Snippy Snippets Part I
The best way to keep things simple while delivering something meaty and historical enough to attract an audience is to focus on a set of noncontroversial details: George Washington’s teeth, the condition of the Constitution’s parchment, the mechanism of muskets, or the rigging on Columbus’s flagship. In the public arena, grand events are usually remembered through such tiny facts.
—Frederick E. Hoxie
in Lewis & Clark and the Indian Country: The Native American Perspective
Riding a bicycle across the country means reading history in snippets, from one historical marker, statute, museum to the next, voices many and varied. People emphasize certain facts over others, sometimes out of convenience. Riding my bike from one storied place to another, I can hear the snippets talk to each other. Sometimes the snippets get snippy.
There are two monuments, both on reservations, about 140 miles apart. I’ll write about the second one in my next newsletter. For now, here’s the first, on the edge of the Yankton Sioux reservation. It’s maybe 500 feet from the road. The land around it is fenced off, so the fence at the road has to take a detour up the jeep trail to the monument, over, and then back to the road. The fence creates a feeling that the monument is an inconvenience. I don’t know who installed this monument. I believe it was the National Park Service, since they write about it on their website.
I took these pictures on my first cross-country bike ride in 2018.
This monument commemorates the signing of a treaty in 1852. “In memory of the Yankton Chiefs who made the Treaty of 1852.” Their names are carved on the granite, here and on the other side.
The historical marker includes a photo of Yankton tribal leaders and their white counterparts at the signing of the treaty in Washington DC, and a map showing the original territory and the more than 11 million acres ceded in the treaty. The major block of text says:
This monument commemorates the Yankton Sioux Treaty of 1858.
As increasing numbers of settlers came upriver, the Yankton Sioux had to decide whether to join other Sioux tribes in armed resistance or to co-exist with the immigrants. They chose peace.
Head Chief Struck by the Ree led a delegation of tribal leaders to Washington, D.C., to negotiate a treaty. The tribe ceded most of its lands to the U.S. Government and agreed to move to a reservation on the north side of the Missouri River.
The words, “They chose peace” feel a little gaslight-y. Well, more than a little. The National Park Service website gives more insight into Chief Struck by the Ree’s attitude:
Returning from Washington, Padaniapapi (Struck-by-The-Ree) told his people, "The white men are coming in like maggots. It is useless to resist them. They are many more than we are. We could not hope to stop them. Many of our brave warriors would be killed, our women and children left in sorrow, and still we would not stop them. We must accept it, get the best terms we can get and try to adopt their ways."
The inset mentions that Head Chief Struck by the Ree might have been present as a baby when Lewis and Clark had a council with the Yankton, Sioux.
The Sioux delegation leader, Struck by the Ree (right), was a newborn baby at the 1804 Council at Calumet Bluff, and Meriwether Lewis supposedly wrapped him in an American flag
Travelsouthdakota.com elaborates, saying that folklore suggests that the future chief was born on the day of the meeting, that Captain Lewis heard about it and wrapped the baby with an American flag, and made a speech, prophesying that the baby would grow up to be a great leader.
Some version of the story may be true, but if so, it is odd that no one mentions it in the Lewis and Clark journals. The meetings with the Yankton at Calumet Bluffs were spread out over three days: August 29-August 31. There was much dancing and exchanging of gifts leading up to the formal meeting on August 31. The Yanktons came from their village more than nine miles away. A group of 60 or so were camped just across the river from Calumet Bluffs. There may have been a pregnant woman there, but Sgt. Gass wrote in his journal that no women were present at the dancing and conversations that lead up to the formal meeting. And there’s no mention of there being women camped across the river.
On August 31, according to Sgt. Ordway’s journal entry, one of the chiefs praises the flag given to them which is “so large as to Cover our children from the heat of the sun.” That flag may have eventually made its way to the newborn baby who would become named Struck by the Ree.
Not surprisingly, the journal writers record the names of the five chiefs at Calumet differently. Ordway records the 3rd Chief’s name as pan-dan-apappy. In his footnote, Gary E. Moulton says the name is more appropriately spelled panini ap’ api, which he translates as “Struck by the Ree.” So there is a Struck by the Ree senior at the meeting in 1804.
I don’t think the baby was there at the meeting, but I believe a flag made it to him eventually, and, more importantly, stories of the meeting were shared with him. He must have grown up hearing of stories of the 1804 meeting. The story must have meant something to the storyteller and the listener.
But what did the story mean to them? Was Stuck by the Ree he as star-struck as the historical marker makes him out to be? Given his remarks to his own people, it’s more likely that he thought of the Lewis and Clark story as a story of broken promises. If he told the story at the treaty negotiations, it was probably as a rebuke.
In the process of doing this research, I discovered that the Yankton tribe maintains a herd of buffalo on the land surrounding the monument. I didn’t see any the last time. This time, maybe I’ll be lucky. I also learned that the gravesite of Struck by the Ree is nearby. I will try to go there and pay my respects.
In my next newsletter, I’ll write about another monument on another reservation 140 miles away from here. It’s quite a contrast.