the whites grew.[iii] 

The Lakȟóta and Dakȟóta saw General Sully’s approach from miles away, his march put a great cloud of dust into the sky. Sully formed his command in to a large one mile square, and under his command was a detachment of Winnebago U.S. Indian Scouts, traditional enemies of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Seven Council Fires; Great Sioux Nation). A war party of thirty warriors had tussled with the Winnebago two days before Sully’s arrival.

In Robert Larson's take on the Killdeer Mountain conflict, the Teton are overconfident and Inkpaduta was the chief who organized the defense against Sully. 

Historian Robert Larson describes July 28, 1864, nearly perfectly, “…Sully’s five mile march to reach the large Sioux village was a tense and uncomfortable one. Even though it was morning, the day would be hot and dry; the tense summer heat had already thinned the grass and muddied the water holes. On every hill along the valley at the south end of the village were clusters of mounted warriors.”[iv]

The Dakȟóta under ĺŋkpaduta (Scarlet Point) had been engaged with soldiers since the Minnesota Dakota Conflict of 1862. They had fled west towards Spirit Lake when General Sully and his command caught up to them at Big Mound. The Huŋkphápȟa Lakȟóta under Phizí (Gall) had crossed the Mníšoše (Missouri River) in search of game; the heat and drought had driven game from the traditional their hunting grounds. Sibley’s arrival and pursuit of the Dakȟóta and Lakȟóta towards the Mníšoše marked the first U.S. martial contact against the Huŋkphápȟa.

Tačháŋȟpi Lúta pictured here in his B.I.A. police uniform. "Sitting Bull was my friend," he said, "I was under orders...I killed him..." 

Tačháŋȟpi Lúta (Red Tomahawk), infamously known for his part in Sitting Bull’s death years later, recalled the Sibley Campaign, “There was a shallow lake south of the hills and about where Dawson now stands. That was fine buffalo country. The buffalo would get into this lake and mire down so they could not get out. We went there that time to drive them into the lake and get meat and hides. While we were there the Santees came along.”

Tačháŋȟpi Lúta then referred to the ĺsaŋyathi (Santee) as “hostile,” but that the Huŋkphápȟa camped with them and joined together in the hunt. He doesn’t detail how the fight began at Big Mound, only that Sibley pursued them to the Mníšoše. The warriors held the attention of the soldiers, which allowed the Lakȟóta two days to cross the river. The ĺsaŋyathi under ĺŋkpaduta and Wakhéye Ská (White Lodge) broke off and turned north.

ĺŋkpaduta pictured here. After the Little Bighorn fight he went into exile in Canada and died there in 1881. 

After the escape at Apple Creek, ĺŋkpaduta and Wakhéye Ská moved their camps in an arc, first northerly, then back east and south, and kept a respectable distance between the Isáŋyathi and Sibley’s retreat. Then the Isáŋyathi journeyed to Pa ÍpuzA Napé Wakpána to make camp and hunt with the Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna the following month. Sully found the camp and slaughtered as many as 200 and took over 150 captives, mostly women and children in both cases.

After the Dakȟóta split from the Lakȟóta, “we went to cross the river. We were not afraid,” explained Tačháŋȟpi Lúta, “We did not lose any of our people when we crossed.”[v] He admitted to being a part of the party who waited the night through and then attacked and killed two soldiers.

Here's a reconstruction of the Apple Creek conflict. The map comes from a survey of the Missouri River in the 1890s. 

The late Delma Helman, a Huŋkphápȟa elder from Standing Rock, recalled the story of the Mníšoše crossing, “The soldiers chased us into the river. We cut reeds to breathe underwater and held onto stones to keep submerged until nightfall.” After the vesper of sunset, they emerged from the river safely onto Burnt Boat Island (later called Sibley Island).[vi]

The Sibley campaign was the Huŋkphápȟa’s first encounter with U.S. soldiers, Sully’s assault at Killdeer was the second. Sitting Bull’s own pictographic record testifies to his own portrayal, not as a warrior but as a medicine man, counting coup and stealing a mule from Sibley’s wagon train in July, 1863.[vii]

Sitting Bull pictographed his part in the Big Mound conflict in which he stole a mule from Sully and counted coup on one of the men. 

