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Sitting Bull And General Sibley At The Battle Of Big Mound

March 11, 2013, 2:50 pm
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General Sibley's 1863 Punitive Expedition map. 

Bismarck, ND - The summer of 1863 found many Santee Dakota displaced from their homeland in Minnesota, scattered across the plains of Dakota Territory, into Nebraskaor across the Medicine Line, the 49° parallel, into Grandmother’s Land or Canada. The Sioux Uprising, the Dakota Conflict, of the previous year lay heavy in the hearts of Dakota and settlers as everyone braced for General Sully’s and General Sibley’s punitive campaign.

Robert Utley, in his book The Lance And The Shield, described 1863 as a year filled with angst, confusion and worry for the Indians and the whites. “Dakota refugees fleeing his [General Sibley’s crushing campaign against the Minnesota Dakota in 1862] offensive spilled onto the Dakota prairies, mixing with Sissetons who had taken no part in the uprising, with Yanktonais, and even with Lakota along the Missouri River. The influx of the Minnesota Indians not only added to the unrest of the resident Indians, who were still smarting over the summer’s emigration to the mines [in reference to miners ascending the Missouri River to Fort Benton and beyond in their quest for gold], but so frightened the settlers edging up the Missouri into Dakota Territory that one-fourth of them abandoned their homesteads.”

Chief War Eagle Park, Sioux City, Iowa. The Big Sioux River converges with the Missouri River just below the monument to War Eagle.

A terrible drought in the summer of 1863 drove the bison ganges north, west, south and east across the Mni Šhošhá (The Water A-Stir; Missouri River), the Thítĥuŋwaŋ (Teton Lakota) followed some of the ganges east into Ihaŋktówaŋa (Yanktonai) country. Many of the Teton and Yanktonai had fought alongside US Colonel Leavenworth’s command in the Arikara War of 1823 and many of the Santee under the leadership of War Eagle had protected US citizens in the Northwest Territory during the War of 1812 from tribes swayed by English trade. The Sioux who were “smarting” over the influx of miners also felt betrayed and parleys & treaties afterward were brittle efforts.

Some members of the Cherokee enlisted with the Confederates States of America.

In the first two years of the American Civil War, the Confederate States of Americapromised congressional representation to Indian nations who took up arms against the Union. The CSA’s promise was undoubtedly intended for tribes in south like the Cherokee, Creek and others. Bureau of Indian Affairs Commissioner William P. Dole got wind of the CSA’s offer and saw the implications of the CSA’s open offer to all Indian nations:
            The defiant and independent attitude they have assumed during the past season [in reference to the 1862 Minnesota Dakota Conflict] towards their agent, warns us that not a moment should be lost in making preparations to prevent, and, if need be, resist and punish any hostile demonstration they may make. They have totally repudiated their treaty obligations, and, in my judgment, there is an abundance of reason to apprehend that they will engage in hostilities next spring. Like the southern rebels, these savage secessionists tolerate no opposition in their unfriendly attitude toward the whites.

The Očhéthi Šakówiŋ(Seven Council Fires; The Great Sioux Nation) had only heard that there was a great fight between the whites of the North and South. They had never heard of the CSA’s offer of congressional representation. 

Inkpaduta (Red End; Red Cap; Red Point), Itancan (Chief) of the Wahpekute (Shooters Among The Leaves) Tribe of the Santee Dakota. Run a Google search of this guy and find out a little more about him for yourself. It was believed that one of his sons stole General Custer's horse, Vic.

Some of the Santee, Inkpaduta’s Band of Dakota, had wintered on an island in Mdewakanton, SpiritLake(Devil’s Lake) after being chased out of Minnesotathe previous fall. Spring broke and Inkpaduta’s band decided to follow Čhaŋšáša Wakpa (Red Willow Creek; James River) to one of the great directional stone markers just north of present-day Jamestown, ND, then west to the Missouri River and then south towards FortPierrewith the hope that the Government had relieved them of responsibility for the Dakota Conflict. Since many of the Santee hadn’t participated in the conflict, they believed that they would be forgiven.

Clell Gannon, an artist from the Depression Era, painted this scene of General Sibley's command marching across the Great Plains in pursuit of the Sioux. The painting is a fresco within the south vestibule of the Burleigh County Courthouse in Bismarck, ND.

Sitting Bull, the Huŋkpapĥaand other bands of the Teton encountered the Santee Dakota west of the James Riverwith General Sibley hot on their heels. General Sibley employed Santee Dakota men to serve as his scouts in Dakota Territory. These scouts caught up Sitting Bull’s camp and Inkpaduta’s camp, now one large impromptu congregation who had no intention of squaring off against Sibley’s command of 4000 soldiers. Besides, the Dakota-Lakota camp took the word of the Scouts that Sibley came to take only the Santeewho had fought in the Dakota Conflict the previous year.

A beautiful wood engraving of anonymous US Indian Scouts.

It so happened that as the Scouts were in council with the Dakota and Lakota, one of Sibley’s officers foolishly crept away from Sibley’s command to watch the council from a nearby hill and made an easy target. The temptation proved too sweet for one warrior who took aim, shot and killed the officer. Historian, Alexander Adams supposed that this anonymous warrior was one of Inkpaduta’s party.

The impulsive action of one warrior committed the entirety of Inkaduta’s and Sitting Bull’s camps to action. Sibley’s command retaliated immediately and the warriors immediately took up the rear of the retreating camps to defend the hasty and masterful escape of the women and children around pothole lakes and serpentine movement back and forth over the Apple Creek, all of which slowed Sibley’s command.

Sitting Bull counts coup on General Sibley's man and steals a mule, from Sitting Bull's Hieroglyphic Autobiography in Stanley Vestal's Sitting Bull: Champion of the Sioux. The line coming from the figure on horseback's mouth denotes a name, the upright bison bull represents his name, in this case, Sitting Bull. The hairstyle arranged on this figure's head indicates a spiritual man, or medicine man.

The running battle began at the Big Mound on July 24, 1863. Sitting Bull flanked by friendly fire from behind and enemy fire ahead, dashed headlong into General Sibley’s wagon train, delivered a quick rap with a coup stick to the wagon master and made off with one of his mules.

The running battle continued west to where Apple Creek converges with the Missouri River, below present-day University of Mary, Bismarck, ND and concluded with the Dakota-Lakota civilians safely across the Missouri River, and a stand-off with General Sibley’s command which ended on August 1, 1863. 

In a correspondence with Ernie LaPointe, great-grandson of Sitting Bull, Leksi Ernie has no additional oral tradition to add to this story.Visit his website: Sitting Bull Family Foundation.

Read more about the Conflict at Apple Creek.
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Interpreting A Pictograph Calendar

March 26, 2013, 9:42 am
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It's been a long while since I posted an article that exercised my ability to write as an academic. I began work on this about ten years ago. I'd forgotten that I had this in my files, then I happened upon Thornton's 2003 article and remembered I had this again. I amended my grammar and reviewed some additional notes. Here's what I have. Note: The Mandan Indians call themselves "Nu'Eta," which means "The People."

An excerpt of a pictograph by Sitting Rabbit. The scene is of the Hidatsa village along Knife River, the village that Sacagawea lived in when she encountered the Corps of Discovery.

Sometime back in the fall of 2003, enrolled member of the Cherokee in Oklahomaand Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Dr. Russell Thornton and Dr. Candace Green published a short paper about the Little Owl calendar, a lunar chart, of the Mandan Indians.

The calendar, or lunar chart, is a fascinating example of Plains Indian pictography. It is similar and yet different to another Plains Indian pictographic tradition, the Winter Count.

The lunar chart is the personal property of the late Mr. Ronald “Sammy” Little Owl, of the Arikara Hidatsa and Mandan Nation on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, who found it amongst his late mother’s belongings. Mr. Little Owl brought the lunar chart to Dr. Thornton’s and Dr. Green’s attention in 1998. Little Owl also supposed that the lunar chart was associated with the Bad News Clan, to which his father and paternal grandfather belonged.

Dr. Green suggests that the Little Owl lunar chart may indicate “a possible record of planting by the agricultural Mandan…apparent cycles and obvious plant symbols, one might conclude that the calendar was used to keep a record of planting and harvesting.”[1]

Dr. Edwin Benson, the last man to speak Nu'Eta as a first language. Watch and listen to him.

In the fall of 2003 I contacted Dr. Edwin Benson, of the Arikara Hidatsa and Mandan Nation, who was teaching the Nu’Eta (Mandan) language at the TwinButtesDay School on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation at the time for his knowledge of the Mandancalendar. Dr. Benson graciously responded with the following:

January            Kupa-hanas                              Seven Nights
February          Ma-istami-ba-da                      Sore Eyes
March              Wa-he-knew                           Spring
April                Ma-nabe-ki-bu-ke                   Game
May                 Muut-ogeheneh                        Planting/Sowing
June                 Ma-na-bu Shu-kena-de-ke      June Berries
July                  Ka-dek-na-de-ke                    Chokecherries
August             Wak-da-na-de-ke                   Wild Plums
September       Koxate-du-kie                         Ripe Corn
October           Ma-nah-pe-o-dee-geh             Frost-On-The-Ground
November       Ikatehne-o-nu Des-o                Freezing Rivers
December        Hump-ni-nahge-ge-gipdahg     Short Day/s

Dr. Benson also sent me a few alternate names, but these only in English:

January                                                            Seven Cold Days
April                                                                Breaking-Up-Of-The-Ice
October                                                           Falling-Of-The-Leaves
December                                                        Little Cold

Here follows a basic understanding of the Mandan and Hidatsa gardening practices throughout the summer. This may assist with interpreting the Little Owl Lunar Calendar (chart).

"Singing The Corn" by Jack Stewart.

“In the old garden, the work usually started when the first geese appeared on their way north, or when the Missouri River broke up, events which usually occurred almost together. At this time the old weeds and stalks and vines were collected and burned.”[2]

The women would arise when the light began to appear on the horizon or at daybreak, sometimes as early as three o’clock in the morning.[3]The women would work the fields from sunup to when the heat of the day could be felt, at which point they returned to their lodges and did other work. If any time was left over in the day, toward the close of the afternoon, they would go back to their fields.

Often times the women would sing while working or watching the crops for intruders, or to make fun of the men and boys.[4]

After the fields were cleared of debris, the planting hills were dug up, loosened, and broken back down again into loose soil. The hills measured about twelve to eighteen inches in diameter and were approximately twelve to eighteen inches apart from one another. Sunflowers were the first crop to be planted around the edge of the garden before clearing and digging were finished.[5] They were planted three to a hill of their own about eight or nine paces apart.[6]


Corn followed soon after the sunflower was planted, sometime in the first half of May. Sixty to one hundred corn seeds were planted which was believed sufficient in the sheltered bottomlands to insure that only slight, if any, crossbreeding of the corn.[7]Corn was planted in every other hill, usually seven or eight kernels of corn to a hill, with beans being planted in those early hills skipped by the corn.[8]Planting usually lasted from early May “until the roses bloom in June,”[9]but in the big gardens the beans were planted immediately following the corn, and in the same amounts as the corn. Squash was planted after the beans, after the blooming of the roses.[10]



Toward the latter part of summer, the gardens were rarely unoccupied during the day. This was because of the flocks of crows and other birds that would try to come after the soft corn. To help the watchers, a brush shade was constructed, or a scaffold with a shade of some type would be employed while the women and girls worked on sewing, quillwork or other craft. Girls always went with their mothers to do this work and it was permissible for a man to go to work with his wife if they didn’t have children.

The first harvest of the Mandan, known as the green corn harvest, started as early as August as the young squashes were gathered, sliced and dried. This event is generally determined by the older women who examined the ears and silk of the corn, which, if it was brown or withered and the husk was dark brown, the corn was harvested until frost. The green corn harvest was a time of feasting and rejoicing, but also a time of drying food for storage. Preparing corn to eat might consist of either boiling or roasting.[11]The green corn harvest seldom lasted more than ten days. The second harvest, the ripe corn harvest, followed two to four weeks later and usually lasted about ten days or until early October. Sunflowers were the last to be harvested.

A corn threshing booth. Corn was dried on the stage above ground, then the kernels were threshed or beaten from the cob in the booth. Choice corn, or corn which was traded, was braided together, about a hundred ears of corn to a braid and was considered the equal of a tanned bison robe.

Depending on the variety of corn, Mandan corn generally matured in about ninety to 105 days. Squash was picked immediately after the first frost. Beans, which were planted after immediately after the squash, were picked in the fall after they had ripened and the pods were dead and dried.

Tobacco was planted at the same time as sunflowers, but only by the men; the first harvest of tobacco took place in about midsummer, or June. The men would go out amongst the tobacco and pluck some of the flowers, which were dried, crushed and later enjoyed in their pipes. The rest of the tobacco would be harvested sometime before the frost came.

Corn, squash and beans were stored in a bell-shaped cache pit. As deep as six feet and as wide as three to five feet. 

The new year begins, or at least a new growing season, after the ice has broken up, when the geese have returned, after the spring rains, when the bison calves are born, and when the leaves began to bud on the trees.

Figure 1 of the Little Owl Lunar Chart.

In figure 1, the crests, or lunar crescents mark only a very small part of the entire page. Only one of the crescents appears to bear additional markings of a tree on its convex and rain in the concave. If this series of lunar crescents indicate the new year or growing season, this lunar cycle might concur with the roman calendar of April. The crescent with tree and rain could read as “The rains fell; the trees returned to life.”

Figure 2 of the Little Owl Lunar Chart.

In figure 2, the series of pictographs appear to begin on the bottom left and seem to read up the page. The second row then appears to read top to bottom, and seems to be aligned with the lunar crescents, and there is no line separating the row of pictographs and the row of crescents, which also seem to be combined with glyphs in concordance with the row of pictographs.

It should be noted that when a death is mentioned, it may indicate that someone actually died or that someone, likely a woman or child, was abducted by an enemy. Women were eventually married into and accepted by a tribe; children were treated and raised as members of a tribe, this was particularly true of the Teton Lakota and Yanktonai Dakota whom the Mandan were sometimes at war.

Figure 2 interpretation:

  1. Unknown.
  2. Fish/Fishing.[12]
  3. A gathering or council.
  4. A man.
  5. Five days.
  6. Corn.
  7. Corn medicine.
  8. Man with a staff, perhaps a man called a war party.
  9. A horse, perhaps a successful horse raid.
  10. A bison jump or bison hunt.
  11. A lasso, perhaps indicating a successful horse raid.
  12. Unknown, indiscernible.
  13. An event regarding the Assiniboine Sioux.[13]
  14. Three lassos, perhaps indicating either three successful horse raids or that horses were stolen back and forth between an enemy tribe.
  15. They heard a spirit.[14]
  16. Someone killed, perhaps an enemy.
  17. Bison Bull killed.[15]
  18. Unknown. Squash? Beans?
  19. A tornado struck.
  20. Squash and beans.
  21. This appears to be an extension of the squash and beans pictograph.
  22. Singing to the crops?[16]
  23. Lassos arranged in a column, perhaps representing a series of successful horse raids.
  24. Unknown.
  25. Unknown.
  26. A talon?
  27. Someone died.
  28. Elk, perhaps someone made love medicine. Elk, or love medicine, has the antithesis meaning of death.
  29. Staff, perhaps a society’s call to action, or a war party.
  30. Someone had vision.[17]
  31. Someone died, maybe an enemy.
  32. A field, planting.
  33. Unknown.
  34. A knife. A standing knife.
  35. A man with a staff. Perhaps a call to action, a call to gather a society or call a society to action, a call to war.
  1. A time for planting?
  2. Time for planting a particular crop?
  3. Corn has reached a particular stage?
  4. Someone died.
  5. Trees have a full display of leaves?
  6. Rain.
  7. Squash, perhaps an indicator that it was time to plant squash, or that squash was finished being planted.
  8. Man in a garden, perhaps indicating that it was now time to establish sentry duty in the gardens.
  9. Indiscernible pictograph next to a pictograph of corn perhaps indicating that a certain rite relating to corn happened at that time.
  10. Horse tracks under the lunar crescent, perhaps a successful horse raid.
  1. The image appears to be a bird.
  2. Garden,[18] perhaps a time for hoeing.
  3. Beans?
  4. Corn, the pictograph for corn appears to be sideways, perhaps a storm or wind knocked down their crops or perhaps it indicates a time for a rite related to the corn.
  5. Thunderbird.
  6. Horse
  7. Lodge, perhaps a medicine lodge.
  8. Travois, perhaps a hunting party or the trade party of another tribe.
  9. A division of the garden?
  10. Travois.
  11. Lassos.
  12. Unknown.
  13. Travois.
  14. Lassos.
  15. Unknown.
  16. A fallen travois.
  17. Three fallen people, perhaps marking the passing of three people.
  1. Rain
  2. A spirit appeared.
  3. Tree or bush. Perhaps this pictograph indicates that it was time to pick Juneberries. There are four marks beside this lunar crescent, perhaps the entire pictographic entry indicates that it was time for the Mandan Okipa.
  4. Two people beside an unknown pictograph.
  5. A person.
  6. Rain. To the very right of this lunar crescent and descending down are twenty-two marks which appear to be connected to the lunar crescents on the immediate left. These were the days when the Mandan prayed for rain.[19]
  7. Unknown.
  8. A person.
  9. A small garden, perhaps representing the tobacco garden which measured about twenty feet by twenty feet, maybe indicating a time when the flowers were plucked.
  10. Tree.
  11. Two people.
  12. A fence or palisade, perhaps noting the repair of either. Two pictographs appear to be associated because of their proximity to the lunar crescent, unknown.
  13. Unknown. A pictograph appears one end of this lunar crescent, perhaps indicating a death.
  14. Rain. Twenty-three marks appear here much the same as the marks mentioned in “P” above.
  15. Rain?
  16. Dog? Coyote? Fox? There are two pictographs near this lunar crescent, a travois and another which seems to represent a garden.
AA. Butterfly.
BB. Tree, and what appears to be effigies which stand outside the medicine lodge as when the Okipa ceremony takes place.
CC. Unknown, and two “effigies.”
DD. Tree or bush.
EE. Tree or bush, perhaps the two pictographs of trees or bushes indicate that it was time to harvest buffalo berries.

