The Next Day : Arrival to Dawes (Part 2)

[ Music ] >> Hi, we're Doug Yeppie. Welcome back to Episode 3, Part 2, of Wa Ma Khaogana Kei Chanti, the heart of all oral history project. Brought to you by Little One School and generously funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. For more information about the project, visit www.heartofallohp.com. We will now pick up where we left off. >> The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty shut down the Boseman Shell and Montana as well as the forts that had been built beside it. Right cloud waited to sign it into all the forts were burned down seven months after the treaty had been negotiated and in his war against the US government. >> As discussed already, the treaty also set apart for the absolute and undisturbed use in occupation. The Great Sue Reservation, which included the western half of what is now South Dakota, including Casalpa, the Black Hills. It also stated that no more land could be taken by the US government without support of 75% of adult male tribal members. This is Richard Moosecap and Marcel Bober. >> Just like we said earlier, people without values came by searching for gold and they found gold. So that changed the whole direction that took the Indian away from that area and they started prospecting. People came from all over the duck for gold. >> Custard's expedition illegally came into the Black Hills without permission from the Lakota to explore. And when they came in, they just took off into different parts of the Black Hills and they found gold up there in the deadwood area and lead. The other places, there was no gold. >> Probably discovered gold at the 1870s and all the agreements that made sort of went in the waste basket, all the settlers and the prospectors and white people start rushing into the Black Hills while directions and soldiers claim that they have a hard time keeping everybody up. >> And then they raided some of the graveyards. >> Uh-huh, man, there's some horrendous pictures of Calvary men all standing on top of their horse, pulling a skull off of a scaffold. >> Yeah, can you imagine, Greg Roblin was big thing at that time. There's no stories about it, but people knew that things were going to take that turn. And the supernatural was stronger. So, '68, you go over from there to the 1877 act where half of the state of South Dakota was in the Indian country, but they took half of the land from North Dakota to Nebraska. They took the Black Hills legally just for the gold. So, we knew that we're going to start having a hard time. It's going to get tough. >> The suits are relocated to the present day, reservations now, and the fight to begin over the Black Hills around 1880s. Lethigations and all that, it's still standing today, you know, with the claim that that's our land. You're solid, and the government agreed in their courts, but they're willing to pay for it instead of giving it that. So, that's the argument that we have today. [ Music ] >> In 1874, George Custer had received orders to explore Hesalpa with his Simmons Calvary. He brought 1,000 soldiers, 110 wagons, 70 Indian scouts, four journalists, and two minors. >> When they left Fort Lincoln on July 2, they played Custer's favorite song. The same song he had played in the early dawn before the Washington massacre. Some say he also had this Irish drinking song play the last time he left the four on his way to the greasy grass. >> Upon arrival in Hesalpa on July 18, Custer wrote his wife, "We have discovered a rich and beautiful country. On July 27, the two minors in the expedition began to pan for gold." >> On August 2, Custer reports to the New York Times that they had discovered gold right from the grassroots. On August 10, the headline of the New York Times is the discovery of the new gold country. >> In this next longer segment, Ernie La Point talks about his great-grandfather sitting bull and the events leading up to the battle of the greasy grass as well as the battle itself. Sitting bull is not really his name. You know, it's not, you know, La Courtais, if he translate it, right? It's called a Buffalo Bull who sits down. It's not sitting bull. He was a caretaker, a provider, a spokesperson for his people. You know, he wasn't looking for trouble. You know, he was always just a protector of the people and a great hunter. And he has 60 -- I think it was 66 clues. On -- you know, if you -- if you tied it to a -- if you made it up a pochta out of your head, or it's out of your -- what code is the ground? These are the clues he had. You -- because you're -- you're adversarial with a little stick, a little stick that's curved. Or if you didn't have that, you whacked him with your face to something. And if some of your trouble members -- there's mail-tower messages. You get to where you go for the shape of your hair. Because you touch the adversary and then you live. You did not want to kill your adversary for his people or his family to mourn at your head. This is -- this is not the way La Courta was taught. But when the Americans first came