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Sitting Bull: Resistance and Submission in His Life

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Sitting Bull: Resistance and Submission in His Life Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Eva Sklenářová Sitting Bull: Resistance and Submission in His Life Master‟s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A. 2009 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. Eva Sklenářová I would like to thank Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A. for providing me with valuable advice and resources. Table of Contents Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: Lakota ......................................................................................................... 4 Chapter Two: Sitting Bull ................................................................................................. 9 Chapter Three: Sitting Bull and the Lakotas in Contact with the Whites ....................... 15 Chapter Four: Resistance and Submission in Sitting Bull's Life .................................... 39 Chapter Five: Repeating Patterns and Tendencies of Resistance and Submission in Sitting Bull's Life ........................................................................................................ 69 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 77 Summary ......................................................................................................................... 82 Resumé v českém jazyce ................................................................................................ 83 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 84 Introduction Sitting Bull – Tatanka Iyotanka – a Lakota Sioux, was undoubtedly one of the most important Indians living in North America. He devoted his life to the fight for the lands that belonged to the Lakotas as well as to the preservation of Lakota culture and traditional way of life. His life was full of controversies that were brought about mainly by the clash of two cultures – the Indian culture and the culture of the Whites who came to North America searching for new home. In a desperate attempt for the preservation of Lakota lands, culture and way of life, Sitting Bull was as resistant as he could be; however, the pressure applied by the Whites often made him act submissively. Which of these two approaches prevailed and how did they develop and change throughout Sitting Bull's life? What circumstances made him act the way he did? Were there any key repeating patterns and tendencies that accompanied Sitting Bull's demonstration of resistance and submission? If so, which of them prevailed? These questions are the subject of this thesis. The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first three chapters are descriptive and serve as background information for the analyses, which are given in the fourth and fifth chapter. The first chapter is focused on the depiction of the Lakota way of life, philosophy, religion and values. This information is highly important as without it one could hardly understand the influences that affected Sitting Bull's personality, life and conduct. The second chapter deals with Sitting Bull's early years and gives information about his importance as a warrior, a member of men's societies, a chief, a holy man and a medicine man. It also provides some information about his character and family matters. This part is also very important because it shows many aspects of Sitting Bull's 1 personality and life, and thus helps to understand how important he was for the Lakotas and clarifies the reasons of his conduct. The third chapter gives information about Sitting Bull and the Lakotas in contact with the Whites. It covers the main events that happened during Sitting Bull's life and influenced his actions. It also speaks about the people who played important role in Sitting Bull's life. It shows how Sitting Bull reacted under various circumstances throughout his life. This chapter serves as general background information about Sitting Bull and the Lakotas in contact with the Whites and, like the first two chapters, it is crucial for the analyses of resistance and submission in Sitting Bull's life. The fourth chapter deals with the clash between Sitting Bull's resistance and submission. It attempts to investigate and analyze how these two approaches were interconnected, how they changed in different contexts and under various conditions during his life. This part of the thesis is based mainly on the information given in the first three chapters of the thesis; nevertheless, it gives more details about Sitting Bull's conduct. The last chapter works with the information given in the previous chapter in order to find out which of the two approaches – resistance or submission – dominated Sitting Bull's life. It also investigates whether there were any key repeating patterns and tendencies that accompanied Sitting Bull's demonstration of resistance and submission, and which of them prevailed. The thesis is based mainly on the information given in the books by three authors – Robert Utley, Paul Stekler and James Welch. Utley's book, The Lance and the Shield: the Life and Times of Sitting Bull, serves as a main source of background information as it deals with whole Sitting Bull's life and it can be considered very objective and comprehensive study of this great chief. Stekler and Welch's book, Killing 2 Custer: the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians, deals mainly with the Sioux wars; therefore it is used mainly in the parts coping with the Lakota offensive and defensive, and with the last years of Sitting Bull's life. In the thesis several terms are used when referring to various groups of people. A term “Indians” is used to refer to Native Americans in general, not to any particular group or band. A term “Sioux” is used when speaking about the group of the Indians, who lived in the Great Plains and used cognate languages and therefore they are nowadays considered to belong together (with regard to their language, way of life and culture). The Sioux were further divided into three groups – a term “Lakota” (or “the Lakotas”) refers to one of these three groups – Sitting Bull's group. The Lakotas consisted of seven bands, one of which was the band of Hunkpapas – Sitting Bull's band. Another term which is often used in the thesis is “the Whites”. This term refers to the European Americans – the people who discovered North American continent in the 15th century and later gradually started to settle in the area, which is now called the United States. When it is important to distinguish whether the Whites were the Canadians or the Americans, the thesis uses these two terms. 3 Chapter One: Lakota The Lakota Sioux (further only the Lakotas) was the section of a Sioux confederacy. The Sioux belonged to the Plains Indians – people occupying the region between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River. This culture was nomadic, following herds of buffalo (Debo 15, Kehoe 303). As Utley describes it: Originally the Sioux consisted of seven autonomous but related groups. Although they had never assembled at one time and place, they claimed a unity born of shared culture, history, and language (4). By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Sioux had divided into three groups of tribes. The location and way of life of each traced a century's history of migration and cultural adaptation as the people spread westward from their original homes around the head of the Mississippi River (3). These three groups were: the eastern group called Dakota (known also as Santees), which lived along the Mississippi River; the middle group, the Yankton and Yanktonai, which occupied the prairies east of the Mississippi River; and the western group called Lakotas (or Tetons), which lived on the plains between the Missouri River and the Bighorn Mountains. The Lakotas were divided into seven bands, one of which was Hunkpapa – Sitting Bull's band. The other bands were Oglala, Brule, Miniconjou, Two Kettle, Sans Arc, and Sihasapa (Hyde 8, Kehoe 303). The estimated population of the Lakotas was from fifteen to twenty thousand (Utley 4). The Hukpapas numbered about three thousand (Utley 40). Each of the Lakota bands had its own hunting areas. The Hunkpapas, together with the Blackfeet and the Sans Arcs, occupied the territory between the Yellowstone River (today's Montana) and the Sioux Rivers (today's Dakota). These three bands often camped and traveled together, which led to the extensive intermarriage as well (Utley 5). As it has already been mentioned the Lakotas were nomadic Indians. At the beginning of the nineteenth century they gradually become fully mounted nomads as a 4 result of the acquirement of horses (Debo 15, Taylor 41) that started to be brought to the Great Plains as early as the beginning of the eighteenth century (Hyde 29). The main dietary staple of the Lakotas was buffalo meat and thus all their life had to be adjusted to this fact. The Lakota way of life was tied to hunting – their division of labor arose from gaining and processing buffalo, the movement of groups was governed by the migration of buffalo herds and all Lakota social, political and religious matters emerged from it. The Lakotas lived in villages, which consisted of a number of tipis (depending on the size of each
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