Figure 2.2 (right half of image turned 90 degrees clockwise) of the Little Owl Lunar Chart.

The other half of figure 2 consists of what seems to be almost writing, similar to the Sioux alphabet which was developed by the Lakota man named Curly.[20] A Bison dancer sits astride a gracefully rendered horse. The dancer holds a lance with two tassels attached. The lance resembles the ceremonial lances that the bison dancers carried in their dance. This dancer brought the horse into the dance to ensure a good hunt and to secure the safety of the hunters.

The Lakota alphabet as developed by Curly, from the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Agency in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. Copied from the Lakota alphabet on display at the Crazy Horse Museum at the Crazy Horse Mountain near Custer, SD.

In figure 3 there appears to be no separation between the pictographs to the immediate left of the lunar crescents; they appear to be connected to the lunar crescents and relate directly to them.

Figure 3 of the Little Owl Lunar Chart.

Figure 3 interpretation:

  1. Someone died?
  2. Travois.
  3. Corn.
  4. Hoeing corn?
  5. Two fallen people, perhaps noting their deaths.
  6. Two fallen people and a travois, perhaps noting these deaths on a hunting party.
  7. A person – an inverted pictograph – and a garden, perhaps someone died in a garden.
  8. Five people, perhaps noting their passing.
  9. Rain, a thunderbird and travois appear together.
  10. A person and what appears to be a bush, perhaps harvesting chokecherries.
  11. The pictograph appears to be a hoe, and corn.
  12. Nine marks appear here. Possibly horse whips indicating a successful horse raid, possibly marks to indicate fallen corn stalks.
  13. Garden. Two lunar crescents below, twenty-three marks follow, perhaps an indication for a period of prayer for rain and good weather for crops.
  14. Thunderbird, a few other marks.
  15. Heavy rain; travois.
  16. Garden and a tree.
  17. Garden.
  18. Unknown.
  19. Travois; another pictograph aside may indicate a skirmish.
  20. Two people died?
  21. A person with corn? Twenty-Two marks appear to the very right of this lunar crescent, perhaps in indication for prayer for rain.
  22. Unknown.
  23. A spirit.
  24. Travois; spirit.
  25. Garden.
  26. Spirit.
  27. Travois; rain.
  28. Travois; unknown pictographs.
  29. Corn, and what appears to be a burden basket, perhaps an indication for a harvest.
  30. Thunderbird.
  31. Travois.
  32. Garden; three figures, perhaps three deaths.
  33. Rain.
  34. Corn, and what appears to be a burden basket.
  35. An inverted pictograph for a person, perhaps a death.
  36. Unknown.
  37. Corn.
  38. Travois.
  39. Garden, and what appears to be a spirit.
  40. Unknown.
  41. Lassos.
  42. Travois; thunderbird.
  43. Fallen people and rain.
  44. Corn; indiscernible pictograph. Seventeen marks appear to the immediate left of the lunar crescents. This may indicate a time for prayers or ceremony.
  45. Unknown.
  46. Travois.
  47. Unknown.
  48. Rain; indiscernible pictograph.
  49. Rain and thunderbird.
  50. Corn, and what appears to be a burden basket.
  51. Rain.
  52. Rain and thunderbird.
  53. Pictograph seems to articulate that it is a person of some note appears alongside corn. What appears to be feathers or a hairstyle or a headdress is present.
The right half of figure 3 appears to be read bottom to top. The line of pictographs seem to demarcate the Mandan Okipa ceremony. An interpretation of the pictographs bottom to top follows:

Singing/Beginning
Pipe
Singing
Sweat Lodge
Singing
Medicine Lodge
Singing
Similar/Alike?
Singing Between?
Unknown
Singing
Singing Man
Night
Singing
Similar/Alike
Singing
Day
Singing
Night
Singing
Day
Singing
Night
Singing
Day
Singing
Night/End

Figure 4 of the Little Owl Lunar Chart.

Figure 4 interpretation:

  1. No moon.
  2. Someone in a garden, perhaps working.
  3. Someone with a garden hoe.
  4. Unknown.
  5. Staff with something attached to the top, it looks like a tassel or an ear of corn. Perhaps a successful year.
  6. A person.
  7. A person with something held, possibly a child.[21]
  8. Corn, and what looks like fallen corn under the standing corn.
  9. A standing knife.
  10. Someone holding a staff aloft.
  11. Unknown.
  12. Unknown.
  13. Garden.
  14. Person standing.
  15. Five circles, possibly representing five days.
  16. Corn in a medicine wheel, perhaps an offering or prayers or ceremony.
  17. Corn in a garden, perhaps a selection of the best seed for next year’s garden.
  18. Person with a staff.
  19. They shot a bison; a lasso below.
  20. They shot another bison; another lasso appears.
  21. Lasso.
  22. A wolf.[22]
  23. An eagle.
  24. Unknown.
  25. A spirit.
  26. A person, or man, with the text “Foolish Woman” beside it, perhaps to indicate the birth of the Mandan Foolish Woman who became a winter count keeper.
  27. Bison. The lines below indicate a great hunt and/or feast followed.
  28. Someone in a field, perhaps working the field, or collected the last of a harvest.
  29. A burden basket.
  30. A little hill which seems to have crops yet in it, perhaps left as an offering.
  31. Unknown.

Mistakes and assumptions about the interpretation of the Little Owl lunar calendar are this author’s.


[1]Thornton, Ph.D., Russell, A Report of a New MandanCalendric Chart, Ethnohistory, Vol. 50, No. 4, Fall 2003.
[2] Will, George F. (with George E. Hyde), Corn Among The Indians of The Upper Missouri, page 76, University of Nebraska Press, 1917.
[3] Will, George F. (with George E. Hyde), Corn Among The Indians of The Upper Missouri, page 92, University of Nebraska Press, 1917.
[4]Conversation with LydiaSage Chase, July 2006.
[5] Will, George F. (with George E. Hyde), Corn Among The Indians of The Upper Missouri, page 79, University of Nebraska Press, 1917.
[6]Wilson, Gilbert L. (as told to), Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden, page 16, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1917.
[7] Will, George F. (with George E. Hyde), Corn Among The Indians of The Upper Missouri, page 291, University of Nebraska Press, 1917.
[8] Will, George F. (with George E. Hyde), Corn Among The Indians of The Upper Missouri, page 83, University of Nebraska Press, 1917.
[9] Will, George F. (with George E. Hyde), Corn Among The Indians of The Upper Missouri, page 88, University of Nebraska Press, 1917.
[10]Conversation with Amy Mossett, June 2001.
[11] The Mandan boiled their corn in kettles or by roasting it. When they roasted the corn, they gathered bunches of brush into as flat a pile as could make it, then covered the pile with corn, while the corn was still in the husk, then burned away the brush. Report of the Indian Agent at FortBerthold, 1878.
[12] The Mandan fished using a few techniques, a switch with line, hook and sinker; a bell-shaped fish trap; a weir made from willow and baited with rancid meat.
[13] A very similar glyph was employed by Baptiste Good in his Brown Hat winter count to represent the Assiniboine.
[14] Below the pictograph for spirit is a pictograph for an ear. The Bad News Clan was said to be able to converse with the deceased and owls, the messengers of the deceased.
[15] The bison in this pictograph is on a line that might be used to indicate death, Bison Bull, or Buffalo Bull might be the name of the individual.
[16] The pictograph that could represent “singing” bears a strong resemblance to Baptiste Good’s pictograph which he employs to represent the Assiniboine.
[17] The lines protruding from the vision seeker’s head seem to indicate a “crazy.”
[18] The Sitting Rabbit Mandan Indian winter count utilized the square to represent the garden.
[19]Conversation with Kandi Mossett, Winter 2002.
[20]Conversation with Jan Ullrich, January 2013. Ullrich said that the Lakota alphabet was developed by Curly from the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation, then the Cheyenne River Sioux Agency, in the mid to late 1800s.
[21] Little girls would often walk around holding a squash as though it were a baby.
[22] It doesn’t appear to be a deer or an elk or other four legged prey, the raised ears seem to indicate a wolf. 
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Revival Of The Flute Tradition

March 28, 2013, 9:00 am
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Kevin Locke shares the background of some of the oldest flutes in his collection.
Flute Tradition Returns With The Spring
Once A Part Of Daily Life, Practice Nearly Faded Away
Standing Rock - Dawn hit the Landof Sky and Wind, the Land of Standing Rock, and bathed the ancient prairie steppe with warm sweet light that turned last year’s grass gold despite the cold silence of winter. The frozen air seemed to shatter with each mile I drove. Aside from my car, I imagine that the morning of the first spring must have been much like this. The cold and quiet was so sharp I could imagine a knife scraping along the backs of my exposed hands.

I pulled up to SolenHigh School on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation. My passenger Rich Dubé, a personal friend of my Lekši (uncle) and Wauŋšpekiyapi (teacher) Kevin Locke, and I swapped stories about the gift of Šiyotĥaŋka (the flute), where it came from, when it appeared on the steppe of the Northern Great Plains, and its growing revival.

Rich Dubé, came down from the great snows of Saskatoon, Saskatchewanto conduct a flute workshop in four of the schools on the reservation. I visited with Dubé the evening before. When I heard he was from Saskatoon, and was coming down to the Land of Sky and Wind, I prejudged who I thought I’d be meeting. Kevin raved about Dubé’s knowledge in the reconstruction of the traditional flute, how they were made, the original sound, and that Dubé even wrote his Masters thesis around the flute.

Naturally, I thought Dubé was going to be a member of the White Cap Dakota Nation who reside on a reserve just south of Saskatoon. Not that skin color matters but I was expecting to meet a native man. Who met me instead, and broke my prejudice, was an impeccable skinny white guy. He seemed used to native scrutiny however and graciously anticipated and answered my probing questions, which eased my mental lockjaw. I backed off when I was satisfied that he knew what he was about.

Dubé is a music teacher. His story with the native flute begins about ten years ago in Saskatoon. He was teaching native youth in an inner city music program. Dubé had never heard of the native flute until he attended a session for choir teachers and he leafed through a book by Bryan Burton called Voices of the Wind which had native flute songs transcribed for the recorder. He was looking for something to capture the interest and inspire his senior kids and thought the native flute would be much more appealing to his students than just trying to play the songs on a recorder, a western European instrument.

The music teacher searched the internet looking for flute makers, and experimenting with various flute kits, discarding those that didn’t seem to have a true sound to his sharp ears. Eventually, Dubé crossed paths with Kevin Locke. Kevin sent Dubé the schematics of one of his great-grandfather’s flutes. Dubé seized the opportunity to reconstruct not just a traditional flute, but a traditional flute with the original sound.

One of Dubé's flutes.

Dubé created a cast using the original traditional flute from Kevin’s schematics. Dubé wanted to create a flute that was easily constructed and mass produced yet true to the original sound. In the end, his experiments found success in a custom size ABS plastic flute matching the exact sound of the original one-hundred twenty-year-old flute.

I entered the high school and remembered my days when my team played the Solen Sioux. There was the typical small town pride in the class B team that represented the best hopes of the community, and like any small town, the team was fiercely held high in respect. Putting the games of yesteryear firmly in the back of my head I made my way down the hall towards the gym where Dubé was preparing his workshop.

Dubé’s luggage was opened up on the bleachers and inside it was as though he had brought an entire workshop. Someone had set up some tables and Dubé was quick to set drills, tools and all his accoutrements out for the workshop. In the span of twenty minutes he trained staff and volunteers in preparation for students to drill the holes of their flutes.

Kevin arrived about fifteen minutes after we got to the school. Students were quietly milling about in the halls in eager anticipation of the morning’s project. A few had poked their heads into the gym to watch Dubé set up and train the school staff. A teacher, possibly the principle, cheerfully made some announcements about lunch and stuff before she gently reminded students to be on their best behavior for Dubé’s flute workshop.


Locke offered a heart-felt greeting to the youth who assembled at the school.

About fifty-five high school students filed into the gym, arranged by year, and immediately staked out spots on the basketball court. The gym quickly filled with echoes of growing chatter which became a loud buzz with the arrival of fifth and sixth graders from the nearby community of Cannonball, who took the floor closest to where Dubé was set up.

The principle made a few announcements reiterating students to be on their best behavior and extended a welcome on behalf of the schools and introduced Kevin. Kevin introduced Dubé who shared some technical things about the flute and what to be expected in the workshop, and the students listened as best as students could while they itched to get to the construction.

Dubé divided the large group into three and subdivided each of those into three at each table. From the time of Dubé’s beginning instructions to the last student drilling the last hole in the last flute and the last student assembling the various pieces into a replica of the Lakota Grandfather flute, about forty minutes had passed. At one point in the assembly Kevin remarked, “Rich is really organized,” a sentiment which was repeated by high school staff.

Dubé (orange shirt) plays a quick tune between instructing students.

When the last flute was put together, Dubé called for the students to gather together once again on the basketball court where he offered some basic flute instruction. It was this instruction that Dubé’s experience as music teacher came out. When the students were quieted with their flutes and ready to play, Dubé played a few simple songs with the students who echoed his rendition of the old English tune “Hot Cross Buns.” The fifth and sixth grade students were quite familiar with playing the song on their recorders and followed Dubé’s instruction swiftly.

After Dubé’s crash course in flute basics, Kevin stepped in and shared a few flute songs, one of which was the Flag song which the students recognized right away. The students had grown tired of the floor towards the end of the workshop and took to the bleachers on the other side of the gym after the song. There, Kevin shared the story of the first flute. He played the first flute song as part the story, and sang the song at the end.

One of the things that Kevin shared, a traditional belief, was that the Dakota and Lakota people are people of the wind. On the tips of ones fingers are what we call fingerprints. We all have fingerprints. For the Dakota and Lakota people however, fingerprints are more than something that identifies and/or incriminates a person, they say that the patterns tell one which direction the winds were blowing on the day of one’s birth.

In the days of warriors and legend, the flute was played by young men in traditional courtship, to win the heart of a particular young woman. A young man might sit outside the lodge of a young woman and serenade her. If he was successful, she might contrive an excuse to fetch water or gather additional firewood to spend a few moments with a suitor.

"Indian Courting" by Captain Seth Eastman, 1852.

The flute was a daily part of life. Early American Western artists like Seth Eastman and George Catlin painted scenes of young men playing the flute. When the post reservation era began, traditional courtship faded and was nearly forgotten.

In the 1970s, Kevin Locketook up the flute and learned about the tradition from men like Richard Fool Bull, William Horn Cloud, Joseph Rockboy, Asa Primeaux, Henry Crow Dog, Bill Black Lance, Charles Wise Spirit and Pete Looking Horse among many others. At a wacipi, Locke saw Richard Fool Bull’s display of flutes and remarked, “Someone should learn this tradition,” to which Fool Bull said, “Maybe you should.” And Kevin did.

Locke hopes to pass on the flute tradition to the today’s generation. Dubé’s flute workshop fits snugly into the world of the young native student. An individual can construct a flute with traditional specs and a faithful sound and be finished in five minutes using Dubé’s kit. In a world where studies come first, where extracurricular activities play a large role in a student’s life and where popular media influences style and dress, there’s still time and place for dancers and singers to hit the pow-wow circuit.

In the Land of Sky and Wind the wind is a constant presence. The people of Standing Rock are people of the stars. They are people of the wind. Maybe the flute tradition will work itself back into the daily lives of the people as it once did. 

