Quanah Parker Brightman shares this article with Censored News about his Great Great Grandfather Henry Kingman and Kingman's father Dogs Back. Dogs Back was one of the few who died when the people killed Custer.
The Real LakotaI knew Harry Kingman ever since I can remember. He was a survivor of Custer's Last Stand and the Battle of the Little Big Horn. He was a close friend of the Schutterle family and he often told the story which is the Lakota tradition. Harry has been gone for over 50 years, but his memory is still fresh in my mind. I can't forget people like him. I will share what I remember about this wonderful man.
Harry was ten when Custer and his soldiers rode into the camp. He said he hid behind some bushes because everybody knew the soldiers killed women and children. The theory was that nits grew into lice.
After the battle, Harry found his father, Dog's Back, had been killed in the defense of his people. He learned it really did take a village to raise a child.
Although Custer and all his soldiers were killed, the Lakota's understood they were able only to postpone total disaster. When the fighting was over, they had to flee from the United States to seek freedom in Canada. Harry told of the hunger and misery all, even the smallest children, had to endure in the desperate struggle for survival. Their retreat to Canada was long, hard and few survived it.
Years later, after they were allowed to return to their birth land, the Kingman family settled on the west side of the Missouri River which was on the east side of the Cheyenne River Reservation and near what is now called the Four Bears area.
It happened to be my grandfather homesteaded almost directly across the river from the Kingman family. So, my father knew them since he was about 10 years old. That would be about 1911.
Harry would often cross the river when the ice was thick and hunt rabbits on the east side of the river since the forest was thicker and the rabbits more plentiful. Dad said he used to follow Harry when he hunted. Harry carried an old muzzle loader rifle and used black power because it was
cheaper. Dad said when Harry would pull down, aim and fire, there was sure to be a rabbit kicking in the snow after the smoke cleared.
Over the years the Kingman and Schutterle families grew to be close friends. As it ended, Agness, Harry's daughter, came to be my godmother. Her only son was in Tennessee and my mother had died so we became just like mother and son when she was in her 90's. We would visit and she would pour her heart out and I would learn.
When Agness died at 96, I helped carry her tiny little body to its final resting place on a gumbo ridge in LaPlant. I always go to visit her when I am in the area. Her grave is now grown over with buffalo grass and other plants of the prairie and there is little trace of her existence.
The last time I saw Harry was at a pow-wow at the old Cheyenne Agency camp grounds, now under the waters of the Ohae Dam - or is it the damn Oahe. That was in the 50's.
It was the final evening of the dances and the air was filled with the smoke of campfires. The smell of fresh cut buffalo meat hung on racks managed to slip between the campfire smoke and fill the remaining space.
There had been great anticipation for the arrival of Harry, and his reverence hung on the tongues of everyone. Suddenly it got quiet with only the yelps of the young dogs and the cries of a few infants to be heard. Finally, I saw him coming. Harry was dressed up in his eagle feather bonnet, beads, moccasins and breast plate made of real bones. Everything was perfectly traditional and authentic.
It wasn't just his walk I recognized. Harry liked to smoke and had a distinctive cough. All these years and I still hear it in my mind.
The dance went on into the night. Harry danced and coughed throughout the evening. I watched in awe as he pranced around the willow cooler. That is the way I will always remember Harry. It got late and I had to get back on my side of the river.
The Lakotas had suffered a lot, but they were clearly resilient. The officials of the United States were the terrorists then. They used small pox infested blankets for biological warfare and wiped out people by the thousands.
Washington forced the Lakota into a style of government they did not understand. The government officials put them on permanent disability on lands that could no longer support them because the buffalo were gone. They seldom got the relief they were promised. Their lands and natural resources were gobbled up by a nation pushing west.
All the Lakotas ever wanted was to be free. The price for that freedom was unaffordable.
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