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Sitting Bull’s Second Grave: Colonial Metamorphoses in Twentieth-Century America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Thomas Grillot
Thomas Grillot*
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CNRS
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Abstract

The Lakota leader Sitting Bull was first buried on the Standing Rock reservation, only to be disinterred and re-buried sixty years later. A historical study of these graves leads less to the commemoration of a great man than an opportunity to reexamine colonialism within America. While American colonial power was a fragile one and challenged by some, it was also deeply rooted in the symbolic interactions that took place on and around the reservations, which involved depriving people of land, singling out certain segments of the population, and Americanizing people’s belief systems. While this attempt at internal colonization has been considered a massive failure due to the resistance of native populations, this article seeks to lend nuance to this interpretation and analyze the situation in all its complexity

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Colonized Memories
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Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 131 - 165
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Copyright © Les Éditions de l’EHESS 2013

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References

1. Roy Harvey Pearce, Savagism and Civilization: A Study of the Indian and the American Mind (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1953).

2. Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1973); Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 (New York: Athe-neum, 1985); and Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Atheneum, 1992).

3. See, in particular, Gilles Havard, “Les Indiens et l’histoire colonial nord-américaine. Les défis de l’ethnohistoire,” in Sociétés, colonisation et esclavages dans le monde atlantique. Historiographie des sociétés américaines des XVIe-XIXe siècles, eds. François-Joseph Ruggiu and Cécile Vidal (Bécherel: Les Perséides, 2009), 95-142.

4. Herbert T. Hoover and Robert C. Hollow, The Last Years of Sitting Bull (Bismarck: Museum Division, North Dakota Heritage Center, 1984); Robert M. Utley, The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull (New York: Henry Holt, 1993).

5. Richard White, “The Winning of the West: The Expansion of the Western Sioux in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” The Journal of American History 65, no. 2 (1978): 319-43.

6. On these dances and their link to the Sun Dance, see DeMallie, Raymond J., “The Lakota Ghost Dance: An Ethnohistorical Account,” Pacific Historical Review 51, no. 4 (1982): 385-405 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. For McLaughlin’s point of view, see: McLaughlin to Morgan, 16 December 1890, US National Archives, http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc ; box 114, file 140 Walter Campbell Collection (hereafter “WS”), University of Oklahoma, Norman, http://digital.libraries.ou.edu/WHC/nam (pagination for further references to this collection pertains to the corresponding PDFs available online). For a photograph of the ceremony, see Utley, Robert M., Sitting Bull: The Life and Times of an American Patriot (New York: Henry Holt, 1993)Google Scholar, photo file, n. p. For the Catholic point of view, see Strassmeier to Walter Campbell, 1 January 1929, box 108, file 2, p. 9, WS, Norman.

8. See Bland, Thomas A., A Brief History of the Late Military Invasion of the Home of the Sioux (Washington: The National Indian Defense Association, 1891 Google Scholar).

9. On the act of mutilation, see Utley, , Sitting Bull, 303-4 Google Scholar.

10. Sitting Bull had outlawed such mutilation after Little Big Horn and attributed subsequent defeats to the failure to respect this rule. See Beede, Aaron M., “Sitting Bull and Custer,” Bismarck Tribune Co, 1913, p. 9 Google Scholar. On mutilation as an aspect of the cultural and ideological battle between whites and Indians, see: Abler, Thomas S., “Scalping, Torture, Cannibalism, and Rape: An Ethnohistorical Analysis of Conflicting Cultural Values in War,” Anthropologica 34, no. 1 (1992): 3-20 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robarchek, Clayton A., “Plains Warfare and the Anthropology of War,” in Skeletal Biology in the Great Plains: Migration, Warfare, Health, and Subsistence, eds. Owsley, Douglas W. and Jantz, Richard L. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 307-16 Google Scholar.

