12/8/2022 0 Comments Last man sitting with bullsHe was 37 years old by the time he encountered Father De Smet near present day Fort Rice, North Dakota to sign the Ft. Sitting Bull or Tatanka Iyotake, his Lakota name, was born in 1831 near the Grand River in what is now South Dakota today. General Stanley was quoted in 1868 as saying, “Father De Smet alone of the entire white race could penetrate to these cruel savages and return safe and sound.” He helped to secure the numerous signatures of chiefs that appear on the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. There are multiple accounts in 1868 of Father De Smet walking, alone, unarmed, into an armed Sioux camp of five thousand. The great Jesuit missionary, Father De Smet, was a friend of Chief Sitting Bull. Historical records show that many of the Sioux, Chief Sitting Bull among them, admired the “black robes” as they called the Catholic missionary priests. And later, after Sitting Bull surrendered from Canada and then led a life as an autograph-seller, celebrity, and farmer on a shrunken reservation in Dakota Territory, it appears that even a bishop tried unsuccessfully to bring Chief Sitting Bull into the Catholic Church. #Last man sitting with bulls full#But was it possible that Sitting Bull was a full member of the Catholic Church? To begin with, there are no baptismal records from Father Pierre De Smet, the most likely priest to have baptized him. From stories, to blogging, to Catholic radio shows, to postings from Facebook friends, I heard it multiple times.Īs a student of the Old West, having read numerous accounts of Sitting Bull and a resident of the once vast Dakota Territory, I thought it unlikely. Was Chief Sitting Bull a Catholic convert? Did he convert William “Buffalo Bill” Cody? That was the scuttlebutt around Catholic circles this past week.
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