Montrose - Daily Press

Chief Sitting Bull's vision was prophetic. On the morning of June 25, 1876, the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army, under the leadership of George Armstrong Custer, descended over the combined encampment of Lakota and Northern Cheyenne tribes on the eastern plains of Montana. 

In the blood-drenched battle that ensued, army regiments quickly fell in defeat to Indian warriors under the command of chiefs Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Gall.

Seven months after the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Sitting Bull and his followers headed north into Canada, where they remained until 1881, at which time the Indian leader surrendered to U.S. authorities.

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 He appeared briefly in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and later returned to the Standing Rock Indian Agency in South Dakota. During a quarrel over his participation in the Ghost Dance, Sitting Bull suffered a fatal gunshot wound at the hands of police authorities in 1890. However, his story doesn't end on the wind-swept prairies of the Dakotas.

More than a century after his death, the family of Sitting Bull once again gathered to honor the great chief of the Lakota Sioux. Presiding over a special ceremony held last December in Deadwood, S.D. were members of the Smithsonian Institution's Native American Repatriation Review Committee. Among the select group was Montrose resident Roland McCook, who currently serves as vice-chair of the committee.

"I returned a lock (six- to seven-inch braid) of Sitting Bull's hair and a pair of his leggings," McCook noted.

Following the chief's untimely death in 1890, a local doctor had cut a lock of his long hair and taken a pair of his leggings. The items remained in the doctor's personal collection for many years until one of his descendants decided it was time to return the objects to the rightful owners.

"They (Sitting Bull's descendants) were very grateful to get the items back," McCook said.

Recently, he helped to re-inter the remains of a small Ute infant in a cradle board, found west of Delta, and the remains of a Ute warrior from the Denver area in a gravesite at the Delta City Cemetery.

"It was very gratifying," McCook said, explaining that traditionally Native American tribes buried their loved ones on the spot where they died, often in shallow graves. When the white man came, they disturbed many of these unmarked burial areas. It was also a popular practice for doctors of the time to collect Indian remains from battle-torn areas. The objects, including human bones and sacred and funerary items, were then sent back East to be examined and documented by the Surgeon General's office.

"They studied the size of their eyes, ears, heads," McCook said.

Sacred items refer to those which have spiritual meanings for the tribes. Funerary items, on the other hand, include trinkets or small personalized items, buried with a body.

After decades of excavation by archaeologists and displays of Native American remains in museums, a movement began about 20 years ago to reverse that trend. In the early 1990s, various Indian tribes petitioned Congress for laws to return not only human remains of Native Americans to their places of origin, but accompanying artifacts as well. 

"Tribes didn't like it (the practice), but there was nothing they could do about it until now," McCook said.

McCook's own life experience has brought him into conflicting worlds: his Native American heritage and his professional career. He is a member of the Northern Ute Tribe of the Uncompahgre Band and great great-grandson/nephew of Chipeta, wife of Ute Chief Ouray. He worked as a civil engineer and fire manager with the Bureau of Land Management and later was employed with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

"I was nominated for the position of vice-chair on the committee and interviewed by a panel from the Smithsonian," he said. "They were looking for a traditional and religious leader. Over the course of my life, I have participated in all of the Ute ceremonies and studied the history of the tribe."

With growing sentiment for returning remains "to their country of origin," or repatriation, several important pieces of legislation were enacted in the late 1980s and early 1990s addressing these issues.

Under repatriation, museums and other institutions transfer possession and control of Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian remains back to the tribes. This is done through a lengthy process of identifying, evaluating and cataloguing thousands of pieces of evidence.

Major Native American collections are located at two separate (and independently operating) Smithsonian museums: the National Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of the American Indian.

For museums under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of the American Indian Act (NMAI Act), implemented in 1989, governs repatriation. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), passed in 1990, directs the repatriation process for other U.S. institutions that receive federal funding.

"This is a claim-driven process," McCook said.

To date, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History has identified 18,000 out of 33,000 human remains as belonging to Native Americans. Of 5,400 of the human remains, 3,652 have been repatriated. A large number (90,159) of funerary objects have also been disbursed back to tribes.

Despite the efforts, McCook said there are some mysteries that may never be solved. An example is the Uncompahgre Valley's own Chief Ouray, who died in August 1880, after visiting the Southern Utes.

"Ouray was first buried along with two other bodies near Ignacio, but over the years, many stories have emerged about where he is actually buried," McCook said. There are (official) documents indicating he was buried, in secret, by the Utes at a spot south of Montrose as witnessed by a young boy. Other documents indicate he was buried near the Black Canyon of the Gunnison.

"We may never know," he said.

McCook will give a free public presentation on the Repatriation Act at 6 p.m. Friday, July 10, at the Ute Museum.

For more information, call 249-3098.

• There are 562 federally recognized tribes in the United States with a service population of about 1.9 million American Indian and Alaska Natives.

• Approximately 56.2 million acres are held in trust by the United States for various Indian tribes and individuals.

• There are 326 Indian land areas in the U.S. administered as federal Indian reservations, the largest being the 16 million acre Navajo Nation Reservation which extends from Northern Arizona into parts of Utah and New Mexico.

(Source: U.S. Dept. of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs)

 

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