11. On profaning corpses, see Vestal, Stanley, New Sources of Indian History, 1850-1891 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1934), 343 Google Scholar. On factionalism in Indian history, see Lewis, David R. and Wash, William, “Reservation Leadership and the Progressive-Traditional Dichotomy: William Wash and the Northern Utes, 1865-1928,” Ethnohistory 38, no. 2 (1991): 124-48 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. On rumors concerning the corpse, see box 114, file 10, pp. 11-14, WS, Norman. On the Smithsonian Institution’s intervention, see Associated Press, “Relative of Sitting Bull Gets Artifacts,” Billings Montana Gazette, December 15, 2007 Google Scholar.

13. Bland and Murray cited in Bland, A Brief History, 25 and 27.

14. On the role of the various churches and missionaries in the Christian acculturation of Indian funerary practices, see Enoch, Ross, The Jesuit Mission to the Lakota Sioux: A Study of Pastoral Ministry, 1886-1945 (Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1996 Google Scholar). On the attempt and relative failure to reform the general perception of death, see Seeman, Erik R., “Reading Indians’ Deathbed Scenes: Ethnohistorical and Representational Approaches,” The Journal of American History 88, no. 1 (2001): 17-47 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. On how the monument was used on Memorial Day, see Wallace, David W., Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 204 Google Scholar. On McLaughlin’s role with regard to fundraising, see box 105, file 33, p. 12, WS, Norman.

16. On Strassmeier, see “Rev. Bernard Strassmeier O.S.B.,” The Indian Sentinel, October 20, 1940, p. 155. On his role with regard to Memorial Day, see “Memorial Services at Fort Yates Are Most Impressive,” Sioux County Pioneer, May 30, 1919. On his protégée Augustine Pleets, daughter of Little Eagle, see “Crow Hill Indian Congress,” The Indian Sentinel, July 19, 1939, p. 100.

17. On Inyan Bosdata, or “Standing Rock” in Lakota, see Byron Olson, “A History of Inyan Bosdata,” Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Historical Preservation Office (unpublished).

18. On the Indian side, people made the “pilgrimage” to Little Big Horn even before Sitting Bull’s death. The reservation’s memorial connections with the East and the West were known, if not made explicit, by both its inhabitants and participants in the ceremonies. See Utley, , Sitting Bull, 266 Google Scholar.

19. On the role of commemoration in the structuring of national spaces, see Ashplant, Timothy G., Dawson, Graham, and Roper, Michael, eds., Commemorating War: The Politics of Memory (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2004), 3-85 Google Scholar.

20. On the defacing of the wooden stele, see box 107, file 3, p. 37, WS, Norman. On Casey’s request and the cabin, see Utley, , Sitting Bull, 312-13 Google Scholar. On the reenactments, see Sprague, Donovin A., Standing Rock Sioux (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2004), 60 Google Scholar. The Frank B. Fiske collection of photographs held by the State Historical Society of North Dakota (hereafter “SHSND”) is the primary source of postcards depicting the grave. On how photos of the grave were employed, see: box 108, file 2, p. 2, WS, Norman; Albers, Patricia C. and James, William R., “The Dominance of Plains Imagery on the Picture Post Card,” in Fifth Annual 1981 Plains Indians Seminar: In Honor of John C. Ewers, eds. Horse Capture, George P. and Ball, Gene (Cody: Buffalo Bill Historical Center, 1984), 73-97 Google Scholar.

21. On the photography of Peter Shier, see: box 107, file 3, p. 37, WS, Norman; photograph “Unknown Man at Sitting Bull’s Grave,” Fiske Collection, SHSND, Bismarck.

22. Fiske, Frank B., “ My River – The Missouri by Frank B. Fiske, ca. 1943,” North Dakota History 55, no. 2 (1988): 8 Google Scholar; Fiske, , Life and Death of Sitting Bull (Fort Yates: Pioneer-Arrow Print, 1933), 58-89 Google Scholar; Fiske, , “The Taming of the Sioux,” Bismarck Tribune, 1917, p. 169 Google Scholar; and Hollow, Robert C., “Sitting Bull: Artifact and Artifake ,” North Dakota History 54, no. 3 (1987): 12 Google Scholar.