into this area, that's what they did. They started killing. He was a humble man. So he only wore one eagle feather in his hair. And then he got wounded once. He drew blood. So he became a -- a part of the red feather society. You know, that's when you'd die. Eagle feather red and they were dead in his hair. So he always -- sometimes there were two feathers. You know, one straight up and one dyed red, slightly -- slightly to the right. The -- the main one standing up. Another thing was he was a poorest man in the whole camp. Because he gave away everything with somebody needed it. You know, somebody needed clothes. He gave it to him horses, teepees. You know, and he took care of the people in this context. And -- and he was mostly a spokesperson for the La Courta people. That's what led up to the little big one. Battle, you know, was the encroachment of the Black Hills of 1874. And they discovered goals here. Where we lived and lived. You know, where homestead goal mine was. So he wanted to have counsel with all the natives and find out how they can deal with this without having to, you know, and go as extremes. So the word was odd. And he always said, in him days, the carriers or the messengers were not faster than the Internet or telephones or even telegrams. [ Laughs ] Because the word went out to all the times. And these are the ones, at that time, in 1874, they had established all these agencies, you know, like Red Cloud agencies, Standing Rock, and even Fort Robinson. They had these little agencies with -- they called them the hangar on the fort guys, you know. They hung around and took handouts from the white men. But there were others who didn't really want to become loafers as they come or hang around the fort. And they still, you know, camped away from the fort a little bit. Well, they got word of that. My great grandfather was willing to have counsel with all people so they all started coming. And he was camped up there. There's a little town in Montana along the Yellowstone River called Carter's Hill. And just south of Carter's Hill, maybe about five, six miles. There was an interstate in '94, you cross interstate '94 and south of there, literally, was where his camp was. It was closer to the tone river and Roosevelt, you know, because it's all right there. And he was camped there. And he was inviting all these people to show up. And you were showing up. And they were coming there. He went across to Yellowstone River to a big bridge up there. He did a whole bunch of there. And during this humblitzer, he was shown to do a Sundance. And what the vision was was they showed him the face of a rock. Of running at boat that hit his rock, he just left the blue streak in a place of his rock. And he didn't know what this was. So he came back when he came back to cross out for his humblitzer, because he humblitzered himself. This is where all in the business. You didn't have to have helpers. You didn't have to have all these people. But you know, you did it by yourself. So when you came back to camp, the camp had grown a little bit. You know, there's a couple of hundred people there. So when he came back, the people, some of the people who showed up were Chiant, Chahilas, you know, they were, so they went there, he did the same one about him, tell him about his vision. And when you told him about this romp face of this blue lightning that had spelt, you know, image on it, the Chiant elders told him, they said, "You know where this place is, Chahilas is, you follow the rose, but soft decision will break off to the right, a little bit he says, and it's there, so it will show you. So it took them a few days of, you know, moving the camp, and it got down to there and on not that, but they called it Dear Medicine Rocks. It's just, was it north, east of the Chiant, northern Chiant reservation, when the present day now? But so, they took him over and he's seen this rock piece with this, with his lightning bolt hit it, so that he was instructed to do the sundaster, so he did a sundaster and which is him and his, his adopted, his own god brother and a singer he had and he did a sundaster and on the third day of his sundaster he had a vision of soldiers falling to camp. In his region he had no ears and his spirit told him, "Are you released because they have no ears?" And that's when he told him, you know, just, you know, you could take a mile he says, but do not take the spoils, in other words, don't take the clothes or horses or anything, nothing, just leave them as they lay. So after he came, came out of there, he told the people his vision and he also had an often 200 pieces of flesh, 50 out of each arm for this vision. So when he did this, I was a couple of days later, I think maybe a week later crew could come up to the Rosebud and that's where they caused the Rosebud, Battle of Rosebud. My crazy horse was there and he went after him with his group of warriors, there weren't that many of them, but they made crew, looked like he was, there were guerrilla fighters on horseback, and you know, if you know what