Historian Robert Utley estimates that there were perhaps as many as 1400 lodges at Taȟčá Wakútepi. It was a sizable village consisting of Huŋkphápȟa, Sihásapa, Mnikȟówožu, Itázipčho, Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna, and Isáŋyathi. Utley paints the Lakȟóta and Dakȟóta in overconfident tones: “they did not order the lodges packed,” explains Utley, “nor did they order the village moved, “The women, children, and old men, in fact, gathered on a high hill to watch.”[viii]

But the camp was moved. At least the Lakȟótas’ was, from the west side of Taȟčá Wakútepi to the southeast side, below Medicine Hole the day before Sully’s arrival,[ix] in a movement which placed a fresh water creek between them and the approaching soldiers. The Lakȟóta had learned the previous summer that water slowed or stopped the soldiers’ advance.

"Tȟatȟáŋka ĺyotake," says Ernie LaPointe of Sitting Bull, "that's his name." 

Ernie LaPointe, Tȟatȟáŋka ĺyotake’s (Sitting Bull’s) direct lineal descendant, a great-grandson of the Huŋkphápȟa leader, offers this retrospective, “If it had been possible, Tȟatȟáŋka ĺyotake might have accepted peace terms that simply allowed his people and him to continue to live their traditional lifestyle.” As it was, Sully’s assault left one hundred Lakȟóta dead,[x] though Sully’s reports have the count closer to 150.

A map of the Killdeer conflict as it unfolded, courtesy of the State Historical Society of North Dakota.

The Lakȟóta camp had moved in a position which faced Sully’s left flank; ĺŋkpaduta’s camp faced Sully’s right. A hunting party, possibly a war party though all the men were as much prepared to fight as to hunt, skirmished with Sully’s Winnebago scouts earlier that day. Sully’s command, five miles away, approached Taȟčá Wakútepi for a showdown.

When the soldiers got closer, a lone Lakȟóta warrior, Šúŋka Waŋžíla (Lone Dog), decided to test the fighting resolve of the soldiers and boldly rode his horse within range of fire. The soldiers fired three times at him. Tȟatȟáŋka Ská (White Bull) believed that Šúŋka Waŋžíla lived a wakȟáŋ life, charmed some would say in English. Šúŋka Waŋžíla, explained Tȟatȟáŋka Ská, “…was with a ghost and it was hard to shoot him.”[xi]

A map of the 1864 Sully campaign in Dakota Territory.

Lt. Col. John Pattee, under Sully’s command that day, said of Šúŋka Waŋžíla riding, waving, and whooping at the soldiers, that an aide from Sully approached him, “The General sends his compliments and wishes you to kill that Indian for God’s sake.” Pattee ordered three sharpshooters to bring down Šúŋka Waŋžíla. One shot, according to Pattee, sent Šúŋka Waŋžíla from his horse, though Sully claimed the warrior fell from his horse.[xii]

According to Šúŋka Waŋžíla’s own pictographic record, he was riding, armed with bow and arrows, carrying black shields as much for practical protection as for spiritual protection, and received one wound.[xiii]

The fighting continued north for the five miles it took for Sully’s command to reach the encampments. For those five miles, the Lakȟóta held the soldiers’ attention, at times in brutal hand to hand combat. The Lakȟóta managed to outflank Sully’s men, which threatened the wagons and horses, so Sully ordered artillery to open fire. When the fight approached the encampments, the women hastened to break and flee. Frances “Fanny” Kelly, a captive of the Lakȟóta said that as soon as soldiers were sighted, the women withdrew into the hills, woods, and ravines, around Taȟčá Wakútepi, for protection[xiv].

Taȟčá Wakútepi (Killdeer Mountain), a view from the south looking north.

On the Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna and Isáŋyathi side of the conflict, the fight for the Dakȟóta became a stubborn retreat back to the encampments at the base of Taȟčá Wakútepi. There the soldiers broke into heavy fire into the Dakȟóta protectors until they finally broke. White Bull told Stanley Vestal (Walter Campbell) that the Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna and Isáŋyathi were as strangers to the Lakȟóta, and that they lost thirty when their line of defense broke.[xv]

In a dialog with Mr. Timothy Hunts In Winter, there was a woman, an ancestor of his, Ohítika Wiŋ (Brave Woman) who fought at Killdeer. “She was only 14 on the day of the Killdeer fight but she fought along side her até (father). Her até was killed that day in battle,” explained Hunts In Winter, “she was named Ohítika Wiŋ because she was a woman warrior.”[xvi]

The Lakȟóta and Dakȟóta encampment lay on the other side of this coulee (the treeline in the middle ground). The Lakȟóta camp moved here from the southwest side of the plateau.

From the Lakȟóta camp there came a singer escorting a man known as The-Man-Who-Never-Walked, a cripple since birth. His limbs were twisted and shrunken and in all his forty winters, he had never once hunted nor fought. When the soldiers came to the camp, The-Man-Who-Never-Walked knew that this was his one chance to fight. He was loaded onto a travois and a creamy white horse pulled the drag. The singer led him to where Tȟatȟáŋka ĺyotake was watching the fight.

