Black Twin was one of the prominent leaders of the Hokayuta, an Oglala band that after 1876 was led by his brother No Water. In my research files, I have a copy of the following letter dated Oct. 23, 1957 between Mari Sandoz and Edgar Stewart regarding Black Twin:

Although most of my Sioux material is in storage out west, I've dug up what I can about the Twins as the Oglalas called them. My recollection now is that they were born twins, blood twins, but this is, as you know, sometimes difficult to establish beyond any doubt. He Dog said they were twins but this was through a young interpreter who wasn't always too reliable in the fine shadings of Old Lakota.

Black Twin was at least 1/4 Cheyenne, some say 1/2, and White Twin too, of course, if they were actual twins, He's often said to have been part Cheyenne.

Both Frank Grouard and his biographer, Joe DeBarthe were liars, but in this Twin business there is truth. The complication for the researcher comes from the complication of the names. Black Twin is often referred to as simply Twin, but so is White Twin. Sometimes they were called Twin No. 1 and Twin No. 2 in the records, White Twin the No. 2. In addition they both had other names. Black Twin is often called Wakan or Holy Eagle, also Holy Bald Eagle. Both Twins were called Holy upon occasion, also Black Holy and White Holy. Because there were other men whose names were interpreted similarly, the confusion gets pretty thick.

Black Twin, as you know, shows up frequently in the document files of Red Cloud Agency in the National Archives, from the creation of the agency in 1871 into 1877, usually reported as coming in with Crazy Horse. The document files of Fort Laramie mention that emissaries were sent to him as early as 1866 asking him to come in with Man Afraid of His Horse, Red Cloud, and Red Leaf. Apparently there was little hope that White Twin could be coaxed in. His band, I gather, hunted a little farther north in the earlier days, sometimes coming down the Niobrara and then swinging up along Pine Ridge to the Belle Fourche and back to the mouth of the Tongue, following game, etc. White Twin had close ties with the Minneconjous and the Crazy Horse Hunkpatilas in the later years. His reticence and uncompromising dedication to his people were said to have been greatly influential, by example, in the later life of Crazy Horse.

The fact that the white man knew so little about so influential a man testifies to the great respect he inspired in the Lakotas. He will always be a misty figure because he inspired this respect. One talked freely of a Red Cloud, a Man Afraid, a Sitting Bull, but White Twin, Crazy Horse, High Back Bone were considered men of special dedication, of special holiness, of closeness to the Great Powers, and these names are seldom mentioned, should, in fact, never be known upon the tongue.

Unfortunately John Colhoff, who knew a great many things about these men, is dead too now.

In the Ricker Interviews at the Nebraska State Historical Society is a wealth of unpublished material in these pencil-written tablets of old Judge Ricker; I could not have written my Indian books without them.

— Ephriam Dickson

A few observations on Black Twin. I would assume he and White Twin were born about 1825. There is a letter from the Red Cloud Agent J.J. Saville which confirms the Sandoz statement above - Black Twin was half-Cheyenne. I presume that his mother was Cheyenne - the Hinman interviews indicate that the father bore the name No Water, given to one of The Twins' younger brothers. There is mention in an 1868 report of a brother of Black Twin who was prominent among the Cheyennes. Called "Young Chief" in the report, I think this is the Little Chief who was the ranking Northern Cheyenne leader at Pine Ridge in the 1880s. Do you know anything of other Cheyenne connections, Gary? (Incidentally the Saville reports that Little Big Man was another 'half-breed Cheyenne'.)

On band background, as Ephriam states, the Black Twins were the leading family of the Badger-Eaters. The interviews conducted by Scudder Mekeel at Pine Ridge in 1931 throw up invaluable information about this group. It was originally (i.e., pre-1850) an extended family grouping associated with the larger Tasnaheca (Ground Squirrel) band, of whom the leading family was the Bad Wounds. In turn the Tasnaheca was one constituent sub-band of the Southern Oglalas, collectively known as the Kiyaksa. In 1851-52, according to the Mekeel interviews, the Black Twin tiwahe wintered alone, had poor luck and - of course - killed and ate some badgers. The resulting nickname stuck. The incident is connected with a shift by the Badger-Eaters away from the Southern Oglalas. They joined the Northern Oglala bands that hunted southwest of the Black Hills. According to Victor Douville, Lakota Studies Dept, Sinte Gleska University, the B-Es became identified first with Man Afraid of His Horse's band - the Hunkpatilas.