crew look like he is and be at NOM, you could encounter them. That'd be like 20, 30 guys, and they hit you in six strategic areas, and you think there is a whole brigade out there on a battalion of soldiers out there, I mean they knew how to hit you and get out there. And you know, after you call our teller in their strikes and you go out and you might find one dead body or even none, you might find some blood trails. And you wonder man, you know, sound like there was about 1,000 guys out there was actually only 23 guys, that's a crazy horse, did it with crew, crew's column was halted and he retreated because he thought there was a bunch of them there. And this artist was the victory, but my grandfather said no, that's not it. And by this time there were more horses than people and he had eight up all the grass and people were running low on food so they sent out scouts to find some games so they can go hunt. And some scouts came back from the west and said along the greasy grass, they said there is a big hurdle of antelope, they said, you know, so we can go, so the whole camp moved up and they moved to the greasy grass, which is a little big one river, and they camped on the west side of it, you know, and they went on a hunt and they all feasted on antelope. People kept arriving, they didn't come in tribes, they came as individuals, you know, might be a family with five, six horses, you know, because the more horses you had, the more wealthy you looked like you had, you know, that's why you go on a res night, you see a house of 50 cars parked on it. You know, wheels on them, you know, you know, we would nothing but just ride, I mean, that's your horse, right? Well, these guys had horses, you know, these people had all these horses, so there was probably, after, I mean, they didn't even, you would do a head count, but estimation was probably around, anyone from 12 to 1500 people, they weren't all men, they were all, you know, families, you know, women, children, and men, young men, they're older men, they're older, and they were going to have counsel on how to deal with the, what's the importance of black girls, you know, and in the meantime, here comes Custard, and you know, he broke his men up in three columns, and the first column was Reno, he attacked the Southern camp, and all the Lakota young warriors they went after him and repelled his attack, well, Custard himself was going to come in from the north, so he came around the east and edge of the mountains, there's the hills there, and he came up with a called deep ravine, and at this time, the northern part, which was, where this place was, where the deep ravine thing was, but across, on the west side of the little big one river, they had set up all these corals, and everybody's horses were in there, you know, and they had these young guys, you know, teenagers over there, you know, making sure that the horses didn't run, or, you know, fat and watered and everything, they were like the caretakers of the horses, so they were out there, and these were the McGrann uncles, they told us these stories, you know, they were one of McGrann uncles, and he was a little soldier, and the other one was a, while the Buffalo Bill Cody gave him the name John Cillingbow, but his name wasn't John Cilling, his name was Refuses them, because he was a deaf mute, he couldn't talk, and these were McGrann father's step sons, each one, you know, he married two sisters, he married my great-grandmother and her sister, and each one of them, when he married him, had a son, you know, little soldier was a four-year-old son and seen by our nation, which is McGrann mother, her son was Refuses them, which is a deaf mute, and then a couple other young men were there, you know, the Rodney horses, and all of a sudden, they heard these battle going on south, you know, the popping, like five miles down the, five, six miles south along the river, because the camp was off-strung out along the trees there, and then we're, as like the historians say, camp is so gallows here, the main causes here, moh-pappas here, and all this, I think the bigger group of the same tribe was the moh-pappas, of great-grandfather's people, I mean, there weren't that many of them, but, you know, there were, in the southern end of the camp, and then from there, they had chions, or apopholes, and other people, you know, like, you come into the area, and you see somebody that you know, maybe a man who called you, you know, gala, or something, and they say, "Hey, come camp here," so they put you, keep you next to 'em, 'cause you know 'em, you know, and, see, that's how it was, you know, so, and it was no 25,000 warriors either, it was like, estimated, my grand uncles, they were probably about six, maybe 700, 700 men, a fighting age, in other words, I was there, and they looked up, and you see this column of soldiers, four, four abreasts coming down, and they looked like, you know, there was a whole line on behind them, a column behind them, and they screamed out, there's soldiers coming, so they grabbed their weapons, and