When the singer finished his song, he called out, “This man has been a cripple all his life. He has never gone to war. Now he asks to be put into this fight.” Tȟatȟáŋka ĺyotake replied, “That is perfectly all right. Let him die in battle if he wants to.” White Bull later said of Tȟatȟáŋka ĺyotake, “Sitting Bull’s heart was full that day. He was proud of his nation. Even the helpless were eager to do battle in defense of their people.”[xvii] The horse was whipped and drove The-Man-Who-Never-Walked straight into a line of soldiers, who shot the horse then him. They called him Čhaŋte Matȟó (Bear’s Heart) after that because of his great courage.

A closer look at the south-facing slope of Taȟčá Wakútepi, below Medicine Hole. They would have ascended the plateau going around the landmark and over. 

Íŋkpaduta engaged in a counter-attack on Sully’s right flank to stall his approach and lost twenty-seven warriors in hand to hand fighting. The Isáŋyathi broke just as Sully’s artillery began to fire upon the encampment.

Women and children who hadn’t retreated into the hills and ravines west of Taȟčá Wakútepi were suddenly in the fight. The women gathered what they could before abandoning camp, and young boys shepherded the horses to safety. “Children cried, the dogs were under everybody’s feet, mules balked, and pack horses took fright at the shell-fire or snorted at the drifting smoke behind them,” according to Frances Kelly.[xviii]

The Badlands west of Taȟčá Wakútepi. Thousands of places to hide and rendezvous on top of generations of intimate familiarity with the land helped the Lakȟóta remain elusive.

The Lakȟóta and Dakȟóta turned west into the Badlands, and there evaded capture.

The smoke cleared and over a hundred Lakȟóta and Dakȟóta lay dead. Sully ordered troops to destroy everything left behind. Lodges, blankets, and food were burned. Dogs were shot. Children inadvertently left behind in the confusion were chased down by the Winnebago scouts and killed.

________________________

GLOSSARY:

Čhaŋte Matȟó: Bear’s Heart (The-Man-Who-Never-Walked), a forty-year-old disabled Lakȟóta man who fought his first and last fight at Taȟčá Wakútepi

Huŋkphápȟa: also known as “Hunkpapa,” one of the seven Thítȟuŋwaŋ tribes

Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna: Little End Village (Yanktonai), one of the seven tribes that make up the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ

ĺŋkpaduta: Scarlet Point, war chief of the Waȟpékhute band of the Isáŋyathi

Isáŋyathi: the general name of the four eastern tribes (Sisíthuŋwaŋ, Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ, Waȟpékhute, and Bdewákhaŋthuŋwaŋ), their language is Dakȟóta

Matȟó Watȟákpe: Charging Bear (John Grass), a war chief of the Sihásapa, one of the seven Thítȟuŋwaŋ tribes

Mníšoše: Water-Astir (Missouri River)

Očhéthi Šakówiŋ: Seven Council Fires (The Great Sioux Nation), the confederation is made up of the Thítȟuŋwaŋ, Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna, Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋ, Sisíthuŋwaŋ, Waȟpéthuŋwaŋ, Waȟpékhute, and Bdewákhaŋthuŋwaŋ

Ohítika Wiŋ: Brave Woman, she fought at Killdeer Mountain alongside her father when she was fourteen years old

Pa ÍpuzA Napé Wakpána: Dry Bone Hill Creek (Whitestone Hill Creek)

Phizí: Gall, a war chief of the Huŋkphápȟa (Hunkpapa), one of the seven Thítȟuŋwaŋ tribes

Sihásapa: Black Sole Moccasins (Blackfeet) one of the seven Thítȟuŋwaŋ tribes

Šúŋka Waŋžíla: Dog Only-One (Lone Dog), a Huŋkphápȟa warrior and a Waníyetu Wowápi (Winter Count) keeper

Tačháŋȟpi Lúta: Red Tomahawk , a Huŋkphápȟa warrior known more for being a Bureau of Indian Affairs police officer and his role in the death of Sitting Bull.