By the time of the Bozeman Trail War, however, the B-Es had become a sub-band of the Bad Faces. According to trader G. P. Beauvais, in 1867 Black Twin was rated the fourth chief of the Bad Faces - after Red Cloud, Brave Bear, and Trunk. That same year Black Twin begins to become clearer in the sources. He begins a lifelong career of doing the opposite of whatever Red Cloud does. In 1867, for example, Black Twin is consistently identified with factions (e.g., Man Afraid of His Horse, Brave Bear) of Northern Oglalas seeking a negotiated solution to the Bozeman Trail crisis. By contrast, Red Cloud was laying down a hard line - no peace until the forts are physically abandoned. Black Twin's role in the period 1868-70 is unclear, but by 1871, when Red Cloud tries to build consensus around accepting an agency, off-reservation but on the unceded territory, Black Twin was the key Northern Oglala leader resisting. In spring 1872 he came in with Red Cloud as far as Rawhide Creek, shared in the distribution of annuities, but declined to actually visit Red Cloud Agency No. 1. The following winter he and his band visited briefly on the White River at the Brule agency (located east of modern Crawford, Nebraska) but again did not visit the Oglala agency.

I have tried to reconstruct the relationship between Crazy Horse and Black Twin in my biography of the former, due out from University of Oklahoma Press this autumn. Basically I think Black Twin's was a more measured, less reflexively hostile, attitude than that of Crazy Horse. I was intrigued by Sandoz's statement about White Twin. It reminds me of a statement in Lt. W. P. Clark's summary report on the Great Sioux War, in which he synthesised the accounts of Indians surrendering at Red Cloud Agency in 1877. He has a statement to the effect that it was an acknowledged fact that some of the Lakota leaders considered the most intelligent and perceptive were among the Northern or non-treaty band leaders.

I don't know whether Gary is aware of the extensive account given by Johnson Holy Rock, a living descendant of White Twin, in the recent Smithsonian Institution book on the Little Bighorn, edited by Herman Viola. Johnson is a very knowledgeable elder (a prominent Pine Ridge politician in the 1950-2000 period). Another source: there is an account of the hunka ceremony in the Buechel Lakota Tales & Texts volumes, given by Thunder Tail. I think Black Twin, who I suspect was Thunder Tail's father, is the protagonist in the account, of a specific hunka dated about 1850.

I speculate in the Crazy Horse biography that he died about February 1876. — Kingsley Bray

I had not picked up on the Johnson Holy Rock interview before, but I have now read it. I note that he was told by his father that Black Twin died on the way to Canada after the Little Big Horn battle and that his twin brother, Johnson's grandfather, White Twin/Holy Bull/Holy White Buffalo, died on the way back. Neither of these accounts tally with my investigations, although his account will undoubtedly repay further examination.

Hardorff (in The Death of Crazy Horse) says that Black Twin died in a Northern Oglala camp on the Powder River in 1875 according to Lakota sources. I conclude that this is a likely date in the light of other circumstantial evidence. I look forward to reading your Crazy Horse biography, Kingsley, and will be interested to see your evidence for a February 1876 date of death.

Hyde (Red Cloud's Folk) says that Black Twin died on the reservation in 1877 after surrendering with Crazy Horse. With regard to White Twin, he goes on to say that he fled to Canada with Sitting Bull and died there. Neither statement appears to be supported by the Crazy Horse Surrender Ledger which makes no mention of Black Twin (unless he is recorded under another name- I will look at this again), but records White Twin as surrendering with Crazy Horse.

This would also tend to contradict Johnson Holy Rock's information that White Twin died on the way back from Canada. Having said that, it seems strange that the elder Holy Rock, who presumably supplied the information to Johnson, was mistaken as to the circumstances of his father's death. — Gary

He Dog said that Black Twin died in the winter of 1975, I don't remember well where I read that, probably in Camp's notes. — Shatonska

He surrendered with Crazy Horse but maybe he left for Canada later, with Big Road and the others, and then died on the return journey. — Grahame Wood

Pine Ridge man retells father's eyewitness account
By STEVE YOUNG
Argus Leader
published: 6/25/01

He was born 135 years ago in the season of the blossoming rosebushes, perhaps May or June according to Oglala tradition, along the Tongue River in southeastern Montana.

Of this much Johnson Holy Rock is certain when he talks about his father, Jonas.

Holy Rock knows, too, that the man he called "Dad" was at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876 -- a mere boy maybe 9 or 10 years old.

"Except for a few times, he didn't often talk about the Little Bighorn," says Holy Rock, 83, himself now a respected elder among his people on the Pine Ridge Reservation in southwestern South Dakota.

"I do know he said that at the time the fighting started, his mother and the other women grabbed the children and ran for cover."

According to the story Jonas Holy Rock told his son, they were hiding in thick bushes along the Little Bighorn River while Custer's men were being cut down on Last Stand Hill.

