The next stop was Bismarck, the first white man’s city that the Hunkpapas had seen. Here was the kind of fanfare that would soon greet Sitting Bull in many places, with citizens lining the shore for a close look at the famous captive. In this case, elaborate plans were afoot. Town dignitaries and officials of the Northern Pacific Railway had cooked up a gala event to welcome the Indians, and it seems that they must have been told to dress for the occasion. Now, contrary to how they looked upon surrender, many of the prominent Hunkpapas were wearing their most decorative clothing. But Sitting Bull continued to present himself with humility. He was wearing blue leggings, the reporter from the Pioneer Press later wrote, a dirty white shirt with three red stripes on each sleeve, and moccasins with little beadwork. His hair was in three braids, and his face and neck were streaked with red paint. His eyes were still painful, and to protect them he wore steel-rimmed goggles that were tinted green. On the little and second fingers of each hand he wore brass rings. He carried his pipe bag in one hand, and with the other he fanned himself with a large hawk’s-wing fan.
When the Indians disembarked, they were each given two days of rations. Sitting Bull and some of the other headmen were separated from the band, and they were whisked away to a nearby train—the very thing that they had fought for years to keep out of their territory. There they were introduced to B. D. Vermilye, the personal secretary to the general manager of the Northern Pacific Railway, and Captain C. W. Batchelor, one of the principal owners of the Yellowstone Line. They explained to Sitting Bull that everyone would be attending a reception in his honor. He would meet the leading citizens of Bismarck and there would be a dinner. “We’re traveling by rail to the Sheridan House,” Vermilye explained, pointing to a plush railcar that would carry the party to downtown Bismarck. But it was the locomotive that seemed to interest Sitting Bull, wrote Bill Yenne in his book about the chief, and Vermilye told the engineer to steam it up and move it. To the secretary’s puzzlement, Sitting Bull declined the offer for a ride, saying that he would rather walk to the hotel. Vermilye convinced him to head to the reception in an army ambulance drawn by a team of mules.
Sitting Bull sat in the front, along with Captain Batchelor and the driver. Behind them were the rest of the party, including Sitting Bull’s sister Good Feather, his uncle Four Horns, White Dog, Scarlet Thunder, High-as-the-Clouds, and Bone Tomahawk, as well as the interpreter, Vermilye, and a guard. When the other Indians saw that their leaders had gotten into an ambulance, they panicked and began wailing, fearing that the chiefs were being taken to prison. Soldiers rushed in with their rifles, trying to control the crowd. Sitting Bull immediately stood up in the ambulance and addressed his people. His remarks were not recorded; he calmed them down, and the ambulance headed to the reception.
Outside of the Sheridan House, several hundred people had gathered. Inside, Captain Batchelor escorted Sitting Bull and his group to a cushioned parlor upstairs. Chairs had been placed in a semicircle and everyone took a seat, with Sitting Bull in the center, and the armed guard behind him. He took out his pipe, lit it, and began to smoke. As he talked with some of the wasichu, he occasionally fanned himself. The other Hunkpapas talked with one another and occasionally laughed. As the event progressed, various people in the room approached Sitting Bull and asked for his autograph, including Captain Batchelor. During his exile in Canada, Sitting Bull had learned to write his name in English, reportedly to accommodate people who asked for souvenirs even then. He had become quite proficient at using a pencil. By all accounts, he warmed to this occasion in Bismarck.
It was just a prelude of festivities to come throughout the day. Soon the group headed downstairs, back into the ambulance, and over to the Merchants Hotel for a banquet. They were followed through the streets by large crowds, who pressed in outside the hotel windows once Sitting Bull and the other Indians were inside, hoping to get a good view of the event. The hotel owners had prepared a meal “as if for the Queen of England,” said the Bismarck Tribune. To the surprise of their hosts, the Hunkpapas knew how to use knives and forks; they had learned such skills in Canada. Sitting Bull ate slowly, the newspaper would report the next day, stopping often to fan himself. The serving of ice cream for dessert was a great puzzlement for the Indians, who wondered how the wasichu could cook something so cold in such hot weather.
