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- [00:02]
Don Wildman
ACAST powers the World's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.
- [00:10]
Chris Duffy
We all have bad days and sometimes bad weeks, and maybe even bad years. But the good news is we don't have to figure out life all alone. I'm comedian Chris Duffy, host of ted's how to Be a Better Human podcast, and our show is about the little ways that you can improve your life. Actual practical tips that you can put into place that will make your day to day better. Whether it is setting boundaries at work or rethinking how you clean your house, each episode has conversations with experts who share tips on how to navigate life's ups and downs. Find how to be a better human wherever you're listening to this.
- [00:45]
Don Wildman
ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com June 1876 A Lakota Holy man performs the Sun Dance in the Rosebud River Valley. Having fasted, he dances continuously for two days and nights, ritualistically offering 100 pieces of flesh from his arms, inflicting excruciating pain upon himself to attain a higher spiritual realm. Finally, exhausted in a trance state, blood dripping from his arms, the man faints. A vision comes to him, soldiers descending from above. They appear to him like grasshoppers, falling headfirst, feet to the sky. When he awakens, this man, Sitting Bull, rejoins his people and shares his vision, foretelling victory against the invading US army troops. It will not be long before his vision becomes reality and the name Sitting Bull becomes known the world over. Greetings History hit listeners. Welcome back. I'm Don Wildman. There's a real trap in the study of American history, ours being a legacy involving some dark chapters of persecution and oppression to characterize those who suffered as fallen pawns in the great American chess game. This reduces them to mere victimhood, a single dimension, and it is important and more truthful to try and see these figures in the fullness of their humanity. We are aiming to do this today as we tell the proud story of Sitting Bull, the Lakota chieftain who was central strategically and spiritually to the resistance among Native peoples of the American Great Plains against the US Government across what is today the northern states of Montana, Wyoming, and Dakotas. Sitting Bull was a star, a living legend within his culture and beyond, with a story spanning the last half of the 1800s and representing so much of what happened to indigenous peoples as our government laid the groundwork for white settlement across the continent. And doing so, we are in the company of Ernie Lapointe, author of the book Sitting Bull, His Life and Legacy, who also happens to be the great grandson of the man himself. It is an honor to meet you again in life, Ernie. Nice to be with you.
- [03:18]
Ernie Lapointe
Thank you. Appreciate you.
- [03:20]
Don Wildman
You and I met on camera when we were doing a television show about the battle of Little Bighorn at a place called Dear Medicine Rocks, which is where your great grandfather very famously did the Sun Dance, which created the vision that he saw about the victory at Bighorn. We spent the day together at this very holy and sacred place. Very special day in my life. But today we're talking about the story of Sitting Bull. But let's start with your relationship with him. When I say great grandson, this is proven in DNA. How did you first learn that you were connected to him in this way?
- [03:51]
Ernie Lapointe
Well, when I was about four or five years old, my mother is the one that's a granddaughter of Sitting Room, and she would basically tell us about his life and about our culture. You know, I didn't really know. She just talked about him as a grandfather, so I didn't know he was famous or anything. He was just another person that she spoke about. She didn't talk to us like we're talking to each other now. She spoke to me in the Lakota language. So it doesn't take as much talking. It was just one sentence covered a lot in Lakota, and she used a lot of humor. She'd tell the story, a couple sentences, and then she'd say, do something or say something funny, and you would laugh. I just thought it was kind of funny story she was telling us because she's making us laugh. But her reasoning for that was she said, every time you laugh, it's like a store button in your brain. It stores the information, so you always remember it in the future. I try to do that myself by using humor when I'm trying to talk to people. And I always tell people this. You know, when you listen to stories in a native language, it stays with you. In this language, we're talking to each other. It's really hard because the language is too many meanings, too many words made up. So it doesn't stay like it does if you had a native tongue. So it stayed with me. The stories I told you before, you know, those are very much in my memory.
- [05:20]
Don Wildman
So much of indigenous history is made up of oral storytelling, and you're carrying on that tradition you mentioned. Lakota language. Can you tell us a little bit about the Lakota people?
- [05:30]
Ernie Lapointe
The Lakota people make up over 500 different nations that were in this country at the beginning, before the European nation came here. And we're basically one of a nation that we were, like, nomadic. We followed the buffalo. That was our source of food, and we used every part of the buffalo. So, you know, it's basically the herds moved further, we followed it. We really didn't have one area that you stayed at forever. Like some tribes that have hogans and earths and huts that they built, they're permanent with us. We just moved around and. Well, our nation consists of three. We call them the Lakota, Lakota, Nakota, and all different parts. You know, like, Lakota are in Minnesota. The Nakota are down. We're down in Iowa, Nebraska area. Lakota. We covered North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana with bigger tribe than the other ones are. So we speak the same language. The only difference is, like I say, the Lakota, Nakota, the D, the N and L is what distinguishes that separates us from who we are now.
