Sunday, October 17, 2010

Some facts you may not know...

..and neither did I until recently when I was watching a program which reminded me about this watercolor ACEO I painted a while ago.

Chief Sitting Bull was a fascinating person. He was Lakota chief and holy man. He also had nerves of steel & was a visionary. In the middle of a battle in1872 he led four warriors out between the battle lines, sat down & shared a pipe with them as bullets flew. He he put out the pipe and nonchalantly walked away.

Another time he was doing a dance ritual, offering prayers to the Great Spirit, and he slashed his arms one hundred times as a sacrifice.  While all this was going on he had a vision where he saw soldiers falling into the Lakota camp like grasshoppers falling from the sky. Turns out that came true when Custer...remember him....charged Sitting Bull's camp. Of course Custer was outnumbered, took his "last stand" and was slaughtered.


After a few years, he couldn't feed his people anymore. Seems the buffalo was nearly extinct so he surrendered.  he was sent to a reservation where he wasn't welcomed and as a result he was then sent to Ft. Randall to be kept like a prisoner of war for a couple years.

 In 1883, Sitting Bull was sent back to rejoined his tribe. The Indian agent in charge of the reservation,wasn't too fond of him and forced him to work in the fields. Later he was permitted to join Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show for a few months before returning back to his home.  But that didn't end it.

He had another one of his visions  this time of  a meadowlark and heard it say, "Your own people, Lakotas, will kill you."  Sitting Bull went to join another group of Indians in some kind of dance to rid the world of white people. People were still afraid of his power and 43 lakota policeman came to put him in custody but a gunfight broke out and he was hit in the head with a bullet.

What a brave man. 

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If you are interested in the ACEO here's the link from my shop.
http://www.etsy.com/listing/14945922/watercolor-aceo-chief-sitting-bull-ooak

1 comment:

Lisa said...

Very interesting info about Chief Sittting bull, cool aceo of him!

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