As the banquet concluded, Sitting Bull gave Captain Batchelor his pipe and Vermilye his goggles. The Indians then headed back to their encampment, and the guests at the hotel toasted the occasion with fine wine. The Hunkpapas who were not at the dinner had been having their own celebration as well. During the three hours that Sitting Bull was gone, they had eaten most of their two days’ ration of food. After years of flight and deprivation, and now, uncertainty about where they were going, the seemingly large supply of sustenance must have been a relief, if only for a moment.
Back on board the Sherman, a group of prominent citizens was waiting to meet Sitting Bull. With the interpreter translating, the famous Indian was introduced to each one of them. One of the guests was Miss Emma Bentley, who presented Sitting Bull with a California pear, Yenne noted. He took it, retrieved his knife and cut off a piece, tasted it, and liked it. In return, he removed a ring from his finger and placed it on one of Miss Bentley’s, folding her hand over it.
It was the kind of gesture that Sitting Bull would become known for, and for which he was already known within his band. The fact that he had so charmed Miss Bentley was not lost on the other women in attendance, or the men, and it only added to his appeal. For him, the soiree that night overturned his every expectation. It wasn’t that he was surprised by what the white man was capable of; rather he began to learn the ways of the enemy. Beyond the fact that he did not trust them, he now realized that plenty of things were available once he was inside their world. Among his own people, he never wavered from his desire to get to Washington and sit down with the Grandfather. He would raise this subject from time to time with his captors, and in a few years he would discuss the idea with Buffalo Bill. For now, he was an imprisoned guest at the white man’s party, asked to pay tribute to the Iron Horse, whose rails were now traversing and binding the frontier. While he may have liked the attention, he also understood its source. When the gala concluded, he and his headmen headed back to the Sherman, and boarded it along with the rest of the Hunkpapas for the next leg of the trip. At 6 p.m., a band on board struck up a festive tune. The celebration continued as the steamer traveled down the Missouri toward Fort Yates.
Debarking there the next day, August 1, Sitting Bull was greeted by his old associate Running Antelope. For the first time since his return, Sitting Bull broke down and cried. Later that day, he was reunited with his daughter, and they cried together. The Lakotas began to settle in at their new home, and almost immediately after his arrival Sitting Bull tried to get permission for a trip to Washington. When he surrendered in Canada and agreed to return to the Dakota Territory, he had been told by one of the officials that President James Garfield would indeed receive him in the White House. But by the time Sitting Bull arrived at Fort Yates, Garfield had been assassinated and Chester A. Arthur, the new president, “refused to allow the savage who was responsible for the slaughter of Custer to go to Washington,” according to an army memo. In response, Sitting Bull sent a letter to President Arthur. It vacillated between defiance and capitulation and hope, and indicated that he was coming to a rapid understanding of his circumstances. “I wish that the Great Father would furnish me with farming implements,” he concluded, “so that I can till the ground.”
It was the plea of a man who was now concerned with the survival of his people, and very soon he would indeed become a farmer. But that would not happen at Fort Yates. A few weeks after the Lakotas had been living there, some cartridges were found in Sitting Bull’s lodgings. There was to be no ammunition among the Indians and authorities at the fort began making arrangements to remove Sitting Bull and his band to Fort Randall, a more remote locati
on where the isolation, it was believed, would help to control the Hunkpapas. Sitting Bull was not told of the plan until it was implemented, on the 10th of September. The white man had now broken another promise, for he had been told there would be no more removals. Once again, he and his band were ordered to board the Sherman, harried up the gangway at gunpoint. The lone Indian who refused, his nephew One Bull, was butted with a rifle between the shoulders, and sent sprawling. He got up and boarded the ship, and the Hunkpapas and soldiers headed downriver, this time for a week-long trip of four hundred miles to their new home near the present-day border of South Dakota and Nebraska.