Taȟčá Wakútepi: Where They Kill Deer (Killdeer Mountain)

Tȟatȟáŋka ĺyotake: Sitting Bull, a great leader of the Huŋkphápȟa

Tȟatȟáŋka Ská: White Bull, nephew of Sitting Bull, and a famous warrior

Thítȟuŋwaŋ: Dwellers On The Plains (Teton), the Thítȟuŋwaŋ is made up of the Huŋkphápȟa, Sihásapa, Mnikȟówožu, Itázipčho, Oglála, Oóhenuŋpa, and Sičháŋǧu, their language is Lakȟóta

Wakȟáŋ: With-Energy, often translated as “Holy” or “Sacred”

Wakhéye Ská: White Lodge, a chief of the Sisíthuŋwaŋ

________________________

ENDNOTES: 

[i] In an interview conducted by Colonel Alfred Welch with One Bull, July 14, 1934.

[ii] From Mr. Corbin Shoots The Enemy, September 2013.

[iii] Welch, A. B., Welch Dakota Papers (welchdakotapapers.com).

[iv] Larson, R., Gall: Lakota War Chief (University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), 45.

[v] Welch, A. B., Welch Dakota Papers (welchdakotapapers.com).

[vi] Interview with Delma Helman, July 2013.

[vii] Vestal, S. (Campbell, W.), Sitting Bull: Champion Of The Sioux (University of Oklahoma Press, 1957).

[viii] Utley, R., The Lance And The Shield: The Life And Times Of Sitting Bull (Henry Holt And Company, 1993), 55.

[ix] White Bull, box 105, notebook 24, pp. 1-6, Walter S. Campbell Collection, University of Oklahoma Library, Norman, OK.

[x] LaPointe, E., Sitting Bull: His Life And Legacy (Gibbs Smith, 2009), p. 49.

[xi] White Bull, box 105, notebook 24, pp. 1-6, Walter S. Campbell Collection, University of Oklahoma Library, Norman, OK.

[xii] Pattee, J., Dakota Campaigns (South Dakota Historical Collections 5, 1910), 308.

[xiii] Hé Núŋpa WaníčA (No Two Horns), thípi with pictographic records, July 7, 1915.

[xiv] Kelly, F., Narrative Of My Captivity Among The Sioux (Mutual Publishing Company, 1871), pp. 274-278.

[xv] White Bull, box 105, notebook 24, pp. 1-6, Walter S. Campbell Collection, University of Oklahoma Library, Norman, OK.

[xvi] From Mr. Tim Hunts In The Winter, March, 2014.

[xvii] Vestal, S., Sitting Bull: Champion Of The Sioux (University of Oklahoma Press, 1932), p53-54; White Bull, box 105, notebook 24, pp. 1-6, Walter S. Campbell Collection, University of Oklahoma Library, Norman, OK.

[xviii] Vestal, S., New Sources Of Indian History (Gayley Press, 2008), p. 56.

Philip Deloria Returns To North Dakota

Philip Deloria Returns To North Dakota

An Author And Scholar In His Own Right

By Dakota Wind

Grand Forks, N.D. – I came awake at four in the morning. Sleep sand still thick in my eyes, I managed to roll over and turn off the alarm on my iPhone. I had set it to play “Thor Kills The Destroyer” rather than listen to a blaring alarm so damn early in the morning. I let the song play through completely before tapping the screen, then stretched hard and yawned loud. I rolled into some clothes I set out before I crashed.

I hit the road at 5:00 in the morning. Traffic was light and I managed to gas up my little beast and take to the Interstate in a few minutes. I put on my Def Leppard playlist and before I knew it, the sun was up and I was in Fargo.

In Fargo, I picked up blogger, world traveler, archaeologist, and historian Aaron (The Edge Of TheVillage) who joined me on this day trip to Grand Forks to meet and hear Phil Deloria, author and historian. Phil came to the University of North Dakota as a guest lecturer for a few days and though Deloria and I had conversed online for several years we had never met in person.

Aaron and I stopped in at some hotel where Deloria was staying at and had brunch. I ordered a round of biscuits and gravy with a pile of whipped scrambled eggs and a couple rashers of thick bacon. I have never tasted such fresh biscuits, which were somehow flaky, and with a creamy gravy to go with it. I swear the food tasted like the chef loved his job. I washed it all down with a hearty drought of sweet grape juice.

Aaron probably had bread and water, or something.

I informed Phil we were at the hotel café and he joined us in the lobby. The floor of the halls and lobby were naked tile. Naturally, noises magnified and echoed back and forth, a clatter of dinnerware and silverware sounded like a crash of thunder. Banter amongst the hotel and café staff sounded not dissimilar to a country henhouse.

Phil’s great-grandfather, the Rev. Philip Deloria, was an Episcopal minister on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation, as was Vine Deloria Sr. My grandfather, Innocent Goodhouse, served as an Episcopal minister too, his time overlapped with the Delorias. Our families used to be close. Ella Deloria, was my mother’s god-mother. Time, distance, and vocations called Vine Deloria Jr. and his son Phil to the ministry and interpretation of American Western history.