they started shooting, and they didn't have much weapons, 'cause they weren't, they'd prepared to engage anybody up here, and all of a sudden, they said, "Somebody started shooting from the tree lander, with the bunches to leverage action that way, you know, you could hear," he said, and he said, "They shot two of 'em off the horse, you know, in front column there, one fell, and another one fell," and he said, "The next move went so long, grabbed one of 'em, put 'em back on these horses, and he said, "That's when the route happened," he said, "They just broke apart, and they started to hit the top of the hill," and he said, "It was like an instant, here comes warriors from all directions, you know, men on horses, and they, they engage them," and he left one there, and at the edge of the, at the end of the deep ravine there, next to the little big one, one of 'em, guys who shot off these horses, but the other one they picked up, and they took him up, and they didn't know who those column soldiers were, he said, "So they, they were trying to get themselves prepared, you know, join the battle, and here comes the young man," he said, "He's probably about 18, 19 years old, he had three horses in the crowd there, one of 'em was his war point," so he went, he already had him painted up, you know, he grabbed him, pulled him out there, and the gunfire was going off, he said, "And the horse was getting all spooked," so he let my uncle, my grand uncle hold, he said, "Hero, his weapons," and he got on the horse, he said, "The horse bug a little bit," he said, "He was like cowboy that permitted," he said, and he combed it down, he got his weapons, and he crossed the river, and he said, "The battle was over," he said, "This is how fast it went," and he said, "Oh, my other grand uncle, little soldier," he got all teary eyed, missed the eyed, he said, "Watch when the soldiers get off his horse, take off his side arm, and shoot the horse he rode in on, kill it, use it as a berkage," and he said, "That man knew he wouldn't see that son," he said, "He said, "This was the last act of desperation of survival," he said, "If there were to be the leaders," he said, "How was he going to leave here?" he said, "He killed the thing that brought him." And he said, "It's kind of sad," he said, "These were men who just went into panic mode. And he said afterwards they were going through the camp, I mean, to the bath, the, these, the phone, it was custard. You see a cut his hair short, he wasn't wearing his, his buckskin jacket. So this is what again, they picked him as a, you know, the last guy on the hill with two guns blazing. And he found out that he was the guy that they shot off his horse to be at the beginning of the battle. So he was really not be hero like they made him, made him have, you know, and because when they found him laying there, they found a bullet hole in his chest, and then he had one in his temple. Either he committed suicide or his brother Boston custer took him out, being when he captured. But the women put sewing all was done his ears to, you know, shine women. Because, you know, he had no ears. And then he took two wings and stuck it up his penis because he raped a lot of them at the Washington when, in Oklahoma when he attacked them. And they said custer was not an honorable person. This is what, what, you know, what, what our story is. In actual reality, there's probably about three, maybe four hundred natives died there. One of the radicals said he said some of these guys could using guns because in close combat, they shot a soldier, the bullet went through and hit a crocodile or somebody on the other side and kills him too. So they could using the guns and use what they call the head smashers, you know, the stone clubs, it smashed their heads. But then he said they took all the bodies and they moved them somewhere else. A way from there. But, you know, these are the things that, again, I was talking about is my great-grandfather's journey and what he was, you know, what he did. After that battle, he was up on top of that bridge with that big monumentism. He killed his pipe. He prayed for his people who died. But he also prayed for custening his men. He said that they were, that they, he prayed that their souls make it to the spiritual world because they didn't, no matter they came to annihilate him, they still were human beings like us. And so that's a difference between how the thinking of the Americans on how he was thinking. You know, he didn't despise or hate. You know, he knew there were human beings too, but they were leading the world, this country offering a different tangent, you know, up a spiritual way of the lack of the Lakota. At the conclusion of this battle in June 25th, 1876, I said there was winners and there were losers. And, you know, the winners were given a message from the spirit world that there's going to be some soldiers falling in the camp with no years. And this was my great grandfather's vision. But I said, you know, they didn't follow the vision to the end. I said, maybe things