By Lorna Thackeray
Webmaster's Note: This article appeared in the
February 22, 2007 issue of the "Billings Gazette."
Sitting Bull's four surviving great-grandchildren want the bones of their
famous ancestor moved from a cement-clad grave in South Dakota to Little Bighorn
Battlefield in Montana.
Ernie LaPointe of Lead, S.D., the spokesman for the family, said that for 50
years, Sitting Bull's grave on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation near
Mobridge, S.D., has been neglected and dishonored. Now, LaPointe says, new
owners of the property plan to exploit the legendary Lakota political and
spiritual leader's memory.
LaPointe and his sisters, Marlene Little Spotted Horse Andersen, Ethel Little
Spotted Horse Bates and Lydia Little Spotted Horse Red Paint, sent letters
Wednesday advising government and tribal officials in the Dakotas and Montana of
their intent to have the remains moved.
"This is to notify you and other interested parties of family right and
authority to re-inter our Great-Grandfather Sitting Bull to Little Bighorn
Battlefield National Monument, Montana," it says. "We do this because North
Dakota, South Dakota and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe have not honored their
promise for proper care and maintenance of our Grandfather's burial site."
Darrell Cook, superintendent at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument,
said the battlefield has agreed to help LaPointe and his sisters.
"We recognize Sitting Bull's legacy and that it is at the Little Bighorn," Cook
said.
Sitting Bull led an alliance of Sioux, Cheyenne and others in defiance of
government orders to settle on reservations. His struggle culminated in a
resounding defeat of the 7th Cavalry at Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876.
The National Park Service and Sitting Bull's direct descendants have a
long-established working relationship that dates to planning for the new Indian
Memorial at the Battlefield, Cook said.
"I think that's why they felt comfortable coming to us about this," he said.
Before a final decision is reached on placing the remains at the battlefield,
Cook said, the National Park Service will probably order an environmental
assessment, so the public will have a chance to comment.
The catalyst for the great-grandchildren's decision apparently was a proposal by
the nonprofit Sitting Bull Monument Foundation, which recently purchased the
grave site from a private owner. According to its Web site, the foundation's
plans include preservation and protection of the grave site and development of
an educational and cultural center and museum. It would also include a
riverfront recreational development, amphitheater, snack bar, restaurant and
gift shop.
The foundation has already completed a major cleanup at the grave site and has
installed electricity and lighting.
LaPointe said he and his sisters were not consulted about the plans and don't
want to see a restaurant and gift shops at the grave site.
Reached by telephone Wednesday morning, Bryan Defender, a member of the Standing
Rock Tribe and one of the founders of the Sitting Bull Monument Foundation, said
commercialization was never his intent.
"Our motivation behind this is very sincere," he said. "The development is a
very positive thing. The only thing I want to do is display our culture, our
history in an authentic, positive way and to pay tribute to a leader who has
never been properly paid tribute."
He agreed that until 2005, when he and Rhett Albers bought the land where
Sitting Bull rests, the grave had been neglected. But the foundation has cleaned
it up and is raising money for a $12 million complex to honor Sitting Bull and
the Lakota heritage, Defender said.
"I'd like to call him (LaPointe) and talk to him about this," he said. "I would
absolutely have to take a look at it."
LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, tourism director for Standing Rock, said Wednesday
that she had not heard about LaPointe's letter. Her first reaction to hearing of
his plan: "I don't think that's possible."
She said that although LaPointe has rights, he is not enrolled at Standing Rock
and she doesn't know what rights he has on reservation lands. That would be a
matter for the tribal chairman to comment, Allard said. He was spending the day
with Sen. Byron Dorgan, D.-N.D., and was unavailable Wednesday, she said.
The tribe had been working with the foundation on new signs for both the
Mobridge grave site and the original burial site at Fort Yates in North Dakota,
she said. North Dakota, which had owned the Fort Yates site since 1956, turned
it over to the tribe earlier this year.
"Finally we got both sites in our ownership," she said. "There are a lot of
plans for both sites."
Those plans include better roads, signs and landscaping, she said. The tribe is
just waiting for the snow to melt to begin.