At some point, the boy's uncle rode down to the bank where they were hiding, grabbed young Jonas by the arm and swung him up on the back of his war pony.

"He told him, 'Come. This day you will become a man,' " Johnson Holy Rock says. "He was going to take him up to join the last assault on the hill."

But the boy's mother began crying, then reached up and grabbed hold of her child. She had already lost a daughter to some unarticulated illness in the past. She didn't want to lose her son as well.

And so he stayed.

"My father used to say, 'I often wondered what it would have been like if he had taken me up on that last final charge on the hill,' " Holy Rock says. "He said, 'Maybe I would have been hit by a stray bullet.' "

At the time of the battle, the Oglala were hunting on the land of their traditional enemies, the Crow. Many historians have argued that the Sioux were a warring people who thought little of taking what they wanted, even among fellow Indians.

But Johnson Holy Rock downplays that bully image.

"In bad seasons, most tribes look the other way to allow even their enemies to hunt on their hunting grounds," he says. "I think that was the case here. They were hungry. They knew they needed food."

As a child, Jonas Holy Rock's Oglala name was Big Gall, a name whose origin is unknown to his son. Big Gall's father, Holy Bull, was co-chief of his Oglala band with his twin brother, Holy Bald Eagle. Neither one of the chiefs fought at Little Bighorn, Johnson Holy Rock says.

"Chiefs were not allowed to participate in battle," he says. "That was not their role. The chief's main duty was to provide leadership and protection for the people. They made the important decisions, such as determining when the camp would move. But they did not fight."

Such decisions emphasize what Holy Rock views as a society much more highly organized than white America gave them credit for.

"They were viewed as savages," he says. "But I really admire them for the structure and organization they had in their society. And these were people who were unlettered. Everything was done by oral language."

It was done by storytelling, just as Jonas Holy Rock used to do with his son, and as Johnson Holy Rock does now.

Stories that the Oglala consider to be an accurate reflection of their past.

"What he told me about Little Bighorn," Johnson Holy Rock says, "I consider the truth."

Article found by Grahame Wood

Here is a working research paper I drafted on the Badger Eaters and Black Twin.

NOTES ON THE BADGER-EATERS
(HOKA-YUTA)
TIYOSPAYE
OF THE OGLALA TRIBE,
1800-1900

BY

KINGSLEY M. BRAY

March, 2004.

“Hoka-yuta tiyospaye etanhan Oglala oyate etu – There was a Badger-Eaters band in the Oglala tribe”: so said George Sword in a statement to Pine Ridge physician James R. Walker. We can trace the band’s history back into the early 19th Century, when it was a junior branch of the larger Tasnaheca or Ground Squirrel band. In that period the Oglalas lived along Bad River and the south-east side of the Black Hills; Short Bull recalled to Scudder Mekeel (1931 Field Notes, p. 64) that some Tasnaheca camped “on this side of the Black Hills . . . [found] many Badgers which they killed and ate.” The name coined by their sarcastic kinsmen stuck.

The leading family of the Badger-Eaters, the No Water tiwahe, was connected to the Bad Wound and Black Stone families that led the parent-Tasnaheca: No Water I (probably born a little before 1800) and Black Stone III (born ca. 1805) were related (He Dog statement to Eleanor Hinman, July 13, 1930, Nebraska State Historical Society), and perhaps addressed each other as ‘brother’ or ‘cousin’.

No Water I married a Cheyenne woman: his sons, the twins Holy Bald Eagle (Black Twin) and Holy Buffalo (White Twin), were born to this woman, about 1825. There seems to have been at least one sister older than the twins. Another daughter married Peter Richard, Sr., the trader (in 1841?). She was known as Lucy Red Sack. Another son, Little Chief (or Young Chief), was probably another son of the Cheyenne wife, born ca. 1823: in manhood he lived with his mother’s people, and became a Cheyenne council chief. He and his band lived at Pine Ridge in the 1880s. The youngest recorded son, No Water II, was born ca. 1834.

In the early 19th Century the Tasnaheca and the Badger-Eaters were drawn into the orbit of the rapidly growing Kiyuksa band, led by Bull Bear. When the Kiyuksa divided in 1841 after the killing of Bull Bear by supporters of his rival Smoke, the Tasnaheca were similarly divided: Black Stone’s tiwahe joined the Smoke faction, forming an important lineage within the now-independent Bad Face band. No Water I’s tiwahe remained with the Bull Bear or Bear People faction, which increasingly hunted south of the North Platte River, summer hunting on the Laramie Plains and wintering on Horse Creek.

