Blood Brothers

by Deanne Stillman

  Sitting Bull’s band was the Bad Bow of the Hunkpapa tribe, and, like the other bands among his people, and of the Indians across the plains, its members traversed the vast terrain in pursuit of buffalo, sometimes crisscrossing the paths of their enemies, engaging in battle, and sometimes, after the wasichu arrived, encountering settlers and soldiers and mountain men and miners, engaging in battle on new fronts, and commingling with the new pilgrims. They did not want war with the interlopers; they sought to defend their territory, waging offensive moves when it became clear that the newcomers did not intend to honor agreements, preferring to acquire or seize what was valuable, at any cost. Quite simply, the light-skinned arrivals were greedy—and, in fact, the term wasichu originally meant “those who take the fat,” and was used by the Lakota to describe the kind of person who takes all of the buffalo fat, a desirable part of the buffalo that the Lakota shared.

  Sitting Bull was the second of four children, the only son, born to Her Holy Door Woman and Returns Again. He was not yet given the name by which the world would know him; he was first called Jumping Badger, following Lakota culture, a name involving something his father had seen or experienced. He was different from other boys his age. “Where the others were adventurous, eager, and often reckless,” writes LaPointe, “Jumping Badger always held back, thinking before he leaped. If he had lived in this century, he would have been considered a gifted child and would have been praised for his self-discipline and for always analyzing everything before he acted.” But his own people, LaPointe says, regarded his behavior as “hesitant” and “feeble,” and they called him Hunkesni, which meant “slow-moving” or “weak.” Later, his biographers called him “Slow,” perhaps hearing the shortened version from their own sources or not getting the exact translation.

  In Lakota culture, young boys were sent to live with a trusted uncle for instruction in the ways of the tribe. For Jumping Badger, this figure was Four Horns, the brother of Returns Again. As a medicine man, Four Horns knew that the boy was ready to listen. At the age of seven, he did something that is recounted in nearly every portrait, suggesting that he was not just a good student, but making the kind of decision that is often ascribed to ancient holy men. He had constructed a bow and arrow, and it was perfect. One day, the most gifted bow and arrow maker in the band arranged a test for those boys who were between six and ten years old. “Go hunting,” he said, “and bring me a beautiful bird.” On the trail, Jumping Badger saw a Bullock’s oriole at the top of a tree and aimed. At the same time, another boy saw the bird and shot an arrow. He missed, his arrow was tangled in the branches, and he was upset. Jumping Badger shot the arrow out of the tree, and when it landed it was broken. The boy wanted to fight, but Jumping Badger offered his perfect arrow instead. The boy accepted. Later, back at camp, the boys spoke of how a fight was averted and the peace was kept. The bow and arrow maker gave Jumping Badger his own fine bow and arrows as a reward.

  Three years later, Four Horns wanted to test the boy’s tracking and hunting skills and took him on his first buffalo hunt. This was not just a matter of securing food for his family and tribe, although that was a factor. The buffalo was the lifeblood of the Lakota, satisfying its physical and spiritual hunger and serving in every other way. Such knowledge was given to the tribe in the way that sacred knowledge is passed on or manifested in certain individuals through a vision, and this vision in its intent is no different from any other vision that comes to any other people as a map for living, and it is repeated, one to the other, and generation to generation, to tell the story of how to walk on this land.

  “A very long time ago, they say, two scouts were out looking for bison; and when they came to the top of a high hill and looked north, they saw something coming a long way off, and when it came closer they cried out, ‘It is a woman!’ and it was.” This is Lakota medicine man Black Elk speaking, and the story came to him when he was a young boy, perhaps around the time that he participated in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. He is telling the story to the poet John G. Neihardt, who wrote it down in the 1930s, hoping to make a written record of Lakota beliefs. When the buffalo were gone, Black Elk would become a member of the Wild West, like Sitting Bull, traveling the world to see how the white man lived, and lamenting after Sitting Bull’s death that the sacred hoop was broken. But now, in his cabin on the plains, he continued his story.

  Then one of the scouts, being foolish, had bad thoughts and spoke them, but the other said: “This is a sacred woman; throw all bad thoughts away.” When she came still closer, they saw that she wore a fine white buckskin dress, that her hair was very long and that she was young and very beautiful. And she knew their thoughts and said in a voice that was like singing: “You do not know me, but if you want to do as you think, you may come.” And the foolish one went; but just as he stood before her, there was a white cloud that came and covered them. And the beautiful young woman came out of the cloud, and when it blew away the foolish man was a skeleton covered with worms.