- [06:38]
Don Wildman
Sitting Bull, your great grandfather is known the world over. If you had to summarize why that was, what would you say?
- [06:46]
Ernie Lapointe
Well, basically, he never knew he was going to be looked at as a historian or something. But I have one story in my mother's telling that I think kind of touches on how come the. The world knows him. And he. It was at a first ceremony that he did, which is called the Sundance, and they pierced him on front and on the back, and they lifted him off the ground, and he was probably 6, 7 inches off the ground. And he went into a trance. And he went back to when he was a little boy. In his vision, he's walking across this field, and he heard a voice calling for help. So he went over to investigate, and there was a wolf laying there in the bushes there. He had two arrows in his side. So the boy went over and removed the arrows, and he. In his vision, it was like time elapsed, you know, boom. He put the arrows and he doctored his wounds. And then the next instant, the wolf is healed a little bit, and he's starting to walk away. Then as he's walking away, he stopped, turn around, looked back at my great grandfather's little boy and said, boy? He said, for helping me. He said, the nations know you will know you just by your name, and walked off. But he didn't realize that, you know, he thought it was just, you know, the nations that's around the tribes didn't realize it was going to be around the world people. He was a spiritual man most of his life. He did communicate with the spirits and that's what I do myself right now, is I have a ceremonial room I go into every morning and every night, and I communicate with the spirit, and I ask them to give me direction and what I'm. What I have to do in this life. So basically, that's what he did. And I guess the reason people know him is because of the vision he had at the Sundance just before Custer came along and what we call the basil of the Grisigrass, which they call the Basil Bighorn, or where Custer and his men were defeated. But during the vision, he heard a voice that come to him, and his soldiers had fallen into his camp upside down, with no ears. They look like grasshoppers. And the voice told him, he says, I give you these because they have no ears. And then he told him, don't take the spoils. Don't take their weapons, their food, clothing, or nothing. Just leave them as they lie. And he says, this will solidify what you're doing, protecting your way of life, your people, your culture. But evidently, the people didn't do that. So we had to suffer at the hands of the future generations of the Americans.
- [09:11]
Don Wildman
Amazing. So Sitting Bull was born in the 1830s. Where was he born, and how did he come by his name?
- [09:18]
Ernie Lapointe
It was May of 1831 when he was born in a place called Orange Creek, which is just south of a town called Miles City, Montana, kind of like an eastern part of Montana. When he was born, he had a childhood name. Most men who are born or children are born to have a childhood name. Usually it comes from the father, what he sees the minute the child is born. And his father seen some badgers, little animals that jumping around out there. So then they told him he had a son. So he named his son Jumping Badger. In Lakota would call it Hokob Sija. And as he got a little older, he was already, in a way, a manner of speaking, he was born as a gifted child. So he always analyzed things before he acted as a young kid. So the people around him, the nation, the village, called him hokeshini, you know, which means slow or weak, because he was always not doing anything, participating what little kids usually do. He was older, thinking, but actually he was just learning things at a young age. And by the time he got old enough to go on a hunt, on raids and stuff with the other men, he counted his first coup, as we call. He had a stick, and he went and touched a Crow chief. They went to raid horses, and this guy came out of his teepee, and he. He whacked. Him with this stick. And it turns out the guy he hit was touched, was a Crow chief.
- [10:37]
Don Wildman
So just to jump in here, a coup refers to an act of bravery during battle. Bold bravery, usually where a warrior touches a member of the opposing side, usually with a stick, during the conflict. This doesn't harm the enemy, except in pride, but demonstrates courage, where the warrior has had to come into close contact with his opponent, risking his life.
- [11:01]
Ernie Lapointe
And since he did that, his father seen it, and he bestowed the name Sitting Bull. He took his name and gave it to him. So he earned the name Sitting Bull. So his father gave him the name. His name. He called himself Sitting Bull first, but he gave that name to his son, and then he took the second name. He had four names that was given to him by the Buffalo Nation. So the first name was Sitting Bull. So he took that for himself. Well, it wasn't really what Sitting Bull, Tatsuki, Yotsaki. And then the second name was Tatunka Psija, which is Jumping Bull. So he took that name for himself, gave his name to his son. So that's how he became known around the world. As you know, it really doesn't mean Sitting Bull. It means a buffalo Bull who starts to sit down. He isn't sitting yet. He just starts to sit. But the Americans and their translations, they butcher the names. But there were five Sitting Bulls at the same time when my grandfather was there, so I was alive. So I don't know if each name meant the same thing as his, but because it was a Dakota, Oglala, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and my great grandfather, there's five guys named Sitting Bull at the same time.
- [12:08]
Don Wildman
And what about his role? Would Sitting Bull have understood himself as a leader?