23. On ghosts, see: Vestal, Stanley, Sitting Bull, the Champion of the Sioux: A Biography (Boston: University of Oklahoma, 1932; repr. 1989), 313 Google Scholar; Vestal, , “Sitting Bull’s Ghost Appears,” The New York Times, December 21, 1890 Google Scholar. On placing flowers on the grave, see Beede to Campbell, 4 October 1930, box 107, file 83, p. 38, WS, Norman.

24. On Mary Long Chase, see “Aged Indian Woman Recalls Why Dad Shot Sitting Bull,” Rapid City Daily Journal, April 12, 1953. On John Loneman, see: box 114, file 7, p. 9, WS, Norman; “Sioux Policeman’s Crucifix,” The Indian Sentinel, February 7, 1927, p. 81. On Red Tomahawk, see: “The Man Behind the Highway Patrol Logo,” Bismarck Tribune, October 25, 2009; “Red Tomahawk,” Sioux County Pioneer, December 29, 1929.

25. Riggs, Thomas L. and Howard, Mary K., “Sunset to Sunset: A Lifetime with My Brothers the Sioux,” South Dakota Historical Collection 34 (1958): 261-68 Google Scholar. On the outlawing of mourning rites, see DeMallie, , “The Lakota Ghost Dance,” 400 Google Scholar. On missionaries and the promotion of a Christian death, see note 14 in this article.

26. On the White Horse Society, see Vestal, New Sources, 183. On the organization of fundraising dances, see box 104, file 6, p. 44, WS, Norman.

27. Collins to Commissioner Francis E. Leupp, n.d., and Collins to McLaughlin, 20 April 1908, Standing Rock Agency, entry 44, box 4, file 38570, RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, National Archives (hereafter “NA DC”), Washington DC.

28. On the removal project, see “Removal of Sitting Bull, Gall, and Rain in the Face,” Standing Rock Agency, box 287, file 600.1, RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, National Archives (hereafter “NA KC”), Kansas City, Missouri. On the Grand River monument, see Robinson to Kittredge, June 6 1907, and McLaughlin to Secretary of the Interior, 18 June 1908, file 38570, NA DC, Washington DC. On the Gamble bill, S.7641, see “Cemetery, Standing Rock Reservation, January 9, 1909,” Report 716, Calendar 711, 76th Cong. 2nd Sess., SDHS Senate.

29. Collins to Leupp, 1908, file 38570, NA DC, Washington DC. For One Elk’s point of view, see in the same file: One Elk to Colonel Downs, 29 March 1906; “Memorandum,” 1908.

30. On One Elk’s experiences, see: Office of Indian Affairs, Annual Report of the Commissioner, 1894, p. 565, http://www.littlebighorn.info/Indians/NameO.htm ; “One Elk Thinks Back,” The Indian Sentinel, March 18, 1938, p. 47.

31. Strassmeier to Charles S. Lusk, 20 August 1909, file 38570, NA DC, Washington DC.

32. One Elk to Downs, 29 March 1906; One Elk to McLaughlin, 7 March 1908; McLaughlin to Secretary of the Interior, 8 and 18 June 1908; and DJP, “Memorandum,” September 29, 1909, file 38570, NA DC, Washington DC.

33. Album of newspaper clippings, Acting Commissioner Charles F. Larrabee to US Indian Agent, 23 March 1908 and 2 May 1908, box 362, RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri.

34. Belden to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 19 June 1907 and 8 October 1909, file 38570, NA DC, Washington DC.

35. Old Bull to Collins, 27 June 1908, H75-140, South Dakota Historical Society, Pierre.

36. “Memorandum,” September 29, 1909, file 38570, DJP, NA DC, Washington DC.

37. “Standing Rock Memorial Celebration,” Guy H. Houchen to James B. Kitch, 2 June 1919, RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, Standing Rock Agency, box 152, file 044, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri.

38. Box 107, file 3, pp. 28 and 37, WS, Norman. On the role of the newspaper and the Fort Yates Chamber of Commerce, see box 107, file 3, p. 37, WS, Norman. For an example of respectful behavior toward the grave during this period, see the photograph “E.W. Herbert at Sitting Bull’s Grave, Fort Yates, N.D.,” Fiske Collection, SHSND, Bismarck.