Visit Kevin Locke online at Kevin Locke.
Visit Rich Dubé at Northern Spirit Flutes.
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Dakĥota Kaškapi Okicize Wowapi: The Dakota Prisoner Of War Letters, A Review

April 10, 2013, 9:28 am
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I received my copy of Dr. Clifford Canku’s The Dakota Prisoner Of War Letters: Dakota Kaškapi Okicize Wowapi through the mail and I carefully removed it from the box it came in. I was excited to read it, but not joyous to do so. Its about a real life tragedy, the consequences of which the Dakota and Lakota are still living with today. 

My initial perception of the book, my judgment of the book based on its cover, was that I was getting a book in the vein of Albert White Hat’s Life’s Journey. In the case of White Hat’s book, the transcriber, Mr. John Cunningham, and White Hat took great pains to keep the oration of the book even as a translation into English as how a traditional Lakota would speak English. White Hat’s work retains the “flavor” of the language.

Canku’s book goes a step further. Not only did White Hat and his associates invest several years translating beautifully hand-written letters in Dakota to English, Canku keeps the original Dakota, but he adds a word for word translation, then a free translation into English which contains Dakota connotations.

Dr. Canku carefully reads a letter of a Dakota prisoner.

There are two things which reached out to me about this book. The first being that its about the Dakota who became prisoners of war following the Minnesota Dakota Conflict of 1862. The book contains letters, first-person accounts of innocent men and women who were wrongly accused and imprisoned. They weren’t USCitizens, so due process didn’t apply to them, so they were guilty and imprisoned until they were determined to be innocent or no longer a threat.

Part of the story of the letters involves a missionary to the Dakota people, Rev. Stephen Riggs.

Riggs, a missionary among the Dakota in the 1850s, was present when cases involving the Dakota were judged, as fast as the service at a fast food restaurant. In one day, Riggs saw forty Dakota cases judged and sentenced to death in about seven hours. Some of the cases took mere minutes.

The missionary Stephen Riggs.

Missionaries, including Riggs, visited the Dakota prisoners, and converted a captive audience, while writing their letters of appeal for them, letters to loved ones at different agencies and letters to military commanders pledging to never more resist the American expansion westward.

The second thing which reached out to me was that the book is bi-lingual. There aren’t many resources published in both Dakota and English. As a person whose first language is English, and being a Dakota-Lakota person, having the original Dakota language present for me to read and learn is wonderful.

The most intriguing part of this book is the scholar himself. Dr. Clifford Canku. He is an enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate and a retired Presbyterian minister. Canku is a common man and his stirring introduction includes early efforts from the previous teams he worked with at Flandreau, SD, the SissetonWahpetonCollege, and then North DakotaStateUniversity. Even though his name is on the cover alongside Michael Simon, Canku is quick to acknowledge the efforts of others.

Taoyate Duta, His Red Nation, more commonly known as "Little Crow."

Before being brought on to earliest efforts of this translation project, Canku was visited by the spirit of Taoyate Duta (His Red Nation; aka Little Crow). Throughout the translation process, a spiritual presence was always present. When the project wrapped, Canku received another visitor through a dream. He was at a sundance in this dream and a old man was brought into the east gate where his name was announced four times. The grandfather’s name: Wakaŋboide (Sacred Blazing Fire). The grandfather came to Canku and said, “Hau, wičohaŋ ečanupi kiŋ de wašhté do.” (Yes, the work you are doing is good, it is so.)

Canku is deliberate in that the reader, casual or otherwise, clearly understands that the book is about the Dakota prisoners of war. There are plenty of books out there, and more so with the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and the Dakota War, but Canku’s and Simon’s book is the only published primary resource from the perspective of the people who fought, the people who defended, and the people who were entirely innocent of the 1862 Minnesota Dakota Conflict.

Camp Kearny, where the Dakota prisoners of war were taken.

An excerpt of one of the letters places the reader in the first person. Wiŋyaŋ, or Woman, writes to her relative Pa Yuĥa, Curly Head, about starving and the heartbreak in the prison camp at Davenport, Iowa:
…my heart is so very broken, it is so. Last summer, we all know one terrible event has occurred, and always we are very heartbroken, because now again, my heart if broken very much, because this winter we are without, we are all suffering. I hate to live, it is so. And now where will they take us?...now we don’t know where they will take us, and therefore I thought maybe we will never see all of you, and therefore my heart is very sad.

Another letter by Stands On Earth Woman tells her relative His Country that she is recently widowed and with a new baby, at the prison camp. She asks for her relative’s assistance because she literally has nothing and she’s starving.

Get this book if you are interested in the “other” side, the forgotten side of the story. Get this book to support a native elder and scholar, but get this book so that we never forget what happened as a result of this terrible conflict. 
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Winter In The Land Of Sky And Wind

April 21, 2013, 6:26 pm
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WINTER IN THE LAND OF SKY AND WIND
A Reflection of The Changing of Seasons
Mandan, ND - It was quiet uneventful drive through the countryside. Despite the dawn, the clouds hung heavy and cast a steely grey pall over the landscape. Clouds hung low, low enough that I could reach high and feel the cool droplets that filled the air. The land itself reminded me of a patchy brown and white mottled pony.

Some would call it spring, and if it weren’t for this last snowfall, it might very well be spring. A wind came out of the west carrying the promise of rain, or more snow. It smelled clean and earthy, like rain, but it also smelled cold too.

It’s always windy here on the Great Plains. It is rather like a messenger carrying the scent of ionized air before a storm, the promise of a storm. In the days of summer the wind cools nothing. It’s like standing in front of a furnace with the heat blasting you right in the face. In the heart of winter the wind whips the snow into a riot and locks the land in a blizzard.

Today though, the wind and the snow only remind the citizenry that winter is the lord of seasons. In the days of warriors and legends, the winter and wind so shaped the relationship that the Lakota share with the land that the years were literally called winters. We have no mountains to reach the heavens and take snow and rain from the sky. We have endless rolling hills that allow the arctic to stretch forth from the far north and touch the land here.

The geese have returned, heralding the change of winter to spring. Only their honking has been subdued by the sudden return of snow. The meadowlarks keep their enthusiasm and sing through the cold wind. It’s a tradition going back to the moment of creation. They welcome the end of the winter, the end of the year, and sing in the new. On the Great Plains, that's how it is. Spring marks the new year, not the middle of winter.

Deer prance in fields of last year’s left over corn stalks, noses to the ground in search of bites of last year’s harvest. Ducks waddle into a pothole lake, submerge their heads in that half way manner that only ducks can and set themselves back upright, and then vigorously shake their heads as though they were trying to dislodge water from their ears.

A hawk, a peregrine falcon to birders, one of many of the birds of prey on the prairie, settled itself in bold irony, as a king on a throne, on a fence post brightly labeled “No Hunting.” Its head turned nonchalantly in my direction as though it had planned on looking my way all along. As I drove by, it casually spread its wings and took flight in front and over me.

To the west of the road lay a swath of wind turbines, giant windmills, erected in the past decade to harvest the wind and convert the wild energy into electricity. The ever-present wind passed them by, its raw energy undiminished by the great turning wheels. The blades silently cut through the low grey overhang of clouds.

By the time I get home, the sun has burned through most of the fog and the wind had blown some of the low cloud cover to the east. Rays of light playfully pierced through the remaining cover and practically danced; the motion of the sun’s rays are like looking up through water from the bottom of a pool.

This is North Dakota. This is the Great Plains, a rolling steppe west of flat prairie, a gentle swell east of the Badlands. Winter rules much of the year, and the wind has been here since creation. 
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The KKK In North Dakota

April 29, 2013, 12:51 pm
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The KKK In North Dakota: An Investigative Report
By Jerome Tweton, North Star Dakotan, A North Dakota Studies Project
January 31, 1932

Grand Forks, ND - Following the American Civil War an organization called the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) spread like wildfire across the South. Begun as a social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1867, the KKK soon became a symbol of hatred and bigotry. Its main objective was to keep black people from voting and taking their constitutionally rightful place in society.

Led by the Grand Cyclops, the Klan, a secret organization, was organized into local Adens. Dressed in bizarre fashion - high-pointed hats, masks, and flowing white robes - KKK members promised to defend the constitution and to protect the weak and oppressed, but in reality they terrorized black Americans and filled their lives with fear and fright.
Former Confederate soldiers founded the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) after the American Civil War (1861-65). The KKK used violence and intimidation to keep blacks segregated and to prevent them from voting and holding office. Courtesy of D. Jerome Tweton.
Having succeeded in reducing the black vote, in 1877 the KKK disbanded as a national organization. This did not mean, however, that local Adens stopped tormenting blacks. Lynchings and cross burnings continued as part of the southern scene into the 1890s. The KKK then pretty much faded from view until 1915.
In that year a new Ku Klux Klan was organized in Georgia as a fraternal organization dedicated to the principles of white supremacy. It sounded and looked like the old KKK, but it was different. The new Klan added Roman Catholics, Jews, and left-wing political radicals to its list of enemies. The new KKK sought to protect the purity and values of native-born, white, Anglo-Saxon Americans and claimed a higher morality and dedication to Christian ideals. Led by the Imperial Wizard, the KKK, like its predecessor, held secret meetings around fiery crosses with members hooded and robed in white. Its tactics for intimidation included whipping, branding, mutilating, and lynching.
In the summer of 1921 Klan organizers moved into South Dakota and gained many followers by attacking the politically radical Nonpartisan League. The national organizers attempted to recruit Protestant ministers who were staunchly anti-Catholic to serve as heads of the local klans/klavens. This has been a successful method in South Dakota.
At that time an Indiana Klansman traveled secretly to Grand Forks where the Presbyterian minister, F. Halsey Ambrose, had gained a reputation as a powerful orator, a staunch foe of the Roman Catholic Church, an arch-opponent of the Nonpartisan League, and a booster of white Protestant Americanism. Soon after arriving in Grand Forks in 1918 Ambrose began attacking the Nonpartisan League as “socialist” and “Bolshevist,” endearing himself to the Grand Forks Herald and its owner, Jerry Bacon. Ambrose’s pamphlet, “A Sermon on Applied Socialism,” a violent assault on the League, was published with the help of the Herald and sold 5,000 copies in two weeks.
Ku Klux Klan Rally. Courtesy of D. Jerome Tweton.
Ambrose believed that a Roman Catholic couldn’t be a good American because the Catholic’s first allegiance is to the Pope in Rome. His sermons were full of anti-Catholic statements. Ambrose was a clergyman who fit the KKK’s qualifications for leadership. His popularity tripled church membership and his special Sunday night services usually have attracted 1,200 people. What more could the Klan want? Reverend Ambrose became its chief leader for Grand Forks and for North Dakota. Even though Roman Catholics were outnumbered almost three to one by Protestants in Grand Forks, Ambrose persuaded Protestant civic leaders that the Catholics had a master plan to take over the city’s government. The minister’s charisma convinced business leaders that the town’s Roman Catholics, led by furniture dealer and funeral director Moses Norman, presented a threat to their livelihoods and American values.
A source within the Klan has told the North Star Dakotan that the Grand Forks Klan first met 22 miles west of that city in September 1922, and that its leaders were members of the business community, including three bankers, three insurance men, seven store owners, two hotel proprietors, three lawyers, one doctor, one architect, and one clergyman other than Ambrose. According to our source, about 500 men have joined the Grand Forks klaven.
That North Dakota legislative leaders saw the KKK as a mounting threat became obvious in 1922 when a bill was introduced to outlaw the wearing of a mask or regalia which concealed the identity of the wearer except when such a mask was worn inside a building or by a person less than 15 years old.
Reverend Ambrose, who has never denied his leadership in the KKK, went to Bismarck and testified for an hour against the bill. He argued that no klansman had ever been convicted of a crime committed while wearing hoods. He insisted that hundreds of klansmen around the state were pillars of their communities and concluded that the KKK had to remain secret, in his words, “to do its valuable work.”
Both houses overwhelmingly approved the bill and Governor R.A. Nestos signed it into law, earning him the hatred of klansmen.
That fall of 1923, paying no attention to the new law, Ambrose organized a Klan rally west of Grand Forks. A thousand hooded klansmen from all parts of the state gathered to hear Ambrose preach the virtues of the KKK. Amid burning crosses, he emphasized the Klan’s patriotism and its desire to accomplish its goals in a peaceful manner. A reporter has told the North Star Dakotan that he saw at least 300 carloads of klansmen arrive at the ceremony and that a major reason for the rally was to initiate new members and install a klaven in Larimore.
With a growing membership and increasing strength within the city, the Klan moved into civic politics, endorsing and working for candidates who were in the KKK or sympathetic toward it. In the 1924 Grand Forks city election, one Klan candidate won a seat on the five-person city commission, and a klansman defeated the incumbent city justice, a Roman Catholic.
Flushed with victory, the Klan entered vigorously into the school board election three weeks later. The division was clear: two Klan businessmen versus a physician’s wife and the wife of a retired minister. In a Sunday night sermon Ambrose attacked the women as pawns of the Roman Catholics and charged that the Catholics were attempting to gain control of the public schools. The campaign tore the community apart. Mass rallies on behalf of the Klan and the anti-Klan candidates drew crowds numbering in the hundreds.
The Presbyterian clergyman told the North Star Dakotan that Moses Norman had started the petition drive for the women. “He will give his unqualified support to circulating those petitions,” he stated. “Any woman who will accept his support absolutely deserves the disrespect of every respectable woman in the city. Any two ladies who will permit a dirty thing like this to take his support are unworthy of the name of woman.” He referred to Catholic supporters as “the scum of the earth” and pledged that Catholics were the same the world over, “rotten.” Jerry Bacon and his Grand Forks Herald now began to attack the Klan. The paper backed the women candidates, stating that Ambrose’s reasoning was absurd. Tracy Bangs, a longtime Grand Forks lawyer, told the North Star Dakotan, “Ambrose has disturbed old friendships and has torn families asunder with his gospel of hatred.”
The two klansmen easily won election to the school board. Their objective was to reintroduce Bible reading into school classrooms. This, the Klan believed, would make the schools safe from the Roman Catholic threat. The board passed a Bible-reading motion. The Klan achieved its goal.
Ku Klux Klan members march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., 1928. Courtesy of D. Jerome Tweton.
After its political victory in 1924, the Klan became much more open. A statewide Fourth of July rally at Hillsboro drew hundreds of klansmen, mostly from Fargo and Grand Forks. The visit of the national head of the KKK, the Imperial Wizard, attracted a crowd of 5,000 to the Grand Forks fairgrounds. In 1926 the Klan won control of four of the five seats on the city commission. The klansmen voted as a block to dismiss many Roman Catholic and anti-Klan city workers. The fire chief, a Catholic with 33 years in the department, and the electrician, a Catholic with 28 years of employment, were fired. In all, ten officials were let go, including the City Hall’s janitor who was a Catholic.
A Klansman told this paper that most members believed that the KKK’s work was finished with the housecleaning at City Hall and that there was no longer a need for the Klan. Ambrose tried to whip up Klan enthusiasm for last year’s city elections and asked, “Will our citizens stand for a silent campaign?”
The answer was “yes”; the Klan began to run out of steam. Reverend Ambrose has departed Grand Forks for a pulpit in St. Paul. He has left behind a bitterly divided town. He convinced many of its people, through the force of his dynamic personality, that Protestant Grand Forks had much to fear from Roman Catholic Grand Forks. This, of course, was an imagined fear - a danger that existed in Ambrose’s head. For all the hatred that he spread, the accomplishments were small: Bible reading in the schools and a dozen fired city employees. There were no whippings, mutilations, or lynching in North Dakota, but the mental scars left by the KKK run deep.



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Maĥpíya Kiŋy’Aŋ (Flying Cloud) Glí: SD Nelson Returns

April 30, 2013, 11:10 am
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Contemporary Practice Of The Ancient Painting Tradition
Maĥpíya Kiŋy’Aŋ (Flying Cloud) Glí: SD Nelson Returns

Nelson's cover painting to "Greet The Dawn: The Lakota Way."


White Shield, N.D.– White Shield, ND rests on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, about a two hour drive north and west from the North Dakota state capital. The drive may have been a few hours, but it allowed me to take in the majesty of the vast open plains and the great open sky and the quiet drive north on HWY 83 took me through Lake Sakakawea and LakeAudubon.

I had been in contact with S.D. Nelson since the South Dakota Book Festival of 2012. I happened to pass him by one afternoon there. He had just finished a conversation with another festival attendant and it was obvious that he had other business to attend to, and I had wanted to meet him so I called out to Nelson. He gave me a nod and wave, and intended to continue on, but when I said, “I’m from Standing Rock.” Nelson immediately stopped in his tracks, turned around and made time to visit with me.

A late winter storm the previous week dropped about eighteen inches of snow on the prairie steppe. Piles of snow were pushed or dumped in efforts to open the roads and drives, but the daytime warmth of spring had melted much and puddles of water had collected in potholes and ditches, slush lined the sidewalks and steamed as it evaporated.