- [12:12]
Ernie Lapointe
Well, you know, the story of our culture. See, again, our cultures were the American historians that took the culture, our people, and to kind of try to equate it to theirs, they have leaders. And now each man is a leader of his teepee, of his home. And you have your spiritual pipe. This pipe. He communicated with his own spirits of how he should be with his family. He didn't have to be part of this camp. They just were together as a group to get along with each other. But in this. In this camp, they had to have a spokesperson, somebody who sees the women were the backbone of our culture. The women had the wisdom. They knew right from wrong, good from evil, good. All this. The men didn't have that. All we were were. You know, you look around, you see young boys, young men, same way. You know, they're always doing something dumb or stupid. You know, that's what. Women outlive men, I guess, you know. So anyhow, and then see, men, we have to do a purification lodge. They call it a sweat lodge. We go in there to try to understand the wisdom of a woman. And once a person starts to get that, he gets a certain percentage of a wisdom of a woman. The women see this, and then they. They use the men to do their council meetings. All men are council members. And then a chief, as they call in the American language. A chief is a spokesperson. He's a caretaker, he's a provider. It's a guy who shows his wisdom of a woman, but he's a man. And he takes care of those that need help. If they're hungry, he feeds them. If they need something, a teepee, he gives them one. If they need transportation, he always has more, more than one horse. So he gives them a horse to travel in. And this is how the women see him as. As a man who's in councils with other nations. He's a spokesperson. He sits there without anger, without hate. He has to be neutral. And this person exhibits that same quality yet of a woman's quality as a woman's wisdom. Yet he's a provider and a protector. He's a man who earned his eagle feathers with valor. He didn't kill people. He touched them with his stick. So basically, when Americans came in and wrote books about him, they said he was a chief, he was a leader. And he was just an inspirational caretaker, a spokesperson for the people. And that's what most chiefs are. And you have some that are like Crazy Horse. He was a. Who was a warrior chief. He was a leader. Not a leader, but he was an inspirational leader. He always said, strong hearts to the front, weak guys behind. Let's go into battle and stuff. He was. He was the main protector of the camp, the people. That's what he did. And my great grandfather was a spokesperson. He tried to educate the Americans and all other nations that we, our people, were welcoming them into our society, into our area. Didn't have to do the fighting, but the Americans came in there and they feared the natives. So they started shooting and killing them. See, that's the two different sides. But the American storytellers glorify the murderers and the killers more than the native side. They always call us noble savages, which is a oxymoron term. How can you be a noble and be savage at the same time? So basically, he was really a spokesperson for his tribe. And actually on the other hand, too, is as a protector and as a caregiver for the people. He was a Sundancer. A sand dance is like the flashing in German, you know, It's a renewal of new life every year. That's what the Sun Dance is for. When I Sundance, that's what I did. I prayed for the survival of our culture, but as a young will grow up to understand our people's culture. Not. Not the capitalistic world of the Americans, but the Lakota spiritual way of life which we live. You know, we don't take life seriously. We don't have degrees. We don't grade each other. The only one that grades each other is you. You don't have to be greater than anybody else. Just be yourself. That's who we are. And the Americans. The other night, I was watching a thunderheart, and the guy said, they're defeated people. They never treated us, not in the battlefield. They never defeated us. We're still here. And they created their Second Amendment carry a gun because of us. They feared us, so they wanted to kill us. That's why they had their guns. Whereas I always tell people why you wouldn't fear us. We were a spiritual people who lived with harmony with nature and each other. So don't fear us. Be with us. We try to help you to survive, to make it back to the spirit world.
- [16:51]
Don Wildman
I'll be back with more American history after this short break. Speaking of encounters between the Lakota and the American settlers, as I mentioned at the start, Sitting Bull was an icon of resistance against federal control. Why was that? Why? How did that come to pass?
- [17:13]
Ernie Lapointe
Well, my great grandfather and Crazy Horse were the only two guys that didn't believe in treaties because they knew, I guess it's through the ceremonies that. That a white man made these pieces of paper. And most chiefs come in, most leaders, most spokesperson come in here and just sign it to put an X or whatever on that paper saying that they agree, but they were told they'll never honor the paper. They said they're going to say a lot of good things, but they're not going to live up to it. But their main goal here was hunt for gold. And that's what started the Little Bighorn battlefield. See, they came into the. In a treaty of 1868, they said the Lakota nation, they gave them the Black Hills, which is where I live right now. This is sacred land to the Lakota that has so many mysterious things that's in these mountains.
- [18:08]
Don Wildman
This is the Treaty of Fort Laramie, which the United States entered into with the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota and another nation, the Arapaho. The treaty was forged on the US side to put an end to the two year campaign of raids and ambushes along the Bozeman Trail, A shortcut that thousands of white migrants were using to reach the gold mines in the Montana Territory. The treaty established the so called Great Sioux Reservation, a large swath of lands west of the Missouri River. It also designated the Black Hills as a quote unceded Indian territory for the exclusive use of native peoples alongside focusing on the so called integration of native people into white settler society. But in June 1874, General George Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills to search for gold. By 1875, year later, some 800 miners and fortune seekers had flooded into those hills to pan for gold on land that had been reserved by the treaty exclusively for indigenous people. The United States went back on the agreement, broke the agreement, redrawing the boundaries of the treaty and confining the native peoples to lives on the reservation. So can you tell me, Ernie, why the Black Hills are so integral to the Native American people?