39. On the December 11 ceremony, see O. R. Kopplin, “Full-Blood Indians Volunteer,” Standing Rock Agency, entry 125, file 115705, RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA DC, Washington DC. For an example of a call to a “western” identity during the war, see “With the Colors,” Sioux County Pioneer, October 3, 1918, p. 8. On the Indian warrior in propaganda, see Barsh, Russel L., “American Indians in the Great War,” Ethnohistory 38, no. 3 (1991): 285 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On White/Red reconciliation, see Grillot, Thomas, “L’héritage patriotique: mémoire de la Grande Guerre et anciens combattants amérindiens aux États-Unis (1917-1947)” (PhD thesis, EHESS, 2010 Google Scholar), chap. 2.

40. “Movement Begun for Sioux Memorial Hall,” Sioux County Pioneer, February 6, 1919, p. 1; “Standing Rock Memorial Celebration,” Houchen to Kitch, 2 June 1919, Standing Rock Agency, box 152, file 44, RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri; and Skaug to Commissioners of Indian Affairs, 3 May 1923, file 38570, NA DC, Washington DC.

41. On the ideology of reconciliation, see Grillot, “L’héritage patriotique,” chap. 1. On the participation of Standing Rock in the fiftieth-anniversary commemoration of Little Big Horn, see “Indian Wars,” Standing Rock Agency, box 287, RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri. On Campbell’s presence, see DeMallie, , foreword to Sitting Bull, the Champion of the Sioux: A Biography, by Vestal, Stanley (Boston: University of Oklahoma, 1932; repr. 1989), xv Google Scholar.

42. On the links between commemorative logic, ethnic affirmation, dances, and local chapters of the American Legion, see Grillot, “L’héritage patriotique,” chap. 2.

43. Skaug and Morrison to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 3 May 1923, NA DC, Washington DC.

44. Skaug, Julius, Mobridge: Its First 50 Years, 1906-1956 (Aberdeen: Brown Lithographing Company, 1957 Google Scholar); Skaug, Places of Special Interest in Mobridge, South Dakota and Vicinity (Mobridge: Mobridge Tribune Print, n.d.).

45. Robinson to Burke, 1 August 1922, Standing Rock Agency, box 159, file 53.0 “Genealogy, Family,” RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri.

46. Ibid.

47. One Bull and George White Bull to Quartermaster General, 7 May 1923, file 38570, NA DC, Washington DC.

48. A few hundred for the summer of 1931: see “Grave of Indian Statesman Will Be Cared For,” Sioux County Pioneer-Arrow, August 16, 1928.

49. Box 107, file 3, p. 37, WS, Norman.

50. See: “No Man’s Land in North Dakota,” Missions: An International Baptist Magazine 24 (1933): 86-87 and 169; corresponding photographs in the Fiske Collection, SHSND, Bismarck, especially “Frank Zahn and Unidentified Man at Indian Police Graves, Fort Yates, N.D.,” 1932.

51. Yellow Robe to C. D. Erskine, 8 January 1925, file 38570, NA DC, Washington DC.

52. For another example of a transfer request to the Black Hills, see John Frederick to C. H. Burke, 15 March 1927, file 38570, NA DC, Washington DC. For examples of native visitors on the condition of the grave, see E. D. Mossman to J. A. Stransky, former inhabitant of South Dakota now retired in Los Angeles, 7 January 1928, Standing Rock Agency, box 181, file “Indian Troubles, Visiting Among Indians,” RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri. On Gertrude Bonnin as a descendant of Sitting Bull, see: “Indian Woman in Capital to Fight Growing Use of Peyote Drug,” Washington Times, February 17, 1918, cited in Thomas Constantine Maroukis and Leonard R. Bruguier, Peyote and the Yankton Sioux: The Life and Times of Sam Necklace (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 130; box 108, file 2, p. 35, WS, Norman. On Bonnin’s visit, see: DeRockbraine to E. D. Mossman, 18 July 1928, and E. D. Mossman to Burke, undated report, p. 5, box 181, file “Bonnin, 1928,” NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri. Regarding Bonnin’s own words on the subject, see box 108, file 2, p. 36, WS, Norman.

