4/19/2011:
If you listened to Dakota Datebook yesterday, you heard of the controversy around Sitting Bull’s life and death – turmoil that lasted long after the great man took his final breath in December of 1890. And there is still controversy today.
In the early part of April in 1953, a group from South Dakota reportedly exhumed the bones of Sitting Bull from North Dakota lands and buried him in Mobridge. They immediately encased the bones under 20 tons of concrete on a South Dakota bluff overlooking Mobridge along the Missouri River. The "raid" was criticized by the South Dakota editor of the McLaughlin Messenger, as the Bismarck Tribune reported on this date. The editor wrote, "the whole state of South Dakota has had to suffer and has been referred to as grave raiders. South Dakota had nothing to do with it—let’s get that understood. Put the grave raiders title where it belongs … The rest of South Dakota is perfectly innocent in the untasteful matter."
North Dakota States Attorney Robert Fiedler vowed to legally re-obtain the bones, stating, "It was an awful thing, but we’ll get Sitting Bull back—and legally."
Yet the residents of Mobridge were happy with their new acquisition. One local columnist reportedly suggested that they change the main street in Mobridge to "Sitting Bullevard." There were also reports of Mobridge youth wearing T-shirts with a picture of Sitting Bull and text reading, "Mobridge, S.D.—Sitting Bull Sleeps Here."
And after all of that, the stolen bones might not have actually been Sitting Bull’s. In 1984, Robert Hollow, then-curator of collections for the State Historical Society of North Dakota, said that the group from Mobridge had taken the wrong body. According to his research, by 1932, Sitting Bull’s remains were reburied in a box inside a coffin at Fort Yates on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. But the South Dakota party had reportedly "dug up loose bones" that were not in a coffin. Furthermore, he said that in 1962, a coffin and bones were found at Fort Yates that matched the descriptions of the 1932 reburial. However, a member of the 1953 raiding party was "very confident" they had made off with Sitting Bull’s remains.
In the end, Sitting Bull’s life and death are wrapped in mystery. More than 100 years later, with at least two gravesites, the controversy continues.
Dakota Datebook written by Sarah Walker
Sources (for both dates):
http://sittingbull.org
Sunday Morning, April 19, 1933, The Fargo Forum
The Fargo Forum, April 18, 1933 “The Ghost Dance” by Jim Davis, http://www.prairiepublic.org/radio/dakota-datebook?post=30977
Bismarck Tribune, Saturday, Dec. 20, 1890, p1
Bismarck Tribune, Sunday, Dec. 21, 1890, p1
Bismarck Tribune, Thursday, Dec 18, 1890
The Jamestown Sun, Saturday, October 6, 1984