White Shield public school, an unassuming weary-looking older building dominates the townscape. A pale beige brick exterior masked an updated interior. A tiled floor carried the echoes of children at play or lessons down the halls and out the main door when I entered and made my way to the library.

Nelson's program was received with great enthusiasm and many students had questions.

It was a tidy library but bigger than the school library of my youth back on Standing Rock. The chairs and tables were arranged in a horseshoe to accommodate Nelson’s presentation. A select cadre youth had made the drive up from the CannonballElementary School on Standing Rock just to see Nelson’s program and to get him to sign their books. They arrived about forty minutes early and Nelson graciously gave them his complete attention before the program began.

Nelson is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. His traditional name in the Lakota language is Maĥpíya Kiŋy’Aŋ, or Flying Cloud, which is also the name of one of his ancestral grandfathers who was a storyteller and horse thief. He may not have grown up on the reservation, but he spent his summers there with his maternal grandparents and frequently returns. The land of sky and wind reached settled deep into Nelson’s mind and heart, and while he traveled with his enlisted father across the nation, and even as he now lives in Arizona, Standing Rock and the Great Plains are still home.

Nelson is a retired teacher. He earned a BS in Art Education from MinnesotaStateUniversityin Moorehead, MNand taught art at Wahpeton, ND before making a move to Arizona and teaching there. “The winters got to be too much for me,” said Nelson with a smile. He is now retired from teaching, but he still engages learners in scheduled workshops and makes time, like today, to be with native youth back on the plains. Nelson may be self-employed, but he’s still an educator at heart.

Images like this of an old pickup truck out in the field and horses speak to the native youth who for them is a common occur

Nelson actively engaged the students. His use of the lecture style presentation tells how he was taught and how he learned, but Nelson includes a media presentation, a showcase of selected past works, sketches of works and brilliant finished paintings which keeps the students in rapt attention. One painting depicts children on a prairie in the morning waiting to get on a bus, and putting it that way makes it sound unexciting, but the painting reaches out to the children because the landscape is alive with plains symbols of strength, medicine and life. The imagery and symbolism meant more, meant something cultural as well as personal to those children.

Whether the children are aware of it or not, Nelson had shown them the importance of going to school and getting an education. Later in the hour, he reinforces that message by encouraging them to pursue an education and in a field they love. 


There is evidence in many of Nelson’s paintings of a deep love and respect for horses, or as he would say, “The Horse Nation.” Horses are also associated with thunder too, and much of his work ties the horses with thunder. Once a traditionalist questioned Nelson’s authority to depict lightning and the workings of thunderstorms, which stemmed from a deep-seated tradition that only certain people could depict, to which Nelson replied, “Lightning came to my house twice. I have a direct connection to lightning, thunder and hail.”

Along with a presentation of stories and select images of his paintings, Nelson shared painting techniques with the children. “I brush the paint on, but I also take a little sponge. I get them wet and squeeze them until their soft and pliable and then dip them in paint, and I sponge paint on.”

From Nelson's "Quiet Hero: The Ira Hayes Story."

The presentation moved into illustrations of Ira Hayes, the Pima Indian from Sacaton, Arizona who helped raise the American flag on top of Mt.Suribachi in WWII. After the war, Hayes descended into alcoholism and died. Nelson then delicately shared his own experience as a recovering alcoholic.

The air grew a little heavy and the children settled into a solemn silence as Nelson spoke of the native struggle with alcohol and alcoholism, but he brought hope in his message that life is so much better without alcohol or substances. “I’m an alcoholic. I haven’t had a drink in twenty-seven years.” He credits God, the Great Spirit, with giving him the strength to stay sober. “Thank you God, for giving me a good life, so that I could write these books and tell these stories,” Nelson said.

Recalling a hangover one morning long ago, Nelson was watching his two little girls play in the backyard when he realized that he needed help. He picked up the phone and called the local A.A. chapter who immediately sent over two people to give him reassurances and encouragement to live clean.


Nelson concluded his warning of the perils of alcohol, “My hope for you is that you won’t drink and you’ll receive a blessing…I promise you.”

Art has been in Nelson’s life since he was little boy. His earliest memory of art in the home is of his mother’s project in which she applied tempera paint to the living room window. “I remember marveling at her. It was big and it was colorful, and the sun shone through the paint like a stained glass window.” Art was encouraged in the home and when he was three or four years old, Nelson recalled sitting at the kitchen table and finger painting.

Art runs in Nelson’s blood. His mother was a landscape artist who had studied academic and classical painting under the tutelage of Herr Von Schmidt, a German artist. His maternal great-grandmother, Khízá Wiŋ(Fighting Woman) was a traditional artist—a fine beader. Unfortunately, one of her creations, a fully beaded buckskin dress had to be sold to help support the family. Nelson’s mother, had little time to devote to painting due to the demands of motherhood, but her creativity manifested in quilting.

It wasn’t until a rainy day at school when his class stayed indoors that Nelson decided to consider art seriously. He was working on a wildlife scene at his desk when an older “alpha male” fellow whom the class all admired stopped by Nelson’s desk and peered over his shoulder, and said, “Wow, that’s really good.” Nelson’s confidence was boosted further when his classmate declared, “Guys, come over here and look at this.”


Nelson’s mother spoke fluent Lakota and English, and she handed down cultural stories with life lessons like the old Iktomi, or Trickster, stories. Nelson fondly recalls a summer night in his childhood in FortYates. His father had heard that the satellite ECHO was going to pass above so Nelson’s mother took him and his brothers and sister outside to watch for it. While watching the heavens Nelson’s mother told them that the Lakota are people of the stars, and up above was their grandfather, Nelson’s Lakota namesake Flying Cloud, riding his horse. “I looked and I couldn’t see a horse, all I saw were stars, but I knew what she was talking about. I got it. I didn’t have to ask her or say that grandpa’s not there. She was talking about infinity. She was talking about forever. I felt the stars were alive.”

When he was a little boy, when the Missouri River was still free flowing on the bottomlands below Fort Yates, his mother and grandmother repeatedly warned Nelson and his siblings not to go swimming in the river. Historically the river was dangerous. In fact, the Lakota called the river Mni Šhošhé, which means “The Water-Astir.” Before the dam, the river was brown with sediment that was stirred up by the swirling churning river and for the Lakota who had become coffee drinkers the river reminded them of the motion of stirring their coffee with sugar or cream. The river was indeed dangerous and only in the mid to late summer was swimming in the river advised for even strong swimmers were pulled under by the undercurrent and never seen from again. Today, the river and the lake are blue.

Nelson’s remembers the river as a river. As a boy, he longingly desired to swim in the forbidden waters and that longing is echoed in his voice today. “It’s a beautiful lake,” said Nelson in an accepting tone. “I like to see kids swimming there.”


After the dams were built in the 1950s, the US Army Corps of Engineers approached the people of Standing Rock and asked them what they would like to call the new lake. Their cryptic response, for they weren’t happy with the Corps, “O’ahé,” which means Something To Stand On in reference to the buildings that were taken under the rising waters and drifted apart and away leaving only the foundations.

Childhood memories came swift to Nelson. His grandmother, Josephine Gipp Pleets, was born in a tipi, and lived in a cabin in Fort Yates when he knew her. In her back yard grew a modest grove of Chinese Elm trees. Nelson would climb them as high as he could. The birds were used to him and continued to land in their nests or flit away unconcerned in their business. He would gaze out over the tree tops for hours at a time watching the river, the valley and the sky.

SD Nelson may live in the southwest. His house is there in eternal summer, but his heart is in the never ending horizon of the Great Plains, his soul is with the Lakota and Dakota people in the land of sky and wind. He is a son of Standing Rock and his life’s work recalls it in each sketch and painting, and his paintings touch the souls of children.

For more information about SD Nelson visit him online at SDNelson.net. 
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The Villages of the Ochéti Šhakówiŋ in 1750

May 10, 2013, 12:42 pm
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The Villages of the Ochéti Šhakówiŋ
The Year 1750 On The Northern Great Plains
By D. Jerome Tweton, The North Star Dakotan

They are commonly referred to as the Sioux. They call themselves the Ochéti Šhakówiŋ, Lakĥota for “Seven Campfires,” representing the seven major bands of the Great Sioux Nation. Once each year representatives of the bands come together to hold council, socialize, and participate in religious rites. This meeting of the Great Sioux Nation takes place in Péšhla“The Heart Of Everything That Is”—the Black Hills, the place, according to tradition, that gave birth to the Ochéti Šhakówiŋ. It is a serious mistake, however, to group all these Siouan-speaking people under one name or characterization, for the ways of life of the Campfires differ considerably.

A Dakota Village by Seth Eastman

The Dakota, sometimes referred to as the Eastern Sioux or the Santee Sioux, live in the Mississippiand Minnesota river valleys and account for four of the seven Campfires: the Mdwakanton(Spirit Lake People), the Waĥpékute(Shooters Among The Leaves), the Waĥpétowon(Dwellers Among The Leaves), and the Sissétowon(People Of The Swamp). To the west of the Dakota in the region of the James RiverValley lie two Campfires, the Ihanktowan (Yankton) and the Ihanktowana (Yanktonai), sometimes known as the Middle Sioux. The Lakĥota, who populate the plains from the Platte to the Knife rivers, is the seventh Campfire. Also known as the Teton Sioux or Western Sioux, the Lakĥota are comprised of seven bands: Oglala (They Scatter Their Own); Sĥičhaŋğu or Brule (Burnt Thighs); Mniconjou (Planters Beside The Water); Itážipčho or Sans Arcs (Those Without Bows); Oohénoŋpa (Two Boilings/Kettles); Sihasapa (Blackfeet); Hunkpapa (Campers At The Horn).

Siouan territory about 1750.

By the 1500s, the Ochéti Šhakówiŋ inhabited the prairie and woods to the east of the plains. They could not avoid contact with the Ojibway who were moving toward the same territory south of Lake Superior. Tied closely to the French fur trade, the Objiwa, armed with French guns, gradually pushed the Yankton, Yanktonai, and Lakota to the west. The Ojibway made peace with the 5,000 Dakota who stayed in the Mississippi and Minnesota rivervalleys.

The Dakota remain people of the woods. The Mdewakanton occupy seven villages along the Mississippi; the Wahpekute have a large single village on the Minnesota River not far upstream from where it empties into the Mississippi. The Wahpeton’s seven villages and the 12 of the Sisseton are to the west on the Minnesota River. That the Dakota are people of the woods and water influences how they live. They construct permanent heavily-timbered bark houses with pitched roofs. Some live in small conical structures covered with skins and bark. Both men and women build the dwellings—sometimes referred to as wigwams. For food, the Dakota depend upon the lakes and rivers for fish and the woods for deer and small animals such as rabbits and muskrats. An annual early winter deer hunt usually brings enough meat to get through the winter. The Sisseton, the furthest west of the Dakota, venture out into the open prairie to hunt buffalo. Some Dakota raise corn, squash, and pumpkins. Wild rice and cranberries are plentiful and maple sugar mixed with water provides a tasty hot drink. Dakota life reflects a typical woodlands culture.

The Yankton and Yanktonai lived together around LeechLake prior to the late 1600s when the two campfires separated. The Yankton, about 3,000 people, moved out of the northern woodlands and onto the prairie country near the pipestone quarries. A hundred years later they have established themselves in the region of the lower James RiverValley. The Yanktonai, with a population of about 6,000, left the woodlands in the early 1700s and have built permanent winter homes in the James RiverValleyto the north of the Yankton.

The two groups developed into mixed cultures; that is, they combine the ways of the woods with the realities of a new environment. They continue to live in permanent villages near water where fish are plentiful. Gone are the large quantities of deer, wild rice, maple sugar, and cranberries. In their place are large gardens and buffalo. Buffalo hunts take the Yanktonai north to DevilsLake, east to the Red River, and west to the Missouri River. The Yanktonai have adopted the earthlodge , probably learning the building technique from the MissouriValley tribes.

A Lakhota camp follows a bison gange, a scene by George Catlin.

The Lakota, the largest campfire with about 12,000 people, moved to the plains between the late 1600s and the mid-1700s. By the mid-1700s, the Lakota entered the sacred Black Hills, displacing the Cheyenneand Kiowa. As more and more bands reached the lower Missouri River, the Lakota pushed the Sahnish (Arikara) northward upriver toward the Mandan and Hidatsa villages.

Facing a new land, the Lakota have had to abandon their woodland ways and adjust to a completely different climate and terrain. Soft-soled moccasins, so comfortable in the woods, have been replaced by hard soles, more appropriate on the sun-baked plains. Total dependence upon the buffalo has forced radical change. The buffalo, so numerous that they look like a vast brown sea, have become the life blood for the Lakota, providing food; skins for clothing, shelter, and beading; bone tools; sinew for sewing; materials for making all kinds of containers including cooking pouches and spiritual objects. One cannot overstate the importance of the buffalo to sustaining Lakota life.

A Lakhota chases a bison bull on horseback, a scene by George Catlin.

Because the buffalo herds migrate from place to place—sometimes hundreds of miles apart—so, too, do the Lakota. This has made permanent villages impossible; the tipi, a portable dwelling, has replaced the fixed wigwam. Village membership disappeared and has been replaced by smaller units called tiospaye—groups of related people. Each tiospaye is divided into camps that represent extended families. Because the Lakota have to travel, skin cookery has taken the place of breakable and heavy pottery. Because a tiospaye sometimes has to move suddenly, life is extremely well-organized and the closing down of a campsite can be done in a short time. The Lakota have acquired horses, making life much easier.

The Ochéti Šhakówiŋ are people of the woodlands, people of the prairie, and people of the plains. Where they live has dictated how they live. Their bond of togetherness, however, is stronger than their separatism.
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Sitting Bull Visitor Center Opens On Standing Rock

May 16, 2013, 8:01 pm
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Sitting Bull Visitor Center Opens On Standing Rock
Hear The Stories Of The Land and People
Dakota Wind, The First Scout

Fort Yates, ND - On Wednesday, May 15, 2013, the people of Standing Rock and many invited  visitors celebrated the grand opening of the new Sitting Bull Visitor Center on the Sitting Bull College campus in Fort Yates, ND. According to LaDonna Bravebull-Allard, Standing Rock Tribal Tourism Director, it was a project a decade in the making. 


The building, a log cabin, was donated to the Sitting Bull College ten years ago and assembled on a hillside overlooking the campus and highway. At first it was used for offices, then languished with various problems from an unstable foundation to finishing the interior. Gradually, each problem was assessed and then tackled methodically as funding became available. 

A Medicine Wheel rests just outside on the north side of the visitor center. Pergola shading offers modest protection from the sun and rain. Outdoor seating provides a quiet place at three of the four corners for reflection and relaxation. 


Things aren't finished just yet. Future plans call for an amphitheatre for outside public demonstrations of culture, art, story telling, dance and song. 


Hard wood lines the floor and display cases within the visitor center. Lighting inside is bright but soft and profuse. Cases are filled with the finest examples of quill and bead work both historic and contemporary. Historic photos decorate the walls of the reservation in its early agency days.

Interior plans for the ground floor, or basement, show that a classroom will provide an area for Standing Rock's finest artisans to demonstrate their craft to visitors or instruct the next generation in centuries of tradition. 


The dedication of the visitor center was graced with the attendance of Isaac Dog Eagle, one of Sitting Bull's descendants. Kevin Locke, pre-eminent flute-player of the traditional Plains Indian flute and world-reknowned hoop dancer, provided the assembly with a benediction to the Creator and a song by Sitting Bull. Charles Murphy, Standing Rock's Tribal Chairman - longest chairman in office briefly shared a few words of welcome to all. 



A light rainfall sprinkled down, but never threatened a downpour, and an ever-present plains breeze carried the songs of meadowlarks throughout the entire program. In a beautiful gesture an esteemed visitor from North Carolina brought tobacco from his family land and shared it with Standing Rock's leadership. 

For more information visit Standing Rock Tourism or contact LaDonna Bravebull-Allard.
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Traditional Lakota Horsemanship Lives

May 30, 2013, 12:13 pm
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Šhuŋg Nağí Kičhí Okižhu
"Becoming One With The Spirit Of The Horse"
Traditional Horsemanship Lives On Standing Rock
By Dakota Wind, The First Scout

Standing Rock– I met Jon Eagle at the SittingBullCollege right outside of FortYateson the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation. It was a bright spring morning, a few distant clouds hung in the sky, not enough to provide shade, nor heavy enough to promise rain. Meadowlarks flew boldly through a light breeze carrying short sweet songs of courtship.

Jon had taken me to his niece’s land just south of FortYatesnear the wačhipi (pow-wow) grounds. We followed a short bumpy dirt road, more trail than road, and the pickup kicked up a small cloud of dust which dissipated with the quiet wind. Suddenly we were there, where we saw his horses grazing along the meandering Akičhita Haŋska Wakpa (Long Soldier Creek).