- [19:31]
Ernie Lapointe
They give them the Black Hills, which is where I live right now, that constitute a spiritual realm. So many people who passed away are buried along the outer edges. Some on the inside was like a cemetery, a burial grounds, different places. And to us it's sacred. Everything about this because I'll take a step back and tell you about why they call this Turtle Island. If you look at the earth from space, it looks like a big turtle. The right leg is Florida and its left hind leg is the Baja peninsula of California. And its tail curves into the Central America and its head goes up into Canada. And in the center, the heart of the turtle is the Black Hills. Again, take another step back. Is the whole world was underwater. Basically the Christians had that same concept, Noah and his boat and stuff. Well, on this there was this water everywhere. And on top of the water was. This was the great mystery on a buffalo robe. And he was floating on top of the water like, like a boat. And then he heard a voice call it. Now each storyteller tells this differently. So he looked up and he's seen this. Some say it's an eagle, some say it's a hawk, some say it's a crow. Everybody, depending on each nation who tells the story. I used the eagle. This eagle was flying above him and he's yelling down at the Creator. He says that he's getting kind of tired of his wings are getting tired. And he placed the land, the light so the creator reached into his medicine bag. He had a bag full of sacred items. Each there took out an elune. You know, it's a little bird. He says, dive to the bottom. Bring me up some mud. So the alune dove, and he was gone for a while. Come back up and he says, man, he says, I can't see the bottle. So he reached in and took out an otter. He says, you got on. So he drove. He was gone a little longer, and he came back up and said, man, I can't even see the bottom. So she took out a beaver. A beaver had a flat tail. So he said, propel yourself to the bottom. So he went. It was gone for a while, and he come back up and he says, man, he said, I could see the bottom. He said, but my lungs were bursting. He said, I couldn't get to it. So he reached in his little bag and took out a turtle. He says, you dive to the bottom. So each time, each one of these guys go, he had a drum, and he hand drum. He'd sing sacred song for him and his turtle. He was gone. And the other three sitting with him said, he drowned. And all of a sudden, he came back up. He had mud all in the crafted. His shell and his claws and his hair inside of his shell. So the creator took out some mud. He made a mud patty out of it, put it on top of the water and clapped his hands. And he turned into land. Became what the United States is, the North American continent is. And then he took other mud pieces out and he made little humans and put them on there. He stood on it and stomped his foot, and they all became man and woman. He told me, he says now, he says, live on this island, he says, and take care of all living things that grows from it to balance the ecosystem, he says, and you will live. And from then on, you know, he created other animals like the buffalo, the deer, the trees, green growing things. He said, all have a spirit. You should always respect them. Take care of it, he said, take care and nurture this turtle island. So that's why we call this Black Hills the heart of the Turtle island. See, everything has a story of our creation here. And it's a beautiful story. It's a beautiful way of life. For thousands of years, we lived on this turtle island. We never destroyed.
- [22:59]
Don Wildman
The breaking of the treaty of Fort Laramie ultimately leads to the battle in 1876. You mentioned the battle of Greasy Grass, otherwise known as the Battle of Little Bighorn at the beginning. So what is the Lakota's role in this battle.
- [23:14]
Ernie Lapointe
In 1876, when this battle happened, they're already separating the natives. They made promises to them. And you know, they have a lot of these natives that lived around these forts. They call them hang around the forts. They give them beef to survive on. And then you had the non treaty Indians. We call them these like my grandfather and Americans call them hostiles. They weren't hostile. They just didn't want to gravitate toward becoming part of the system of getting handouts from the white man. So they lived all over the areas where the white man feared to come in there, because again, fear, instead of coming there with peace, they wanted to come and fight them and stuff. But their main goals in this whole existence was gold. And gold to the Lakota is a worthless iron ore. It has no spiritual value. I mean, a rock has more spiritual value than piece of gold, a gold nugget. But, you know, they couldn't understand why an American would kill his own friend or sell his own grandmother's soul for gold. And that's what they did. They discovered gold in the Black Hills right here where we live, where I live, right here. We live in this place you call eastern call Homestate Gold mine. They dug for gold and they discovered this gold. And when they did all that treaty saying that they give the Black Hills sacred to the Lakota without the window, they broke their own treaty. So on the other hand, the word came to all the non treaty natives who live out there. I mean, you talk about the Internet, you talk about the telephones and all this. The moccasin telegraph is a lot quicker. All the non natives know about this in an instant. How they do it. Even now, today, it's still like that. My wife and I was talking about it the other day. You do something or say something out here. The people in eastern South Dakota know