Rapid City Journal Online
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2003/06/14/news/opinion/top/news01.txt
NEW TOWN, N.D. - On Memorial Day, as he's done for
the past 25 years, Jerome Dancing Bull raised the red, white and blue flag at
Holy Family U.S. Scouts Cemetery.
Sixty-five smaller U.S. flags, placed there that day by VFW Post 9061 members,
fluttered at the foot of veterans' headstones. Flags marked graves in nearly
half the cemetery.
Many bore a two-line inscription: "Indian Scout,
6th U.S. Infantry."
Among the names at this cemetery, 16 miles east of New Town in the Shell Creek
area: One Buffalo, Likes White Women, Bears Tail, Red Feather, Spotted Bear,
Dancing Bull, Chases Enemy.
A web of history swathes the cemetery where many of Jerome Dancing Bull's
relatives lie buried - particularly Bulls Eye.
Bulls Eye was the grandson of one of the most famous women in North American
history, Sacagawea. Her likeness now graces the U.S. dollar coin. She is lauded
as the resilient guide of Lewis and Clark's 1804-06 expedition to the Pacific
Coast. The explorers left the Mandan and Hidatsa villages near the Missouri
River in North Dakota with Sacagawea and her French trapper husband, Toussaint
Charbonneau.
After a three-language interpretation - from Hidatsa to French to English -
Lewis and Clark said Sacagawea was a Shoshone girl captured by Hidatsa warriors.
Only so much of that story is true, according to the oral tradition of a Hidatsa
family.
Bulls Eye's story was recounted by the Van Hook, N.D., Reporter in 1925. "We
have heard that they wrote that she was not a Hidatsa," Bulls Eye said. "They
say she was a Shoshoni among us. She was not a Shoshoni. The interpreter got it
wrong and it has been wrong ever since then."
Jerome Dancing Bull's grandfather - his mother's father - was the nephew of
Bulls Eye. His name was Plenty Dog, also known as George Parshall. He was among
eight tribal members present when Bulls Eye provided the account of his
relationship to Sacagawea.
Bulls Eye said his mother's mother was Sacagawea. And her father was a Hidatsa
named Smoked Lodge. And Sacagawea's mother, he said, was a Hidatsa named Otter
Woman.
Sacagawea, known as Bird Woman in the Hidatsa language, had four children with
Charbonneau, one boy and three girls. The boy - the baby she carried across the
Rocky Mountains to the Pacific - was named Baptiste. Bulls Eye said the girls'
names were Otter Woman, Cedar Woman and Different Breast.
The Bird Woman and Charbonneau had traveled far beyond the three rivers of the
Missouri in Montana before meeting Lewis and Clark. "They went so far they were
among people who sometimes went to the ocean out beyond there," Bulls Eye said.
"So she knew that country. This was the year before that white party came among
us ... When these people came, they selected Sharbonish and Sakakawea to guide
them into that same country where she had been the year before."
Sacagawea knew people far beyond the Knife River villages. When interpreters
learned she had "a brother" near the Rocky Mountains, they misunderstood the
context of the "Indian relationship," Bulls Eye said.
They took it literally, thinking if she had a brother there, the Hidatsa must
have captured her.
"We are sorry that they got it wrong," he said.
Sacagawea returned in 1806 to the Knife River villages with Lewis and Clark. She
remained there when the Corps of Discovery continued its trip down the Missouri.
It's said Sacagawea acquired a taste for coffee in her travels. Bulls Eye said
he was 4 when he traveled with his grandmother, Sacagawea, and his mother, Otter
Woman, to a trading post near Glasgow, Mont. Coffee was among the trade items
his grandmother sought.
During that 1869 trip, the wagon in which the women had been traveling was
attacked. Otter Woman and Sacagawea were shot. His mother died propped against
the wagon wheel. Bulls Eye left the coulee the next morning with his injured
grandmother, Sacagawea.
"I can remember it well. I have never forgotten it," he said. They made it to
the trading post, but the 82-year-old woman died there from her wounds.
For many, the Bird Woman is a mystery. Records of her death are not known to
exist. She is said to be buried in four locations. Also, families from three
tribes - the Hidatsa, Shoshone and Comanche - all cite lines of lineage to
Sacagawea.
Meanwhile, Bulls Eye's story continues to be told. It's been recited in one
language, Hidatsa, for generations. As Jerome Dancing Bull stood in the Holy
Family U.S. Scouts Cemetery, not far from Bulls Eye's grave, he spoke of the
times he heard Sacagawea's story told on travels between North Dakota and visits
to Crow relatives in Montana.
"We would go to Crow Fair when we were small and my mother would tell us, 'Your
great-great grandmother is buried up there and died up there.' She'd tell us
that - in those hills you know - meaning Sacagawea," he said.
At the cemetery, Dancing Bull's final salute is to the family memory.
"That's our story," he said. "Oral history."
Jodi Rave Lee is a citizen of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation. She writes
on American Indian issues for Lee Enterprises and the Lincoln (Neb.)
Journal-Star. Contact her at (402) 473-7240 or
jrave@journalstar.com.