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Sitting
Bull
(1831-1890) Born in present-day South Dakota, he became a political,
military and spiritual leader of the Lakota tribe. As a young warrior and later chief of the northern Lakota, he advocated
firm resistance to white encroachment and settlement. Accustomed to a nomadic life of hunting, the Lakota fought attempts
to force them onto cramped reservations. In 1868, Sitting Bull made peace with the U.S. Army in exchange for a sizable reservation
free of white settlers. In the mid-1870s, however, an influx of gold prospectors and railroad crews outraged the Sioux, who
left the reservation and joined with the Cheyenne and Arapaho in a renewed campaign of resistance. In the
summer of 1876, the U.S. Army's Seventh Cavalry under Custer tracked down and attacked the Lakota/Cheyenne camp at Little
Big Horn, Montana, but the vastly superior Indian forces killed all 260 of Custer's soldiers. Forced again to flee the Army,
Sitting Bull's band traveled to Canada, but fear of starvation forced their eventual surrender in 1881. After serving two
years in prison, Sitting Bull returned to a South Dakota reservation. By this point a living legend in frontier mythology,
he raised badly needed funds by posing for postcards and performing in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. In 1890, reservation
police tried to arrest him for supporting the Ghost Dance movement, a religious revival which some feared would broaden into
a new Lakota uprising. He was killed by a Native policeman in the ensuing shootout, just weeks before the massacre at Wounded
Knee.
Information retrieved on January 14, 2007 from http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/bios/5.html.
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He-Dog
Born around 1830 on the Laramie plains, He-Dog was a member of the Brulle people, one
of several groups calling themselves Lakota. Childhood friend of Crazy Horse, Chief He-Dog played a major part in the brief,
heroic battle of the Lakota Natives against the entire force of the United States Government. He was drawn in the hostilities at age 14, in 1854. Side by side, He-Dog and Crazy Horse fought many times before
their greatest victory, the defeat of Colonel Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at Little Big Horn. The ensuing, massive U.S.
military response forced the Plains Natives to reservations soon thereafter; those not ordered were starved. With quiet dignity He-Dog continued to lead his people, until his death on the Pine Ridge Reservation
of South Dakota at the age of 100 years. Information retrieved on January 14,
2007 from http://www.axel-jacob.de/chiefs6.html.
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Chief
Joseph The man who became a national celebrity with the name "Chief
Joseph" was born in the Wallowa Valley in what is now northeastern Oregon in 1840. He was given the name Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt,
or Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain, but was widely known as Joseph, or Joseph the Younger, because his father had taken
the Christian name Joseph when he was baptized at the Lapwai mission by Henry Spalding in 1838.
When his father died in 1871, Joseph was elected to succeed him. He inherited not only a name but a situation
made increasingly volatile as white settlers continued to arrive in the Wallowa Valley. Joseph staunchly resisted all efforts
to force his band onto the small Idaho reservation, and in 1873 a federal order to remove white settlers and let his people
remain in the Wallowa Valley made it appear that he might be successful. But the federal government soon reversed itself,
and in 1877 General Oliver Otis Howard threatened a cavalry attack to force Joseph's band and other hold-outs onto the reservation.
Believing military resistance futile, Joseph reluctantly led his people toward Idaho. The army
began to pursue Joseph's band and the others who had not moved onto the reservation. Although he had opposed war, Joseph cast
his lot with the war leaders.
What followed was one of the most brilliant military
retreats in American history. Even the unsympathetic General William Tecumseh Sherman could not help but be impressed with
the 1,400 mile march, stating that "the Indians throughout displayed a courage and skill that elicited universal praise...
[they] fought with almost scientific skill, using advance and rear guards, skirmish lines, and field fortifications."
In over three months, the band of about 700, fewer than 200 of whom were warriors, fought 2,000 U.S. soldiers and Indian auxiliaries
in four major battles and numerous skirmishes.
By the time he formally surrendered
on October 5, 1877, Joseph was widely referred to in the American press as "the Red Napoleon." It is unlikely, however,
that he played as critical a role in the Nez Percé's military feat as his legend suggests. He was never considered
a war chief by his people, and even within the Wallowa band, it was Joseph's younger brother, Olikut, who led the warriors,
while Joseph was responsible for guarding the camp. It appears, in fact, that Joseph opposed the decision to flee into Montana
and seek aid from the Crows and that other chiefs -- Looking Glass and some who had been killed before the surrender -- were
the true strategists of the campaign. Nevertheless, Joseph's widely reprinted "I will fight no more forever" surrender
speech has immortalized him as a military leader in American popular culture.
