Friday, February 10, 2006
How I got the name Chaske' Wit'ko
We moved from Oakland, CA to the Lower Brule' Reservation in South Dakota when I was one year old. My father was an Episcopal priest and had just accepted a position as the assistant to a Chippewa priest who served the “Sicangu” Dakota people (”Burnt Thigh”, these were the people that followed Spotted Tail). We lived in old Ft Thompson for one year and my younger brother was born in Chamberlain. Chris, the Chippewa priest thought we needed Dakota names. He named me Tatanka Iyotanka or “Sitting Bull” because when they were putting in the garden I would follow the plow and end up sitting on my rump as I crossed every furrow. He thought I looked like a little sitting bull. The old Ft. Thompson agency would flood when the waters backed up from the Big Bend Dam on the Missouri and the agency town was relocated onto higher ground.
About that time, my dad accepted a position as Priest in Charge on the Standing Rock Reservation, just south of the North Dakota border. We moved there when I was about 2 1/2 years old and my brother was still a newborn. Chris told my dad it wouldn't do to call me Sitting Bull on the Standing Rock as the Hunkpapa people were followers of Sitting Bull. So Chris gave me a new name, Chaske' Wit'ko which means Crazy First Born. First born because of my birth order and Crazy, because I already had indications of being quite independent. My next two brothers were named Horse Looking and Rain in the Face. Their names ever stuck like mine did!
When we moved to St. Elizabeth on the Standing Rock, there was also a home for about 100 Indian boys and girls that was run by the church. My dad didn't have to handle any administrative responsibilities for the school, but conducted chapel for them. Chief Gall had joined the church there long after the Battle of the Little Big Horn or Custer's Massacre as the white people called it. Legend had it that Gall was riding his horse outside the church one Sunday and heard singing in the Dakota tongue. He was so entranced by the sound that he joined the church even though he had to give up his second wife and be the husband of only one wife. He was buried about a mile north of the church in the Episcopal graveyard and I remember seeing his grave many times as we would walk up the hill to the cemetery. One time when the bishop was visiting he asked where Jimmy was and somebody said they had seen me walking up the road to the cemetery. He asked my mother why she wasn't alarmed, she said that I would be okay as I always came back by dinner.
We moved from Oakland, CA to the Lower Brule' Reservation in South Dakota when I was one year old. My father was an Episcopal priest and had just accepted a position as the assistant to a Chippewa priest who served the “Sicangu” Dakota people (”Burnt Thigh”, these were the people that followed Spotted Tail). We lived in old Ft Thompson for one year and my younger brother was born in Chamberlain. Chris, the Chippewa priest thought we needed Dakota names. He named me Tatanka Iyotanka or “Sitting Bull” because when they were putting in the garden I would follow the plow and end up sitting on my rump as I crossed every furrow. He thought I looked like a little sitting bull. The old Ft. Thompson agency would flood when the waters backed up from the Big Bend Dam on the Missouri and the agency town was relocated onto higher ground.
About that time, my dad accepted a position as Priest in Charge on the Standing Rock Reservation, just south of the North Dakota border. We moved there when I was about 2 1/2 years old and my brother was still a newborn. Chris told my dad it wouldn't do to call me Sitting Bull on the Standing Rock as the Hunkpapa people were followers of Sitting Bull. So Chris gave me a new name, Chaske' Wit'ko which means Crazy First Born. First born because of my birth order and Crazy, because I already had indications of being quite independent. My next two brothers were named Horse Looking and Rain in the Face. Their names ever stuck like mine did!
When we moved to St. Elizabeth on the Standing Rock, there was also a home for about 100 Indian boys and girls that was run by the church. My dad didn't have to handle any administrative responsibilities for the school, but conducted chapel for them. Chief Gall had joined the church there long after the Battle of the Little Big Horn or Custer's Massacre as the white people called it. Legend had it that Gall was riding his horse outside the church one Sunday and heard singing in the Dakota tongue. He was so entranced by the sound that he joined the church even though he had to give up his second wife and be the husband of only one wife. He was buried about a mile north of the church in the Episcopal graveyard and I remember seeing his grave many times as we would walk up the hill to the cemetery. One time when the bishop was visiting he asked where Jimmy was and somebody said they had seen me walking up the road to the cemetery. He asked my mother why she wasn't alarmed, she said that I would be okay as I always came back by dinner.
