He
was friendly to the whites and interceded with aforementioned
club when Red Cloud's men chopped down the flag pole at
the Red Cloud Agency in 1874; a small detachment of soldiers
were sent to calm things down but were surrounded until
Sitting Bull and others intervened. A pictograph to accompany
Harry Anderson's article on him in the Nebraska Indian Wars
Reader shows him fighting the Pawnee while wearing a horned
war bonnet decorated with the head of some sort of bird
of prey. He's armed to the teeth with revolver in holster,
knife club, rifle and US flag.
While
a member of the 1875 delegation, he was given an engraved
rifle by the president in recognition of his work at the
agency. Acording to Anderson, after Little Bighorn, he left
the agency to go to the 'hostile' Crazy Horse village to
retrieve the rifle from a friend who had borrowed it; there,
he agreed to accompany a small delegation who were going
to meet Miles to discuus the possibilities of surrender
terms; before this could happen, Crow scouts rushed out
and killed them. —Grahame
Wood
The
photograph above is of the 1875 delegation to Washington,
D.C., taken by Frank F. Currier on May 13, 1875 in Omaha,
Nebraska. The delegation was on its way to capital to meet
the President to discuss the Black Hills. There are several
other images in this series, and the delegation was also
photographed in D.C. a short time later.
The people in this image include, standing in back, left
to right: 1.) Julius Meyer, proprietor of a store called
the Indian Wigwam, which dealt in both Indian and Japanese
artifacts; 2.) Red Cloud.
Seated in front, left to right: Sitting Bull the Oglala,
2. Swift Bear and 3.) Spotted Tail. The Oglala Sitting Bull
was killed by Crow scouts at Miles' Tongue River cantonment
in early 1877 while coming in with a delegation to discuss
peace terms.
Historian
Harry Anderson, in his article published many years ago
about the Oglala Sitting Bull's war club, identified Packs
the Drum from the Alexander Gardner photographs at the 1868
Fort Laramie Treaty council as the same individual. However,
it is clear by comparing that they are not. As often happens
when working with various Lakota personages, we get confused
because of shared names.
The Oglala Sitting Bull appears in two images from the 1875
delegation in Omaha (including the one above) and he also
appears in two of the 1875 Washington D.C. delegation images.
I am not aware of any individual portraits of delegates
from the 1875 visit.
Incidentally, according to William Garnett, the agency interpreter
at the Red Cloud Agency, it was not Red Cloud's band that
chopped up the flagpole (though if I recall correctly, he
refused to intercede). Garnett noted that the trouble came
from the Wajaje band (Red Leaf's band). While they had lived
with the Oglala for a number of years, presumably to avoid
Spotted Tail's leadership style, the Wajaje were in fact
Brule.
— Ephriam Dickson