Joseph's fame did him little good. Although he had surrendered with the understanding
that he would be allowed to return home, Joseph and his people were instead taken first to eastern Kansas and then to a reservation
in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) where many of them died of epidemic diseases. Although he was allowed to visit
Washington, D.C., in 1879 to plead his case to U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes, it was not until 1885 that Joseph and the
other refugees were returned to the Pacific Northwest. Even then, half, including Joseph, were taken to a non-Nez Percé
reservation in northern Washington, separated from the rest of their people in Idaho and their homeland in the Wallowa Valley.
In his last years, Joseph spoke eloquently against the injustice of United States
policy toward his people and held out the hope that America's promise of freedom and equality might one day be fulfilled for
Native Americans as well. An indomitable voice of conscience for the West, he died in 1904, still in exile from his homeland,
according to his doctor "of a broken heart."
Information retrieved
on January 14, 2007 from http://www.axel-jacob.de/chiefs.html#josef.
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Geronimo Geronimo's
(Govathlay) war career was linked with that of his brother-in-law, Juh, a Chiricahua chief. Although he was not a hereditary
leader, Geronimo appeared so to outsiders because he often acted as spokesman for Juh. Geronimo was the leader of the last
American Indian fighting force formally to capitulate to the United States. Because he fought against such daunting odds and
held out the longest, he became the most famous Nde of all. To the Nde, Geronimo embodied the very essence of the
Nde values, agressiveness, courage in the face of difficulty.
The Chiricahuas were mostly migratory following
the seasons, hunting and farming. One of the most pivotal moments in Geronimo's life was in 1858 when he returned home from
a trading excursion into Mexico He found his wife, his mother and his three young children murdered by Spanish troops from
Mexico. This reportedly caused him to have such a hatred of the whites that he vowed to kill as many as he could. From that
day on he took every opportunity he could to terrorize Mexican settlements and soon after this incident he received his power,
which came to him in visions.
Geronimo was never a chief, but a medicine man, a seer and a spiritual and intellectual
leader both in and out of battle. The Nde chiefs depended on his wisdom. When the Chiricahua were forcibly removed (1876)
to arid land at San Carlos, in eastern Arizona, Geronimo fled with a band of followers into Mexico. He was soon arrested and
returned to the new reservation. For the remainder of the 1870s, he and Juh led a quiet life on the reservation, but with
the slaying of an Nde prophet in 1881, they returned to full-time activities from a secret camp in the Sierra Madre Mountains.
In 1875 all Ndes west of the Rio Grande were ordered to the San Carlos Reservation. Geronimo escaped from the
reservation three times and although he surrendered, he always managed to avoid capture. In 1876, the U.S. Army tried to move
the Chiricahuas onto a reservation, but Geronimo fled to Mexico eluding the troops for over a decade. The last few months
of the campaign required over 5,000 soldiers, one-quarter of the entire Army, and 500 scouts, and perhaps up to 3,000 Mexican
soldiers to track down Geronimo and his band. In May 1882, Nde scouts working for the U.S army surprised Geronimo in his mountain
sanctuary, and he agreed to return with his people to the reservation.
After a year of farming, the sudden arrest
and imprisonment of the Nde warrior Ka-ya-ten-nae, together with rumors of impending trials and hangings, prompted Geronimo
to flee on May 17, 1885, with 35 warriors and 109 women, children and youths. In January 1886, Nde scouts penetrated Juh's
seemingly impregnable hideout. This action induced Geronimo to surrender (Mar. 25, 1886) to Gen. George Crook. Geronimo later
fled but finally surrendered to Gen. Nelson Miles on Sept. 4, 1886. The government breached its agreement and transported
Geronimo and nearly 450 Nde men, women, and children to for confinement in Forts Marion and Pickens. In 1894 they were removed
to Fort Sill in Oklahoma.
Geronimo became a rancher, appeared (1904) at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St.
Louis, sold Geronimo souvenirs, and rode in President Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 inaugural parade. Geronimo's final surrender
in 1886 was the last significant Native guerrilla action in the United States. At the end, his group consisted of only
16 warriors, 12 women, and 6 children. Upon their surrender, Geronimo and over 300 of his fellow Chiricahuas were shipped
to Fort Marion Florida. One year later many of them were relocated to the Mt.Vernon barracks in Alabama, where about one quarter
died from tuberculosis and other diseases. Geronimo died on Feb. 17, 1909, a prisoner of war, unable to return to his homeland. Information retrieved on January 14, 2007 from http://www.axel-jacob.de/chiefs.html#geronimo.
It is strictly forbidden to reproduce artwork by
Yatzie Dee, Silver Eagle,
without the
permission of the artist.
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