Spotted Tail (Siŋté Glešká, ; birth name Tȟatȟáŋka Napsíča , 'Jumping Buffalo'; – August 5, 1881) was a Sichangu Lakota tribal chief. Famed as a great warrior since his youth, warring on Ute, Pawnee and Absaroke ('Crow'), and having taken a leading part in the Grattan Massacre, he led his warriors in the Colorado and Platte River uprising (Spotted Tail's War) after the massacre perpetrated by John M. Chivington's Colorado Volunteers on the peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho camping on Sand Creek (November 29, 1864), but declined to participate in Red Cloud's War.
After spending almost two years as a prisoner in Fort Leavenworth following the Grattan affair, Spotted Tail was able to speak the English language well, and to deal with the "Wasichu" (white men) without an interpreter, whom he did not trust. He had become convinced of the futility of making war to oppose the white incursions into his homeland; he became a statesman, speaking for peace and defending the rights of his tribe by using his knowledge of “wasichu” language and system to increase his political capability to hinder their tricks and deceptions.
He made several trips to Washington, D.C. in the 1870s to represent his people, and was noted for his interest in bringing education to the Sioux. General Anson Mills, who knew Spotted Tail well, called him "a fine-looking man, with engaging manners, perfectly loyal to the government, a lover of peace, knowing no good could come to his people from war," a man who had both a high respect for and confidence in U.S. Army officers as well as a good sense of humor.Anson Mills, My Story (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2003 ), 158, 164, 167. He was shot in the back and killed by Crow Dog, a Sichangu Lakota subchief, in 1881 for reasons which have been disputed.
Early years Spotted Tail was born about 1823 in the White River country west of the Missouri River in present-day South Dakota. He was given the birth name of Jumping Buffalo. Two of his sisters, Iron Between Horns and Kills Enemy, were married to the elder Crazy Horse (later known as "Worm"), in what was traditional Sioux practice for elite men. Spotted Tail was the uncle of the famous warrior Crazy Horse, which meant he was a relative of the notable Touch the Clouds as well. The young man took his warrior name, Spotted Tail, after receiving a gift of a raccoon tail from a white trapper; he sometimes wore a raccoon tail in his war bonnet. During the previous 40 years, the Lakota or Teton Sioux had moved from present-day Minnesota and eastern South Dakota to areas west of the Missouri. They had differentiated into several sub-tribes or bands, including the Saône (including the Sihasapa, his father's sub-tribe, the Minneconjou, the Itazipcho, the Hunkpapa, the Oohenonpa), Sichangu ("Brulé") and Oglala. During this time the people adopted the use of horses and expanded their range in hunting the buffalo across their wide grazing patterns.
Marriage and family
Spotted Tail married and had children. He gained his first wife in 1842, after a deadly fight against chief Mahto Wakuwa ("Running Bear"), and, the killed chief being a famous warrior, young (not even twenty years old) Spotted Tail's reputation probably greatly increased.
Spotted Tail and his family spent some time living in the village outside Fort Laramie, during which Eugene Fitch Ware, an officer at the fort, wrote that Spotted Tail's daughter, variously referred to as Mni-Akuwin (Water Bringing Woman), Ah-ho-appa (a non-Lakota word said to mean Wheat Flour), and Hinzinwin (Fallen Leaf), "... was one of those individuals found in all lands, at all places, and among all people; she was misplaced." He suggested that she adopted some European-American practices, and that she was thought to be secretly in love with one of the officers at the fort, although she was a young child when she lived there. When she was dying of tuberculosis in 1866, Mni-Akuwin made her father promise that she would be buried beside her grandfather on a hillside overlooking Fort Laramie. The entire garrison at the post helped Spotted Tail to honor her request by arranging for a ceremonial funeral, including a Christian service and Sioux ceremony. Many years later, Spotted Tail had her remains transported to the Rosebud Indian Agency in South Dakota and re-interred.
Mni-Akuwin was, in accordance with her wishes and those of her living relatives, re-interred a second time and moved back to the original site of her burial at Fort Laramie, Wyoming (by this time Fort Laramie National Historic Site) on June 25th, 2005.
Grattan and Ash Hollow battles
In the late summer of 1854, about 4,000 Sichangu and Oglala were camped near Fort Laramie, in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of 1851. On August 17, a cow belonging to a Mormon traveling on the nearby Oregon Trail strayed and was killed by a visiting Miniconjou Lakota warrior named High Forehead. Lt. Hugh Fleming, the senior officer of the small garrison, consulted with the chief, Matȟó Wayúhi or Scattering Bear, to discuss the loss of livestock, the officer was evidently unaware, or chose to ignore, that such matters were, by the terms of the Treaty of 1851, to be handled by the local Indian Agent, in this case John Whitfield, who was due to arrive within days with annuities with which restitution could be made. Aware that the matter was not under the purview of the military, Scattering Bear still attempted to negotiate, offering a horse from his personal herd or a cow from the tribe's herd but the cow's owner persisted in demanding $25 instead. Lt. Fleming asked the Sioux to arrest High Forehead and deliver him to the fort, which Conquering Bear refused; he had no authority over the Miniconjou and did not want to violate his people's tradition of hospitality.Paul Norman Beck, The First Sioux War: The Grattan Fight and Blue Water Creek, 1854-1856, University Press of America, 2004, pp. 40-41, accessed 7 Dec 2010 The day's talk ended in stalemate.