would have been different if they did. In the vision, they say, don't scalp them. Don't take the clothes, don't take the food, don't take the horse, you don't take any sleep, live as they are. It defeated them and they didn't do that. So we had to go through the pains of what these ancestors, the soldiers did. You know, eventually we ended up on reservations and all this stuff. And they tried to assimilate us into, you know, kill the Indians, save the man theory, you know. So these are the messages that was given to me through the ceremony to share with these younger people to discover who they are. The school that we attend is now called Liduun. It was previously called Kyle Day School and has an interesting history. But we will get to that in the next episode when we discuss boarding schools, along with the Wundending Massacre, the Badlands bombing range, and many other things facing Lakota in the years to come. Liduun School gets its name from Thaipi Chikala, also known as Chief Liduun, who lived between about 1828 and 1899. He wrote this letter to Valentine McGillicuddy, the Indian agent at the Pioneer's Agency, starting in 1879. This is Stella Iron Cloud. "Father," he said, "I want to tell you something about that line. Myself and my band lived many winters ago on the flat river over by Fort Laramie, Wyoming. We were not interfering with anyone or causing any trouble. One day, a number of white men came along carrying a spyglass set up on three sticks. They looked across the country and began putting little stakes into the ground. Then they put up some posts. Then I was called for a counsel with the agent who said, "I and my people were not on the reservation, and we must pull down our lodges and move our camp." They took us about a two-days ride to the northeast to the White River. We set up our village near Fort Robinson, and we lived there several winters, not interfering with anyone or making any trouble. Then one day, some white men came with a spyglass on three sticks and began looking over the country, seeing as the other white men. They drive stakes and set up posts, and again, we were told that we were off the reservation. We were in Nebraska, they said, and they moved us down to the Missouri River. One winter ago, they sent us here, and we thought we should have a rest. That this was to be our home as long as we lived. We are getting along nicely. We have been happy here. But again, the white men have come with the spyglass, and now you tell us we are off the reservation. Father, we are getting tired of this. We should like to settle down and never move again. But before we pull down our lodges, I want to ask you a question. When the great father puts a boundaries around the Enderland Reservation, why doesn't he take a range of mountains or a river, which the great spirit makes the country with, and which never moves? These stakes that the white men puts up all the time, rotting away, and when he puts them back, he never puts them in the same place. They always move closer to the Indian and cut off some of his land. Where shall we move now, father? U.S. Congress responded to the Seventh Calvary's defeat in a way that would certainly heart the Lakota, and would probably have made Custer a happy man had he survived the greasy grass. Similar to 1871, the 1876 Indian Appropriations Act added another writer that would undermine Indigenous tribes. This time, the Lakota specifically. The writers stated that until the Lakota signed an agreement to sell Hisapa to the U.S. government, all rations promised by the 1868 Fort Lamy Treaty would be withheld. The Lakota called this the Sell or Starve writer. The next year, Congress attached another writer to the 1877 Indian Appropriations Bill that changed the reservation boundaries established in the 1868 Fort Lamy Treaty. This time excluding Hisapa. This act effectively altered a treaty, which only 100 years before had been declared the supreme law of the land within the U.S. Constitution. More importantly, it took the sacred Hisapa from the Lakota. While boundaries were being changed, the U.S. government altered the order of the Great Sue Reservation by Executive Order in 1882, adding 50 square miles of land just south of Pine Ridge Village. The current reservation boundaries would not be established until 1889. In this next segment, Stella Ironcloud, John Haas, and Jimmy Christensen explained the white clay extension, otherwise known as the strip. Have you ever heard of this strip? All the people like coming up from the half-breed reservation, the Nimoana half-breed reservation, they're all along that strip there. If this was the Pine Ridge Reservation, the law said that only full-blood Indians could be on the reservation. That included French fur trappers who married Lakota women, they couldn't go on it. So they made an extension onto the reservation for white clay as in it's like five miles by ten miles. That's where the non-Indians could live. Including half-breeds. Half-breeds couldn't even live on the reservation. Every time the government or somebody discovered gold or a good farmland or something, then they moved the Indians out again. So that happened in La Porte, Colorado. You know where that is, right? Well, it's now like where Fort Collins was. There was this nice little half-breed town there way back before they discovered gold. in the Rocky Mountains, then the government said you got to go. All you people get out of here. - Well, where can they go? 