Crow Foot, 17

Standing Rock Reservation, North Dakota
December 15, 1890

Agencies: Unspecified

Cause of death: Shooting


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Last updated: almost 6 years ago

Overview

The most spread version of Crowfoot´s death comes from Walter S. Campbell´s notes, who interviewed people from Standing Rock in the 1930s.
Basically Campbell, known also under his writer´s name Stanley Vestal, writes that Crowfoot, after Sitting Bull was killed, was hiding in the cabin (sometimes it is said under the bed). He was described as a “schoolboy of seventeen winters”. When the policemen found him he was yelling “Uncle, I want to live! You have killed my father! Let me go!” Nevertheless he was shot to death by the police.

According to Ernie LaPointe, direct lineal descendant of Sitting Bull, oral history in his family paints another picture. Ernie describes Crowfoot as a young man of seventeen, who picked his weapon when the police wanted to arrest Sitting Bull as he wanted to protect him. When his father was shot outside the cabin, Crowfoot fell next to his father.
According to Ernie, Campbell´s story seeks to humiliate the memory of Sitting Bull´s son and is a complete fabrication.

Red Tomahawk´s own accounts differ from each other in 1815 and 1823:

"We got outside and he [Sitting Bull] made a loud cry as his son came around the corner of the house, and then the hostiles came. His son, Crow Foot, came and was killed right away. He went down these tracks and died. (Pointed to the trail depicted on the map). I shot Sitting Bull in the left side."
Red Tomahawk to A. B. Welch, 1915

“When we lifted the mattress we found Crow Foot under it. He was Sitting Bull´s young son. He was about seventeen winters. Bull Head said: “Kill Him. I´m dying now”. I hit Crow Foot then and knocked him down. He laid partly out of the door and a little inside the house. Lone Man and One Feather then shot him dead. We threw him out of the way then.”
Red Tomahawk’s story of the fight, told to Welch, Published in “The Clover Leaf,” February 1923


 

 

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