Hobart Lonehill, painting by Andrea Two Bulls.Lakota boxing at its very best
The Lonehill brothers got serious with the gloves
By James Giago Davies
Native Sun News Correspondent
nsweekly.com RAPID CITY –– Bricked in between the high walls of two Belle Fourche buildings is a small barber shop, and there’s just enough room inside for a couple of barber chairs, and some waiting chairs while you wait for your haircut, but the walls tower high, and are covered with attention-grabbing plaques, pictures and posters. There is a large white poster covered with black, block letters, promoting a fight card from the early 1950’s, but the poster seems like it was printed only yesterday, and a name jumps off that poster—Edgar Lonehill—a name that meant something back when that poster was brand new. A Rapid City southpaw, welterweight Edgar was known for his fearsome body punching. Lonehill is a name old school area fight fans associate not with just boxing, but with excellence, because the Lonehill brothers, Edgar and little brother Hobart, may have been the best two boxers South Dakota ever produced. Born at Pine Ridge back in the 1930’s, people assume the Lonehill brothers are all Oglala, but the original Lone Hill had a much different origin. His mother had been part of the Hunkpapa band that had fled from the Army and settled in Canada. There, she hooked up with a Royal Canadian Mountie, and she had a baby, a son, and one day she decided to leave that world and return to her people in South Dakota. That meant a very long walk. “She had planned it all winter,” Hobart Lonehill said. “Made three pairs of moccasins (for the trip).”
Read the rest of the story on the all new Native Sun News website: Lakota boxing at its very best (Contact James Giago Davies at skindiesel@msn.com) Copyright permission Native Sun News
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