http://www.indigenouspeople.net/hedog.htm
Chief He-Dog
Interview with He Dog, Oglala, S.D. July 7, 1930
(Thomas White Cow Killer, Interpreter)
Interview with He Dog, at Oglala S.D. July 13th, 1930
(Interpreter, John Colhoff)
Interview with He Dog, Oglala, SD, July 7, 1930
(Interpreter, Thomas White Cow Killer)
Interview with He Dog, Oglala, SD July 13, 1930
(Remembrances of Crazy Horse)
He Dog School History
(Located on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation)
Born in the spring of 1840 on the headwaters of the Cheyenne River near the Black Hills, He Dog was the son of a headman named Black Stone and his wife, Blue Day, a sister of Red Cloud.[1] His youngest brother was Grant Short Bull. By the 1860s, He Dog and his brothers had formed a small Oglala Lakota band known as the Cankahuhan or Soreback Band which was closely associated with Red Cloud’s Bad Face band of Oglala.
He Dog and his relatives participated in the Great Sioux War of 1876-77. After the treaty commission failed to persuade the Lakota to give up the Black Hills, the President had an ultimatum sent in January 1876 to the northern bands to come in to the agencies or be forced in by the army. He Dog was encamped with the Soreback band on the Tongue River when the message was delivered. He Dog’s brother, Short Bull, later recalled that the majority of the northern Oglala resolved to head in to the Red Cloud Agency in the spring, after their last big buffalo hunt. In March 1876, He Dog married a young woman named Rock (Inyan) and with part of the Soreback Band, stopped briefly with the Northern Cheyenne encamped on the Powder River in Wyoming Territory. On the morning of March 17, 1876, a column of troops under Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds attacked. “This attack was the turning point of the situation,” Short Bull later recalled. “If it had not been for that attack by Crook on Powder River, we would have come in to the agency that spring, and there would have been no Sioux war.”
During the summer of 1876, He Dog participated in Battle of the Rosebud and Battle of the Little Bighorn. He also fought at Slim Buttes in September 1876 and Wolf Mountain in January 1877. He finally surrendered at the Red Cloud Agency with Crazy Horse in May 1877. Following the killing of Crazy Horse, He Dog accompanied the Oglala to Washington, D.C. as a delegate to meet the President.
He Dog and other members of the Soreback Band fled the Red Cloud Agency after its removal to the Missouri River during the winter of 1877-78..[4] Crossing into Canada, they joined Sitting Bull in exile for the next two years. Most of the northern Oglala surrendered at Fort Keogh in 1880 and were then transferred to the Standing Rock Agency in the summer of 1881. He Dog and all the northern Oglala were finally transferred to the Pine Ridge Reservation to join their relatives in the spring of 1882.
He Dog lived the remainder of his life on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He served as a respected Indian judge and later in life, was interviewed by a number of historians, including Walter Mason Camp, Eleanor Hinman and Mari Sandoz. He died in 1936.
click image for larger version
Edward S. Curtis Photo
I am not aware of any identified photographs of Short Bull (He Dog’s brother). I have been recently in contact with the great-grandson of Short Bull and they do not have any photographs either. Unfortunately, Short Bull and much of his family were killed in a tragic car accident in 1935 so much of the family oral history was lost.
Kingsley may be right that Short Bull and his nephew Amos Bad Heart Bull could be in the photograph, though I am not certain how we can demonstrate that without another identified photograph. Amos did serve a sixth month stint as an Indian scout at Fort Robinson beginning in March 1894 (under the name Eagle Lance), joining his uncle Short Bull who was by then serving his seventh enlistment including several years at Fort Robinson. The timing would be right for them to be in the photograph.
Finally, someone asked about the meaning of the silver crosses visible in a number of Cheyenne and Lakota portraits. I recently wrote an article, “German Silver Crosses in Lakota Attire: Personal Adornment or Symbols of Tribal Leadership?” in the March/April 2005 issues of Whispering Winds that looked at these interesting items. I listed every known image or surviving example of these crosses (I have since located additional ones) and tried to argue that they may represent some office or leadership role among the Lakota. Here is the concluding paragraph:
“In summary, the available evidence suggests that the Great Plains metal crosses originated within the southwestern silverwork industry and then spread successively northward, first to the Apache, Comanche and Kiowa, and then to the Southern Cheyenne and Northern Cheyenne by the 1860’s and the Lakota by the 1870’s. These ornaments declined in popularity during the two decades that followed. The Big Road Roster suggests that rather than just ornamentation, the German silver crosses worn by the Lakota during the 1870’s may have had some cultural significance, the meaning of which has unfortunately become lost. The evidence is admittedly far from conclusive, but perhaps one day, additional sources will be found that may shed light on the meaning of these intriguing elements of Lakota material culture.”
— Ephriam Dickson
The McBride photo was first (I guess) published in 1976, without any identification, by the Nebraska State Historical Society, illustrating their fascinating “Oglala Sources On The Life Of Crazy Horse”, the Eleanor Hinman interviews. But it became soon clear that this was a portrait of He Dog and his family and followers. I am convinced that the small man in the suit (second from left) is indeed He Dog’s brother, Grant Short Bull. I have two other portraits of him for comparison (both Nebraska State Historical Society). The first, taken ca.1920, depicts him standing in full Indian attire together with an old friend of the Red Cloud family, Captain James H. Cook. The second image is a 1933 group photo of the Red Cloud family and friends. Short Bull is identified as the small man holding a large beaded tobacco bag, standing quite in the middle between James Red Cloud and Lone Man (eighth person from the left).
What about the young man standing right behind He Dog, sporting a cowboy hat and a large bandana? I always loved to think that this was He Dog’s artist nephew/son, Amos Bad Heart Bull. Of course I can’t offer any proof. But didn’t he portray himself much like this in his drawings? — Hans Karkheck
Here is the name list of the above photo, as published by the Nebraska State Historical Society (left to right): Pine Ridge Supt. McGregor, John Kills Above, Susie Kills Above, Silas Fills The Pipe, Delia Red Cloud, Agnes Red Cloud, James Red Cloud, Short Bull, Lone Man, Fast Whirlwind, Stanley Red Feather, Samuel Rock, Amos Afraid Of His Horses, Emil Afraid Of Hawk, Oliver Jumping Eagle, Herbert Bissonette, Robert Fast Horse, Captain Luther H. North.
The Short Bull & James H. Cook photo was published in NEBRASKA HISTORY, Vol.22, No.1, 1941. It had actually been taken in September 1934, a year before Short Bull was killed in a car accident near Oglala, South Dakota.
This is what Cook had to say about the picture: “The photograph was taken at Fort Robinson by an artist unknown to me, at the time (September 4-5, 1934) when cenotaphs were dedicated to Lieutenant Levi Robinson (in whose honor the fort was named) and to Crazy Horse, brave Indian and leading Sioux warrior. Short Bull who stands beside me was a brother of He Dog. Both participated in the fight with General Custer when his command was wiped out” (NH 22:1, 1941, 74).
— Hans Karkheck
If the individual in the McBride photograph (second from left) is actually Grant Short Bull, then I suspect the boy standing next to him is his son Charles Short Bull, who would have been about 8 or 10 years old when the image was made. Grant also had a daughter, but she was not born until 1895. Perhaps one of the women standing to the right is his wife, Good Hawk.
The photograph of Captain Cook and Short Bull was indeed taken in 1934 at the dedication of the two stone pyramids at Fort Robinson, one dedicated to Crazy Horse and the other to Lieut. Robinson killed in 1874. They are both standing in front of the Post Headquarters, today the Fort Robinson Museum. — Ephriam Dickson
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