'Cause they got kicked out of Colorado, 'cause a sand creek massacre, all the Indians went towards north of Denver. Well, they kicked them out of there. And so they were coming up here and they said, "No, you can't go there." 'Cause that reservation is just for full blood Indians. - They all were married to Native women and they all had a bunch of half-breed children. And so they were concerned about where in the world were their children gonna go. All the people from all four are me, from Wyoming down to Denver, all of the white men, or non-Native men, or half French men, or whatever wrote this treaty that they wanted land for their children. Which at that point in time, numbered two to three thousand half-breed children. - The law said the half-breeds were called mongrels. The non-Indian and his school wife and their mongrel kids. - Mongrel kids, yeah. - That was a law. And so that's why it's still called extension over there. There's a cemetery and there's a little elementary school. That's the name of that place, extension. - Surely after the reservation began when they were forced to live on a reservation, they weren't allowed to have like bootlegers on the reservation, but they call these areas they were called whiskey ranches. Most of them were the white ranchers that lived nearby the reservation. They were between like Rushfield and Gordon, a group of people. I don't know how many they would sell water down whiskey to the natives and they would trade anything they had. They'd trade all their horses and all their beadwork and all their leatherwork. Even their teepee and their home and everything, they'd trade it to get more of that stuff. But our people seem to be stuck on the fact that they gotta have some way to enjoy life, I suppose they call it. So that was a terrible time in our history. I don't know exactly how many people were affected by it, but they were quite a few. - And so that's how white clay came to be. Because the white traders, storekeepers, started stores right there. And that's how the whole thing about white clay came to be. But that little bit of history of these dogma, a lot of it, nobody seems to know about, it's just kinda went by the wayside. - Initially the extension was created by President Chester Arthur as a no-sell of alcohol buffer zone. In response to insecurity caused by the creation of the whiskey ranches that had been set up next to the great sue reservation starting in 1800s. Alcohol, introduced by European explorers, trappers, and traders. And used against the Lakota as a negotiating tool. Has started to become a problem for us. We will explore this topic more in future episodes. - In December of 1882, Secretary of the Interior Henry M. Teller wrote a letter to Commissioner of Indian Affairs Hiram Price. In it, he said. - I desire to call your attention to a irregard as a great hindrance to the civilization of the Indians. The continuance of the old heathenish dances. These feasts or dances are not social gatherings for the amusement of these people. But on the contrary, are intended and calculated to stimulate the warlike passions of the young warriors of the tribe. The result is the demoralization of the young who are incited to emulate the wicked conduct of their elders. Without a thought that in doing so, they violate any law. But on the contrary, with a conviction that in so doing, they are securing for themselves and enduring and deserve it fame among their people. Active measures should be taken to discourage all feast and dances of the character I have mentioned. - After turning to the practice of polygamy, Teller goes on to talk about what he sees as problems related to the vichasha will come. - The medicine men resort to various artifices and devices to keep the people under their influence. And are especially active in preventing the attendance of the children at the public schools, using their conjures arts to prevent the people from abandoning their heathenish rights and customs. Step should be taken to compel these imposters to abandon this deception and discontinue their practice. Which are not only without benefit to the Indians, but positively injurious to them. - He then undermines the traditional Lakota practice of destroying our relatives belongings after they have moved on from this world. In opposition, he says, when an Indian acquires property with a disposition to retain the same, free from tribal or individual interference, he has made a step forward in the road to civilization. He ends his letter by saying, - I therefore suggest whether it is not practicable to formulate certain rules for the government of the Indians and the