July 1

Where the Bear Stays in Winter

This is our first weekly (July 2-8) “dispatch” from the summer of 1874. As we discussed in last week's column, we will track an infamous expedition to find gold in Paha Sapa that took place exactly one hundred and fifty years ago. We want to turn the extractive goals of that reconnaissance back on themselves, mining the rich archive of documentary records that it produced to ask what it reveals about the region's Native inhabitants. For those who would like to follow along, we've created this website.

At 8am sharp on the morning of July 2, the expedition left Ft. Abraham Lincoln. As they marched over some fifteen miles of rolling prairie, William E. Curtis, a special correspondent for the New York World, noted several trails which had been “cut deep and stamped hard” by “the extinct buffalo,” whose “bones are everywhere to be found … in little bleached piles.”

To our surprise, the expedition included nearly one hundred scouts from a variety of different tribes. According to Curtis, they marched at the head of the main column, forming “the advance guard.” This indicates that Native people were a highly visible part of the expedition. Anyone approaching the column of soldiers would have been hard pressed to miss them.

After several long days of marching under the hot sun, they reached a beautiful prairie. According to the expedition geologist, it contained “a flowing stream of clear water” that Goose, one of the Native guides, called “Where the Bear Stays in Winter.” An expedition map places this creek just northwest of Carson, SD, at 46° 30' 56”N and 101° 37' 42”W.

The next day, on July 6, they reached the Cannon Ball River. This is where Private Theodore Ewert described meeting “a party of Sioux Indians” who “claimed to be out hunting.” But as we discussed in our last column, Ewert was certain that, in actual fact, they had been “posted here as a 'corps of observation' on the movements of our expedition.”

Clearly, the expedition was under surveillance. At one point, a botanist named Aris Donaldson saw a prayer flag on a bluff about one mile off in the distance. When a scout was dispatched to investigate, he returned with a square yard of calico fastened along a cross piece atop a large pole. A plug of tobacco was suspended on either side of the perpendicular cross, which Donaldson interpreted as “an offering” to “secure protection of some kind, and most likely from this expedition.”

But the expedition was not only being watched from afar. It also included more than one Lakotan guide. Who were they, and why might they have agreed to join Custer's party?

Unfortunately, the sources available to us don't offer definitive answers. We don't even have names for most of the Native guides.

But there are a few exceptions. The most intriguing—and confusing—is Goose, who identified Where the Bear Stays in Winter Creek. According to The New York Tribune, Goose had been “obtained” from the “Grand River Agency,” in what is now the Standing Rock Reservation.

Initially, we were skeptical that Goose was truly Hunkpapa. Why would a thirty-nine-year-old Lakotan man join this expedition? But as we kept digging, more evidence emerged. First, we found a photograph of Goose taken by D. F. Barry that was labeled “Sioux Indian Scout.” We also found a memoir written by the expedition naturalist, George Bird Grinnell, who recalled visiting Standing Rock many years later. Goose approached Grinnell at the general store, “asking me if I had not gone to the Black Hills with Yellow Hair a good many years ago.”

Finally, we learned that Goose had worked with the ethnomusicologist Frances Densmore, who described him as a respected medicine man who had taken part in the Sun Dance by being suspended from the central pole at the age of twenty-seven.

The work that Goose did with Densmore also sheds light on the significance of Cannon Ball River. According to Curtis, the river derived “its name from the presence of boulders of all sizes worked by attrition to perfect roundness.” Such stones, Densmore explains, could be used to cure illnesses, predict the future, and retrieve lost objects.

After he dreamt of them, Chased By Bears told Densmore that because they have “no end and no beginning,” such stones are “perfect in their kind.” Brave Buffalo said something similar, stating that they “are round like the sun and moon.” But not all round stones are the same. “Some have been shaped in the current of a stream,” he said, while others “were found far from the water and have been exposed only to the sun and wind.” It were these that Brave Buffalo preferred.

Goose dreamed of the sacred stones too, Densmore tells us, and he had two of them in his possession. Once, a skeptic challenged him to demonstrate their power by calling a buffalo to the spot where they stood. Although they had long disappeared from the region, Goose “sent the sacred stones to summon a buffalo.” Soon enough, one appeared and came close enough to be shot.

We will never know what could have motivated Goose to join this expedition. But we know he was a respected medicine man who Sun Danced at twenty-seven and understood the power of sacred stones.