Sitting Bull

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Sitting Bull by DF Barry ca 1883 original cabinet card
Sitting Bull (1885)

Sitting Bull ( English for "Sitting Bull", actually Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake - " Sitting Bull "; * around 1831 on the Grand River , South Dakota ; † December 15, 1890 in his camp on the Grand River in the Standing Rock Reservation , North Dakota ) was chief and medicine man of the Hunkpapa - Lakota - Sioux . As a primarily spiritual leader, he resisted US government policy for years. After the suppression of the last Indian military uprisings, to which he had contributed significantly, he became known, among other things, through appearances at Wild West shows and campaigned for reconciliation with the former war opponents. In 1883 he is said to have converted to Catholic Christianity, but according to his friend Mary Collins (1846–1920) he remained an ardent opponent of the Church. In 1890, Sitting Bull was shot dead by Indian police while attempting to arrest him.

Childhood and youth

Some sources claim that Sitting Bull was born on the Grand River in 1831. His great-grandson Ernie LaPointe, however, writes in his biography about Sitting Bull that he was born on the Yellowstone River not far from the Black Hills in what is now Montana near Miles City . Sitting Bull was called the Jumping Badger when he was a child. Since he was a very calm boy who acted very carefully and was disciplined, his tribe called him Hunkesni, "who moves slowly". As is common with the Lakota, the young Jumping Badger was raised by his uncle Four Horns, brother of his father Returns Again. His uncle was chief and his father was a medicine man of the Bad Bow group of the Hunkpapa-Lakota, and thus both were respected men.

From a young age, he showed magnanimity and humility, and won the attention of the whole tribe. At the age of ten he shot his first buffalo and at 14, Jumping Badger showed himself to be an intrepid warrior for the first time by achieving his first coup during a raid against the Absarokee (Crow) . After this event, Jumping Badger received his name "Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake" (Sitting Bull) from his father, who had adopted the name years earlier after a vision and from then on called himself Jumping Bull. In another bout against the Crow years later, a bullet wounded Sitting Bull's left foot. This wound never healed properly and he limped to the end of his life. However, the limp did not hinder him as a warrior and hunter and in the following years he scored 69 coups in battles against neighboring tribes such as the Crow, Flathead or Assiniboine . Sitting Bull became a member and later leader of the Hunkpapa's most prestigious warrior society, the Strong Heart Society.

Life

Sitting Bull was an important leader of the Sioux Indians and forced their resistance at the end of the 19th century against the conquest of American settlers and their military support. He was a medicine man and also one of the most powerful Sioux war chiefs. In the latter role he became world famous, especially through his work at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.

In addition to him, other war chiefs, such as Crazy Horse and Big Foot, were also involved in the strategic battle . They led the warriors of the tribes of Sioux , Cheyenne and Arapaho , who united to defeat the 7th Cavalry Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer on the Little Big Horn. This, and the death of Custer, was the US Army's greatest defeat during the Indian Wars .

Sitting Bull did not take part in the actual battle as an active fighter, but only acted as a holy man in advance . For example, a few days earlier he initiated the festivities for the sun dance, from which the warriors participating in the battle are said to have drawn their combat readiness.

When the US Army carried out concentrated punitive expeditions against him and his people in response, he fled to Canada with about 2,000 to 3,000 henchmen and remained there in exile until he returned voluntarily and surrendered at Fort Randall on July 19, 1881 . The livelihood of his nomadic culture , which was closely connected with buffalo hunting, had been destroyed by the whites by exterminating the buffalo . He then lived on the Standing Rock reservation . In 1883, Sitting Bull gave an important speech to representatives of a US government commission.

In 1885 he took part in the Wild West Show by Buffalo Bill in the United States and Canada as an extra. He was unaware that it was just a show because of a lack of English and false pretenses. Rather, he believed that in this way (he gave speeches in Lakota ) he could clear up the crimes of whites against the Indians, and hoped that this would lead to a rethink. He declined to take part in Buffalo Bill's European tour in 1887.