53. Francis Bullhead, “Sioux Catholic Congress at Holy Rosary Mission,” The Indian Sentinel, November 4, 1931, pp. 173-74.

54. On Campbell’s ambition to write educational biographies of great Indian men and women and how his correspondents responded, see box 107, file 4, pp. 5-7 and box 117, file 16, p. 2, WS, Norman. For an example of such a reponse by an “educated” Indian mentioning Sitting Bull at the beginning of the twentieth century, see Eastman, Charles A., Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1918 Google Scholar). For a history of Indian accounts before Campbell, see Hardorff, Richard G., Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight: New Sources of Indian-Military History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991; repr. 1997)Google Scholar. Works by inhabitants of the reservation that were partially or entirely dedicated to Sitting Bull include those by McLaughlin, Robert High Eagle, Beede, Fiske, Riggs, and Jacobsen.

55. Angela A. Boleyn, “John Grass, American Indian Patriot,” n.d., excerpts available on Richard Grass’s website, http://www.richardgrass.com ; box 197, file 1, p. 7, WS, Norman.

56. On rivalries between witnesses, see box 110, file 06, p. 5 and box 108, file 18, p. 73, WS, Norman. On the symbolic benefits of being interviewed by Campbell, no other source is more eloquent than Campbell’s second book: see Vestal, Stanley, Warpath: The True Story of the Fighting Sioux Told in a Biography of Chief White Bull (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1934 Google Scholar). Campbell gives White Bull the role of the model Plains warrior played by Sitting Bull in his precedent work. Furthermore, at the editors’ urging, White Bull is portrayed as Custer’s killer. See DeMallie, foreword, V-XXIII.

57. Box 107, file 4, pp. 29-33, WS, Norman.

58. Burke to George H. Moses, 1 August 1927, file 38570, NA DC, Washington DC.

59. Burke to Robinson, 8 August 1922, and Burke to Skaug and Morrison, 21 May 1923, Standing Rock Agency, box 159, file 53.0 “Genealogy, Family,” RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri.

60. Mossman to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 25 August 1922, Standing Rock Agency, box 159, file 53.0 “Genealogy, Family,” RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri. The dichotomy between medicine men and warriors, which had been imposed from the outside during the 1880s for the purpose of tarnishing Sitting Bull’s image, persists in Standing Rock today, proving the durability of the categories imposed by official memory (made possible because they were included in the struggle for local recognition).

61. On senators’ requests, see Mossman to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 26 July 1929, file 38570, NA DC, Washington DC. On the donor and the renovation, see: incomplete letter, 1953, Mossman Papers, file “Sitting Bull,” SHSND, Bismarck; Mossman to Russell Reid, 26 July 1931, Standing Rock Agency, box 159, file 53.0 “Genealogy, Family,” RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri.

62. On the local community’s expectations following the renovation, see “Grave of Indian Statesman Will Be Cared For,” Sioux County Pioneer-Arrow, August 16, 1928. On Russell Reid’s expectations, see Reid to Mossman, 27 June and 20 July 1931, Standing Rock Agency, box 159, file 53.0 “Genealogy, Family,” RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri. On Reid’s reading of Vestal (Campbell), see Reid to L. C. Lippert, 2 March 1944, Superintendents’ File, file “Sitting Bull,” SHSND, Bismarck. On his closeness to historian P. E. Byrne, see “Local Historian P. E. Byrne Calls Sitting Bull Death Murder,” Superintendents’ File, file “Sitting Bull,” SHSND, Bismarck. On the State Historical Society of North Dakota’s acquisition project, see Russell Reid, “Memorandum on Sitting Bull,” April 10, 1953, Superintendents’ File, file “Sitting Bull,” SHSND, Bismarck.

63. On financial questions, see: Standing Rock Agency, entry 44, box 4, file 13393, RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri; “Meeting of the Standing Rock Memorial Association” and Harold L. Ickes to Burton K. Wheeler, 9 May 1933, Standing Rock Agency, box 152, file 044 “Standing Rock Memorial Celebration,” RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri.

