Our history provides integrity and stability
By Ivan Star Comes Out
Native Sun News Today Columnist
nativesunnews.today
Gen. Custer recklessly attacked a large gathering of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, at the Peji Sla Wakpa (Greasy Grass River, known today as the Little Big Horn River) in Montana Territory in 1876. To avoid the United States’ frenzied and angry response in the wake of the Custer’s defeat, Tatanka Iyutake (Bull Sits Down or Sitting Bull) moved with his Hunkpapa nation into Unci Makoce (Canada).
No Water, another Hunkpapa tiospaye leader, decided to stay with the Oglala at the Pine Ridge Agency. The government recorded him and his people as Oglala in 1889 and allotted treaty land. There were also some Cheyenne and other band members that were registered as Oglala and allotted land. The Pine Ridge could be the true “melting pot” within 1851 and 1868 treaty territory.
No Water and his Hunkpapa extended family group camped at the confluence of the Makasan Wakpala (White Clay Creek) and the Makizita Wakpa (Smoking Earth River, now known as White River) in the Oglala area. In 1889, they group moved 8 miles north or downriver.
Sadly, some Oglala members did not accept readily No Water as he was falsely accused of hosting a ghost dance at his first camp. He was arrested, tried, convicted, and sent to a prison in Sioux Falls. He died there in 1895. The Hunkpapa intermarried with the Oglala and received treaty benefits as everyone else.
My grandfather was Ivan Star Comes Out (1873 -1939). Sadly, I am still looking for info on my grandmother, Elizabeth Good Shield. He was deputized as an Indian police officer at 18-years of age. His father, No Water, was trying to protect Two Stick from being killed as the man had killed some cowhands near his camp. My grandfather was deputized so he could accompany Two Stick to Deadwood where he was tried and hanged. Later, he became a catechist and local historian.
My father, Stephan Star Comes Out, married Elizabeth Bear Robe and started a family. Today, I have three living brothers, Steven B., Edward, and Stan, and we are all grandparents. We also have half-brothers and hunka relatives. We lost our brother Frank in 1976 and our only half-sister, Clementine in 1980.
He was also one of the many traditional singers in the community. He was known to sing solo at his drum and sometimes doubled as an announcer. He was very knowledgeable of the songs and oral traditions. Anyway, I can still remember parts of the Ikto (a mythical being) and Inyan Hoksila (Stone Boy) stories and local oral traditions and ancient history.
I still recall how my father entertained us with a variety of tales in the evenings at our humble home or the relatives we were visiting. He had a knack for adding humor to the accounts without changing the story line, a skill that is unmatched even in this day and age.
Aside from his excessive drinking, like nearly every other male in the community, he had an entertaining and likeable personality. It seemed that no matter what he was involved with, it always turned into an amusingly memorable situation.
When I was growing up, we lived at the old meeting hall at the Our Lady of Good Counsel church located in my home community of No Water (1950s –1966). During the summer months, he would set fish lines overnight along the Makizita Wakpa and whatever he caught was our meal for the day. Other times, he set traps to catch small game and those critters were our meals.
Anyway, he caught a beaver one time. He had never cooked or ate beaver tail but he was determined not to waste it. The next day he stoked up the old wood-burning kitchen stove and placed the large flat tail in a deep pan and into the oven. Later, he found the pan almost overflowing with scorched grease. He ended up saving the grease but could not stomach the tail, which was all but burned to a crisp.
My mother teased him about it and he would chuckle while smoking his Bull Durham, roll your own, cigarette. Then she said the beaver grease worked good with her oven bread. I think she was trying to placate him after teasing him about his beaver episode.
Ivan F. Star Comes Out can be reached at P.O. Box 147, Oglala, South
Dakota, 57764; via phone at 605-867-2448 or via email at
mato_nasula2@outlook.com.
Copyright permission Native Sun News Today
Join the Conversation