St. Elizabeth's Episcopal Church, Wakpala, SD, where Philip Deloria and his son Vine ministered to the Lakota people.

We talk about shared family history, and our families today. It is the Lakota custom to introduce one’s self by lineage, but as Phil and I already know the other’s family and background, we move on to the heart of our visit: the 1863-1864 Sibley-Sully Punitive Campaigns against the Sioux. Deloria’s great-grandfather, Philip Deloria, was the son of Mary Sully, who in turn was the daughter of General Alfred Sully, the antagonist behind the conflicts at Whitestone Hill and Killdeer Mountain.

I ask Phil if he had any family history about General Alfred Sully and why he left his Dakota family behind. He is a straight-shooter in this regard, and says straight up that he doesn’t know. If there was a story, it probably died with Mary.

Phil is working on a family history project, something his father had also tackled. Over coffee and juice (because I don’t drink coffee), Phil shares the story of how his grandfather Vine Sr., met his grandmother through Vine’s sister, Ella. Ella herself, had assumed leadership of the family and thought that she’d always be the one to take care of her little brother Vine.

General Alfred Sully. He had a daughter with a Dakota woman, Mary, then left them. One can read about Sully in the book No Tears For The General by Langdon Sully, another of Sully's descendants. The book omits the general's Dakota wife and child.

Phil’s family studies un-apologetically does not include much of General Sully story, other than a brief mention of how an ancestor of Phil’s, Saswe, crossed paths with Sully. Saswe had a vision before the 1862 Minnesota Dakota Conflict that he would kill four of his people, a terrible choice, a lesser of two evils to preserve as many of the Dakota people as he could.

Saswe went into a camp of Dakota, explained that Sully was coming, and that it was his destiny to kill four of his own people. Saswe killed a man after the people listened to him out, and later three others. General Sully took a Dakota woman and had a daughter by her. Saswe had a son, Tipi Sapa, Black Lodge, also known as Philip J. Deloria.

“My grandfather always got a charge out of that,” shares Phil, “The children of two antagonists married one another.”

Though Phil is descended from General Sully, I asked him if he is descended from any of the people who Sully attacked the Dakota at Whitestone Hill or the Lakota at Killdeer Mountain. Phil is not certain, he says, and would have to conduct further research into his background. He does say, however, that one of Saswe’s wives, was from Standing Rock.

I ask Phil about Killdeer Mountain and the energy development currently taking place there and if he’d be able to be there for the 150th commemoration. He teaches a late summer course and his schedule may be tight and it may well be that he can not make it.

Phil is named after his great-grandfather, the Rev. Philip J. Deloria. Among the Dakota and Lakota people, they take everyday legal names and go about their business in the land of the brave, but many keep the traditional names too. Rev. Philip was known among his people as Thípi SápA, Black Lodge.

Phil’s grandfather, the Rev. Vine Sr., was known among his people as OhíyA, Win or Triumph. Vine Jr. carried not just his father’s everyday legal name but also his traditional Lakota name.

Phil comes from a legacy of ministry. His father was a lay reader as well, but answered to the call to indigenous native rights and public education of those rights; among Vine Jr.’s works are God Is Red and Custer Died For Your Sins.

Phil heard the call to action and has pursued a doctorate in history. He is the author of Playing Indian and Indians In Unexpected Places. He is a professor of history and Native American studies at the University of Michigan. Phil carries his family history to his field of work. He can’t not when he’s talking about native studies, especially contemporary native studies in the age of self-determination.

I ask Phil if he has a Lakota name, expecting that he’d tell me he carried his great-grandfather’s Lakota name. He smiles broadly and lets out a small laugh. “My grandfather called me Pšíš,” he said, “It was my grandfather’s boyhood name.” I wonder a moment if Phil liked onions when he was a boy. Pšíŋ is onion, and Pšiŋšíčamna is wild onion.

Gratify yourself and get a copy of Philip Deloria's "Playing Indian."

Our time draws to a close as Phil’s ride to the UND campus arrives. I catch him later to sign my copy of Playing Indian, “Tehansi [male cousin], so great to have connection, and good talk. Hope you enjoy this! Phl Del.” 

Whitestone Hill 150 Years Later

Whitestone Hill 150 Years Later, 1863-2013

The Bloodiest Massacre On The Great Plains

By Dakota Wind

WHITESTONE HILL, N.D. – The wind blew in gusts across the vast open plains. The Dakota and Lakota people who have lived here for millennia are people of the stars, and some of them say too that they are people of the wind. The wind isn’t just the defining characteristic of prairie life, but a part of the indigenous culture.