64. A historical park, which Mary Collins had wanted for the graves of Sitting Bull’s companions killed in 1890, was not created until 1958.

65. She was probably a “smuggler,” though it is difficult to thoroughly describe to what extent, given the state of the sources. Her husband, Ignatius Cadotte, was from an important mixed-blood family of Wakpala. One of his relatives, Raymond, revived interest in transferring the grave among the prominent members of Mobridge in 1952. See DeWall, Robb, The Saga of Sitting Bull’s Bones: The Unusual Story Behind Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski’s Memorial to Chief Sitting Bull (Crazy Horse: Korczak’s Heritage, 1984), 3 Google Scholar.

66. On Lippert’s policies, see Reid to Lippert, 17 September 1936, Standing Rock Agency, box 159, file 53.0 “Genealogy, Family,” RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri. On One Bull and his daughter’s persistent requests and Francis H. Case’s intervention, see One Bull to John Collier, 6 August 1938, Standing Rock Agency, entry 44, box 4, file 13393, RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri. On the maneuvers of South and North Dakota, see: Francis H. Case to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 12 September 1938, Standing Rock Agency, entry 44, box 4, file 13393, RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri; Thomas H. Moodie to Ickes, 17 November 1938, Standing Rock Agency, entry 44, box 4, file 13393, RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri; and Case to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 19 August 1938, file 38570, NA DC, Washington DC. See also Reid, “Memorandum on Sitting Bull,” 1953, Superintendents’ File, file “Sitting Bull,” SHSND, Bismarck. On certain participants’ impatience, see Grey Eagle to Case, 15 February 1952, Correspondence and Related Papers Exchanged Between Francis Case and Individual Indians in South Dakota, Francis H. Case Papers, file “Sitting Bull,” Dakota Wesleyan University (hereafter “DWU”), Mitchell.

67. On visitor complaints, see: Superintendents’ File, file “Sitting Bull,” SHSND, Bismarck; “Controversy Rages Over Sitting Bull’s Grave,” Argus Leader, March 28, 1953; and Francis H. Case Papers, file “Sitting Bull,” DWU, Mitchell.

68. To my knowledge, this was an exceptional number for Indian country, at least until very recently. While this may be explained by the story of Sitting Bull itself, the shortsightedness induced by monuments often known only at the local level is difficult to understand here.

69. On Sitting Bull in the WPA tourist guides, see: The WPA Guide to South Dakota: The Federal Writers&apos. Project Guide to 1930s South Dakota (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2006), 204; Project of Works Progress Administration for the State of North Dakota: A Guide to the Northern Prairie State (Fargo: Knight Company, 1938), 317.

70. On the ceremony of July 26-28, 1934, at Little Eagle, see “Celebration Little Eagle Big Success,” Corson County S.D. News, August 3, 1934, p. 1. On the monument, see L. C. Lippert to Alvin Warrior, 15 May 1934, Standing Rock Agency, box 189, file “Farmers’ Correspondence ¼,” RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri.

71. On the construction and later interpretation of the monument, see Adele Little Dog, interview by Thomas Grillot, July 16, 2008.

72. Superintendent H. N. Clark to D’Arcy McNickle, 25 October 1950, Superintendents’ File, file “Sitting Bull,” SHSND, Bismarck.

73. Case to Grey Eagle, 3 April 1953, Francis H. Case Papers, file “Sitting Bull,” DWU, Mitchell (author’s emphasis).

74. The tribal council’s first resolution was made following the raid, see “Tribal Council Resolution July 1, 1953,” Superintendents’ File, file “Sitting Bull,” SHSND, Bismarck.

75. Reports reproduced in the historiography of DeWall’s The Saga, the only book dedicated to the 1953 events and very “Morbridgian” in its outlook.

76. It would survive, expurgated and reformatted by Sioux neotraditionalists, who inspired Barack Obama to recognize the Indian chief as a “great American” in his 2010 book. See Crouch, Ian, “Literary Smackdown: Obama, Fox News, and Sitting Bull,” The New Yorker, November 18, 2010 Google Scholar, http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/11/literary-smackdown-obama-fox-news-and-sitting-bull-1.html#ixzz1QSWvG1HI .