The sun shown clear and true, but not hot, at least not yet, not in the spring in the land of forever. The snow had all but melted and only in the shade of the bends of the creeks was compacted snow still holding out. Tips of trees and ends of bushes bore small tight buds, a sure sign that spring had arrived.

On the drive to the horse range, we spoke of family lines. I had heard him refer to a lekšhi (uncle) of mine as lala (grandfather). To one another, however, we addressed each other as théhaŋšhi (male cousins) and it seems comfortable to do so as we are closer in age than in generation. In knowledge, Jon possesses practical, experiential traditional knowledge handed down to him and he’s quick to acknowledge who and where he acquired it.

Jon brought me to the horses to talk about them in front of them, and it was far better to speak about the return of traditional horsemanship on site rather than back in the confines of an office. The talk bounced between ancestral or genetic memory, traditional stories of the horse, Lakĥótasocieties of history and the recent Black Spotted Horse Society, and traditional horsemanship which is based on developing a relationship versus the western dominion of horse-breaking.

We stepped out of his pickup and onto the floodplain of the creek, a gentle steppe above a wandering waterway that’s quietly shaped and cut a path at the bottom of the valley floor over thousands of years. Horses circled around the little steppe looking for fresh green spring grass and found it shooting up through last year’s brown remains.

Jon stopped us perhaps twenty feet from a mottled brown and white pony as we continued to exchange pleasantries about the day. After a while the mottled pony came over and shared an affectionate greeting with Jon, and introduced herself to me. I held my hand up and she sniffed and huffed at me for a few minutes and tolerated the touch of my palm to the bridge of her face. “When a horse shares breathe with us, that’s a sacred thing,” explained Jon, “They’re sharing their spirit with us.” The mottled pony made a final quiet non-committal huff of me, took a few steps back into the grass and put her nose back to the ground.


In the cool breezy morning air under a now cloudless azure sky our conversation began in earnest about the horse and the return of the practice of traditional horsemanship by the people of Iŋyáŋ Wosláta(Standing Rock).

“The horses have a language of their own, and a natural social order,” explained Jon. With domestication of the horses, humans have interrupted the natural order according to Jon.

The pony that brought herself over to Jon and introduced herself to me, is “untouched” explained Jon. “She’s never known a halter, she’s never been saddled, and I’m trying to preserve that in her.” Indeed, there’s a spirit of equality that emanates from her as though we’re brother and sister, rather than man and animal. It feels as though she would let me ride on her back at her prerogative rather than mine.

Jon says that he looks for a telling quality of spirit, a gentle quality found in their eyes. “It tells me that they’re intelligent and that she’s trainable, that I can develop a relationship,” he says. For Jon, horses are friends to develop a relationship with, not merely a domestic work animal for breaking, pulling and riding. When people ask him how to learn how to ride a horse, he says that’s something that he can’t teach. In fact, he insists that one needs to develop a relationship with the horse. If one can’t develop a relationship with a horse, one can’t ride a horse.

It’s a lifelong lifestyle for Jon Eagle. He was born into a horse ranching family who rode along the Snake and Grand rivers in South Dakota. In those days, not so long ago, before ATVs, ranchers depended on horses to ride the range and cross the steppe. “We wanted what we called an ‘All Day Horse.’ A horse that could go all day and could get the job done.”


Jon’s children take an active role in horsemanship. They water and feed the herd, venture into the field to repair fence line, anything that puts them in direct field contact with their horses. They ride some of their horses and are equally practiced in saddle and tack as well as bareback riding. Jon doesn’t push them into the field, but rather lets his children determine their own time with their horses. “I want them to enjoy this. It’s a way of life,” said Jon.

I asked Jon if he rides bareback, a question which he graciously answered and led us into discussion about western horsemanship and traditional Lakĥóta horsemanship. “I can’t ride bareback,” he said and then recounted an incident back in 2000 when he rode a two-year old mare all summer then put her away for the winter. When spring returned, he corralled her and when he rode her, she “clicked,” doing everything he wanted her to do as though he had ridden her only yesterday. Feeling rather enthusiastic about his mare’s recall, he took her out in the field when she began to behave unfavorably. Thinking that Jon had to “correct” his mare he directed her to a run.

“I was 5’11” when I started that day, and became 5’10” by day’s end. I had shattered my pelvis and fractured by back,” recalled Jon with a distant gaze in his eyes that told me he wasn’t just looking over my shoulder down the dirt road, but was looking back in time. The incident humbled Jon. He was raised as a cowboy and was trained to have dominion over the horses, to break them. “I realized that our cowboy way of horsemanship was disrespectful and abusive. We broke them and they resented that.”

In the time Jon was laid up in recovery, he began to rethink his approach to the horse. He picked one of Monty Roberts’ books about natural horsemanship which talks about the concept of “join up.” Jon then brought his horse into the corral, and after she read Jon’s body language, she became comfortable with him again and approached him after a short while.

In another version of the horses' arrival, the horse came out of a swirl in the Missouri River.

Jon contacted his théhaŋšhi, Greg Holy Bull, in Red Scaffold on the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation and heard the story of the Lakĥóta story of the horse. This, Jon graciously shared with me:

A long time ago, the people traveled west to some mountains, then turned south where they encountered a camp of people whom they had never before met. In that camp, they noticed too, that there was an animal that they had never before seen. Unfortunately, enthusiasm of first contact swiftly broke down and violence broke out. During the conflict, the horses broke free and scattered. Warriors went into the new enemies’ camp during the fight and stole women thinking to make wives of them. The people, the Lakĥota, made a run north with the enemy in hot pursuit. Gradually, it happened that the enemy lost heart and turned back. The people slowed their flight in response the enemy retreat and to their wonder, encountered the harras. Warriors wanted these horses and tried taking them without success. In the evening, after camp was established, the enemy women went out in the field and sang to the horses which drew them in. With the horses drawn closer to the familiarity and soothing tone of the women, warriors would attempt to capture them to no avail. All the while the tiyošpaye kept moving. A day came when they came to a river, there they made an abrupt turn east, back to their ancestral territory, and lo, the harras followed. Gradually the horses and warriors came to an understanding and so that’s how this one band of Lakĥota came to have the horse.
Note: According to the story as Jon heard it, the enemy whom the Lakĥótatook women and horses from were the Spanish.

The natural approach to the horse, the singing and allowing the horse to come forward on its own accord, is the method the Lakĥota came to call Šung Naği K’sapa, The Wisdom Of Spirit. The spirit of the horse senses the natural order of the world and the natures of men, and they respond. In the natural world, they know when thunderstorms are coming. Horses read the body language of men, and determine if they will get close or allow humans to come close to them.

Jon doesn’t teach people how to ride horses or master horses. He teaches people how to have relationships with horses. He passionately recalls the lessons of the Lakĥota people and how they look at the horse as their own nation, the Šung Wakaŋ Oyáte. That everything out thereis a nation unto itself. That everything has a spirit.

This natural and spiritual approach to horsemanship leads Jon to be able to harness and ride his horses without ever having to go through the traditional “breaking” or bribing of the horse. “I can actually get them to come walk over and stick their head in that halter, and it’s all because we’ve established a meaningful relationship based on trust,” Jon explains.


Jon has carefully examined the meaning of the Lakĥotaword for horse. A search online, and in person among various Lakĥota communities have yielded different words and even different meanings. Šhuŋka Wakáŋ, which many give a contemporary interpretation as “Holy Dog,” but which Lakĥóta elders render in the traditional sense as “pitiful,” not in the western mindset of downtrodden but as “beautiful, innocent and pure.”

Part of the Lakĥota word for horse, wakáŋ, reaches back to creation. When Iŋyáŋ, Stone,let his blood flow, his blood which ran blue and became the waters of the world, his blood was Kaŋ, full of energy with the potential for destruction and to give life. When the Lakĥóta say Wakáŋ, it means something with energy, energy with good and negative potential. Taken altogether, Šhuŋka Wakáŋ means Beautiful Pure Innocence With-Energy.

Jon described traditional horsemanship with the Lakĥótaphrase Šhuŋg nağí kičhí okižhu, which translates as “Becoming one with the spirit of the horse.” The Lakĥóta people say it’s a way of life, and breaking a horse or having dominion has no part in building a relationship with people, nations and creation. Jon notes that with a natural spiritual relationship with horses, the horses put people in a place of honor, čhatkú, a middle place between the natural authority of the mares and the sires. It’s a place that is earned by trust, which is not so different from how one earns friends and holds them in esteem.

Before I felt it, morning became noon, and before we left Jon’s horses he related one more story with me, a story that came to him from Mr. Albert Foote Sr. who heard from his Lala (grandfather) the origins of the horse:

A long time ago, Thuŋkášhila [Grandfather, in reference to a higher power] had an omníčiye [a gathering] of all the nations in one place. There, Thuŋkášhila told them there would one day appear a two-legged, that’s coming. “They’re going to be uŋšíka [pitiful]. They’re not going to be able to see as good as you. They’re not going to be able to hear as good as you. They’re not going to be as strong as you. And they’re not going to be as fast as you are. So, who amongst you is willing to help them?” said Thuŋkášhila. After this question was posed, one of the šung wakaŋ took off running. Thuŋkášhila then sent Waŋbli [the Eagle] after, “Talk to him. And ask him if he’ll help the two-legged.” The eagle caught up to the horse, “Why are you running?” The horse replied, “They’re going to be a burden to me. They’re going to ride me and they’re going to want me to carry their things.” The eagle alighted on the horse’s rump and said, “This is how much of a burden they’re going to be.” But the horse kicked that eagle off of him. Eagle went back to the gathering and told Thuŋkášhila what transpired. Thuŋkášhila said, “No. You must go back and convince him.” Eagle returned to the horse, but by then it had started to rain and horse had been running for a long time and was sweating profusely. Again, eagle said, “Let me show you how much of a burden they’re going to be,” and again alighted onto horse’s back, and shook himself, and as eagle shook himself, his center plume came out and came to rest on horse’s back. Horse began to protest with wild bucks back and forth, but because he was sweaty from running and wet from the rainfall, horse could dislodge the feather. Eventually, horse relented and said, “I’ll be the one. I’ll be the one to carry their burdens.”

The sun shone true and fair upon us, a few clouds hung high in the azure sky and rambled slowly eastward. I carry no watch, and I didn’t see one on Jon’s wrist either, only the growl in my stomach let me know it was about midday. The horses had wandered across Long Soldier Creek to graze on the fresh dark green grass there. Jon had finished his coffee long ago and sat patiently on the gate of his pickup and gently tapped his empty paper cup against the palm of his hand.

For a moment I imagine Jon in another time, sitting on the backend of a travois, tapping the rim of a hand-drum about to break into song. There are no roads either, only the tell-tale ruts of the travois that show how we arrived here. The lofty clouds are the same that floated here three hundred years ago, in a sky the same blue, above a quiet wandering creek just as hauntingly quiet then as now. The same breeze grazes me and cools me.  

I am brought out of this reverie the moment we step into Jon’s pick-up. We barrel up an incline back onto the lonely dirt road that brought us here. It’s my turn to open the barbed wire fence gate. The dirt road gave way to gravel, then blacktop. We drove back into town and into the twenty-first century. The efforts of traditional Lakĥóta people carried the tradition of the horse culture into a new age.


Jon Eagle Sr. is HúnkpapĥaLakĥota and Isáŋti Dakĥota, his wife Martina is SihásapaLakĥota and IhaŋktĥuwaŋnaDakĥota.  Together, they have seven children and two grandchildren, two cats, two dogs and twelve horses. They enjoy traveling to celebrations all over Indian Country and enjoy a rich and beautiful life.


Visit Šhuŋg Nağí Kičhí Okižhu, Becoming One With The Spirit Of The Horse for more information.
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Terrible Justice: Sioux Chief And U.S. Soldiers, A Review

May 31, 2013, 10:03 am
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Terrible Justice: Sioux Chiefs And U.S.Soldiers
A Review And Criticism Of An Otherwise Good Book
By Dakota Wind, The First Scout

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 FortRice, 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 DeadBuffaloLakethrough to Sibley’s final conflict with the Sioux at Apple Creek between present-day UnitedTribesTechnicalCollege 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 TurtleMountainsand 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. 
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A Sacred Stone As Related To AB Welch

June 6, 2013, 12:18 pm
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The following comes from the papers of Col. A.B. Welch. The Welch papers are available online at Welch Dakota Papers.



Native American Sacred Stones And Holy Places
As Told To Col. A.B. Welch

Chapter II: Sacred Stones
Part 1, The Painted Rock
Many stories and legends are told among the old people of the North Dakota tribes and frequent allusions are made in these legends to a large rock, sometimes called “The Painted Rock,” situated in the country deserted by the Mandans and Arikara as the Sioux pressed northward, upon the North Fork of the Cannon Ball river, not far from Brisbane in Grant County, N.D.


This probably was the most revered object of all the stationary medicine, or holy, stones of the tribes which have held the country, including the Cheyenne and Sioux, during the last one-hundred and twenty-five or more years, and has been frequently consulted by many tribesmen who are still living.  It is known to the Sioux as the Iyan Wakan Gapi (Idol of the Holy Stone) and they call the river upon which it is situated Iyan Wakan Gapi Wakpa (River of the Idol of the Holy Stone).  This stream is marked upon maps as the Cannon Ball and Le Raye mentions it by that name in 1801.

Part 2, Reclining Bear's Story Of Standing Rock
Reclining Bear, an old time Hunkpapa Teton speaks as follows of the stone itself:

“I have been there.  Many people went there often.  The Palani went there too.”

Palani, or Padani, is a Sioux word properly applied to the Arikara.  While the Dakotah, or Sioux, have separate names for the Mandansand Hidatsa, or Gros Ventre, the term Palani is commonly used when speaking of these three northern tribes as a separate federated body.  When speaking of any of these tribes as a separate people, they use the name Mowahtani for the Mandans, Hewaktokta for the Gros Ventre and Palani for the Arikara.

Reclining Bear used the term in the general sense meaning the people of those three tribes.  Continuing, he said:

“This stone is a big one.  It is a little distance from the water of the Cannon Ball.  It is as big as a log house, where it stands.  It has many marks upon it.  The marks are made by the spirits.  When we came near to it, we sung songs and acted very respectfully then.  We camped on the water and not too near it.

Then when we were ready, some old man carried a pipe to it.  He carried the stem in both hands in front of his body.  He extended it toward the sky and toward the holy stone then.  There he sat down and smoked with four draws through it.  He placed the pipe there.  He poured out some tobacco there.  He sung a good song then.  He wanted plenty of buffalo and he wanted the people to live a long time.  He sung that way.  He went away from there.

The next day he went again.  When he went again there were other marks upon the stone.  Some good men would tell what they meant to the people.  Some times there was [sic] paint marks upon it.  The marks were made by spirits.

They were never the same marks like they were before.  It told us what to do.  It said when to strike the enemy.  It told where the buffalo had gone to.  If the people did like it said, they were all right.

One time it sung a song with words.  We saw an old woman walk into it one time.  She went right in it.  She was gone.  It is very holy.  It was there when we came across the Missouri.  I think it had been an Arikara stone.  I think they found it first.  The put things there, too [sic].  No one would strike an enemy around that place.  Every one was safe there.  There were always many presents there.  There were weapons and things to eat and valuable cloth on sticks.  There were buffalo heads there, too, for meat to come around.  It is very holy.  It is there yet.  I do not want to talk much about it.” 

Part 3, Offerings To Stones
The custom of placing offerings before certain stones was noticed by many of the early explorers.  There can be little doubt that Lewis and Clark, in 1804-05, while wintering with the Mandans at a point a few miles above the present city of Mandan, N.D., referred in their journals to this identical stone mentioned by old Reclining Bear.  Many of the traditions told today by members of the three Federated Tribes relate to this stone.  It is often mentioned as a sort of “Zero Milestone” when they endeavor to locate some point in the country, by saying that “It is a day’s journey by wagon from the Painted Stone on the Cannon Ball.”

Part 4, [Standing Rock] Holy Idol Stone Mentioned In Lewis & Clark Journals
“Thursday, 21st (February, 1805).  We had a continuation of the same pleasant weather.  Cheenaw and Shahaka came down to see us, and mentioned that several of their countrymen had gone to consult their medicine stone as to the prospects of the following year.  This medicine stone is the great oracle of the Mandans, and whatever it announces is believed with implicit confidence.  Every spring, and on some occasions during the summer, a deputation visits the sacred spot, where there is a thick porous stone twenty feet in  circumference, with a smooth surface.  Having reached the spot, the ceremony of smoking to it is performed by the deputies, who alternately take a whiff themselves and then present the pipe to the stone; after this they retire to an adjoining wood for the night, during which it may safely be presumed that all do not sleep; and in the morning they read the destinies of the nation in the white marks on the stone, which those who made them are at no loss to decipher.  The Minnitares (Hidatsa) have a stone of a similar kind, which has the same qualities and the same influence over the nation.  Captain Lewis returned from his excursion in pursuit of the Indians…”

Part 5, The Minnitari Stone
The “Medicine Stone – sacred oracle” mentioned by Lewis and Clark is none other than the Iyan Wakan Gapi of the Sioux on the Cannon Ball River.  The “Minnitari” stone spoken of, according to information given to the writer by living members of the Mandan and Hidatsa people, was a large, detached, granite boulder – - – which was in the Valley of the Middle Hole country, and a little ways from the river which flows there.  The CryingHillVillage people went there.  It was north of the water on a hill side.  It is gone now.  Some white man put powder in it and built a house with it.  It was a holy stone.  It belonged to the Hidatsa.  It had marks upon it like the one on the Cannon Ball.