The murder of Sitting Bull: Image of the Oglala Amos Bad Heart Bull

The American authorities, and specifically the Indian agent James McLaughlin, continued to regard Sitting Bull as a troublemaker because he criticized the further downsizing of the reservation and the lack of contractually guaranteed food and materials. In addition, he stuck to the Indian way of life and instructed his fellow tribes as a role model. The American press basically portrayed Sitting Bull as a hostile Indian who was a troublemaker and who embodied everything that the whites disliked about the Indians. Large parts of the public, but especially the military, held the battle of Little Bighorn against him as an offense throughout his life . They judged his actions at the time to be malicious, devious and murderous. At that time he was joined by Indian rights activist and civil rights activist Caroline Weldon from Brooklyn , New York , who assisted him as a mouthpiece, secretary, interpreter and lawyer. She moved to Sitting Bull's camp on the Grand River with her young son Christy in 1889 and shared a house and hearth with him and his family.

When he was promoting the ghost dance movement among his supporters again, he was supposed to be arrested by the Indian reservation police. The Lakota historian John Okute Sica writes about the assassination of Sitting Bull, based on tribal lore, “the ingenious plan for this” was devised “by the Indian commissioner McLaughlin, who would later write the book 'My friend, the Indian' ... Even stranger that it was a tribal comrade who murdered him. ” This was Lieutenant Bull Head, the chief of the tribal police. “The lieutenant drew his revolver, pressed it into Sitting Bull's side, and pulled the trigger. The chief sank to the ground. A second shot was fired. This happened so quickly after the first that the two were almost indistinguishable. The lieutenant fell fatally to the ground. " According to John Okute Sica, it is likely that Seizing Bear shot the murderer of Sitting Bull immediately afterwards. According to Robert M. Utley, a second shot struck Sitting Bull, which was fired by the Red Tomahawk tribal policeman.

Family relationships

1881: Front center Sitting Bull; back left / right sister Good Feather Woman / daughter Walks Looking, front left / right mother Her Holy Door / daughter Many Horses with son Courting a Woman
  • Parents:
  1. Father: Returns Again / Sitting Bull I (approx. 1801–1859)
  2. Mother: Her-Holy-Door (1808–1884), Arikara / Ree (?)
  • Siblings:
  1. Good Feather Woman / Wiyaka Wastewiŋ (1827–1886?)
  2. Twin Woman & Brown Shawl Woman (twins, ca.1838–1871?)
  3. Fool Dog (half-brother, Ree-Hunkpapa)
  • Wives:
  1. Light Hair (1833-1857) 0
  2. Snow-On-her (1840–?) & Red Woman (1840–1871)
  3. Four Robes (1848–1929) & Seen-By-Her-Nation (1837–1897 / sisters)
  • Children:
  1. One Bull (actually nephew, after Ernie LaPointe (grandson) traitor to Sitting Bull at his death, approx. 1853–1923)
  2. Many Horses (daughter, 1865–1897)
  3. Walks Looking (adopted daughter, 1868–1887)
  4. Lodge In Sight (daughter, 1876–1898)
  5. Runs-Away-From / William / Theodore (Twins ?, 1879–1909)
  6. Crow Foot (son, 1875-1890)
  7. Standing Holy / Mary Sitting Bull (daughter, 1878–1927)
  8. two step-sons and other children who died early

filming

Commemoration

While he had been perceived as a troublemaker and enemy among the white American population, his judgment changed over the years. Sitting Bull slowly became a symbolic figure and resistance fighter against the annihilation and disenfranchisement of the Native Americans. In 1989 the United States Postal Service brought out a series of the great Americans and Sitting Bull graced it with the 28 ¢ stamp. In 1996 Standing Rock College was renamed Sitting Bull College.