  Then the woman spoke to the one who was not foolish: “You shall go home and tell your people that I am coming and that a big tepee shall be built for me in the center of the nation.” And the man, who was very much afraid, went quickly and told the people, who did at once as they were told, and there around the big tepee they waited for the sacred woman. And after a while she came, very beautiful and singing, and as she went into the tepee this is what she sang:

  With visible breath I am walking.

  A voice I am sending as I walk.

  In a sacred manner I am walking.

  With visible tracks I am walking.

  In a sacred manner I walk.

  And as she sang, there came from her mouth a white cloud that was good to smell. Then she gave something to the chief, and it was a pipe with a bison calf carved on one side to mean the earth that bears and feeds us, and with twelve eagle feathers hanging from the stem to mean the sky and the twelve moons, and these were tied with a grass that never breaks. “Behold!” she said. “With this you shall multiply and be a good nation. Nothing but good shall come from it. Only the hands of the good shall take care of it and the bad shall not even see it.” Then she sang again and went out of the tepee, and as the people watched her going, suddenly it was a white bison galloping away and snorting, and soon it was gone.

  Such was the medicine in which young Sitting Bull was nurtured and such was the medicine that would hang in the air when he filled a pipe with tobacco years later in the company of Buffalo Bill and reporters, puffing on it and passing it around the circle, though this would not have been the sacred buffalo pipe that was reserved for special circumstances and used only by certain people who understood its power and when and where it must be used.

  When young Sitting Bull embarked on his first hunt that day with his uncle, the elder told Jumping Badger to follow a smaller herd to the west. An expert rider like many Lakota boys, Jumping Badger rode directly into the middle of the herd with his bow and arrow poised. Zeroing in on a big bull, he shot and felled the animal. The rest of the herd was spooked and ran away. Four Horns had warned Jumping Badger to steer clear of situations like this, in which he could get trampled by an angry, stampeding herd. “Why did you choose the big bull,” he asked, “when there was a cow close to the edge of the herd?” “I’ve seen the cow,” the boy said, “but also her calf. If I had taken the cow, her calf would have perished.”

  Four Horns was impressed by Jumping Badger’s compassion, and told him to eat part of the buffalo’s liver to thank the spirit of the buffalo for giving his life. Then the boy was told to fetch his mother and other relatives to prepare the meat. As they prepared to return with skinning and butchering tools, Jumping Badger told his mother to cut portions of meat for a widow who lived nearby; there was no one to hunt for her family. The ten-year-old’s generosity, and again, his compassion, came to the attention of his elders.

  At fourteen, Jumping Badger was fully anointed as a warrior, a thing all Lakota boys
prepared for from birth. “He had been born and reared in the midst of war,” as Stanley Vestal wrote in Sitting Bull: Champion of the Sioux. “When he was little, his mother had often dressed his baby feet in tiny moccasins before she went to sleep at night, because they might have to run out of the tent and hide if an enemy attacked. He had learned to fear the hoot of the owl, which might signal prowling foes—perhaps Crow Indians—who would cut a small boy to pieces if they caught him. Wounds, and tears, and wild rejoicings, war dances, victory dances, with all their lively pantomime of battle, ambush, and sudden death, were part of his daily life.” Even his uncle had once been left for dead on the battlefield.

  One day, Jumping Badger joined a raiding party along with Four Horns and his father, Returns Again, who by then had taken the name Tatanka Iyotake, or Sitting Bull. It is said that Returns Again communicated with four-legged creatures like others of his own kind. Around the time that Jumping Badger had killed his first buffalo, Returns Again was hunting. His group had camped for the night and a big white buffalo bull appeared at the edge of the fire. It reared up on its haunches, bellowed, and stomped down on his front hooves, four times, and then disappeared into the night. Returns Again explained to the others that the reason the buffalo bellowed four times was to give four names to the tribe, and these names would be given to individuals. The names were Buffalo Bull Sits Down (Sitting Bull), Jumping Bull, One Bull, and Bull Stands with Cow. They were a gift from the buffalo nation, Returns Again said. “From this day forward I will be known as Tatanka Iyotake.”

