CBC*: 'Rare Indigenous eyewitness account of Battle of the Little Bighorn found in Ontario.
Lakota leader's letter, illustration about historic U.S. battle was recently repatriated to his community.'
*Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/battle-little-bighorn-letter-brampton-1.6404159
[When Samantha Thompson read the first line of a long-lost letter, she knew that her work to authenticate and transcribe the mysterious set of rolled-up documents, packed away for some future archivist, was worth it.
"I remember where I was sitting at my desk and I started reading: 'I was born in Montana, my father died when I was four years old and so I lived with my mother and sister and my grandparents and my uncle,' and my heart started beating faster," said Thompson, an archivist at the Peel Art Gallery Museum and Archives in Brampton, Ont.
A few months earlier, Thompson had been going through one of 60 boxes donated to the museum. She came across several pages of thick paper — on one was a detailed watercolour painting, and the others were made up of what looked like two letters, one lengthy and the other short.
While there were some English names like "Reno," "Custer" and "Montana,"
the letter was written in Old German, a rare dialect that fell out of use around
the Second World War. "Right away we had this mystery. Why is somebody
writing in Old German about what seems to relate to a possibly significant event
in U.S. history?" Thompson told Rosanna Deerchild in an interview for Unreserved.]
As a history buff this article immediately drew my interest. As a child I visited the
Little Bighorn battlefield with my parents and for many years had a book that my Dad
had purchased at that time. I've studied various sources of the battle and am aware
of modern analysis of troop movements based on the recovery of cartridges found
there.
This article is a long and interesting/informative read that covers many aspects of
the people and places involved. There is a painting and many photos also, and I
have already bookmarked this article to save as a future reference. I have edited the
article text to meet our 4-paragraph rule.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Standing Bear and his Austrian-born wife Louise Standing Bear (nee Louise Rieneck), at their cabin with their granddaughters Rose and Lula Two Bonnets, ca. 1918
Courtesy Arthur Amiotte and Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Wyoming