what. And they're not using telephones or computers or nothing. They just know. They call it the moccasin telegraph, but that's how they knew. And word went out to all non treaty natives. My grandfather sent out. He wanted to do a council with the white man. How do they honor what they said on their treaty? He said he didn't believe that they were going to honor it anyway. But how they're going to protect it. Okay, but on the other hand, the Americans didn't knew about this. They heard that my great grandfather was calling a meeting, a council. All non treaty Indians were coming together up in Montana. So they created three columns of soldiers. You know, one coming out of Fort Laramie. And you know, you had Crook, Gibbon, Custer and all these guys. Custer's coming out of Bismarck, North Dakota to converge and to trap them and to annihilate them. That's what their. Their thing was. There's no council or talk. They just wanted to go battle with them. But my grandfather was. They were up, I guess, way further east of where the big heart was at the beginning. What they call the Rosebud. The Rosebud Creek was their river. His camp was there. And the first one to get there was Crook, General Crook. And Crazy Horse and his guys chased him out of there. So he went back to Fort Laramie. Well, the camp was getting too big. People were just showing up. And they had more horses than they had humans. So the horses were eating up all the grass. So they wanted to know where they could go to land more grass. And then the food was running short, so they sent Scots on four directions to plant, you know, a place where the grass is good. And the Scots came back from the west saying that there's a whole huge herd of Anglo along the greasy grass. I meant along the river down there. And the grass was plentiful. So the whole camp moved and they got to the river and they crossed it and they trees the camp. And they had. They were. They were waiting for others to come so they could hold this council. Well, Custer had left earlier and he had a force march he made. He made his men ride day and night to try to encounter the niggas. And so that's how the battle started. I mean, that's how it ended when he came and he. He was hot headed and he was egotistical and he wanted to. After he killed off all the Lakota, he was going to be president. He was run for president, you know. Yeah. He had already had division, right. And he told the people to beware of it. And when Crute came out, they thought that was the vision. He said, no, he said, this is not the vision. He says, comet. Well, when it came again, I always emphasize the fact that women are the wisest of the whole thing. So my grandfather went into his teepee and he was in his 40s by this time. And he comes out carrying his weapons. And as he walked out of the teepee, his mother was waiting for him and she stopped him. She says, you have done enough for the people. You have protected, provided. She says, but you let the young men show their worth, show their expertise in combat. She says, take the non combatants to a safe place and, you know, take care of Them there, the children, the old people and everybody. So he did, he didn't have. No, he listened to his mother, see, and, and this is, this is where, I mean, he already had all these coups. He had so much. He showed his own bravery on the battlefield, you know, against other natives and even against the non native, the white man. But he listened to his mother and took the non combatants and took them so the young, younger men could do battle with Custer. Of course, you know, they'd be in him. But again, it was no military thing. It is just each individual has his own style of fighting. They call it guerrilla warfare. I've seen that in Vietnam when I was there. The guerrilla, that's how they were. They were guerrilla fighters. I mean, they didn't fight as groups like the Americans did, like platoons and companies. And you had to follow one guy's orders. You had your own instinct on how to fight. You had your own instinct of knowing where they could hit you from. You had your own instinct of knowing how to do this. And that's what they used with Crook. See, if you read the history books on Crook, General Crook at the Battle of Rosebud, he said, man, there was probably 2,000 native warriors, but in actual reality there's probably 60 warriors at the max that went after his column of soldiers, just 2,000 of them. And Crook thought he was outnumbered. But it's gorilla fight. You hit him in strategic areas of the column, make it, make it look like there's more than usual, and that's what made him turn back. And the same way if you read about the custom even today, the Custer buster trying to find out why or tell stories why Custer lost because he was a great hero. And they said he odd numbered, he was outnumbered, which wasn't true. My great uncles told me there's probably 6, 700 men of fighting age that fought against Custer. There wasn't no 25,000 Indians. They had more horses than people. So the latest one I heard was in this little book that Chris Dixon, he's from Scotland, he, you know, he wrote this book. He may not have good friends. You know, he's a professor and he come and spoke with me many times and he wrote this little article about, he interviewed some people and he said they joined that customer and half his command had syphilis. That's why they lost that big one. Well, that's a new one.
- [30:41]
Don Wildman
Oh, gosh, that's definitely a new one. So the colonizers have lost the battle, but they continue to split the Lakota up And move them onto the reservations. Now your great grandfather doesn't agree to this. He doesn't surrender. So what happens next?
