As Burke neared Standing Rock, it was almost time to make his pitch. This one would be different—after all, he would be talking with Sitting Bull—yet much like the others. If it worked, Cody and Burke were ready to deal with whatever else may have followed. In the two years that the show had been in existence, the men had managed many a flamboyant character or temperamental personality. With years of theater experience, they knew what to do and what not to do when it came to quieting and reassuring nervous actors, many of whom in this case were warriors and cowboys who were prideful and did not step away from a fight. For instance, years earlier, Cody had hired Wild Bill Hickok for a production of Scouts of the Prairie. Living up to his name, Wild Bill would sometimes shoot at the feet of extras to make them jump. Another time, feeling disrespected by an audience member, he fired his gun at a spotlight, blasting it to smithereens. Now, dozens of Native Americans, primarily Pawnee, were in the employ of the Wild West. Burke and the show’s staff were well versed in the ways and needs of Indians. These were not solo operators who would stage unnecessary dramas like Hickok or some of the touring cowboys who liked to go into town and drink, but they often came with their own rivalries and ongoing feuds, which erupted offstage in their tent community or while they were making their cross-country trips by rail or steamboat.
As an advance man whose success with Buffalo Bill’s shows spoke for itself, Burke, we can assume, had done his homework when it came to Sitting Bull, probably “scouting” him as a prospective member of the troupe. Having read about Sitting Bull’s travels in various theatrical enterprises, he would have learned that the medicine man was eager to acquaint himself with modern machinery, and also that he wanted to understand how the white man was living and how his culture was being passed on to his children. If he had read of Sitting Bull’s journey to New York City in 1884 to appear at the Eden Musee, a Madame Tussaud–like enclave on West 23rd Street that presented “the Wonders of the World in wax,” he might have learned that the performance—consisting of “a tipi on the stage and the Indians in full dress smoking and cooking”—drew six thousand people during the matinee and evening productions on the first day. This was a huge audience and would have further convinced Cody and Burke to add Sitting Bull to their lineup. Yet the Eden Musee did not treat Sitting Bull in a fitting manner; he did not ride a horse at the Eden Musee nor was he presented with any sort of stature or grandeur other than his name. With that in mind, Burke would want to make sure that the Lakota war hero understood that he’d be an honored cast member of the Wild West.
Still, Burke must have wondered about a few things. Would Sitting Bull be difficult to work with? Having already forged alliances with various Lakota while scouting on the Plains, no one knew better than Cody that Sitting Bull was a powerful figure with strong medicine—not a man to be trifled with. Would there be a problem if a dispute arose and things didn’t go his way? On a more mundane front, how many people were in his entourage and would they all be on the payroll? If Sitting Bull declined the offer, should Burke offer a Plan B—and what was it? These were probably some of the questions he pondered and discussed with Cody as they formulated a presentation.
As for Sitting Bull, what had gone through his mind before Burke’s arrival? We can say he had a very good idea of his own value by that time, having already appeared at various events around the country, publicized as a warrior who had survived bloody battles and the man who killed the beloved Custer. Now “Major Burke,” the emissary of a famous wasichu hunter and showman, was coming to meet him. This might have underscored Sitting Bull’s understanding of his stature to himself, his tribe, and the soldiers who watched and said yes or no to his comings and goings. But humility, not self-aggrandizement or adulation, was a virtue in Lakota society, and Sitting Bull’s standing among whites would serve only to help him negotiate a good deal—nothing more and nothing less. There was another, more important question that he likely would have considered: could he trust one more white man with a piece of paper requiring his signature? So far, not a single wasichu had risen to this level. And what if he didn’t trust Burke? Would he send him back to Cody after a courteous farewell, even though McLaughlin had sanctioned the meeting? In his heart, before Burke outlined his proposal, Sitting Bull knew the answer. Behind his curiosity about the pending offer was a desire to go to Washington and meet the Grandfather. He had been promised such a thing on previous tours. He still wanted to talk face-to-face with the headman of this new American empire. What was what? he wanted to know. What goes on in this man’s heart? Buffalo Bill was the way to such knowledge, and Sitting Bull was ready to sign.
To the Lakota, summer was known as bloketu, the Time of the Warm Moons, and there were three of them, one for each month of the season. It was during the Moon of the June Berries that Burke arrived, stepping off the train and heading to Fort Yates. There, he and Major McLaughlin exchanged pleasantries and then climbed into a wagon with two interpreters, William Halsey and Joseph Primeau. They were heading southwest away from the Missouri River and across the grasses of the Plains—as tall as a horse’s belly—with displays of color responding to the heat and sunlight everywhere, sunflowers, primrose, and goldenrod betraying not a hint that those who lived on this land were confined to it.