On August 19, 1854, Second Lieutenant John Lawrence Grattan, of the U.S. 6th Infantry Regiment, a recent graduate of West Point and supernumerary waiting for a vacancy in the regiment, led an armed detachment into the Indian encampment to take custody of High Forehead and bring him back to the fort. The aspiring Grattan, eager to gain a military reputation, was inexperienced and described as contemptuous of the Lakotas' ability as warriors.Beck (2004), The First Sioux War, pp. 46-47 This was his first (and only) encounter with the Sioux. By the time the detachment reached the encampment (hosting some 1,200 warriors among the total 4,800 population), Lucian Auguste, Grattan's interpreter, was intoxicated from drinking along the way, as he feared the encounter; the Lakotas disliked him and he disliked them, moreover he spoke only broken Dakota, and had little grasp of other dialects. As they entered the encampment, he began to taunt the Sioux, calling their warriors women, and saying the soldiers were not there to talk, but to kill them all, and failed to fully or accurately translate Conquering Bear and Grattan's comments; according to the trader James Bordeaux, Lt. Grattan began to realize the risk and stopped to discuss the situation with the trader; Bordeaux advised him to talk directly with Conquering Bear and let him handle the situation, and Grattan seemed to not understand and continued on into the encampment, going first to the lodge of High Forehead, whom he ordered to surrender to the US forces. High Forehead said he would die first. Then Grattan went to Conquering Bear, saying the Sioux should arrest the guilty party and turn him over; but Conquering Bear refused and tried to negotiate, offering a horse as compensation for the cow. Conquering Bear asked for the trader Bordeaux to act as interpreter, as the Sioux trusted him and his language ability. Called by the Sioux, Bordeaux rode to the meeting place; later he said he could see the situation was out of hand; as Grattan persisted in pressing Conquering Bear, numerous Sioux warriors moved into flanking positions around the soldiers. Ending the discussion, Grattan was walking back to his column, when a nervous soldier fired his gun, shooting a Sioux, and the warriors started shooting arrows while leaders tried to take control. Conquering Bear was mortally wounded and died nine days later near the Niobrara River.Beck (2004), First Sioux War, pp. 50-52 The Sichangu Lakota warriors, led by Spotted Tail, then a rising war chief within his people, quickly killed Grattan, 11 of his men, and the interpreter. A group of some 18 soldiers retreated on foot trying to reach some rocks for defense, but they were cut off and killed by overcoming warriors led by Red Cloud, a rising war chief within the Oglala Sioux. One soldier survived the massacre but later died of his wounds. Conquering Bear was the only Lakota who was killed. The Sioux spared Bordeaux, both because he was married to a Sichangu Sioux woman, and because he had a friendly relationship with the tribes. The enraged warriors "rampaged throughout the night, swearing to attack other whites." They rode against Fort Laramie the next morning but withdrew; they looted the trading post but did not harm Bordeaux. On the third day after the US attack, the Sichangu and Oglala abandoned the camp on the North Platte River and returned to their respective hunting grounds. On the fourth day, the military asked Bordeaux to arrange a burial party and found that the slain soldiers had been ritually mutilated.
The U.S. press called the event the "Grattan Massacre", and reports generally ignored the US soldiers' instigation of the event by their failure first, to leave it up to the Indian agent to settle the matter, as called for in the treaty, and second, shooting chief Conquering Bear in the back; punctually, when news of the fight reached the War Department, officials started planning retaliation to punish the Sioux. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis characterized the incident as "the result of a deliberately formed plan.
Col. William S. Harney was recalled from Paris in April 1855 and sent to Fort Kearny, where he assembled a command of 600 troopers, consisting of men from the 6th Infantry, 10th Infantry, 4th Artillery, and his own 2nd US Dragoons. In all he had four mounted companies led by Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke and five companies of infantry under Maj. Albemarle Cady. They set out on August 24, 1855, to find the Sioux and exact retribution. Harney was quoted as saying, "By God, I'm for battle—no peace."
Warned by the Indian agent Thomas S. Twiss that the army had put a force in the field, half of the Lakota camped north of the Platte went into Fort Laramie for protection as "friendlies". The other half, generally led by Conquering Bear's successor Little Thunder, remained at large. They considered themselves peaceful but knew that Harney was out with a force. They continued to harbor warriors sought by the Army. Harney engaged them in the Battle of Ash Hollow (also known as the Battle of Bluewater Creek) on September 3, 1855. U.S. soldiers killed 86 Sichangu Sioux, half of them women and children, in present-day Garden County, Nebraska. The New York Times and other newspapers recounted the battle as a massacre because so many women and children were killed. The village of 230 persons was caught between an assault by the infantry and a blocking force by the cavalry. Spotted Tail, principal war chief of the Sichangu, surprised and initially unarmed, was seriously wounded four times having had two bullets pass through his chest, but reportedly managed to kill or wound 13 "long knives" (white soldiers).