Through the 1840s the tiwahe was growing in numbers and influence. I suspect that events of 1845-50 changed the course of the tiwahe’s history, ensuring that its future lay not with the Southern Oglalas or Bear People, but among the Northern Oglalas. We know that in 1845 Bad Wound II (born ca. 1805), who had been living with the Hunkpatila band (he was the ranking akicita leader there in 1844 [David Adams Journal, Museum of the Fur Trade]) returned to claim his late father’s place at the head of the Tasnaheca, after quarrelling with Hunkpatila chief Old Man Afraid of His Horse over trade and women. He was soon recognized as an important headman in the Bear People council, and by 1851 was acknowledged to be the most widely influential chief of the Southern Oglalas. I infer that this sat ill with the No Water tiwahe. Moreover, the epidemics of 1849-51 (first cholera, then smallpox) seem to have dealt a severe blow to the Badger-Eaters. Horn Chips (born 1836), who lived in the Badger-Eaters camp, lost his parents at this period, and it looks as if key members of the No Water tiwahe died too.

In the collection of Lakota Tales & Texts, collected by Fr. Buechel, there is a story (No. 59) told by Thunder Tail. John Colhoff stated that Thunder Tail was a Badger-Eater, and at the 1877 surrender of the ‘hostile’ Northern Oglalas, he was living in the tipi of White Twin (nb. Black Twin himself had died a year or more previously). This suggests that he was a ‘son’ of White Twin, and I believe that his biological father was Black Twin himself. The story is the account of a hunka ceremony conducted by Thunder Tail’s father when a young man – immediately after he received a vision message from a bald eagle (anukasan). Since Black Twin’s other name was Holy Bald Eagle I feel sure that this story relates to him. It states that he was mourning the death of his elder sister, and speaks of a time when many in the Oglala tribal village on the North Platte River were sick. The hunka and other ceremonies that he sponsored (including the Throwing of the Ball) were fundamental in healing many people. I think this is likely to be 1850, in the wake of the epidemics, and from the sheer investment of family wealth in these ceremonies, I infer that Black Twin is making a clear claim to a leading status in his band.

This surely set the family up as rivals of the Bad Wound interest, so it need not surprise us too much to learn that the following year, 1851-52, the Year of the Big Distribution (Horse Creek Treaty), was remembered as when “the Badger Eaters . . . broke away from the Tashnaitca” (Charles Turning Hawk statement to Mekeel, 1931). This may have immediately followed the Treaty, when Wazhazha band headman Scattering Bear (Mato Wayuhi: often translated Conquering Bear) was made chief of all the Lakotas by the government. Scattering Bear was said to be Black Twin’s cousin (Joseph No Water statement: Mekeel 1931 Field Notes, p. 62), and another statement in the Mekeel interviews makes me think that Black Twin was made a ‘soldier’ or akicita in the share-out of treaty presents. Such preferment could have deepened the jealousy between the No Water and Bad Wound families.

The Badger Eaters, probably only ten or fifteen lodges, joined the Northern Oglalas near the Black Hills. In 1852 young Horn Chips, of the Badger-Eaters, and the Hunkpatila youth Curly Hair (later Crazy Horse) were made hunka brothers. This could tie in with a statement by Victor Douville to KMB – namely that the Black Twin tiyospaye were for a time identified with Old Man Afraid of His Horse and the Hunkpatila band. This may be so, but over the next decade, the growing tiyospaye became associated with Red Cloud’s Bad Face band, which was taking an aggressive lead in opening up the Powder River hunting grounds to the Lakotas. Cloud Shield’s Winter Count for 1855-56 reports the killing of two Oglalas by their own people – Torn Belly I and his wife. The depiction of naked scalped bodies bristling with arrows indicates a very serious dispute. Torn Belly II (born ca. 1827) was a Badger-Eater – could the older Torn Belly be his father or kinsman? He was probably a Badger-Eaters elder, and while the reasons behind the killings are unknown (could it be something to do with accusations of witchcraft?), they coincided with the Harney campaign against the Lakotas, when Old Man Afraid of His Horse tried to keep the Oglalas out of the war. Red Cloud and many Bad Faces took a less friendly attitude to the Americans, so Oglala society was becoming polarised. I suggest that Black Twin took the Badger-Eaters into the Bad Face band at this time.