reservations that shower strict and ultimately abolish the practices I have mentioned. I am not ignorant of the difficulties that will be encountered in this effort. Yet I believe in all the tribes that there will be found many Indians who will aid the government in its effort to abolish rights and customs, so are injurious to the Indians. And so contrary to the civilization that they earnestly desire. - In response to Teller's letter, Price created the code of Indian offenses that was to be enforced by the court of Indian offenses starting in 1883. We will look more at the effect of this code and court in episode four. - Something else significant to the Lakota had been in 1883. A process that had been unfolding since migrants began pouring into the western part of Kauita. This is Marcel Boober. - Well, that was going on. There was a lot of great herds of buffalo would migrate. You know, the buffalo one, you know, they would migrate south where the grass was green. Then it would head north or in between, you know, they would head south when it's cold. Buffalo there was millions and millions of them. And so 51, the treaty was made up for that to make peace to cross. But the railroads started coming in. The buffalo didn't want to cross that. So there was a southern herd and there was a northern herd. They stopped there and they turned around and they said, my migration route was interrupted. And by that time there was a lot of people coming. Once that railhead came in, man and all the soldiers and all the people going to California, they started killing a lot of buffalo. What happens was trains come by part of their train fare. They give them, give the train a little bit more dollars for passengers carries his rifle and he would kill buffalo. 'Cause, you know, the buffalo hits their tracks. It would run sideways whichever way. So they would go up to a certain point, but there was a lot of animals that were killed that way. I've seen pictures of buffalo skulls at Dodge City for Laramie. It was piles and piles. The buffalo highs were stacked in a different way. They would take those into the back to the east and into England and Europe. But it was money, really a lot of money. And sometimes the buffalo hunters that come in, they would just randomly shoot it. And this is where buffalo bill wow west shows. 'Cause this guy was noted to kill at least 200 buffalo just to get their tongue and get the heights. They left the rest of it. Yeah, it was a game. Finally, they killed a loss of the herd up there at Grand River. Oh, they lost their brother. They lost their life. They lost a way of life. In the mid 1800s, it is said that somewhere between 30 to 60 million buffalo lived upon the plains of Keowita. By 1900, only 300 remained in the wild. It is estimated that 12 million indigenous people and Keowita also lost their lives between the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 and 1900. We realized that we have come so far since the beginning of this episode. That night, we fell asleep upon the plains not knowing what the next day would bring. Could our ancestors have imagined away things would turn out? Didectomy stories exist before the arrival of the Europeans? All these words, all these dates, all these people, all these things. They are hard to stomach, hard to take. We might prefer not to talk about them, not to think about them, not to think, not to. But then that song, that voice, those words, Lahijiaya, take courage. By now, many attempts had been made to control the Lakota. They brought their diseases. They brought their alcohol. They brought their guns, they brought their laws and treaties, they took our woman. They took our food, they took our lives. They took our relative to Tonka, they took our sacred hesapah. They started trying to take our culture. The next step was assimilation, trying to make us be more like them. The Dolls General Alumni Act of 1887, also known as the Dolls' Severality Act, was a law intended to make indigenous people into dependable farmers and the white man's image. Similar to the Homestead Act of 1862, it was to unlock the lands instead of reservations in Severality, or separately, to any Indian located thereon. The U.S. National Park Service even admits that another intended goal of the Dolls Act was to create the vision among Native Americans and eliminate the social cohesion of tribes. In this last segment, Richard Arnclaw, Jimmy Christensen, and Marcel Bulber discussed the Dolls Act and its effect upon the Lakota. I was just going through at this afternoon. They talked about 160 acres of land to give to heads of household, which are the males. And also, like my grandmother, she got 168 acres. And that's about four generations back to this whole reservation. This whole area was all divided into 168 acre tracks. A lot of men part out is really hard for everybody to understand, because they didn't believe that they could own the land, the land belonged to everybody. The only thing you owned were your horses and your family, I guess. I just know that the people that