The tribe's motivation was in showing respect, not in commercialization, she
said.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
If Sitting Bull's remains are moved, it won't be the first time. After his death
in 1890 in a shootout with Indian police at his home on the Grand River, Sitting
Bull's body was buried at Fort Yates on the North Dakota end of the Standing
Rock Sioux Reservation.
LaPointe said his mother and her two sisters agreed that Sitting Bull's remains
should be removed to a site near Mobridge on the South Dakota end of the
reservation in 1953 after they were promised that the new grave would be
maintained in perpetuity. They were also promised that it would not be
commercialized.
Everything that has happened in the past 54 years has been a violation of an
agreement signed "under duress" by his mother, Angeline Spotted Horse LaPointe,
LaPointe said. She wanted Sitting Bull's remains removed from the Standing Rock
Reservation, he said.
"She said they stood with the killers of her grandfather," LaPointe explained.
Mrs. LaPointe acquiesced reluctantly to the wishes of a sister and a cousin who
had obtained pledges from the Dakota Memorial Association that Sitting Bull's
remains would be cared for and honored. The association was formed by people in
Mobridge solely for that purpose. It appears that the organization no longer
exists.
Mrs. LaPointe was born to Sitting Bull's youngest daughter, Standing Holy. After
his death, Sitting Bull's relatives and followers fled, but they were brought
back to Standing Rock and held there under protective custody. In the summer of
1891, Sitting Bull's immediate family and about 300 others left Standing Rock
and followed the Cheyenne River to the Badlands. They laid low for three years,
disappearing into the rough country when any authorities from the agency
arrived, LaPointe said. Then the Indian agent at the Pine Ridge Reservation in
southwestern South Dakota arranged to have the family enrolled there.
"We don't want to break any rules or laws," LaPointe said in a telephone
interview. "But we are his closest relatives, and we have the main say in what
is done with our grandfather."
He said he sees no impediment to removing the remains to Little Bighorn, where
the grave will be honored and maintained in perpetuity.
"This is our mother's wish," LaPointe said. "We don't have to ask permission
from nobody."
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Sitting Bull died Dec. 15, 1890, when Indian police were sent to arrest him.
Authorities thought he was involved in a Ghost Dance movement spreading across
Indian Country. The movement invoked a desperate dream of a messiah who would
bring back the buffalo, drive out the white intruders and allow Indians to live
as they had for thousands of years. They feared he would be a rallying point for
malcontents, and they wanted him removed.
Sitting Bull refused to go with the Indian police and one of his supporters
fired, downing a policeman. In the melee that followed, 14 people were killed or
mortally wounded.
The old warrior and holy man was hurriedly buried at Fort Yates, now
headquarters of the Standing Rock Reservation. His remains have been the subject
of dispute ever since. Despite assurances from the medical examiner, rumors
circulated almost immediately that he was never buried there. Others insisted
that Sitting Bull's followers dug up the remains and reburied them in a secret
location in Canada.
Sitting Bull did not rest peacefully in his grave. When Fort Yates was abandoned
in 1903, his grave was the only one left behind. It was poorly marked and
maintained and rarely visited.
In 1953, a group from Mobridge, apparently interested in Sitting Bull's tourism
potential, decided he should be removed from the Fort Yates burial site on the
North Dakota side of the Standing Rock Reservation to a site near Mobridge on
the South Dakota side. When North Dakota objected, the South Dakota group got
the support of Sitting Bull's three granddaughters to dig up the body in the
middle of the night and move it to Mobridge.
North Dakota officials later claimed that the Mobridge group got only a few
bones and that they were not necessarily those of Sitting Bull. They also argued
that Sitting Bull had already become part of the Fort Yates soil where he had
been buried and would remain there forever.
When the Mobridge group dug up the bones, they were placed in a steel vault,
moved to the Mobridge grave and covered with 20 tons of cement that day. Korczak
Ziolkowski, who was in the early stages of carving the Crazy Horse Memorial in
the Black Hills, sculpted a likeness of the chief to stand over the grave.
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