The Dakota say that the patterns on ones’ fingertips indicate which direction the wind was blowing on the day of one’s birth. The swirling pattern on one’s crown was taken to mean not just the living presence of one’s spirit, but the wind that brings that spirit. Sometimes, a very powerful wind was even referred to as Táku Wakȟáŋ Škaŋškáŋ, Something With-Energy Is Moving About. Indeed, a Dakȟóta elder visiting from Crow Creek, SD declared that the strength of the wind was an indication that the spirits were there at Whitestone Hill.

On Saturday, August 24, 2013, over 300 people from across North Dakota and the Great Plains gathered at Whitestone Hill near Kulm, ND to remember the bloodiest massacre of Dakota Indians following the largest mass execution in the history of the United States, which involved thirty-eight of the Dakota Indians in Mankato, MN, Dec. 26, 1862.

Despite high winds, and green lodge assemblers, this beautifully painted lodge was set up.

On this day, someone from Lake Traverse, the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, brought a beautifully painted thipí rendered in warm earth tones of red, orange, and brown with constellation patterns embellishing the outside of the lodge. A call went out for assistance to erect the lodge on that windy day and volunteers rushed to assist.

They say in the days of memory, that women could erect a lodge in as little as ten minutes. Their nomadic life way demanded a lifetime of practice, but on this day Dakȟóta women supervise a handful of non-native men, there’s even a Chippewa in the mix helping to get the lodge up.

Renowned and eminent flute-player and hoop dancer, and enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Kevin Locke, was called forward to begin the day with a prayer. At the end of the afternoon’s lectures and reflections, Locke would share the message of vision and unity of the human spirit with the hoop dance, traditional stories, and flute songs.

Locke performs the hoop dance, pictured here at Williston State College. 

Locke, known among the Dakȟóta and Lakȟóta as Tȟokéya Inážiŋ, The First To Arise, is also a descendant of Ta’Oyáte Dúta, His Red Nation, who is more widely known by the name Little Crow. Locke doesn’t make a public issue about his great-grandfather, probably because Tȟaóyate Dúta was not at Whitestone Hill, but had died of a gunshot wound in a field near Hutchinson, MN in a fight with a farmer.

One of Tȟaóyate Dúta’s sons, Mokáȟniȟya, had fled west to the Húŋkpapȟa and was among them in the running battle from Big Mound to Apple Creek. Mokáȟniȟya survived the Apple Creek conflict in late July by cutting a reed, grabbing a rock, and jumping into the Missouri River. There he waited until it was safe for him to cross. But this wasn’t a story that Locke shared at Whitestone Hill, it was a story shared with this writer in Locke’s home. Locke’s message this day was instead based on the ideal of what Dakȟóta is, as ally, as friend, and as peace.

Richard Rothaus, owner and director of Trefoil Natural and Cultural out of Minnesota, was invited to present about the causes of the 1862 Minnesota Dakota Conflict, and expertly tied the Dakota Conflicts in Minnesota and Dakota Territory to the American Civil War which was being waged concurrently in the south.

Aaron Barth, a historian and archaeologist from North Dakota State University, offered his thoughts about the Whitestone Hill massacre as an agent of genocide in American history. Barth facetiously suggested attaching cables to the current monument atop Whitestone Hill and pulling it down, but in seriousness suggested a memorial be erected on site honoring the Dakȟóta and Lakȟóta.

A local city band gathered together over the lunch hour and played music themes from popular movies and other pieces. The music, while rendered in the spirit of peace, seemed decidedly out of place. At one point the band played the theme made popular in the Rocky movies. A visitor from the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate observed that the music was very nice but out of place and jovially said during the Rocky theme, “That makes me feel like running to the top of the hill and raise my fists and shout, ‘We’re still here!’”

A panel discussion made up of members from the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate and the Standing Rock Sioux shared observations regarding the history and conflict of Whitestone Hill. LaDonna Brave Bull-Allard shared her grandmother’s story of survival when her people, the Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna Pabáska, the Cuthead Yanktonai, came under sudden and unexpected fire.

The Cuthead Yanktonai band had been proponents of the United States since 1818 when their chieftain, Waná’at’á, The Charger, was released from an internment at Fort Snelling. The Charger led the Yanktonai in a siege under the command of Colonel Leavenworth against the Arikara in 1823. The Yanktonai had no reason to fear their American allies until General Sully brought the wrath of the soldiers on them at Whitestone Hill, Sept. 3-5, 1863.