  The Lakota raiding party found a band of Crows in a valley, along with many horses. They closed in and then charged the camp, surprising their enemies. One of the first to reach the Crow was Jumping Badger, who counted coup—or laid a special coup stick on one of the warriors—using the weapon given to him by Four Horns. It was his first successful wartime contact with the enemy, and Jumping Badger’s father embraced the boy and said, “Today you are a warrior. You are now a man.”

  Later, when the band returned to camp with fine horses taken from the Crow, Tatanka Iyotake offered a feast, and “there was dancing and eating and telling of heroic deeds,” writes LaPointe. “Finally Tatanka Iyotake asked for silence.” He proceeded to recount his son’s accomplishment and then asked warriors to bring horses into the center of camp. By way of Lakota custom, he gave the horses away, honoring his son’s bravery. One last horse he kept, a magnificent bay, and then to his son, he said: “I place this eagle tail feather in your hair as a symbol for your first coup. I give you this fine bay horse, a warrior’s horse, and this shield. May they serve you well.” The shield was round and made of buffalo hide, and there was a black thunderbird in the center. Two semicircles ringed the thunderbird, one red and one black. These were Lakota colors indicating two of the four directions—red for the south, the southern sky, font of warmth and growing, and black for the west, where the sun sets and the day ends, the source of thunder and rain. The boy carried the shield for the rest of his life.

  Tatanka Iyotake then dipped his hand into a pot, withdrew it, and covered his son with black paint. “This is my son,” he said, “and on this day he is no longer naked, for he is a warrior of the Bad Bow band of the Hunkpapa Lakota Nation. From this day forward, I shall be Jumping Bull and this warrior’s name shall be Tatanka Iyotake.” Sitting Bull had taken the stage.

  Later, when he became a superstar, a reporter would mock the name, calling him “Sedentary Taurus.” But apart from certain mountain men and various individuals here and there, the wasichu did not understand the nature of the native alliance with animals, other than the fact that the only way to defeat him was to seize or destroy his ponies, thus dismounting him, and to wipe out the buffalo, the source of his food and shelter. In the passing of the name to the boy, the spirit had entered and the animal’s message would be carried. “The buffalo never turned back, never gave up, kept on going ahead, whatever the danger, whatever the weather,” Stanley Vestal wrote. “In winter, it moved against the wind, even in the bitterest blizzard, seeming to welcome opposition. Once it started, in a given direction, nobody could head it off. It was all endurance, headstrong courage, persistence, and strength.” In other words, it stood its ground, and in fact, it was the ground—it embodied the very earth, patient, calm, carrying us all; when roused, a force that would cast its burdens off without mercy. Over the years, some would note that Sitting Bull himself resembled a buffalo; he had a big head and broad shoulders . . . he carried the Lakota burdens and it showed.

  A year later, another feat would be added to Sitting Bull’s story. A band of Flatheads or Crow, depending on the source, ambushed some Lakota warriors, showering them with arrows and bullets. Sitting Bull “ran the line,” riding between the two armies to become a moving target for arrows and bullets fired by the enemy. At the end of the line, a musket ball hit his left foot, entering at his toes and exiting at the heel. By drawing off fire, he may have saved others. The damage never healed and he walked with a limp for the rest of his life.

  There was a celebration for him later that day, but he could not participate in the victory dance because of his injury. He was given a red eagle feather for his act of bravery. Over the years, there would be many others; each would have entitled him to wear an eagle feather. But he rarely did, preferring just the original two—the first from his coup against the Crow and the second, representing his teenage battle wound. To the end of his years, with a few exceptions (his appearances in the Wild West, for example, in which he wore a full war bonnet), that’s how he was generally pictured.

  In 1851, Sitting Bull married the first of his five wives. Polygamy was common among the Lakota; although Sitting Bull never had five simultaneously, there were times when he had two, one of whom died in childbirth in 1857. Two years later, Sitting Bull’s father was killed during a hunt with Sitting Bull and his band. While moving their camp from the headwaters of the Cannonball River to higher ground called Rainy Butte, they were attacked by a large Crow raiding party. The ambush was mounted with knives, and amid the fighting one of the Crow warriors came face-to-face with Jumping Bull, then sixty-one. Jumping Bull raised his bow, but it was blasted from his hands when the enemy fired his gun. Then the warrior rushed him with a knife. Sitting Bull’s father couldn’t reach his own weapon before the Crow began hacking into his neck and abdomen. Finally, he plunged the knife into the top of Jumping Bull’s head, so forcefully that the blade broke.

