Native American Indigenous

THE BUFFALO NICKEL, AND 'END OF THE TRAIL' SCULPTURE:
The most heartbreaking image in Native American history, is that of the lone warrior slumped over on his horse. Even the horse itself appears to be on the verge of collapse. The buffalo has long disappeared, along with the old ways. the Indian Wars are over, and this warrior has surrendered even in spirit. All has been lost. For him, there is nothing to live for.
Images Courtesy~DavidBehrens/Pinterest

Buckskin Charlie, Ute Chief. Wearing a Rutherford Hayes Indian Peace medal. 1905. Photo by Benjamin S. Hopkins.…

Picture of Quanah Parker and two of his wives, Topay and Chonie.
Quanah Parker was the last Chief of the Commanches and never lost a battle to the white man. His tribe roamed over the area where Pampas stands. He was never captured by the Army, but decided to surrender and lead his tribe into the white man's culture, only when he saw that there was no alternative.
His was the last tribe in the Staked Plains to come into the reservation system.
Quanah, meaning "fragrant," was born about 1850, son of Comanche Chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, a white girl taken captive during the 1836 raid on Parker's Fort, Texas. Cynthia Ann Parker was recaptured, along with her daughter, during an 1860 raid on the Pease River in northwest Texas. She had spent 24 years among the Comanche, however, and thus never readjusted to living with the whites again.
She died in Anderson County, Texas, in 1864 shortly after the death of her daughter, Prairie Flower. Ironically, Cynthia Ann's son would adjust remarkably well to living among the white men. But first he would lead a bloody war against them.
Quanah and the Quahada Comanche, of whom his father, Peta Nocona had been chief, refused to accept the provisions of the 1867 Treaty of Medicine Lodge, which confined the southern Plains Indians to a reservation, promising to clothe the Indians and turn them into farmers in imitation of the white settlers.
Knowing of past lies and deceptive treaties of the "White man", Quanah decided to remain on the warpath, raiding in Texas and Mexico and out maneuvering Army Colonel Ronald S. Mackenzie and others. He was almost killed during the attack on buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls in the Texas Panhandle in 1874. The U.S. Army was relentless in its Red River campaign of 1874-75. Quanah's allies, the Quahada were weary and starving.
Mackenzie sent Jacob J. Sturm, a physician and post interpreter, to solicit the Quahada's surrender. Sturm found Quanah, whom he called "a young man of much influence with his people," and pleaded his case. Quanah rode to a mesa, where he saw a wolf come toward him, howl and trot away to the northeast. Overhead, an eagle "glided lazily and then whipped his wings in the direction of Fort Sill," in the words of Jacob Sturm. This was a sign, Quanah thought, and on June 2, 1875, he and his band surrendered at Fort Sill in present-day Oklahoma.

Yellow Eyes was an informant for Sitting Bull. She joined Sitting Bull at the Battle of Little Bighorn, escaped with him to Canada in 1877 and later returned and surrendered with him in 1881.
In regard to my great-great-grandmother, Yellow Eyes, a Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux with Sitting Bull's band. That I have evidence that she and her husband and children were at the Battle of the Little Big Horn and stayed with him into exile in Canada is true. I have Frank Bennett Fiske photos of her in 1903 at Fort Yates and lots of oral history from my grandfather and his siblings.
She is on the twelth census of the United States in 1900 and states she was approx. 72.
She was living on the Standing Rock Sioux Resevation from 1886 until her death in 1905 or 1906. She left Canada when Sitting Bull surrendered in 1881 but went to Fort Peck with some of the warriors, possibly her sons and husband.
The 2 husbands I have researched of Yellow Eyes were Ihanyake and Holy Bear. I have three different spellings of Yellow Eyes. The one on the 1900 census is very difficult to make out. Our family has know her as Ishtazi or Istha Zha Zha in Lakota. — Dorothy Eiken
I was trying to find Yellow Eyes in the Sitting Bull Surrender Census, taken at Standing Rock in Aug.-Sept. 1881. There are several women named Yellow Eyes:
#48. age 30. Wife of Fine Voice Eagle, Crow King's band, Hunkpapa.
#309. age 70. Grandmother of High Hill and Brings Plenty. Circle Bear's Band, Sans Arc.
#318. age 25. Wife of Afraid of Enemy. Circle Bear's band, Sans Arc.
#352. age 21. sister-in-law of Mato Yahapi. Hump's band, Minnecoujou.
#714. age 10. daugher of Boy Horse, Grass' band, Blackfeet Lakota.
#494. Brown Eyes, age 40, wife of Good Thunder. Big Road's band, Oglala. — Ephriam Dickson
Yellow Eyes would not be on the surrender census at Standing Rock in Sept. of 1881. She did not accompany Sitting Bull and his people to Fort Buford or Standing Rock, or Fort Robinson in 1881. She went with the warriors who were afraid to surrender to Fort Peck in Montana Territory. She didn't get to Standing Rock until
1886. So none of the people on the list would be her. In 1881 she would be approx. 53 years old. — Dorothy Eiken
Amy Wizi (Yellow Eyes) is the daughter of Walks Among the Pines and Wizi. She is the granddaughter of Rebecca Red Woman and Brown Cloud. She also attended the Hampton Institute April 1884-1885. — "grandma"
I haven't been able to trace Yellow Eyes mother or father. She stated her birthday as May, 1828 on the 1900 census. She would have been about 72 then. I believe that may have been a guess. My grandfather had to go to the elders to try and find his birthday. His mother, Obosawin (daughter of Yellow Eyes) died November 1895 at Fort Yates when he was about 9. Obosawin was 38 when she died and had 9 or 10 children.
I know the Yellow Eyes I'm related to didn't attend Hampton Institute. She never lived in anything other than a tipi. There is no record of her being educated nor is there record of Obosawi being educated though she may have spoken some English. My grandfather, Yellow Eyes' grandson attended Hampton from 1900 to 1907. He spoke Lakota as well as English and did some translating at Fort Yates. My older sister remembers going along when he was translating from English to Sioux. — Dorothy Eiken

Crazy Horse – A Sacred Hero
Crazy Horse was born on the Republican River about 1845. He was killed at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, in 1877, so that he lived barely thirty-three years.
He was an uncommonly handsome man. While not the equal of Gall in magnificence and imposing stature, he was physically perfect, an Apollo in symmetry. Furthermore he was a true type of Indian refinement and grace. He was modest and courteous as Chief Joseph; the difference is that he was a born warrior, while Joseph was not. However, he was a gentle warrior, a true brave, who stood for the highest ideal of the Sioux [Lakota.] Notwithstanding all that biased historians have said of him, it is only fair to judge a man by the estimate of his own people rather than that of his enemies.