- [30:56]
Ernie Lapointe
He was willing to have a council with the Americans, but they were pretty well entrenched in hate because Custer lost. So he decided to take his non combatants north, what they call the Grandmothers of Canada. And they crossed into Canada. He came up there. And before they crossed into the Canadian land, the people who lived up there were the Blackfeet people. They call them blood people now. Well in Canada they call them blood people. Blood nation. On this side of the border they call them Blackfeet. And their head man was a guy named Crofut. And you know, the Lakota and the Blackfeet really were adversaries. But my grandfather went and had counsel with Kruput. And they sat down and they filled the pipe and they talked. What he wanted to do, he wanted to protect his people because he figured that the Americans were going to annihilate them. So he invited them to come across. So they went across. He asked permission to come across into their land. They didn't look at it as Canadians or Americans. They looked at it as. Because they lived this land for years, centuries. So he agreed. So they took them in and they fed them, they took care of them and everything, the whole nation. I mean there's thousands of people that kept showing up. Even after the battle, people kept showing up, non treaty Indians. So they followed them north. I mean there were Oglalas, Hunchbapos, Minicojos, you name it. Many different nations came and they followed them across. But there were so many of them there, the Canadian government didn't really put them up there because they were overcrowding their people, the Crees and black people and everything. So eventually started coming back these other ones and surrendering to the government. But my grandfather stayed up there and befriended that. His name was Major Walsh, James Walsh. He's a Maori rogue Canadian, Maori police guy. And Walsh taught him how to speak, sign his name and curse him sitting for. And he shared with him many things and they became friends and he did his best to try to keep my grandfather up there. He went to Washington on his behalf and he did everything. But the Canadian government still didn't want him up there because they considered him a troublemaker. I don't know why but. So Walsh tried to keep him up there but didn't help it. So he had to come back. But a lot of them stayed up there. I got a cousin, she still lives up there. She's related to me through Sitting Bulls Uncle Cohorts, his people are still in Canada and a place called Wood Mountain. It's a reserve for those that did come back with the others in 1881. When he came back in July, he surrendered a place called Fort Buford, North Dakota. And that's when they considered him a hostile. While on the other hand, they shipped him to Fort Randall, which is in South Dakota here. And the Americans said he was held there in protective custody, but actually he was held prisoner of war prisoner, you know, being part of the. Because they blamed him for Custer's demise, which he wasn't even in a battle. He just had the vision, you know, of Custer falling to camp with no ears. So basically they kept it for a couple of years there down at Fort Randall, you know, as like to see a protective customer. He was prisoner, him and his people, until they eventually released him to Standing Ground Reservation, which he never was part of that. So people from standing around claim, oh, he's, he's our, our chief, you know, he wasn't. He wasn't. They killed him. His own people up there, there's the ones who killed, who murdered himself.
- [34:37]
Don Wildman
I'll be back with more American history after this short break before we get to his death. Is it true that he joined the Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show?
- [34:52]
Ernie Lapointe
It was right after he was released from Port Muford and they shipped him back to Standing Rock, him and his family. And what they did when he got up there along the grand river there, there's a little cabin. It was owned by his brother in law, Gray Eagle. So he allowed him to stay there and the whole camp camped with him there. And the first guy to come along was a guy named Albert Allen. He was a showman and he heard about this show, people doing shows with natives. So he came to Standing Rock and he inquired to McLaughlin, who was the Indian agent there, if he could take my great grandfather and some of his participants on a little trip. I mean, he had to have an agreement, so he did. So he allowed him to. So his show, he called it Sitting Wool Connection. And they toured the northern hemisphere of the United States. Standing Rock, which is the north South Dakota there, along into northern Minnesota, into Wisconsin, up into the northern parts of Michigan, along the border there, Canadian border. And then coming back, just a little trip, they came along the edge of Lake Michigan and came into what is now Minneapolis, Minnesota and they were doing a show there. And his little scientist said, well, come see Sitting Boy on all this. That's where he ran into The Annie Oakley, she was a short, five foot something girl with great shot, with a gun. And she had these big guns that were bigger than she was, but she could hit the targets. People throw something out and she hit it. So he was impressed by her. And he says when he seen her, she reminded him of his daughter, who didn't come with him names, walks looking. And he said she looked like my daughter. Walks looking, you know. So he went over and they introduced him. So they had an interpreter, you know, that talked to both of them. And he says he was impressed with her, somebody who's so short that she was such a great shot. And he gave her a pair of moccasins, beaded moccasins, as a gift. Because I met this Annie Oakley's great grand niece. She passed away now, but she lived in Ohio. She was telling me the story about the moccasins that my grandfather gave her. And anyhow, he came back to Standing Rock and that's when Cody found out. So he came and asked McLoughlin. So McLoughlin allowed him to do it because he wanted the world, the country to see that Sitting Bull was a savage killer and all this kind of stuff. So he allowed Cody to take him. So they started out east and by the time they got to halfway across the United States, you know, every time they had a show, people will come and hiss at him, spit at him, and yell derogatory marks at him. He didn't understand what they're saying, but he couldn't figure out why are they doing this, you know, I mean, he had a whole group of natives with him, they were doing reenactments. And so finally, eventually, one of the translators came