were put in charge of the land management and all that, it's one of them that was in charge after they were out of office, they all had a lot of land from all of the people that they knew that maybe. They'd say, "Would you like to sell this land?" And they wouldn't have any idea what selling meant. So they said, "Sure." Like they'd give them half broke horse and trade them for 300 acres of land that had a lot of water and everything. Stuff like that was going on quite a bit. But there was a center from Colorado, his name was Henry M. Teller. He was one of the most outspoken opponents of Alamun. In 1881, he said that Alamun was a policy to disobey the Native Americans of their lands and to make them vagabonds on the face of the earth. Teller also said that the real aim of Alamun was to get at Indian lands and to open them up for settlement. The provisions of the apparent benefit of the Native Americans are about the pretext to get at his lands and to occupy them. If this were done in the name of greed, it would be bad enough. But to do it in the name of humanity is infinitely worse. Sandy Graham, she wrote the red pedagogy, says between 1887 and 1934, the Native Americans lost control of about 100 million acres of land. About two thirds of the land based, they held in 1887. As a result of the loss of land and the negative cultural effects of the Doz Act have since prompted scholars to refer to the act as one of the most destructive U.S. policies for Native Americans in history. All of it is bad, but this Doz Act is really detrimental to the lives of all the people. To this day, 160 acres, if you look at your family tree in 1887 to now, probably like about 130 years, I'm sitting here. I have probably to my name, five or six acres. He imagined what our children or grandchildren are going to run into. There's going to be no land. And this was Doz Act. Man, it's an act of devil himself. Doz, he had that mindset, manifest destiny, man for himself. They make you feel like you're special with the use of the word God, but actually they're, you know, they take and take and take. That's what they call him. He is the fat. He too, means he gets the fat. Sorry about that. The song you heard during the episode introduction was from the Willard Roads collection. And they were shared with us by the Oglala Coda College Archives, courtesy of the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University. The voices you heard in the opening montage of the episode were Richard Tudogs, Stella Ironclout, Marcel Bulber, Jesse Pulliamm, Richard Ironclout, and Lanorme Longman. The narrators for this episode were Laura Herman, Elizabeth Ironhorn, Stephanie Janice, Joseph Marshall III, and Antonio Rojas. Narration revisions were made by Kansas Clifford and Jada Goodcro. The project theme song was written and performed by Alex Byr Thunder. Thanks to James McDonald at Little One School for letting us look at his curriculum, Villaini Apple for his assistance in Archives song selection, and Helly Hair at the South Dakota State Historical Society. In the remaining time, you will hear the song that was recorded especially for this episode by Branding McBride, Anthony Guterres, Dawson Yellow Fat, and Dave McBride. Followed by commentary about the relevance of the song to the episode by a music director, Anthony George Apple. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] This song is an honoring song and in these honoring songs we acknowledge individuals who might have done something in their lives and at these gatherings we honor them with a song. And this song was made by one of my nephews his name is Dean Rullard. Dean is from Kyle from the Medicine District. And this song talks about the Lakota ways are hard it's hard to live. So it says Lakota we cho khaki o tehikilo. Usually in these songs and what that means is you know this life is hard and as we're as we're getting old we learn different ways to be strong to cope with whatever is in our way. At this time in our life something hard that we have to undertake or maybe we have to live in this world and sometimes it gets hard. We possess those skills that we learn as we get older and after a while we we can understand what it means to to live up to those values or those virtues, compassion and bravery and to be generous. And in these songs we talk about being courageous in this moment of this time that we're in. At a certain point in the song there's these hard beats one of the singers will hit the drum real hard. We call them the honor beats. These beats were to imitate the gun or the cannon or the big guns that were shot maybe during a battle or each time an honor beat was hit. You know the dancer would would go down low they call it kuchila to go down low during that time and this was to imitate to duck from the bullets or the cannon or to hide. The heart of all oral history project brought to you by a little one school and generously funded by the national endowment for the humanities. For more information about the project visit www.heartofallohp.com. www.heartofallohp.com