They were marks of buffalo, birds and wolve’s feet.  They were different every time.  The old people knew how to read these marks.  It told them all about everything.  It is too bad that it is spoiled.

There was the other one in the Sioux country.  It was bigger than this Minnitari (Hidatsa) stone.  When we passed by there we smoked.  While we were close there, we were not attacked by anyone.  It was dangerous around there after we left the stone.  It was in the Sioux country.  When we left there we always rode clear to the Heart Riverbefore we stopped.   They could steal our horses then.  But between the Heart and the Cannon Ball it was dangerous country.  We were safe at the stone.  On the Heart we could keep watch and they could steal our horses if they were brave enough to come after them there.” 

Part 6, Stone Idol [Standing Rock] Creek Journey
The Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the Arikara villages on the Grand River in the early part of October, 1804, and those people desired that one of their chiefs would be permitted to accompany the boats to the Mandansfor the purpose of concluding a peace parley.  Accordingly, the Chief of the upper village, by the name of Ahketahnasha (“Chief of the Village”) went aboard.  On the trip up river to the Mandanvillages north of Mandan, N.D.much information was obtained from him regarding the names of the creeks and rivers flowing into the Missouri.  It is observed that in nearly every instance where he gave the name of deserted village sites, he called them Mandanvillages.

The expedition, in following up the Missouri River from the Arikara villages in the vicinity of the Grand River, came to a small creek coming in from the east, or left, bank, on Saturday, October the 13th.  This creek now bears the name of “Morphrodite Creek” and is in Campbellcounty, S.D., near the North Dakotaline.  To this creek they gave the name of Stone Idol Creek, and their journal contains these remarks about it:

“…At ten and a half miles we reached the mouth of a small creek on the north, which takes its rise in some ponds a short distance to the northeast; to this stream we gave the name of Stone Idol Creek, for after passing a willow and sand island just above its mouth, we discovered that a few miles back from the Missouri there are two stones resembling human figures, and a third like a dog, all of which are objects of great veneration among the Ricaras.  Their history would adorn the metamorphoses of Ovid.  A young man was deeply enamored with a girl whose parents refused their consent to their marriage.  The youth went out into the fields to mourn his misfortunes; a sympathy of feeling led the lad to go to the same spot, and a faithful dog would not cease to follow his master.

After wandering together and having nothing but grapes to subsist upon, they were at last converted into stone, which beginning at the feet, gradually invaded the nobler parts, leaving nothing unchanged but a bunch of grapes which the female holds in her hands to this day.  Whenever the Ricaras pass these sacred stones they stop to make some offering of dress to propitiate these deities.  Such is the account given by the Ricara chief, which we had no mode of examining except that we found one part of the story very agreeable confirmed, for on the river where the event is said to have occurred we found a greater abundance of fine grapes than we had yet seen…”

By Sunday, October 21st, the same expedition had ascended the great waterway to “a creek on the south called Chisahetaw, about thirty yards wide and with a considerable quantity of water.”  This is the famous Heart Riverof the Mandan Indians and is so called to this day.  Continuing, the journal states:

“Our Ricara tells us that at some distance up this river is situated a large rock which is held in great veneration and visited by parties who go to consult it as to their own or their nations destinies, all of which they discern in some sort of figures or paintings with which it is covered.  About two miles off from the mouth of the river the party on shore saw another of the objects of Ricara superstition; it is a large oak tree standing alone in the open prairie, and as it alone had withstood the fire which has consumed everything around it, the Indians naturally ascribe to it extraordinary powers.  One of their ceremonies is to make a hole in the skin of their necks through which a string is passed and the other end tied to the body of the tree, and after remaining in this way for some time they thing they become braver…”

The stone mentioned in the foregoing paragraph by the old chief of the Ricaras, as being situated “at some distance up this river,” is the Minnitari Stone, and was drilled and split up for building stone by the white settlers in Mandan, and the basement of Mr. G.W.Renden’s residence is built of the fragments of this holy stone of the inhabitants of the Village of the Crying Hill of one hundred and fifty years or more ago.

Part 7, Maximilion Visits The Painted Rock
In the records of the German scientist, naturalist and explorer, Maximilion, Prince of Weid, who spent some time with the Mandan Indians in the winter of 1833-34, we also find reference to the sacred stone of the Cannon Ball River, the Iyan Wakan Gapi of the Dakotah.

Speaking of a Holy Stone, Maximilion says:

“Another curiosity of a similar nature is the Medicine Stone, which is mentioned by Lewis and Clark and which the Minnitaries likewise reverence.  This stone is between two and three days journey from the villages on Cannon Ball River, and about 100 paces from its banks.  I was assured that it was on a tolerably high hill, and in the form of a flat slab, probably of sand stone.  The stone is described as being marked with impressions of the footsteps of men, and animals of various descriptions, also sledges with dogs.  The Indians use this stone as an oracle, and make offerings of value to it, such as kettles, blankets, cloth, guns, knives, hatchets, medicine pipes, etc., which are found deposited close to it.  The war parties of both nations, when they take the field, generally go to this place, and consult the oracle as to the issue of their enterprise.  Lamenting and howling, they approach the hill, smoke their medicine pipes, and pass the night near the spot.  On the following morning they copy the figures on the stone upon a piece of parchment or skin, which they take to the village, where the old men give the interpretation.  New figures are undoubtedly drawn from time to time upon this stone, near to which the celebrated ark, in which part of the nation was saved from the deluge, formerly stood.”

This “Medicine Stone” of Maximilion is, without doubt, the Iyan Wakan Gapi of the Dakotah, and the description he gives to it is quite accurate.

Part 8, Four Swords Story
Four Swords, an aged Sioux, living today upon the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, when questioned regarding the stone, said:

“This stone.  I have seen it.  It is west of Shields.  It is about days’ travel from that place (via horses and wagon).  It is on the north branch of the Cannon Ball River.  It is near the water.  (He pointed across the street to a building about 150 feet distant).  It is that far.  This stone is not high.  It is flat and very large.  It is not red or black or white.  It is more like this color (here he pointed to a tan shade in the rug).  It is not on a high hill.  The ground is not high there.

It is Wakan, this stone.  People sat around it many times in the old days.  ‘Hekton’ – they smoked there.  Many things were placed there.  They placed sticks in the ground with red cloth on them.  They poured out tobacco in little piles there.  Many people sat together there.  The Palani came there too (here he used the term of the Federated Villagers).  We sat together there.  We did not fight then.

I never saw any Wicasa Kangi (Crows) there.  Some might have been there.  They visited the Minnitari (Hewaktokta – the Gros Ventre).  I do not know.  When nighttime came, we went to our camp down by the water.  In the morning there were new tracks on the stone.  There were buffalo tracks there, those of the yearling cows.  That meant good meat.  There were bird tracks and tracks of the wolf, too.  In the grass were tracks of the buffalo and elk.  The spirits had been there.  This stone is there today.  Some old people might go there today, but we have better spirits now.  We go to church.”

The town of Shieldsis on the left bank of the North Fork of the Cannon Ball, on the New England branch of the Milwaukee and St. Paul Rwy., and in GrantCounty.  A sub-agency of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, also called Shields, is located in the same vicinity, but on the right bank and in SiouxCounty.  Four Swords location would place the stone almost south of Brisbane and in the valley of the Cannon Ball, and agrees with Maximilion, that “This stone is between two and three days journey from the villages on the Cannon Ball River and about 100 paces from its banks.”

Part 9, A Mysterious Incident At The Painted Rock
Emeron ‘White,’ an educated Teton Sioux, told me this story as he passed through Mandanafter a visit with the Mandans, Arikara and Gros Ventre upon the Fort Berthold Reservation.  As it relates to the “Iyan Wakan Gapi” of the Cannon Ball River, it is given here, verbatim:

“The people up north told me this story while I was with the Arikara: They said that they sent some men out to look for a place to build a village.  There were four of these men and they went out along the valley of the Missourito find a good, flat place with high bluffs over the water.”

“They came at last to a single earth lodge like they lived in then.  They had never seen this lodge before and they were very much surprised to find it there.  They approached it carefully and there was an old woman standing there all alone.  There were no men around that they could see.  They all ran toward her to strike her for honors.  She did not run, but she did not speak either, but just turned and looked around all the time.  They were afraid to strike her then.  They tried the sign language, but she did not answer them in that either.  She just looked around all the time.  They were afraid of her because she did not speak to them.  Finally they all went away from that place.  They went to their own camp and reported all they had seen and what had taken place.  So then the old men did not believe them at all, for they did not know about that stranger lodge either.”

“They decided to prove the story told by the hunters.  They all went there, guided by the four men.  The lodge was still there.  They finally looked within.  There was no old woman there at all.  There was nothing in the lodge except some branches where some one had slept.  There was no pottery or anything else.  But they found a mark outside which looked like some one had dragged a dead horse or deer or some heavy body through the bush and the grass.  The grass was trampled down all around the mysterious lodge.”

“They followed the sign of the dragged thing and, at last, the trail ended, but a buffalo cow’s track led away from the end of the dragged trail.  These tracks are smaller and more slender than a bull’s track.  They followed these tracks for a long time.  They followed them to the Cannon Ball River and picked them up on the other side.  The tracks led straight to the Iyan Wakan Gapi, where the drawings were, and went inside the rock there.  This is the reason why this Cannon Ball stone was sacred to the Arikara, because this spirit woman went inside the stone.  This was during the time of “Red Man’ or “Red Bear” who was killed by the stone by the road by the Sioux, at Fort Abraham Lincoln.”

This “Red Man” was Arikara, and was born among the Pawnees, cousins of the Arikara people, in 1793.  He was killed while scouting for the soldiers at Lincoln in 1872.  His son was called “Pretty Elk,” whose mother was “White Corn Woman.”  After his father’s death he took the sun dance and his father’s name.  He also was a scout and was present at the “Testimonial Ceremony” at Mandan, July 4th, 1924.
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The Tale Of The Pizzle Stick

June 10, 2013, 2:52 pm
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The Tale Of The Pizzle Stick
I have a story I’d like to share about the pizzle stick.

One time, back at the greatest park in North Dakota, an old supervisor paid a visit bearing a pizzle stick to put on display in the earth lodge. He told me, in an authorative voice that it was a pizzle stick to display along with the many reproductions within the “living” lodge, an earth lodge outfitted to look as though the Nu’Eta (Mandan) lived there and had only just stepped out.

“What’s a pizzle stick?” he asked, waving it around.

“It’s a horse whip,” I nonchalantly responded, looking down at the edge of Missouri River as though something vaguely interesting were there.

“Ah. A horse whip,” he said with great newfound respect and then laid it on a woven cattail mat next to the hearth.

In those days, interpreters (or tour guides) stood around in the abandoned village, greeted visitors, provided interpretive programming, and answer questions to the best of our ability. Working with the general public is something that I wish everyone could experience. Some days brought educated guests, other days were filled with the challenges that only the general public brings. Some visitors were of the live and let live philosophy. Some had read a book and became an overnight expert. Some wanted to see Indians.

It so happened one day that there came a-visiting, a rather gregarious and rowdy bunch of visitors. I was having a tough go of it trying to engage this group and maintain their interest. I suspected that they may have had ingested a few alcoholic libations with their belligerence, raucious laughter, bawdy jokes and repeated questions.

So how does one engage such a group? Like for like? I decided to press my luck when a woman asked about the pizzle stick. She even had the audacity to lean down and pluck it from its place among the reproductions. I saw her bold behavior and thought to meet her coterie’s inebriated wit with pluck.

“I say, what kind of stick is this?” she inquired, completely uninterested in pottery, beadwork, quillwork or the painted elk hide.

I leaned forward a little, lowered my head, and lowered my voice a smidge and said in a conspiratorial tone, and amazingly, they all quieted, “That, is a pizzle stick.” Then I waited for any sign of recognition from her and her party. When none came, a naughty notion struck me, “The ‘Indians’,’” I used the term “Indians” liberally in a grand show of undetected sarcasm, “used the pizzle stick for luck. Like a rabbit’s foot.”

At this point, if you reader, don’t know what a pizzle stick it, you may want to run a quick internet search about it.

“And like the rabbit’s foot, they would stroke it several times for good luck,” and a few of the women pawed at it, giggling as they stoked it and exchanged sexual overtones with one another. I continued in overwhelming confidence, “The women would rub it on their faces.”


I struggled to keep a straight face at how close the women were in their exchange of sexual gesticulations with the pizzle stick. I shook my head at their minstration of the stick, and they laughed, thinking they were embarrassing me. However, just as one woman was about to caress the stick with her cheek I had to speak, feigning newly remembered knowledge, “I do apologize, but it is in fact a horse whip. And [dramatic pause] It’s made from a buffalo penis.” 

Really, some men did in fact use it for a horse whip.
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A Visit To Elk River Country

June 17, 2013, 2:44 pm
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Hehaka Wakpa Makoche (Elk River Country)
AKA Theodore Roosevelt National Park
A Photo Essay by Dakota Wind, The First Scout


Anytime I visit a place with my sons, if the Lakota people have a name and a story about it, I tell them about it as the Lakota know it. The above image was taken at the Painted Canyon Visitor Center. There, I quietly shared the story of General Sully's punitive campaign against the Lakota that started at Killdeer Mountain and led the soldiers to the Badlands, Makoche Sica.


This was taken about a mile south of Wind Canyon. My youngest son wanted to pick flowers so we walked about and found some. When we came upon some, I told him that we must never pick the first ones we see, that we want the flowers to return, so we can pick the second flower we come across. 


Any trees of big size grow on the Elk River floodplain. This little shrub was growing between broken sandstones on a hillside. 


There it is. Elk River. Today the river is known by its contemporary name, the Little Missouri River. It was a favored place of the Lakota, Cheyenne, Mandan and Hidatsa to hunt elk.


Here's a feral herd of horses within the park. The horses descend from horses which were removed from the Lakota in the late 1800s. My youngest son knows that the horses aren't "ours" as in ownership, but he calls them "ours," as in "our friends." 


A gange of bison roam the park too. These bison are pure blooded bison from the gange at Yellowstone National Park. By the turn of 1900 there were only about 300 pure blood bison that could be accounted for there. They were close to extinction, but have made a return.


There were several colts among the horse haras (one of those fancy collective nouns for horses) in the park. Several other visitors had gotten out of their cars and trucks to take pictures, but we didn't. My youngest rolled down his window and called out to them. 


It was windy, but them its always windy on the Great Plains. The wind has been here since creation and still blows strong. The wind blew and carried the wonderful scent of sage across the endless rolling miles. Here's a little valley of sage. Last year my youngest son picked sage for my mother here because her house smells like this.
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A Sahnish (Arikara) Tale Of Standing Rock

June 20, 2013, 8:46 am
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Standing Rock Important To Many Tribes
A Sahnish (Arikara) Tale Of Standing Rock
By Dakota Wind, The First Scout

Some years back I attended the Knife River Culture Festival, an annual event held at the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, in the town of Stanton, ND. Generally, the speakers and presenters are members of the Arikara, Hidatsa, Mandan Nation, otherwise known as the Three Affiliated Tribes, from the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

On this occasion I met a few people of the Sahnish Cultural Society. They shared with me their story of Standing Rock, which was held in high regard and venerated by the Sahnish. The tale they shared with me is not the same tale that was shared by the Rev. Aaron Beede, an Episcopal minister who lived and preached on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation. The story shared with me by the Sahnish was shared in confidence and differs from the version that Beede recorded. However, I can share "Beede's" version.

The rock, known as the Standing Rock to the Sioux and which is now at Fort Yates, N.D., formerly stood in an Arikara vilage in the vicinity of the old town Winona, directly across the river from Fort Yates.

The headman of this village had a beautiful daughter. She was much sought after by young men of the tribes to wed. She refused them all. It was her custom to spend much time among the growing corn in the fields of the village. She cultivated the plants with the shoulder-blade hoe and talked to the corn and sung songs to the pumpkins in the fields, for the Rees were corn raisers. She was very different from the other young women of the village and there was not a word of scandal regarding her. In fact, she was thought to be very pure and holy. She refused many men who were good hunters and brave warriors, and her parents, at last, became displeased with her actions in this manner. At such times she would say that it was intended that she should marry and that it would displease the spirits.