The men camped en route and there may have been a steady wind blowing, for at any given time on the Great Plains, the air, unchecked from the Mississippi to the Rockies, is stirring and swirling and it might have carried the scent of sage or rain if the clouds were swelling, and overhead a falcon may have ridden the current, for that was one of Sitting Bull’s protectors, and surely the winged and the four-leggeds would have been on guard in some way, alerted by a derangement in their surroundings and the silent news that an important member of the circle would be leaving it for a while.
On the second day, the men arrived at Sitting Bull’s cluster of lodges along the Grand River. Here he lived with his two wives and ten children and some of their extended families. It was late. The visitors settled in for the evening, and on the third day Major Burke had a meeting with Sitting Bull. We do not know if, when the men were introduced, they shook hands, and if they did, in what manner it occurred. It was said that when Sitting Bull met a white man and shook hands with the fellow, he generally did it with two fingers rather than his entire hand, simply because that was his custom with the wasichu as they generally did not warrant a full handshake—even from someone for whom that was not his method of greeting. “[The chief] was fifty-one years old,” wrote Walter Havighurst in Annie Oakley of the Wild West. “He stood five feet eight inches, with a massive head and bull-broad shoulders, a tapering waist and neat, small feet. His stern face was pitted with smallpox scars from an epidemic in his youth. They were two big men, Burke and Bull, and both were fond of ceremony. Arizona John spoke of his great gratification at meeting a chief whose fame was known afar. While the interpreter put that into Sioux, the chief stood impassive.” After all, although the Indian wars were over, there was no arguing with his gravitas: he was still the leader of the Hunkpapa, the most powerful tribe of the Lakota Nation.
Finally, Sitting Bull spoke, welcoming Burke and asking him to explain his proposal. Burke said that he “wanted Sitting Bull and a party of Sioux warriors and their women to travel with the Wild West show,” wrote Havighurst. “They would be well paid, well fed, well treated. They would see the cities and towns of the white men, they would have fresh beef in their tepees and fine horses to ride. At the end of the summer they would be brought back on the railroad to their camps in Dakota.”
Sitting Bull invited the men into his tipi, and they sat on a buffalo robe. “Through the open flap came the smell of cooking where the women bent over the scattered feast,” Havighurst recounted. “The sun sank in a rosy haze over the buttes and the long summer twilight softened the plain. They ate their supper and lighted their pipes, and still Tatanka Iyotake did not give his answer.”
On the following day, Sitting Bull was ready to
hear the details of Burke’s offer. Along with eight of his men, he climbed into the wagon and joined the visitors as they all headed back to Fort Yates. In the agency house, Burke sat at a pine table and wrote out a contract. It made Sitting Bull the highest paid performer in the show, and in addition to including a paid entourage, it provided for an interpreter whom Sitting Bull chose.
This was a critical component of the contract. Many a frontier disaster or just plain absurd or deadly misunderstanding had occurred because of inaccurate translations, both purposely or by accident. For instance, there was the infamous Grattan massacre in 1854, an early confrontation between the army and the Lakota, which was initially a dispute over the killing of a cow that belonged to a party of Mormons and then quickly escalated into the killing of Conquering Bear and twenty-nine soldiers, including Lt. John Lawrence Grattan. There was the time that Sitting Bull’s own remarks in Philadelphia were said to be the opposite of what he had stated, although no one was the wiser until much later when it didn’t matter. And perhaps one of the greatest tragedies in the Indian wars, the killing of Crazy Horse, was partly the result of a bad translation. On May 7, 1877, almost a year after the victory at the Little Bighorn, he and a remaining band of followers surrendered to army authorities. Several months later, possibly as a ruse or because of exasperation, he had reportedly agreed to help the cavalry fight Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce, who had been holding out for months along the Canadian border. But his remarks were translated as planning to kill white men. Then he defied an order, and was literally stabbed in the back with a bayonet to the kidney as he resisted an unexpected imprisonment. Sitting Bull had trusted William Halsey as an interpreter since he had been transferred to Standing Rock, and such a relationship on the Great Plains was a thing to be honored. Much could have gone wrong during the time that Sitting Bull traveled with Buffalo Bill; what if an interpreter said incorrectly to a reporter, for instance, that Sitting Bull hated Boston and it became front-page news? There are no reports of misunderstandings due to poor translations of anything that Sitting Bull stated when Halsey was interpreting, and the negotiations with Burke proceeded accordingly.
Other elements of the contract included $125 as a gift, a kind of “signing bonus,” and two weeks’ salary in advance. Burke also promised to pay all of the expenses for Sitting Bull’s party to and from Standing Rock. As an indication of the ad hoc nature of the contract, Burke then added an interesting postscript, a result of something Sitting Bull asked for as the negotiation was under way. He became quite proficient at using a pencil. “PS,” the notation at the end of the contract said. “Sitting Bull is to have sole right to sell his own Photographs and Autographs.”