  Other members of Sitting Bull’s band ran toward the fight, just as the Crow jumped on his horse and fled. Sitting Bull gave chase and caught the Crow. With his lance, he took the attacker off his horse and dismounted as well. Then he “worked the Crow over with his knife,” Bill Yenne writes in Sitting Bull, “leaving his father’s assailant in a mass of bloody bits.” Other members of the band chased the Crow for miles, killing many. On the run, the Crow left three women and a baby, who were taken captive by the Hunkpapa. Many wanted to kill the prisoners in retribution for the killing of Jumping Bull. But Sitting Bull intervened. It was Jumping Bull’s time to die, he said, and getting rid of his killer was enough. The women and child were returned to the Crow at the end of that summer. Sitting Bull himself commemorated the moment when he avenged his father in his hieroglyphic autobiography, a series of pictographs he made while imprisoned at Fort Randall. Jumping Bull was buried south of Cedar Creek, near the current border between the two Dakotas. Sitting Bull passed his father’s name on to an adopted brother. “According to the way it was described in the oral tradition,” Yenne wrote, “Sitting Bull’s father no longer needed it.”

  As he entered the time of his young manhood, Sitting Bull began to have encounters with animals that have become touchstones in his story. Said to have a remarkable voice, he often sang of these meetings. According to Robert Utley’s biography of Sitting Bull, he was especially absorbed by birds. He imitated their songs and understood what the meadowlarks say. Years later, one came to warn him of his death. He also had
an affinity for wolves. One day while traveling along the Grand River, he came across a wolf that had been wounded by two arrows. “Boy,” cried the wolf, “if you will relieve me, your name shall be great.” Sitting Bull removed the arrows, cleaned and dressed the wounds, and sent the animal on his way. Then he composed a song about the experience: “Alone in the wilderness I roam/With much hardships in the wilderness I roam/A wolf said this to me.” He dedicated the song to the wolf tribe.

  Another oft-told story involves the time that Sitting Bull saved a horse by talking to it with kind words. After his band crossed the Yellowstone River and camped on the north bank, there was a storm and the river was not passable. A young woman became distraught, finding that her favorite riding horse had been left on the other side, where it neighed and pawed the ground. Several volunteers offered to retrieve the horse, but the current was too swift. Sitting Bull walked upstream half a mile and stepped into the river, fighting to get to the other side. Exhausted, he crawled up the banks on the south side and approached the horse. “Grandchild,” he said, “I have been sent to come to your rescue. Do not run away from me. Somebody is waiting for you on the other side.” Then he rested and regained his strength. “Grandchild,” he said again, “do your best to permit me to guide you across. If you and I reach the other side safely, I shall have the tribe make a dance in your honor.” Horse and man plunged into the torrent, with Sitting Bull on the animal’s back. They were carried downriver and safely reached the north bank. Sitting Bull was greeted with songs of praise and later his band performed what came to be known as the Sacred Horse Dance.

  According to Robert Higheagle, who once lived in Sitting Bull’s camp, he was also said to have been a thunder dreamer. “He painted his face with lightning,” he said, and only those who have had that dream could adorn themselves in such fashion. A thunder dreamer would have dreamed of a thunderbird, a raptor that was an eagle or falcon, and such a dream meant that he had power to call up certain weather. Once, Sitting Bull stayed up all night on a hilltop, singing “Against the wind I am coming/Peace pipe I am seeking/Rain I am bringing as I am coming.” Some say that a drought soon ended. Such a power could not be denied—personally or by his tribe—as he told a reporter from the New York Herald who interviewed him in Canada in 1877. It was his first such discussion with a newspaper correspondent, and it was lengthy. Among the various interviews that Sitting Bull would provide, it continues to serve as the most revelatory, offering profound clues as to his very nature—clues that were generally not understood at the time, or simply ignored. “I began to see when I was not yet born,” he said, “when I was not in my mother’s arms, but inside of my mother’s belly. It was there that I began to study about my people . . . I was so interested that I turned over on my side.” He recounted learning about smallpox that was killing his people and he suggested that it was while in the womb that he learned from the Great Mystery that some day he would be a big man.