77. On the transformation of Sitting Bull into an archetypal medicine man, see: LaPointe, Ernie, Sitting Bull: His Life and Legacy (Layton: Gibbs Smith, 2009)Google Scholar; Davis, Ann and Bolz, Peter, “ Si Tanka Wokik-suye: The Wounded Knee Memorial Ride,” European Review of Native American Studies 5, no. 1 (1991): 1-6 Google Scholar. On the feeling at Standing Rock that the December 15, 1890 celebration could no longer have a negative effect, see T. E. Howard, “Memorandum to Hon Oscar L. Chapman,” September 13, 1939, Standing Rock Agency, entry 44, box 4, file 13393, RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA KC, Kansas City, Missouri.

78. For a sample of press clippings covering the 1953 events on which this basic analysis is based, see Francis H. Case Papers, file “Sitting Bull,” DWU, Mitchell.

79. Grey Eagle to Case, 23 March 1953, Francis H. Case Papers, file “Sitting Bull,” DWU, Mitchell.

80. On Grey Eagle’s memorial involvement, see John Collier to Theo B. Werner, 11 and 21 September 1934, Standing Rock Agency, entry 44, box 4, file 45808, RG 75, CCF 1907-1939, NA DC, Washington DC.

81. On this subject, see Cooper, Frederick, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005 Google Scholar).

82. A recent example of attempts to better understand this colonial component of American history can be found in the April 2007 issue of The William and Mary Quarterly, in particular the article by Greene, J. P., “Colonial History and National History: Reflections on a Continuing Problem,” William and Mary Quarterly 64, no. 2 (2007): 235-50 Google Scholar.

83. On the historiography of the West, see Havard, “Les Indiens.”

84. The work of Richard White simultaneously summarizes the links and the breaks between “early modernists” and “modernists” of US history. See, in particular, Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991; repr. 2011). This remains one of the most seminal formulations of cultural hybridization in America. But, centered on the French period, he sees this type of relation disappear with independence, under the attacks of white settlers. In “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A History of the American West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), dedicated to the twentieth-century American West, White examines the American colonial situation through the prism of economic relations between the center and the periphery in addition to the problematic of domination through the racial question. The West has been reinforced as a geographical category in historiography, but at the expense of a study linking various colonial events in American history.

85. See the debates on Ann Laura Stoler’s article “Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies,” The Journal of American History 88, no. 3 (2001): 829-65. In particular, see McMahon, Robert J., “Cultures of Empire,” The Journal of American History 88, no. 3 (2001): 888-92 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also: Kramer, Paul, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States and the Philippines (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006 Google Scholar); Tyrell, Ian, Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

86. The already old but still illuminating article by Stephen Aron and Jeremy Adelman on the question of borderlands is representative in that it practically ignores the twentieth century: see Adelman, Jeremy and Aron, Stephen, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in Between in North American History,” The American Historical Review 104, no. 3 (1999): 814-41 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also: Tyrell, Ian, “American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History,” The American Historical Review 96, no. 4 (1991): 1031-55 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frederickson, George M., “From Exceptionalism to Variability: Recent Developments in Cross-National Comparative History,” Journal of American History 82, no. 2 (1995): 487-604 Google Scholar. One should nonetheless note recent efforts to link the different geographical theaters (Continental America in addition to imperial projections on the Caribbean, Latin America, the Pacific, and Southeast Asia) to the study of Indian policies in the United States. See: Wagoner, Paula L., “ They Treated Us Just Like Indians ”: The Worlds of Bennett County (South Dakota: University of Nebraska Press, 2002 Google Scholar); Cahill, Cathleen D., Federal Fathers and Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869-1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011 Google Scholar); and Jacobs, Margaret D., White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009 Google Scholar). On the need to examine the question of “continental” American colonialism in the twentieth century, see Schaub, Jean-Frédéric, “La catégorie ‘études coloniales’ est-elle indispensable?” Annales HSS 63, no. 3 (2008): 633 Google Scholar.