There was no celebration on board and the riverbanks were not lined with admirers. Each night, the Indians left the steamer, set up camp, prepared dinner, slept, and returned in the morning to resume the journey. To the Hunkpapas’ solace, no doubt, a different sort of tribute awaited them as the Sherman steamed past the Cheyenne River Agency. In anticipation of the passing, a large group of Lakotas had assembled on the riverbanks. “The most violent demonstrations of grief occurred,” a newspaper reported. A few days earlier, 120 “ex-hostiles” from the Standing Rock Agency had been transferred to Cheyenne River. When they got word that Sitting Bull was in the vicinity, they had converged on the shores to demonstrate their high regard for the old leader. The display must have had an unsettling effect on the soldiers, and it was further indication that Sitting Bull must be closely watched and controlled. Meanwhile, amid the turmoil and sadness of the journey, one of Sitting Bull’s wives, Four Robes, gave birth to a baby girl.
Life at Fort Randall was not as dire as Sitting Bull had expected, perhaps because it soon became clear that this was to be the final stop for the Hunkpapas, at least for a while. Sitting Bull had seemed finally to accept his fate. He asked to be supplied with wagons, plows, white-man clothing, horses, and cattle. The Hunkpapas were not quite ready for the implements of the new life that was planned for them, it was determined. All of these things would come in due time.
For now, the captives were to wait things out with little to do. They were guarded by the Twenty-fifth Infantry, one of four black regiments in the army, also known as “Buffalo Soldiers” because their curly hair resembled that of the buffalo. Although Sitting Bull had to live right next door to the fort, as opposed to farther away from it on the reservation grounds, he seemed to accept even that as the days and weeks and months unfolded. His statements appeared to be more conciliatory, though he continued to try to contact the White House, pressing for a visit.
Meanwhile, his celebrity status continued to increase, and he was besieged with visitors as well as mail from across the country and from foreign lands. There were requests for Sitting Bull’s pipe, knife, tomahawk, and his autograph. He rarely replied unless the letters included a dollar. According to historian Stanley Vestal, he spent the income on paint and tobacco, “and other little luxuries at the post trader’s.” By now, his stardom was indelible. Offers from the many dime museums that were popping up across the country in the mid-1880s began to pour in. Circuses and road shows also wanted the popular chief. Major James McLaughlin, the agent in charge of Fort Randall, rejected all of the proposals. He was concerned that should Sitting Bull embark on any venture that made him even more famous, he would be impossible to control when he returned. In addition McLaughlin was rapidly becoming a nemesis of Sitting Bull’s. Not only did he dictate the Hunkpapas’ daily schedules—they followed army protocol, with reveille and so on throughout the day—but he also seemed to have it in for the leader, who represented everything that McLaughlin was not. Like many soldiers and settlers on the plains, McLaughlin was married to an Indian and was no stranger to their ways. Yet his interpretation of those ways was often inaccurate—or shaped by his own desires. And he firmly believed that if the Hunkpapas were to survive, they must succumb to the new order. Inside that order, he believed, it was necessary to relinquish any vestiges of the world from which they came.
But for the moment, he was fighting a losing battle. It was precisely Sitting Bull’s stature as a man who would not give in, a rebel who had held his own against the U.S. army, that rendered him all the more popular, enabling him to remain an outsider and, in McLaughlin’s view, cause trouble at Standing Rock. In the summer of 1883, the Northern Pacific Railway was planning to drive the last spike of its transcontinental route across the northern plains, in Gold Creek, Montana. It was decided that it would be advantageous to have an Indian chief at the ceremony in nearby Bismarck, adding to the glamour of the day. Of course, the choice was Sitting Bull, and perhaps because the event involved railroad officials, McLaughlin consented. On September 8, Sitting Bull arrived, accompanied by an army chaperone who spoke Lakota and worked with him to prepare a speech. They rode at the head of a parade, and according to some accounts, Sitting Bull carried the American flag. Then they took their places on the speakers’ platform. Sitting Bull was introduced and began delivering his speech—in his native language. But he had changed the text. “I hate all the white people,” he said. “You are thieves and liars. You have taken away our land and made us outcasts.” The young officer was taken aback. And on Sitting Bull declaimed, “pausing occasionally for applause,” as Dee Brown recounted in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and then “he bowed, smiled, and uttered a few more insults.” After he sat down, the interpreter stood up, and presented his translation, which was a short speech with a few friendly phrases. He added some “well-worn Indian metaphors,” Brown wrote, and the audience gave Sitting Bull a standing ovation. Did he and his chaperone exchange a look at that moment? Or later, on the way back to Standing Rock, did they have some words or maybe even a laugh? All we can say for sure is that Sitting Bull had carried out a stealth campaign from inside what was essentially a jail. It belied the serious expression that is captured in the few photographs bearing his image. Clearly, here was a man who could smuggle in a joke and, at the same time, acquire new admirers at events of import.