That was the final request from Tatanka Iyotake, and all agreed and then Burke and Sitting Bull signed the contract, McLaughlin and Primeau as witnesses. As a result of the late-breaking request, Sitting Bull would go on to earn a substantial amount of money during the four months that he was in the Wild West, much of which he gave away to family and friends, and also to strangers in need, especially the many poor orphan boys he encountered in cities while on tour. This was a thing that caused him great sadness and dismay, and made him ask a question that lingers to this day: in a land where the people have made such great advances, why can’t they feed all their children?
For now, Sitting Bull was ready to leave his camp at Grand River on the Standing Rock reservation, and see more of the world. On June 8, cavalry aide William Zahn, a former member of Custer’s regiment, helped him and his entourage load their belongings onto the wagon that would carry them to the Northern Pacific railhead at Bismarck, along with Major John M. Burke and interpreter Halsey. Traveling with Sitting Bull were Crow Eagle, Fool Thunder, Fishing Elk, Iron Thunder, Crow’s Ghost, and Slow White Bull—all “warriors of distinction,” said a telegraph sent to newspapers around the country. There were also various women among the party, including Great Black Moose’s daughter, Mrs. Crow’s Ghost, Mrs. Slow White Bull and her daughters as well. On the plains, weather can be counted on for a grand gesture, and the party encountered heavy storms and violent winds en route. They crossed swollen rivers and slippery trails and for a while the sun disappeared. It was the most treacherous weather some had seen in years, nature’s response to the departure of a thunder dreamer—Sitting Bull, who years later would perform a ceremony that ended a drought. At the station, a small crowd had gathered, and the soldiers and Indians watched the travelers board. Then they waved goodbye as the vapor horse galloped away on the Iron Road, the parallel lines that had split the vast buffalo herds in half, carving right through the heart of the Great Plains. Three days later, the group arrived in Chicago and transferred to the Atlantic Express. Sitting Bull and his interpreter were ushered into a stateroom in the Pullman car, and they headed east for the Wild West.
Imagine being born into a world where your tribe was the most powerful in all the land and within that being born at the climax of its power. Imagine that in your lifetime, you witnessed a thing that consumed nearly everything you loved and were nourished by and that nearly everyone you cherished or parlayed with was destroyed, altered, killed, or locked up. Imagine being a person who lived through such a thing, sought to head it off directly and softly, was both celebrated and hated for doing so, and yet, because of an alliance with the natural world and it with you, saw the whole thing coming—even your own end. And then, finally, imagine embracing life with all of your might and force, your generosity and joy, trying to contain the wellspring of sorrow and blood that was flooding your world and drowning it, knowing that a river cannot be stopped but that there are many different ways to ride it. This was Sitting Bull’s fate and condition, and this is how it unfolded.
Translating Lakota winter counts to the American manner of marking time, Sitting Bull was born in 1831, either on the Grand River near Many Caches in what is now South Dakota, according to the major historians of that era, or in Montana, on the banks of the Elk or Yellowstone River, as it is now called, according to his great-grandson Ernie LaPointe in his book Sitting Bull: His Life and Legacy, which was published this century. The book casts certain oft-stated elements of Sitting Bull’s life with different details. To some, this would seem inconsequential, but the differences derive from long-standing rivalries between factions and relatives around Sitting Bull—basically, those whose ancestors betrayed Sitting Bull in the end, and those who stood by him. There is even some question as to exactly who is a direct descendant, but after a five-year investigation, the Repatriation Office at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History determined that LaPointe and his three sisters are Sitting Bull’s only living relatives. Told by his mother about her grandfather when he was a young boy on the reservation, LaPointe did not realize at first that she was talking about Sitting Bull. As he got older, he understood, but he and his sisters were told to keep the stories in their heads and hearts, lest people treat them differently if they knew about the family’s celebrated ancestor. In 1992, an aunt told LaPointe that the time had come, and so he embarked on a campaign to tell what he knew about Sitting Bull. Hearing this new information several years later, the Smithsonian got in touch with LaPointe. Meanwhile he began writing a book, and in 2009 it was published. It’s difficult to counter over a century of accepted history. Prior to his publication of the book, Sitting Bull’s history had been written by white historians using accounts from Native Americans who knew Sitting Bull as well as accounts from soldiers and government officials. Some of these accounts were informed by Sitting Bull’s enemies, and these relationships were either overlooked or not understood at the time the histories were written. LaPointe’s narrative derives from his own family stories about his great-grandfather, an oral history passed down in a kind of mosaic. In some respects the old history and his retelling of it are not so different. But there are certain major divergences, and one in particular casts an entirely new light on a part of Sitting Bull’s story that has been told for decades everywhere.
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