But at last a noble young man appeared from a great distance and played upon his eagle-bone flute outside her father's lodge, or rather, earth lodge. She persisted in refusing to marry and her father said, "It is always good for Indian women to show respect towards their parent's desires in such matters; that she was not displaying the proper filial obedience and that they were displeased with her. This time she must marry whether she wanted to or not."

The young chief brought a great pile of furs and other presents for the parents of the young woman and laid them at the door of the lodge. He presented his horses to the father. At last the young woman was married to the young chief from far away. But still contended that it was the wrong thing for her to do; that she was not intended for marriage and that it was all a big mistake. A great feast was given and, after many days of merry-making, the two young people started upon the long journey toward the west where dwelt the people of the young chieftan. 

Sometime afterward there staggered into the village of the Arikara this same young woman, tired and weary with hunger. She had made the long and dangerous journey alone, she said. Her anxious mother asked her what the trouble had been, if her husband had abused her, if she did not have enough to eat, if she had not been well cared-for and and many other questions, such as a mother would ask her daughter. 



But the daughter said that she had been well-treated by her husband, that he gave her the softest skins to rest upon, that she was well fed and that her husband was the perfect man in all things, but she said, "I told you that it was not intended that I should wed, and now see the ruin you have caused by compelling me to marry." 

She then displayed her private parts to her mother. Behold, what had been formerly shaped like the beautiful flower of the pumpkin blossom were now faded and drooped. Her parents comforted her as well as they knew how, but that night she disappeared and, after a long search, was found upon the top of the hill to the northeast of the village, but she refused to return to her parent's lodge. 

Then her father went to speak with her but she still refused. Her mother next talked with her but she told her that she was slowly turning to stone and could not go. She was stone to the knees.

Terribly alarmed, her parents urged the medicine man and all the people to go with them to the hill and have her return. They went, but it was, indeed, true, she was turning to stone and could not move. Her little faithful dog climbed up into her lap and would not be disturbed. Soon she had turned to stone to her private parts, then to her breasts, and finally her entire body and that of the little dog were turned to stone. 

Then a terrible storm came up, spirits rushed through the air, the people were scared and terrified. When the storm had passed over, the daughter was still there, but stone, as you see her, today. So this stone was sacred ever after and was put up in the sacred enclosure in the middle of the village. 

If this story is the true one it is not a Sioux stone but originated with the Arikara. Assuming it was an Arikara stone, the story became evidently known to the Sioux women who carried it across the river after the Arikara had been driven out of that country and established it upon the slope of the hills south of the Porcupine. The Sioux stories were gradually woven about the stone, as the Sioux women would quite naturally take good care of it as a holy object, even though of Arikara origin, as the story connected with it was about a woman. 

Rev. Beede speculates that the Standing Rock stone is not the "original" and that it must come from some where else. That the Sioux women would gradually weave their own stories about the stone mirrors the displacement of place identity the Sioux in turn had the land before soldiers and settlers displaced them. 

If you, reader, have read about Standing Rock in my other posts you've seen another image of an altogether different Standing Rock located along the Sheyenne River, south of Valley City, ND. Its possible that there are as many as four Standing Rocks. 
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Oškate: A Victory Celebration

July 10, 2013, 2:11 pm
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The morning haze made for a muggy afternoon at the pow-wow and rodeo grounds along the Long Soldier Creek.

Oškate: A Victory Celebration
A Commemoration Of The Battle Of The Little Bighorn
By Dakota Wind
Fort Yates, N.D. - Last year I had heard about a Little Bighorn victory commemoration on the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation, where I’m from. Intrigued, but unable to attend the event, I waited. Another year passed, and my schedule allowed me to take it in.

My day began with the sunrise, north of Mandan. The morning sun shone brightly through the windows and into the living room spilling golden light throughout the house and into the kitchen. I bid the family goodbye and braced myself for a long hot day.

The morning was relatively cool. A light ran during the night kissed the grass with dew. The sun’s warmth rung the moisture from the ground and air, and filled the sky with a heavy clammy haze. Clouds hung low, and combined with the haze gave the landscape an almost dreamy quality. The sunlight danced through the clouds and haze as light would through water at the bottom of a pool.

The drive itself was quiet and uneventful. Traffic was light in the early dawn and I passed by what I imagine to be farm traffic. Almost nothing but pick-ups were on the highway or just merging with the highway from the many dirt roads that broke off from the main road.


 The poster that was circulating the web said that the event would begin promptly at 9:00 AM. I drove just slightly over the speed limit, pacing myself, so that I’d get there at least fifteen minutes before the flag song and flag raising at the Akičita Haŋska Wačipi grounds (the Long Soldier Pow-wow grounds).

When I pulled onto the grounds a group of veterans were already there patiently waiting for the singers (drum group) and Nača (headman) and eyapaha (announcers). One of my lekši (uncles) and his wife and their children and grandson came out to see and hear what was happening.

A short but pleasant wait later, the headman of the Šuŋg Sapa Gleška Okolakičiyĕ (The Spotted Black Horse Society) made an announcement that several people had mistaken the information that was circulating online and believed that the victory celebration wouldn’t take place until the evening.

Since there were veterans present, and two American flags to raise, regardless that the celebration wouldn’t take place until later that day, the leader brought out the Spotted Black Horse Society’s drum to render the Lakota National Anthem. There were few singers present, so my lekši and two of his sons, my téhaŋši (male cousins), joined the leader to render the song. My lekši turned to me and simply said, “Here,” and gestured to the drum. I have never sung with my lekši nor my téhaŋši before, and never at the grounds I danced at when I was boy.

Téhaŋši John led us in the Lakota National Anthem, then my téhaŋši Rick “Bu’bu” lead us in the flag song as the flags were reverently brought out and raised with honor.

One of the eyapaha, John Eagle, offers words in memory of our ancestors and encouragement to the Lakota people today. 

I thought to myself, “How could we [the Lakota] be so patriotic as we honored that flag and remembered our relatives who fought for a country who had once fought desperately to put us here, AND honor our relatives who fought to defend us on this day 137 years ago?” The setting of strong contemporary patriotism and commemoration for our relatives who defended our homes and land left me feeling a wonderful juxtaposition of humility, pride, and a tremendous amount of respect for our Lakota lalaki and unčiki (grandfathers and grandmothers) who fought, lived and sacrificed so that we could be here today.

Who can say they’re more patriotic in this land?

I took lunch with my lekši at his home. There he shared with me the story of my lala Innocent’s grandmother, Emma Creek, who had fought at the Little Bighorn to defend her family.


Great-Grandson of Sitting Bull, Ernie LaPointe, "Women didn't fight at the Battle of the Little Bighorn," he explained. 

A few summers ago, I heard an Oglala named Ernie LaPoint – a direct-lineal descendant, a great-grandson, of Tatanka Iyotanke (Sitting Bull) – speak about how Lakota women didn’t fight at the Battle of the Little Bighorn or elsewhere. I think that it may be true, from his perspective, that women didn’t fight.

Major Reno, who was an officer more at ease behind a desk than on actual campaign or in combat, lead his command of the 7th Cavalry into the Hunkpapa Lakota camp at the Little Bighorn.

There are other women who took up arms against the soldiers because the need to protect their children was so great. Among the Hunkpapa Lakota and Ihanktowana Dakota on Standing Rock there are women like Rocky Butte Woman and Moving Robe Woman, and many others, who stood up with their fathers’ or brothers’ warclubs and went into the fight, and not just to repel Reno and his command but also at General Custer’s fight on Last Stand Hill.

Midday came swiftly and the sun cast broken shadows through the passing clouds, dappling the land in sunlight and shadow. It wasn’t hot, but humid. The morning’s haze had burned away only by a small margin that the air seemed to have a bluish tinge to it. A nice crowd of maybe a hundred or so people had gathered at the rodeo grounds on the north side of Long Soldier Creek – the pow-wow grounds rest on the south bank of the creek.

I crossed the creek and memories of my grandmother Thelma camping along the creek during the pow-wow came back. I knew the exact spot where she set her tent, and I walked by it. I remember playing on the bridge there as a little boy during the pow-wows. I remember a quiet walk to the rodeo stand with a girl I used to like.


Jerking myself back from my own reverie of the past, I made my way to the racetrack where a horse racing challenge was about to take place. There, a drum group rendered an honor song for the spirit of the horses and a Lakota cowboy elder gave a prayer to commemorate our past relatives and the enduring spirit of the Lakota today.

Several races, bareback and saddle, occurred throughout the afternoon. My personal favorite to witness was the Stealing-A-Maiden race. The race began with my lekši providing exposition about a story he heard from his father, my grandfather, about a Lakota warpary long ago who went into Crow country not just to steal horses, but to bring back wives. One young man captured a Crow woman who eventually became so beloved by the people that when she died, she was honored in song.

Cedric Goodhouse tells the story of a Lakota horse-stealing raid that ended with a man taking a Crow woman too and eventually marrying her. 

My lekši shared too, that my grandfather also said to be mindful and respectful of the Crow because one day we may have relatives among them. And we do. My lekši has two granddaughters who are part Crow.

A young man "steals" a maiden in this race. 

The Stealing-A-Maiden race began in earnest with a bareback rider making a run to a point demarcated with a line of women. The riders rode hard to get to the women, dismounted, and put their women on horseback, then ran on foot while guiding their horses back to “camp.”


There was also the "Wounded Warrior" race in which a rider races to a point to pick up his kola (his best close personal friend; so close a friend that they were as brothers) from the open field and bring him back. I've seen a similar demonstration by the Frontier Army of the Dakota at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. 

The first place winner of the last race on foot and on horseback. 

The last horse racing contest of the day was a grueling test of stamina. It began with runners making a one-mile run uphill, down and through the creek, and to a line of horses, where they raced another three miles bareback. The runners/riders returned safely to the ending and singers honored them with victory songs.

The Vocational Rehabilitation program sponsored the feed. They made an announcement for people to bring their own plates utensils as was still practiced just a few decades ago, with the intention to cut down on refuse after the feed. I think I was the only one who saw that announcement in the poster, but the Voc-Rehab folks thoughtfully provided paper plates and plasticware for all.

The actual Oškate (Victory Celebration) began after the evening meal. There was no grand entry, typical of regular pow-wows. A young woman walked around with a handful of black grease paint, and applied a victory stripe to everyone’s cheek. The commemoration began with a victory round dance. Dancers were separated by sex. Men in the inner circle, women in the outer circle. It appeared to be generally arranged by age too. Generally speaking, older men and women led the circles followed, again, generally, by younger men and women. A whipman, a type of cultural enforcer, walked around the bowery and motivated passive attendees to become active dancers. Only the elderly or those unable to walk were given leave to remain seated.

The evening progressed with general community dances called “inter-tribals,” that is, songs were sung so that all dancers from all categories were invited to dance, even attendees who came in street clothes.

In between a few of the songs, the eyapaha invited people to come up and share family stories of relatives who were at the Little Bighorn. My tuŋwiŋ (aunt) Thipiziwiŋ was called up to the announcer stand and share the story of Rocky Butte Woman. She asked me to accompany her, and it was my pleasure to hear as complete a story as I’ve ever heard of Rocky Butte Woman’s account of the Little Bighorn.

Rocky Butte Woman entered the fight when Reno’s command attacked the Hunkpapa camp. She had no choice but to defend her children. A man, probably a lala or lekši of her’s told her to carry only a warclub into the fight at Last Stand Hill, as the air was so heavy with dust that none could clearly see. And it was as dark as dusk.


I left the Oškate at sundown with the question ringing in my heart, “Who can say they’re more patriotic in this land?” 
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The Origin Of Spiritwood

July 11, 2013, 8:11 am
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Photo of Spiritwood Lake from JC Graphics.
The Origin Of Spiritwood
Foamy Lake And Snow On The Water Woman
By Dakota Wind 
Spiritwood, N.D. - A friend of mine called me up and asked me if I had ever heard of Spiritwood and if there’s any meaning to its name. Spiritwood is a little community just east of Jamestown, North Dakota, off of I-94. After a quick search through my notes and a search of the town in early North Dakota records I came up with the following.

Spiritwood was originally founded as Eight Siding when it was constructed by the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1873. The citizenry changed the name to Spiritwood in 1879. There was a bonanza farm in the vicinity, itself called Spiritwood Farm, which was one of the largest of its kind in Dakota Territory which was managed by Cuyler Adams.

Adams himself took the name from the nearby body of water, Spiritwood Lake. The Dakota know the lake as MnitȟáğA, Foamy Lake. Of course, there is a story associated with the lake.

The Dakota have it that a long time ago, there was a maiden named Mni Awá’wá Wiŋ, whose name means “Snow On The Water Woman,” “Snowy Water Woman,” or perhaps “Slushy Water Woman.”

The Dakota say that there was a fight or battle a long time ago on the shores of the Foamy Lake. A brave young man gave his life defending his people. The young woman, Snow On The Water, was struck with desperate longing to be with him that she plunged herself into the lake to be with him forever more. Her spirit lingers yet there.

Gradually, when settlers arrived and began to name places and map things, the lake’s name was recorded as “Spiritwood Lake.” When Adams established his bonanza farm and township, rather than impose a foreign name on the indigenous landscape he bucked the trend and named it after what he thought the Dakota called it, Spiritwood. 
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A Visit With A Respected Tribal Historian

July 22, 2013, 2:35 pm
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A Visit With A Respected Tribal Historian
The Story Of Devil's Heart Butte (My 100th Post)
By Dakota Wind

I was looking at the North Dakota state map that’s pegged to my office wall. I don’t know what it is, maybe it was a recent trip out to Heháka Wakpá Makĥoche (Elk River Country, or Theodore Roosevelt National Park) and I was in the mood to learn what the Dakota-Lakota people called places before explorers, traders, and settlers arrived.

There’s a lake in the north eastern quarter of the state. It’s a fresh water lake that’s been growing and spilling onto shore property. New islands have been formed, roads have been built higher, fields are underwater, and the water threatens to rise higher without relent.

The lake is known to the Dakota and Lakota people as Mni Wakaŋ Čhaŋté. Don’t believe Wikipedia in this, if you look it up there. A word for word translation of the Dakota to English is Water With-Energy Heart, which freely translates as Spirit Heart Lake. The calque of Bad Spirit Lake is entirely a misconception.

There, on the southern bank of the Spirit Heart Lake lay the Spirit Lake Sioux Indian Reservation, home of the Spirit Lake Oyate (Nation). The Spirit Lake Oyate has about 6,700 or so enrolled members, but not all live on the reservation.

The lake, Spirit Heart Lake (aka Devil’s Lake), the people (the Spirit Lake Oyate), have a name in common with a site on the reservation near the town of Tokio (a strange word in and of itself; said to named after the Dakota word for “Toki” for “gracious gift;” the closest word for gift, is in the act of receiving a gift, “Okini;” in the discussion of naming the township, Burlington Northern Railroad officials were said to have chosen “Toki” and then added the “o,” at the end thinking, probably, of being cute). There, nestled among the rolling hills of the prairie land overlooking the lake is Spirit Heart Butte, only it’s popularly known as “Devil’s Heart Butte.”


I turned to Spirit Lake tribal historian Louie Garcia to find an answer. I’ve conversed with Louie on the phone over the years and by email. I had always thought he was perhaps a middle-aged gentleman by the youthful exuberance of his voice. Some voices age. Louie’s voice does not. He’s in his 70's, a respected member of the tribe, he’s gracious to give me an answer, and he wants me to share it with others. 

Louie has asked me to post it as he sent it to me, word for word. Pilamiya pelo, Lekshi Louie! He Even included a bibliography and a glossary of Dakota terminology (at the end of this entry).

__________


Heart Hill is a treeless kame located one mile northwest of Tokio, North Dakota in Section Four Woodlake Township (T152N – R64W) Benson County. It sits on the eastern edge of the Backbone, a line of hills formed when Spirit Lake (Devils Lake) was formed some 10,000 years ago during the last ice age. With an elevation of 1725 feet above sea level it can been seen on the horizon for miles in the lake region, and from its summit one can look over a vast area surrounding this hill. The name ‘heart’ means that it is at the center of the area but also the center of spiritual knowledge. As this hill appears to be in the shape of an upside down human heart, some incorrectly speculate this as the reason for its name.

Heart Hill is the most sacred elevation in all of North Dakota. It could be considered a cathedral. This Butte de Coeur of the French fur traders is called in the Dakota language Miniwakan Cante Pahaor Heart Hill at Spirit Lake. The French fur traders named Devils Lake so that presently the term ‘devil’ is attached to many local geographical features.  “Devils Heart” is the name used by local people. Naturally the ‘devil’ word is a misunderstanding, but referring to the Water Spirits who live in the lake.