Pressing his campaign to meet the president, Sitting Bull often asked McLaughlin if he could visit Eastern cities. He refused, until the day that he didn’t, believing that if he could impress Sitting Bull with the advantages of city life, the chief would then be able to convince his people to accept American-style education and take up farming. In 1884, McLaughlin took Sitting Bull to St. Paul for ten days. He gave him a grand tour of factories, stores, churches, banks, theaters, a cigar plant, and the local firehouse. At the plant, Sitting Bull made “some very significant puffs,” a reporter would write. At the Pioneer Press office, workers acquainted Sitting Bull with “the telephone eavesdropping racket.” In admiration, he is said to have grunted “Waukon,” which translated as “the devil.” At the firehouse, Sitting Bull was taken by the sound of the clanging bell and asked if he could ring it. Everywhere he went, admirers turned out to greet him, offering gifts and ribbons and artificial flowers, and introducing him to their occupations and endeavors.
The tour of St. Paul continued throughout that week. Sitting Bull was taken to the Grand Opera House, for instance, for a performance of Muldoon’s Picnic. On March 19, he went to the Olympic Theater to see the Arlington and Fields Combination—“combination” was a term for “repertory”—billed as “the greatest aggregation of talent” ever to appear in St. Paul. From a prominent seat in Box B, he watched the Wertz Brothers perform acrobatics, heard Allie Jackson sing a medley of songs, and saw Flynn and Sarsfield in a minstrel act.
But what impressed him the most—and would become a pivotal moment in his life—was Annie Oakley and her shooting routine. She began her performance by bounding onstage and snuffing out a candle with a bullet from her rifle. She continued to snuff burning candles with gunshots, and proceeded to blow corks off bottle tops and cigarettes from her husband Frank Butler’s mouth. For the next few days, Sitting Bull dispatched messengers to Annie, asking if she would come see him. She was busy preparing for a shooting match and did not want to miss it, so she declined, lest she forfeit
her entry fee. Money was important to the sharpshooter, and when Sitting Bull began offering it, she responded more positively. At first, he sent $65 to her room, asking for a photo. “This amused me,” Annie later said, “so I sent him back his money and a photograph, with my love, and a message to say I would call the following morning. I did so, and the old man was so pleased with me, he insisted upon adopting me, and I was then and there christened ‘Watanya Cicilla,’ or ‘Little Sure Shot.’ ”
It was a name that helped propel Annie’s career (though its real meaning is “Little Person Who Does Good Things”). Two weeks later, on April 5, 1884, Annie’s husband placed an ad in the New York Clipper. “The Premier Shots, Butler and Oakley, Captured by Sitting Bull,” it said, referring to the chief’s warrior status. The ad went on to note that Sitting Bull had given Annie a picture of himself, a feather from a Crow chief, and—as he had told her—the original pair of moccasins he had worn at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Witnesses attested to the fact that Sitting Bull had actually done this, and if he had in fact said that the moccasins were worn at the battle, it would have been something of a grand gesture by which he acknowledged his presence at that event; outside Indian circles, it was still widely believed that Sitting Bull had indeed killed Custer. At the end of the week, Sitting Bull headed back to the reservation, and Annie headed east. They would soon meet again.
One month later, Buffalo Bill made his first attempt to hire Sitting Bull and a few members of his band for the Wild West show. McLaughlin declined to give permission, telling Cody that Sitting Bull “had already received so many propositions of the kind it has become considerable of a bore.” While he thought that the show was a worthwhile form of entertainment and that Cody had made the request “in a very commendable manner,” he explained that he couldn’t consider “any such proposition at the present time when the late hostiles are so well disposed and are just beginning to take hold of an agricultural life.” But he added that “if they would be permitted to join any traveling company, in conjunction with other attractions, I would prefer to have them in your troupe to any organized that I have knowledge of.”
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