A tribal elder from Crow Creek, and a descendant of Tȟóka Khuté, Shoots The Enemy, who was captured at Whitestone Hill and imprisoned at Fort Thompson, Dakota Territory (present-day South Dakota), articulated a short explanation of the site before he departed from Whitestone Hill that afternoon. In the Ihanktowana dialect, Wičhéyena, Whitestone Hill was never called or recognized as Whitestone Hill. They called it Pa IpuzA Nape Wakpana, Dry Bone [as in “Very Thirsty] Hill Creek. “They never called it ‘Whitestone Hill,’” insists Corbin Shoots The Enemy.

Shoots The Enemy shared the story that few young men were in the village as most were out hunting. Men who were past their warrior days stayed behind with elders and youth in the village. Among the chiefs who led thiyóšpaye, an extended family, at Whitestone Hill that day are: Nasúna Thaŋka (Big Head), Taȟča Ska (White Deer), Šuŋkáȟa Napíŋ (Wolf Necklace), Mahtó Wakáŋtuya (High Bear), Hotháŋke (Big Voice, Winnebago), Mahtó Nuŋpa (Two Bear), Wáğa (Cottonwood), Hoğáŋ Dúta (Red Fish), Mahtó KnaškiŋyAn (Mad Bear), Awáska (White With Snow), Waŋbdí Wanapȟéya (Eagle That Scares), Waŋbdí Maní (Walking Eagle), Waoŋzoği (With Pants, or Pantaloons), Čhaŋ Ičú (Takes The Wood), Waŋbdí Ska (White Eagle), Tȟóka Khuté (Shoots The Enemy), and Ziŋtkála Maní (Walking Bird).

These Itȟáŋčhaŋ, chiefs, led tens to hundreds in their thiyóšpaye. There were easily at least a thousand Ihanktowana at Whitestone Hill. Several tons of food were destroyed following the massacre, thousands of dogs were killed, and as many as three hundred Dakȟóta people lost their lives, and over a hundred were taken prisoner, most of whom were women and children.

Lakȟóta language instructor, Earl Bull Head, and an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, was called upon to share a song and story. A storyteller, Bull Head opened with a few jokes about his travels to Europe and his experiences with the world before sharing a story and song he originally composed for a friend who lost his son. Bull Head’s friend was caught up in misery and heartbreak. The song came to Bull Head to inspire his friend to live a good life; it was a call to redemption and forgiveness.

A stone circle, this one about five feet in diameter, rests on private land at the Whitestone Hill site.

A local landowner invited this writer to his land nearby to view some of the features not found at the Whitestone Hill State Historic Site. On top of a rolling hill were several stone circles, several about five feet across and one measured about fifty feet in diameter, and a few great heavy anvil stones bore evidence of shaping tools over thousands of years, which reminded this visitor once again that people were coming here millennia before the conflict.

Sunset at Stoney Lake, north of Tappen, ND. This is where the Lakota engaged General Sibley's command for the second time in July, 1863.

The day ended with a buffalo feed. A long lingering line gradually worked itself through the hundreds of visitors present. Plates were piled with great cuts of lean bison meat, hot steaming potatoes, warmed beans, and handmade biscuits. Conversation ebbed and flowed as the line shrunk. The wind gradually calmed to a breeze, which in the great shade a cottonwood, actually cooled the waiting hungry crowd.

My plate was piled high and heavy with food. I took a cup of lemonade and downed it before I made it back to my car. I was hungry and the smell of roasted meat nearly made me break my fast, but I couldn’t eat. I felt the impression of my grandmother, after all these years sometimes it seems like I can smell her or sense her watching me.

Sunset at Big Mound where Sitting Bull counted coup on one of Sibley's men. Sitting Bull also stole a mule from the line in a show of bravery. This was the first engagement that summer between the Lakota and Sibley's command, July 1863.

I drove off down the dusty gravel road, over the rolling grassy hills, and out of sight from the crowd. It may seem like waste to some, but it wasn’t to me. I pulled over onto the grass, took my plate, and carried it to the side of the road. I said no prayer or benediction. I didn’t call out or cry. I could not eat there when long ago my relatives were forced to go without. It is the custom of the Dakȟóta and Lakȟóta people to take food to our relatives who’ve taken their journey. 

Terrible Justice: Sioux Chiefs And U.S. Soldiers, A Review

A Terrible Justice is a must read for the American Western enthusiast.

