How a firsthand account of the Battle of Little Big Horn made its way home from Brampton to South Dakota

Samantha Thompson knew she had unpacked a historical treasure when she first unrolled the tightly bound letter and drawing.

The documents were Standing Bear’s firsthand account of the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn, perhaps better known as Custer’s Last Stand. They were among a trove of personal papers of a local collector donated to the Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives in Brampton, where Thompson is an archivist.

The papers have been repatriated now to the archives at Oglala Lakota College on the Pine Ridge Reservation in Kyle, South Dakota. Standing Bear was an artist and member of the Lakota tribe of South Dakota, although he spent part of his life travelling with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show.

The reservation is the largest of nine in the state and home to the Oglala band of Lakota. Traditionally, Lakota families burned all of a person’s belongings after their death, so papers of this nature are not common. Repatriating the papers to the archives ensures they are accessible to the public, a decision approved by Arthur Amiotte, Standing Bear’s great-grandson.

“This brought so many people together in a fortuitous way,” said Thompson. “There’s no question that repatriation was the right thing to do. Our mandate at (the gallery) is focused on Peel, and these documents were much, much more important to the community they came from and will speak to the world more clearly through them.”

The world will undoubtedly be listening because the Battle of Little Bighorn, called the Battle of Greasy Grass by the Lakota, is well known to students of American history. The battle, fought on June 24 and 25, 1876 along the Little Bighorn River in Montana, saw Civil War hero George Armstrong Custer and his men wiped out after miscalculating the strength of the Lakota and Cheyenne warrior force they had attacked. Knowing little of Indigenous culture, the army officers didn’t realize the Lakota were present in large numbers for an annual spring gathering and hunt.

The battle was part of the United States’ campaign to force Plains Indians to relocate to reservations, rather than continue a nomadic way of life that saw them move across the region and hunt according to the seasons. The government believed this lifestyle interfered with railroads and settlers.

Lakota leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were among those who refused to sign the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie that would have confined them to a reservation. The Lakota refused to meet the federal government’s deadline to report there, so the government turned the issue over to the U.S. army, leading to the massive defeat at Little Bighorn.

Fourteen years later, in 1890, 250 to 300 Lakota were massacred by the army at Wounded Knee Creek near Pine Ridge, almost half of them women and children. Among the dead were Standing Bear’s first wife and daughter.

“The massacre is widely known to be retribution by the cavalry for what happened in 1876,” said Tawa Ducheneaux, archivist for Oglala Lakota College.

Thompson found the letter and drawing among the papers of Brampton lawyer William Perkins Bull (1870-1948), whose interest in local history was manifested by research, writing and collecting. He had a special interest in the legendary figure of Sitting Bull, one that was reportedly based on their shared name. As an archivist, Thompson researched this history in detail after she unpacked the documents.

In examining the material closely, Thompson realized its historical value and its uniqueness. The letter was dictated by Standing Bear to his wife, Louise, a native of Austria, so it was written in the Old German of her childhood. Thompson recognized the script but doesn’t speak Old German so, for translation, she turned to the mother of a friend who had been raised in the Mennonite tradition and reads Old German. The letter appears to be Standing Bear’s answer to a query, with the questioner still unknown, about Sitting Bull’s participation in the Battle of Little Bighorn/Greasy Grass and offers firsthand information about the battle.

“I stayed (in the battlefield) until evening; the powder dust and the blood made me sick but I was not wounded,” Standing Bear wrote.

The accompanying drawing by Standing Bear was done in pencil and watercolour on muslin in a style called ledger art, characteristic of Plains Indians during the period 1860 to 1900.

“Standing Bear is a significant artist and he is represented in household-name collections like the Smithsonian,” Thompson said.

The drawing depicts Sitting Bull and other Lakota participating in a sun dance, an event that took place a few weeks before the 1876 battle as part of the annual Lakota gathering. Sitting Bull was known for his spiritual leadership as well as his warrior skills. The sun dance prompted his vision of soldiers falling off their horses upside down, their hats raining onto the ground. Sitting Bull interpreted it to mean that his people would have a great victory over government forces, despite not knowing an attack was imminent.

“I do not know if Sitting Bull was in the battle,” wrote Standing Bear. “Since his teepee was not in our area I did not see him. But I did see him in the Sundance and send you the picture.” (Ducheneaux noted that Sitting Bull advised the warriors tactically during the battle but, at 65 or so, was too old to participate.)

Thompson wasn’t certain of the appropriate recipients for this historical find, so she looked online for information about the Pine Ridge Reservation. She located Oglala Lakota College and made contact with Ducheneaux, who knew Amiotte. Not only is Amiotte Standing Bear’s great-grandson, he is an artist himself and an expert on his great-grandfather’s art.

Originally, Thompson hoped to fly to Pine Ridge to present the documents personally, but pandemic travel restrictions and Pine Ridge’s own strict pandemic protocols interfered. She eventually shipped the documents to the Journey Museum and Learning Centre in Rapid City, S.D. Both Amiotte and Ducheneaux travelled to the museum to unbox them in December 2021.

“This is very touching,” said Amiotte, captured in a video of the unboxing. “Samantha, I wish to thank you from the bottom of my heart and the bottom of my ethos, which is Lakota, and on behalf of all of my relatives and my ancestors, I thank you for all of your graciousness and generosity in returning this significant little piece back to its homeland.”

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