up and he told my grandfather, he said that big banner that sits over the gate, but Cody wrote, he said, come see sitting will kill her of Custer. And they would spit at him and yell at him. So he. He started to realize that this wasn't really like the Albert Allen show, you know, that people showing respect to him, he was just using him as a prop to make money. People will pay money to come see see him and they boo him and all kinds of stuff. But as he went along, they went further east and they got to the east coast and they were at the city, what they call the City of Brotherly Love, which is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And they were there and people of Philadelphia came and wanted to show him the City of Brotherly Love. So him and his group, they took Amali to the streets and they're walking down the streets and the minute they walk down the street, all these little white kids come out. They were dirty faced, raggedy clothing, hungry, and they were begging for food. My grandfather was shocked. He says, wow, Lakhta. We call our children wakandja, which is short for wakan ichakh. Something sacred is growing. It never goes hungry, cold or anything. You treat it a little child, because it's the future of your people, creature of your nation. And he couldn't understand why the white man was letting his children be beggars on the street. So the next day, he used to sign his name and curse him. And they gave him $2, take a picture of him, get $2. He had all this money. He had no use for it because LA people had no value for this piece of money or these gold coins. So. And then he got all this food together that they offered him. The next day, they went on the street again and he handed all this food to these little kids. No money. He handed him out. Said by the time he got to two blocks down the road, he had. He's like the Pied Piper, you know. Had a thousand kids following him, you know, because. And it's in the article in the newspaper, you know, a friend of mine asked. He said, this really happened. I said, our oral story tells us this. So he looked it up. He went to the archives of the Philadelphia newspapers. He found this little article in the Philadelphia newspaper that had him on there doing this, you know, giving. Handing out money and food to the homeless kids or the little raggedy kids on the street, and blankets and stuff. He gave them. And so he said, you really just. Yeah. By the time he got back to Standing Rock, the American people respected him. They honored him for what he did. So the McLoughlin guy wouldn't let him go no more because he was. He turned the tables on him. He wanted the people to see what kind of savage he was. Turns out he was a respectable human being, you know, who cared for everybody, all children and stuff. So that's how come he didn't get to go the second time. Only one trip was Cody.
- [40:27]
Don Wildman
So he has returned to Standing Rock. And you mentioned a minute ago that his death was precipitated by the native people there. Can you tell us about that and about the vision that he has of this?
- [40:39]
Ernie Lapointe
Right after he came back from the Cody thing, the people were getting kind of, I guess, at the end of their rope. They're losing hope. And these two guys, Chicken, Bear and Shortbow with two. Two native guys, and they heard about this Guy who sent out word to all nations, all people, the world, I mean the United States. His name was Waboka. He was a Paiute Indian in Nevada that he had a message, he had a vision. So they went to see what this was about. Even all religions showed up, different Christian religions. The Mormons came and everybody. So they went to see this guy, he was a Paiute Indian. He's dressed in American clothes and he had this big black top hat and it was a beaver felt top hat. And he took it off and he, he showed the people that were there that inside this hat he said he, he looked in there and he seen what the future of the world was like and the people of the country here that all human beings would get law with each other, that they lived in harmony with one another inside this hat. And this was what he wanted to share. To him, he says, you have to do this. Well, everybody sat there and listened to this. And you know, most of these guys didn't really, especially the non native ones didn't really believe this that you could look inside of a hat and see this, right. So he shared with them that what they should do and all that while these two guys kicking back shoreboat on their way back, see they're on horses, you know, and you know they had a camp so they're coming back and they had, they conjured up this story. See their story was that if they had to make certain items a ghost shirt, this ghost shirt had certain designs on her. And this idea was sprung from the Mormons. The Mormons had wear underwear that's supposed to protect them. You know, the shirt and underwear, you know, that had certain ways that supposed to help them understand the creation or something. I don't know what it's all about. But they took that idea and incorporated into the ghost Dasher and then it created these songs coming back. And by the time they got to Wood River Indian Reservation in Wyoming or amongst the Rappaho, they had a down pat because it took them, you know, days to get back here from Nevada. And they told him this is what they seen. So it's, it's not like the Sun Dance where it's a ghost dance. You know what they call a ghost dance? It's not a Lakota or native ceremonies. There's two guys made this up and these guys dance around this tree, set up a tree and they dance around singing these songs and have these ghost shirts, they said these ghost shirts that protect you against the white man's bullets. And if you do this so all the white men will disappear and the buffalo knows that they kill, will come back to life is what they told them. And they brought that back here and they started this ghost ass craze in 1890s. And it was going and behind Sitting Bull's cabin on the grand river, the people were doing this ghost dancing. And he couldn't understand what the heck they're doing. Well, he didn't really approve of it, but he couldn't say no to them because they're hanging on by the end of the rope. They didn't know what to do with themselves because they killed off the buffalo. They took away all the waste to survive as humans. So he allowed him to do it, but it started getting out of hand because people were dancing on this tree and they'd followed, they die. And he said, we got to do something about this. It was 1890. As he's walking along there, there's a little brook there. He stopped by his little