Terrible Justice: Sioux Chiefs & US Soldiers

Criticism Of An Otherwise Good Book

By Dakota Wind

BISMARCK, ND – I recently picked up a copy of Doreen Chaky’s Terrible Justice: Sioux Chiefs and U.S. Soldiers on the Upper Missouri, 1854–1868. The first paragraph into the first chapter, Terrible Justice, I immediately determined that this wasn’t a narrative of the Plains Indians conflicts, but a serious study about what happened, when it happened and who was there. A narrative is rather like a travel writer’s attempt to take the reader there. The purpose of the narrative is to make the event easy to read, and something is lost in that style.

Chapters like The Battle of Fort Rice are lengthy and detailed. Nearly no soldier or Indian goes unnamed, and I almost felt I was reading Homer’s Iliad. I had previously read, and re-read Ben Innis’ Bloody Knife: Custer’s Favorite Scout for basic information about what Innis describes as a ten-day siege of Fort Rice, and pretty much leaves it at that. Chakey has gone back and scoured every known published source (The Frontier Scout, military orders for the day, muster roles, etc.) and has delivered the most complete telling of Sitting Bull’s assaults on a military fort. More than just a siege or stand-off, with Chakey’s version, one sees the battle as a battle.

Terrible Justice features maps by a Bill Wilson. Maps which have been pain-stakingly reconstructed from explorers’, traders’ and military maps to show where many of the Sioux (Dakota and Lakota) were known to be in the time period the book focuses on. One of Wilson’s maps even features a breakdown of Sioux tribes and their dialects.

I love maps. I love maps that showcase the Northern Great Plains. Wilson’s maps are detailed with battles sites and forts, place names and state lines, all the standard fare and more that one expects in a map of Dakota Territory. I can appreciate the time and detail that has gone into creating the two maps that are featured in Terrible Justice.

There are only two maps in all of Terrible Justice’s 408 pages, but the book could have used one more. I’m sure that there are resources out there, but the only book with a map – a single map too – that attempts to recreate the landscape as the Great Sioux Nation knew it, is Royal Hassrick’s The Sioux, though not enough detail was put into his single map, only major waterways and major landmarks.

Wilson's first map which appears in Terrible Justice, on page 20. 

I’m not tearing down Chakey’s book, nor Wilson’s maps, they’re both wonderful resources to have in your library collection. I’m just sighing at the lack of a map that have traditional native names associated with them. Wilson’s maps are only an indication of Western/American mentality, the landscape wherein the indigenous have been pushed out or wiped out and the landmarks renamed. The identity of the landscape is made over.

In the chapter hauntingly titled Babies On The Battlefield, Sibley’s 1863 campaign against the Dakota and Lakota covers the running conflict from Big Mound through Dead Buffalo Lake through to Sibley’s final conflict with the Sioux at Apple Creek between present-day United Tribes Technical College and the University of Mary. The running conflict is concisely covered in just two pages.

In this same chapter is the account of Ta’Oyáte Duta’s (His Red Nation; aka Little Crow) son Wówinapĥe (A Place Of Refuge) who reported that his father had attempted to find allies among the Arikara, Hidatsa and Mandan Nation at Fort Berthold, but they were in turn attacked for their recruitment effort. Wówinapĥe also shared with Sibley’s men that his father had attempted to reach out the Chippewa up at the Turtle Mountains and find allies, but too was unsuccessful finding friends there. I had only ever heard this story as oral history from Humanities Scholar Jerome Kills Small.

This same chapter, Babies On The Battlefield, goes into far more detail about Sully’s campaign which culminated at Whitestone Hill. Chakey’s strength is entirely academic and shows in this retelling. The only other place one may find a more complete account of the Whitestone Hill conflict is Clair Jacobson’s Whitestone Hill, the only difference here is that Jacobson includes as much of the native perspective of the conflict as well as the Sully’s and his command’s accounts.

On page 176 the reader learns the awful reasoning behind the chapter’s title. Soldiers’ accounts of the days display a kill and let die philosophy in their carnage. Shooting dogs who drug travois carrying babies were shot, and if they missed, the baby was at rest. The harsh use of language clearly dehumanizes the Sioux, and that’s the sad truth of Sully’s campaign. Babies who were found, the innocent survivors, were given to the women prisoners.

There is no mention of the two pictographic accounts of the Whitestone Hill conflict. The absence of these two recorded primary documents is a resounding silence, the Lakota and Dakota remain voiceless without the inclusion of these firsthand accounts.

My concerns are few (maps and pictographs) but I feel important. Chakey’s Terrible Justice deserves a spot on the bookshelf of the student of American History or Native American history. Footnotes rest at the bottom of nearly each page; a wonderful bibliography follows the conclusion of the book which takes the reader up to the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.