This Heart Hill is a sacred location because it is the Lodge of the Water Spiritfor whom Spirit Lake is named. These spirits are called Unktehi or Terrible Ones due to their custom of drowning anyone who foolishly ventured upon the lake without their permission. These Unktehi are worshiped in the Wakan Wacipi or Grand Medicine Ceremony (Skinner 1920:273).

This hill belongs to a class of sacred lodges (hills) where the spirits meet to decide the help, if any, they will grant humans. Prehistorically the waters of the lake flowed up to the east side of this hill, to the door or entrance of this the Water Spirit’s home. The spirits could enter and exit their home to do their business within this sacred lake. Unfortunately the entrance to this sacred hill was blown closed with dynamite in the 1930’s when a local rancher discovered a den of coyotes living within. If one looks closely at the change in vegetation, the location of the former entrance can be discovered.

There are many heart hills or buttes in the state but this most important one is at Spirit Lake. Examples of other heart hills are: The Heart of the Turtle Mountain or as it is known today Butte Saint Paul. It is located in Cordella Township (13-162-74) Bottineau County. There is also a Heart Butte located on the Ft. Berthold Reservation (9-148-92) in northeastern Dunn County. Cavalier County has a Heart Butte (19-162-62), as well as Grant County (23-137-89).

Thomas F. Eastgate records in his notes two northerly connected hills who he calls ‘sisters’ to Heart Hill (Eastgate). This must be a non-Indian name or a mistranslation as features on the earth are considered male. As an example there is a Sanborn Hill or “Heart Hill’s Little Brother” located in Heman Township (1-139-59) Barnes County named for its exact appearance but smaller stature than the hill presently under discussion.

The Spirit Lake area formerly belonged to the Hidatsa. Their main earthlodge village was located on the west end of Graham’s Island, now a peninsula jutting into northwestern Spirit Lake (Devils Lake). The Hidatsa name for Heart Hill is Mirixopa Nata Sh or Heart of the Holy Water. Hidatsa traditions acknowledge the tribe was ‘born’ at Heart Hill. In a narrative similar to the European tale of Jack and the Bean Stalk, the tribe emerged from an underworld by climbing a vine. Unfortunately the vine broke leaving half of the people in their subterranean world. The Hidatsa departed the Spirit Lake area circa 1550 when their leader was told in a dream to move west to the Missouri River (Bowers 1992:22; Milligan 1972; Libby Papers Box 29: folder 14; Kittleson 1992:15).

The Hidatsa have many Lake Region legends and tales, especially about geophysical features. One story that is remembered, tells of them making a stone effigy of a bear on the north side of Heart Hill. A bison effigy is mentioned too. Dana Wright was shown a trail of 385 stones leading 450 feet to the west from the hill (Roy Johnson Papers).

In 1839 Nicollet visited the area to map the lake and surrounding area. He drew a sketch map from the top of the hill. Today one can see the same view of Black Tiger Bay just as it was drawn some 166 years ago because little has changed (Bray and Bray 1976:192).

I have a reference to this hill in 1855 bring called Clarence Peak.
Dr. Charles Eastman writes in his book Indian Boyhood of visiting Heart Hill in the 1860’s and was informed a great medicine man named Cotanka (Reed or Flute) was buried on top (Eastman 1971:163). A man by the name of Charles Belgarde is also buried on top of the hill (St. Ann’s Centennial). In June of 1992 a group of Crow Indians from Montana ascended the hill and erected two shades for the purpose of a vision quest. A four post shade was erected on the top at the west end, and another on the east end. A year later local children began to dig in the abandoned post holes and discovered a skull and arm bones. The bones were eventually sent to the State Historical Society of North Dakota in Bismarck for evaluation (Devils Lake Journal).

Father Genin on March 4, 1868 erected a thirty three foot tin laminated oak crucifix, but it was destroyed by a prairie fire, or a wind storm. On July 22, 1873 another cross of glass and steel construction replaced the wooden cross (Cory-Forbes Papers: Box 2; Norton 1931:163). Both crosses were said to be spectacular when they reflected the suns rays. Some say that glass particles can still be found at the base of the hill, remnants of the second cross. Father Genin (Richard 1975:3) renamed the hill The Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a name closer to the original intent of the Indians. It is better than the present non-Indian name of Devils Heart (Cory-Forbes Papers: Box 2).

I was told that in1924, on a day with a clear blue sky a local church group went to Heart Hill for a picnic. They sang a hymn and the minister said a prayer, a single white cloud approached and poured hail and lighting upon them, sending them for cover. From a religious aspect one could say the Thunders were attacking the Water Spirits lodge.

Heart Hill has been used for recreational purposes during the last century. There is a photograph of a ski jump built upon the top of the hill. It has been a favorite hiking destination as well as winter sledding, especially for local school classes. By the 1930’s the ski jump was moved to a location by Highway 57 where its skeleton can be seen today. Yearly a wagon train camps for one night at the base of the hill. It is a favorite site to take visitors who have the stamina to climb to the top.

Most if not all you readers would naturally assume the Spirit Lake Tribe owns this sacred hill. You would of course be wrong. When the Spirit Lake Reservation land was allotted to individuals in accordance with the Treaty of 1872-73 and Dawes Act of 1887, no tribal member selected the hill. The ownership of land was against Indian thought. How could anyone think of owning a sacred location? No one can own land, it belongs to God. When the reservation was opened to non-Indian ownership in 1904, the hill was selected by a Whiteman and remains so today. However if we analyze the situation, this non-Indian really doesn’t own Heart Hill, all he has to do it not pay his taxes for five years.

Bibliography

Bowers, Alfred W.                   Hidatsa Social and Ceremonial Organizations.
                                                University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London 1992.

Bray Edmund C.                     Joseph N. Nicollet on the Plains and Prairies: Expeditions
Bray, Martha Coleman           of 1838 39 with Journals, Letter, and Notes on the Dakota
Translators and editors           Indians. Minnesota Historical Society Press, St. Paul; 1976.

Centennial Committee            St. Ann’s Centennial, 100 years of Faith 1885 – 1985
                                                Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation, Belcourt, ND

Cory – Forbes Papers                        (1853 -1927) A-C833 Box 2, Minnesota Historical Society,
                                                St. Paul. Three boxes and 10 volumes.
                                                (Father Genin and the crosses)

Devils Lake Journal                “B.I.A. Probes Bone Discovery” May 19, 1993.

Eastgate, Thomas F. Papers.             (1855-1907) Location unknown.
Formerly located in Larimore, ND.
                                                Withdrawn by family possibly to Minot, ND.

Eastman, Charles A.               Indian Boyhood.
                                                Dover Publications, Inc. New York. 1971.

Eastman, Charles A.               “The Wars of Wakeeyan and Unktayhee”
Eastman, Elaine Goodale       Wigwam Evenings: Sioux Folk Tales Retold
                                                University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln 1990. Pp. 117 – 121.

Hanson, Jeffrey R.                 “Ethnohistoric Problems in the Crow – Hidatsa
                                                Separation”
                                                Archaeology in Montana 20 (3) Pp. 7-85. Billings 1979

Kittleson, Cindy Cooper          “Legends and Lore in Devils Lake”
                                                Going Places 2 (9) September 1992 Pp 14 &15.

Libby, Orin Grant Papers        A85 State Historical Society of North Dakota, Bismarck.

Matthews, Washington           Grammar and Dictionary of the Language of the Hidatsa:
                                                Introductory Sketch of the Tribe.
Cramoisy Press, New York. 1873.

Mattison, Ray H.                     “Report on the Historic Sites in the Garrison Reservoir
                                                Area, Missouri River”.
                                                North Dakota History 22 (1&2) 1955

Milligan, Edward A.                 The Indian in the Northern Plains.
                                                North Dakota State University – Bottineau, 1972
                                                No page numbers, probably written for his classes.

Norton, Sister Mary                “Catholic Missions and Missionaries”
Aquinas O.S.F.                       North Dakota Historical Quarterly 5 (3) April 1975
                                               
Richard, Frank                                    “St. Benedict of Wild Rice”
                                                Red River Valley Historian Summer 1975.

Skinner, Alanson                     “Wahpeton Dakota Wakan Wacipi or Medicine Dance”
                                                Indian Notes and Monographs 4, 1920 Pp. 262-340.
                                                Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation.
                                                New York, NY.
                                                                                                           

Glossary

Backbone                    Miniwakan Cankahu (Mini = water; Wakan = sacred, holy; Canka
= back; Hu = bone). A continuous ridge on the south side of Spirit Lake beginning at Sully’s Hill, travels east to the St. Michael area and then swings south to end at the Sheyenne River.

Black Tiger Bay          Located on the south shore of Spirit Lake north of Tokio, ND
                                    Named for Igmusapa (Black Panther) DLS #482 1829 – 1915.

Butte de Couer            French: Heart Hill (Butte = hill; de = of the; Couer = heart).

Butte St. Paul              Heyatanka Cante Paha (He = mountain; Yatanka = great; Cante =
heart; Paha = hill). Heart Hill at the Great Mountain (Turtle Mountain) has an elevation of 2305 above sea level.

Cotanka                      Medicine man buried on top of Heart Hill. His name translates
                                    Reed, also whistle or flute as reeds were used for this purpose.

Eastman, Charles A.   Ohiyesa (Ohiya = to win; Sa= continually) an Eastern Dakota
                                    who fled to Canada via Spirit Lake as a boy. He later became a
                                    medical doctor.

Genin, Father              Jean-Baptiste Genin an Oblate missionary was born in France 1837. Immigrated to Canada in 1860, in 1865 he journeyed to St. Boniface (Winnipeg, Manitoba), May 7, 1865 went to Ft. Abercrombie which later became his headquarters. He didn’t get along with the settlers because as soon as he selected land for an Indian mission squatters would take the land. The administering to Indians became a bone of contention with Bishop Shanley of Fargo, a new comer who wanted Genin to establish non-Indian churches. He did establish churches at White Earth, Detroit Lakes,
                                    and Moorhead, MN. He died at Bathgate, ND; January 18, 1900
                                    (Richard 1975).

Graham’s Island          Named for Duncan Graham, a Scottish fur trader who operated a post on the island circa 1815. His Indian name was Hoarse Voice
                                    (Hoġita) probably named for his brogue.

Heart Hill                     Miniwakan Cante Paha (MiniWakan = sacred water; Cante = heart;
Paha = hill), located in the Northwest quarter of the northwest quarter of Section four, Woodlake Township, Benson County.

Hidatsa                        The Red Willow People, meaning they were tall and slender as the
                                    Red Willow. They gathered at the mouth of the Knife River where
it enters the Missouri River near present Stanton, ND (Mercer County) is today in three villages. The River Crow separated from the Big Hidatsa Village (Midahati Sh = Willow Village) and the Mountain Crow separated from Sakakawia Village (Awatixa Sh = Elongated Village) (Mattison 1955:22-23; Hanson 1979).

Kame                          Sand and gravel deposited by the melting glacial ice. A hole in the
                                    ice sheet would be filled with sand and gravel. When the ice sheet
                                    melted, the result was a hill. Geologists use the term kame.

Mirixopa Nata Sh        Hidatsa for Heart Hill (Miri = water; Xopa = holy, sacred; Nata =
Heart; Sh = definite article [the] used for personal names and places) (Matthews1873).
                                                                                                           
Sanborn Hill                Miniwakan Cante Paha Sunkaku (Miniwakan = Sacred Water [Spirit Lake]; Cante = heart; Paha = hill; Sunkaku = his younger
                                    Brother) The younger brother of the Heart Hill at Spirit Lake.

Unktehi                        Water Spirit (Un = to be; K = inserted for euphony; Teĥike = terrible, difficult). The Difficult (to deal with) One. The Water

Spirits are the meniscus of the Thunders. Their battles explain the hydrological cycle (Eastman and Eastman 1990).

Wright, Dana               He was the premier historian for the state of North Dakota.
                                    His primary interest was military trails, publishing his findings
                                    in North Dakota History in the 1950’s.
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The Origin Of Apple Creek

July 25, 2013, 8:13 am
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The Origin of Apple Creek
Tȟaspáŋ Wakpála Ohútkȟaŋ
By Dakota Wind

I’ve often wondered about the origin of the name of Apple Creek here in North Dakota.

Apple Creek is a tributary of the Mní Šhošhé (The Water A-Stir; Missouri River), converging with it at the base of Pictured Bluff, just south of the University of Mary, off of HWY 1804.

It begins somewhere in field near Wing, ND, and winds a quiet meandering path south and west towards the Missouri. Nearly four miles east of Bismarck, about on HWY 10, is the Apple Creek Country Club. I’ve not personally been to the country club, mainly because the only golf I’ve ever played was mini, but the 18-hole golf course incorporates the natural environment, which includes the Round Leaf Hawthorn tree.

Another creek with a differing name is the Little Heart Creek, shown here with the name "Bad Water Creek," which is how the Nu'Eta (Mandan) knew it.

Apple Creek is, or was, known among the Nu’Eta (Mandan) Indians as Black Bear Creek, at least according to the Sitting Rabbit map of the Missouri River.

The Mandan used to live in the vicinity of Heart River for hundreds of years. In 1781, they were struck by a epidemic of smallpox. The survivors abandoned their villages and moved north to Knife River, where the Corps of Discovery encountered them in 1804.

Near where the Apple Creek converges with the Missouri River is where General Sibley’s command of about 4,000 soldiers relentlessly chased a group of Dakota and Lakota in a running battle that began west of present-day Jamestown, ND in mid-July, 1863 and ended at about present-day General Sibley Park in Bismarck, ND, on Aug. 2 two weeks later.

The Lakota who’ve lived on the Great Plains and who traded with the Mandan Indians knew of this meager tributary of the Mní Šhošhé. The Lakota have names for landmarks, wildlife, seasons, and rivers. And they personified all, believing – and some still do – that all these things aren’t just animated, but live and have lives of their own, that all have spirits or souls of their own too.

A thornapple tree, or Hawthorn, in bloom at Cashman's Nursery, Bismarck, ND.

In English, the Round Leaf Hawthorn is named for the shape of its leaf. In Latin the tree is called Crataegus cyclophylla, and I don’t know what the hell that means, but I’m sure that it means something really important to science.

In Lakota, the same tree is called Tȟaspáŋčhaŋ, which meant “Of-Red-Tree,” in reference to the dark red or swarthy color of the fruit which resemble little apples and are edible. The creek was called Tȟaspáŋ Wakpála, or as a free translation may have it, “Apple Creek.”

Mary Ann Barnes Williams’ book, “Origins Of North Dakota Place Names,” has it as the unusual name “Qui-Apelle” was given the creek by the early French-Canadians for the many Red Haw or Thorn Apple thickets bordering its banks. Another version is that the name Apple Creek is an inaccurate translation of the Dakota Indian name for it, which it [sic] Taspan Wakpala; Taspan (thorn apple), Wakpula [sic] (creek).
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The Sheyenne River Or The Cheyenne River

July 26, 2013, 7:00 pm
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The Upper Sheyenne River in North Dakota.
The Sheyenne River Or The Cheyenne River
Šahiyela Ožú Wakpá Naíŋš Wakpá Wašté
By Dakota Wind

Bismarck, N.D. – In the Land of Forever, the land of wind, there are two rivers which bear the same name in English, but have two completely different names in Lakȟóta, yet each river was once called home by the Šahiyela (Red Talkers; Cheyenne) long ago.

The Sheyenne River in North Dakota was known to the Dakota and Lakota as the Šahiyela Ožú Wakpá, The River Where The Cheyenne Planted. A long time ago, the Cheyenne, or Tsitsistas, “Human Beings” as they name themselves, lived in earth lodge villages along what became the Sheyenne River in North Dakota.



Like other earth lodge cultures of the Great Plains, the Cheyenne planted corn, squash, and beans in gardens on the flood plain of the river. There was once a great Cheyenne village at the great bend of the river in Eddy County. At some point in their history, after they moved west to the Mníšoše (Water-Astir; Missouri River), and at the turn of the nineteenth century, the Cheyenne abandoned their sedentary lifestyle in favor of a nomadic one, like the Thítȟuŋwaŋ(Teton; Plains Dwellers).


The Cheyenne River in South Dakota.

The Cheyenne moved west to the Mníšoše and lived along the river between present-day Fort Yates, ND and the present-day Cheyenne River. Their villages were abandoned a year or two before the Corps of Discovery ascended the Missouri River. But they lived there when the French arrived in the 1730s, and later when the Spanish and English arrived to trade. It was possible that disease from contact drove them west, much as smallpox drove the Mandan to move north to Knife River.

In early maps of explorers and traders, the river where the concentration of Cheyenne lived along the “Cheyenne River,” the river was named so.

What the Cheyenne called the Sheyenne River or the Cheyenne River is beyond me.

For the Lakȟóta, the Cheyenne River was known simply as Wakpá Wašté, or The Good River.
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