A part of the tiyospaye did remain with the Southern Oglalas. Information given to James R. Walker (Lakota Society, p.21) states that a man named Shedding Wolf led a Badger-Eaters tiyospaye associated with the Bear People, probably in the 1870s. Little Killer (younger brother of the Club Man who married Crazy Horse’s sister) gave a valuable account to Fr. Buechel of his activities in the warfare with troops in the Republican River country in the late 1860s. He reveals that in 1869 – after the Army emptied the Central Plains of Lakotas and Cheyennes - his party joined the Northern Oglalas. Since he then lived with the Badger-Eaters in the north, it seems likely that he came from the Badger-Eaters tiyospaye remaining with the Bear People. It looks to me as if people from the south continued drifting north right through the 1850s and 60s, many attaching themselves to relatives in Black Twin’s camp. I find record of the name Singing Bear, Mato Lowan, in both Northern and Southern divisions: these may be two related men from the Badger-Eaters. In this way I suggest that the Badger-Eaters were steadily growing, from 10+ lodges in 1851, to maybe 30-40 lodges (say 200 people) by 1870.

In 1856 I believe that both Black Twin and his younger brother No Water II were appointed as, respectively, chief soldier and soldier in the tribal hierarchy imposed by General Harney’s treaty. In 1867, as the Bozeman Trail War was peaking, Black Twin was recognised by U.S. Treaty Commissioner G. P. Beauvais as the fourth chief of the Bad Faces. That year he begins to come into focus as a political player. From 1867 until his death in 1875/76, there is one strong theme that runs right through his actions and policies: I call it Doing the Opposite of Whatever Red Cloud is Doing. In 1867, when Red Cloud was being chased by the Treaty Commission to attend talks at Fort Laramie, Black Twin was identified with a faction favouring negotiation. Subsequently, in 1870-72, when Red Cloud became involved in talks about locating a new Oglala agency, Black Twin refused to visit the location. In fall 1872 he brought the Badger-Eaters in to visit the Oglala winter camps along upper White River (near modern Crawford), choosing a time when Red Cloud himself had refused to camp there. Jealousies between the men obviously cut deep. They were about the same age (Black Twin probably a few years younger), and clearly competing in feast and gift-giving for the same constituency.

The tension between the two men was scripted into tribal politics because in August 1868 both men were selected as Shirt Wearers by the Ska Yuha, the White Horse Owners, the chiefs’ council for the joint Bad Face and Oyuhpe bands. In 1871, following what the council believed to be Red Cloud’s failure to achieve a workable agency scheme, the Ska Yuha seems to have invested Black Twin (perhaps temporarily) with a primary status – probably he was given prime spokesman status. It hardly effected Red Cloud’s influence with his closest adherents, but it was the sort of symbolic or honour-status that was crucially important to the Lakota.

In any case, part of the Badger-Eaters were resident at Red Cloud Agency. No Water II moved there about 1871, after his quarrel with Crazy Horse – when the latter eloped with No Water’s wife. He is listed in February 1874 as one of the Oglala akicita who helped protect Red Cloud Agency from ‘hostile’ Lakotas. Subsequently Red Cloud “appointed [No Water] . . . to take care of these people [the Ite Sica or Bad Face band at Red Cloud Agency]” (Grant Short Bull statement to Mekeel, 1931 Fieldnotes p. 64). I think this statement is reflected in the March 1876 Ration Roll from Red Cloud Agency, which is headed by No Water, entitled to 20 beeves – by far the biggest allowance. Since one beef was issued to each 30 people, No Water had a purported 600 people in his band. I think that this may be Red Cloud’s canny way of distancing himself from the controversies surrounding the rationing culture.

Meanwhile, tragedy struck the Northern Badger-Eaters camp early in 1876, when Black Twin unexpectedly died, just when the Great Sioux War was about to open. White Twin assumed the chieftainship of the tiyospaye: when the large Crazy Horse Village of Northern Oglalas finally surrendered at Red Cloud Agency on May 6, 1877, White Twin’s tipi was the first one in the tally (Thunder Tail was living in the same lodge). Although some of the band probably joined agency relatives like No Water, White Twin and other key families joined the flight to Canada during the winter of 1877-78. White Twin seems to have died during the flight north – this would explain Johnson Holy Rock’s account in Herman Viola’s book Little Bighorn Remembered, which states that White Twin died after visiting the grave of Black Twin, “in the mountains below the Rocky Mountains.”

The Pine Ridge Reservation became the final homeland of the Oglalas after 1878. Over the next decade, the Oglala bands scattered across the reservation. The Badger-Eaters settled near the confluence of White Clay Creek and White River, north of modern Oglala. — Kingsley Bray

In his list, Colhoff mentioned the Hoka Yuta tiyospaye under the leadership of Thunder Tail. Now I know he was the son of Black Twin.

Also interesting that Kingsley refers to Little Killer, - the brother of Club Man who married with Crazy Horse's sister - as a member of the Southern Hoka Yutas. — Agnes

Back to the Top