literature

  • Erik Lorenz , Claudia Lieb: The story of Sitting Bull. Palisander Verlag, Chemnitz 2016, ISBN 978-3-938305-95-9 . (illustrated narrative biography)
  • Dee Brown : Bury my heart at the bend of the river (Original title: Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee , translated by Helmut Degner). Anaconda, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-86647-836-7 . (License from Hoffmann-und-Campe-Verlag Hamburg 1972, ISBN 3-455-00720-1 )
  • Kurt von Zydowitz: The Indians in the USA - yesterday, today, tomorrow. Verlag Mein Standpunkt, Westerstede 1977, ISBN 3-921410-11-8 .
  • Bill Yenne: Sitting Bull. Westholme 2008, ISBN 978-1-59416-060-8 . (English)
  • Ernie LaPointe: Sitting Bull. His life and legacy (Original title: Sitting Bull , translated by Martin Krueger), 3rd edition. Dream catcher, Hohenthann-Schönau 2013, ISBN 978-3-941485-07-5 .
  • Ernie LaPointe: Sitting Bull: His Life and Legacy. Gibbs Smith Pub, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4236-0556-0 . (English)
  • Nina Schindler: Who was Sitting Bull? Publishing house Jacoby & Stuart, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-941087-43-9 .
  • James McLaughlin: My Friend the Indian. Riverside Press, Cambridge, MA 1910, ISBN 978-1-4286-3924-9 . (English)
  • Eileen Pollack: Woman Walking Ahead: In Search of Catherine Weldon and Sitting Bull . New Mexico University Press, Albuquerque 2002, ISBN 0-8263-2844-X . (English)
  • Heather Cox Richardson: Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre. Basic Books, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-465-02511-4 . (English)
  • Norman E Matteoni: Prairie Man: The Struggle between Sitting Bull and Indian Agent James McLaughlin . Guilford CT 2015, ISBN 978-1-4422-4475-7 . (English)
  • Stanley Vestal : Sitting Bull. Champion of the Sioux. Published by University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1957.
  • Manual Menrath: Mission Sitting Bull. The History of the Catholic Sioux. Schöningh, Paderborn 2016, ISBN 978-3-506-78379-0 .

Web links

Commons : Sitting Bull  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Around the Earth. A red Napoleon (1882)  - by Rudolf Cronau

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Frederick Whittaker: A Complete Life of General Custer. Volume 2: From Appomattox to the Little Big Horn. 1993, ISBN 0-8032-4767-2 , p. 535.
  2. ^ Sitting Bull becomes a Catholic. In: New York Times. April 13, 1883, Retrieved April 11, 2011 .
  3. ^ Jorge Soley: La historia de los EEUUcomo jamás te la habían contado. Barcelona 2015, p. 176.
  4. ↑ Jeffrey Ostler: The Plains Sioux and US Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee . Cambridge University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-521-60590-3 , pp. 192-193 ( google.com ).
  5. ↑ Ernie LaPointe, Rudy Ramos: Sitting Bull, His Life and Legacy . 3. Edition. TraumFänger-Verlag, Hohenthann 2013, ISBN 978-3-941485-20-4 .
  6. ↑ John Okute Sica: The Man They Called Seizing Bear (Sitting Bull's End). In: The paper, 13th year. October 11, 2010, accessed September 3, 2018 .
  7. ^ Utley, Robert M. (2004). The Last Days of the Sioux Nation, 2nd Edition. Yale University Press. p. 160.
  8. ↑ filmstarts.de
  9. ↑ United States Postal Service, Postal History Website
personal data
SURNAME Sitting Bull
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake; Tatanka Iyotanka
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian tribal chief and medicine man of the Hunkpapa-Lakota-Sioux
DATE OF BIRTH around 1831
PLACE OF BIRTH on the Grand River , South Dakota , United States
DATE OF DEATH December 15, 1890
Place of death on the Grand River , Standing Rock Reservation , North Dakota , United States