brook and all of a sudden this meadowlark came along. And so meadowlark is a bird, the yellow chest. And standing next to him there by the. By the little brook there and started drinking some of the water. And he looked at him and he looked at my grandfather and said. He said. He said, he took off. He said, the Lakota people will kill you. And he said it twice and to pull up. So he says he was trying to figure out why would they want to kill me because I took care of him, fed him, protected him. And I'm still trying my best to try to do this. So he kept trying his best how to do this. And that was fall. And then he's having consult with his group of people there, telling them we need to do something because these people are dancing even in the wintertime cold. And he said, well, you know this thing he's into Pine Ridge Agency, the South Nogalalas. So he. He said, well, I'm gonna go down there and have counsel with Red Cloud. But they touch him down there, you know, and ask him how can we get together and stop this ghost dancing. People are just dying all over from this. Well, all this time when before, when he's doing this told meetings he had his nephew there. And one of his nephews, his name was One Bull, and One Bull was told by McLaughlin that he would give him so much gifts and stuff if he would tell him what the consulate what sitting in his consulate meetings. So east of the camp, there's a little place called Little Eagle. And there was a schoolhouse, school Teacher had a telegraph. So Mung Bu would go over there every night after every council meeting and tell this school teacher who spoke Lakota. So he would tell him what this is. So he telegraphed McLoughlin and tell him what the plans that they were doing and sitting will start to realize, start to figure out. You know, this guy here is knowing everything I'm doing. You know, how's he doing this? Right. Well, he had a meeting and said he was going to have meeting. And McLelflo Indian was sitting both to leave the Standing rock area. I kept him pretty much corralled with no fence, and he wanted to go have meeting with Kyle with the red clown. So Whiteboard went over to Little Eagle to the schoolhouse, and the guy wasn't there. So from there, he rode himself all the way to Fort Yates, North Dakota, to bring the message that Sitting Bull was leaving the next day to visit Red Cloud. But he didn't say it in them words, but, you know, kind of like planning something, you know, kind of a deal. And actually, he was just trying to figure out how to stop the ghost dancing. And he rode. And my mother said he rode that horse. He killed that horse, rode it to death. And he ran the rest of the way, got back into his teepee before he was missed. Just as he got back, Don was breaking in. The Indian police showed up, and he had a teepee. He was next to the cabin. He snuck back in his teepee. And then the Indian police showed up trying to arrest Sitting Bull and the strong hearts, which was the protectors of my great grandfather. They came out and told him not to go to resist because they figured they were trying to. They were going to kill him. And, you know, he just wanted to go find out why McLoughlin wanted him arrested. Well, then the shot broke out, and they read tomahawk and Bullheads. The two guys who shot him, one shot him in the head, one shot him in the heart, and they killed him. So all this came out with the ghost dance.
- [47:21]
Don Wildman
So Sitting Bull is shot dead in December 1890, but his story lives on, particularly now. Any final words on this subject for us today?
- [47:30]
Ernie Lapointe
I just wish that people would listen to some of my words as I go up. Fear. Because fear is what makes people follow a leader, as they call it Guy. They. They choose to be lead them. And. And all that leader does is it just wants to conquer people, conquer everything. The people don't realize that what's coming from the future is the most heinous thing in the eyes of Some people with me, it's their souls. I respect their souls. Like you, Don. Everybody that I met, I don't look at you outside, look at your soul. I can see it. We all knew each other one time. We all came from the same place and we come in different areas of the world, but we were all at one time spirits of the Creator. And we come in. We come, we inhabit a body that comes from Mother Earth. And Mother Earth is really doesn't want to destroy her children again, but we're heading for it. Forced purification. We're going to have a new world. But I didn't ask the Creator, are we going to have people again? And the souls of these people who have hate, greed, racism, fear, that's what it is. Are going to be on this earth screaming and hollering for eternity. There's no heaven or hell in our world. The only thing we have is the spirit world and what you create for yourself. Hell is what you create for yourself. If you let go of fear, you see how people can get along with just laughter and kindness instead of fear. Like I was taught as a child growing up, my mother told me to blind myself. She says, you know, applying yourself on the inside. Listen to the stories of your elders and take a little piece of their story. Incorporate it in who you are. Create who you are. Be perfect in who you are.
- [49:13]
Don Wildman
Ernie Lapointe, besides being Sitting Bull's great grandson, is a Sundancer, a veteran of Vietnam, and the author of Sitting His Life and Legacy. Thank you, Ernie. It's been great to talk with you again, listeners. I will see you again soon. Hey, thanks for listening to American History hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. All kinds of content from mysterious from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great. But you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support. Acast Powers, the world's best podcast. Here's a show that we recommend.
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Chris Duffy
We all have bad days and sometimes bad weeks and maybe even bad years. But the good news is we don't have to figure out life all alone. I'm comedian Chris Duffy, host of ted's how to Be a Better Human podcast. And our show is about the little ways that you can improve your life. Actual practical tips that you can put into place that will make your day to day better, whether it is setting boundaries at work or or rethinking how you clean your house. Each episode has conversations with experts who share tips on how to navigate life's ups and downs. Find how to be a better human wherever you're listening to this.
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Don Wildman
ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.