Jedi Mind Trick

Then lets give up on all history as anything reliable. What can we know for sure about any historical event?

dog-on

How about we just take it on a case by case basis.

No Robots

You will find the native accounts of the incident in Lakota and Cheyenne: Indian Views of the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877, by Jerome A. Greene. You can judge for yourselves if they have greater verisimilitude than that of showman Cody.

aa5874

Oral transmission is normally the first method of transmission. And written records are compiled from the very same oral transmissions.

Accuracy of oral and written information can be verified sometimes by physical evidence.

The veracity of a source is not determined by its format.

PhilosopherJay

Hi No Robots,

Thanks for this.

Unfortunately, the two Native American accounts are from 1929. This is 53 years after the event. It is difficult to know how much validity to give to either one. Beaver Heart's report directly contradicts the earliest reports of the soldiers. Yellow Hair's sister, Josie Tangled-Yellow Hair, seems to be trying to undercut Beaver Heart's credibility by saying that she never saw him and he belonged to an outlaw gang. She admits that she was not there at Warbonnet Creek, but only heard shots. One detail that she gives sounds suspicious. The idea that the soldiers left Yellow Hair's body on the spot where he died for a month seems bizarre. One imagines that the soldiers would have buried it or returned it to the tribe.
Perhaps both of these elderly people were simply having some fun and pulling the legs of their interviewers by claiming a relationship to the events 53 years previously. They don't sound any more believable to me than the varied and contradictory soldier reports.

Here is a recent website that shows just a few of the tangled Warbonnet narratives from that period: Smoke Signals

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

No Robots

It looks to me that we can arrive at a few agreed-upon facts.

andrewcriddle

It may be worth noting that versions of the story become progressively more problematic over the subsequent decades.

The versions within 50 or so years of the event agree on the broad outlines of what happened.

It is 80 years afterwards that a radically revisionist narrative occurs. (The M. I. McCreight version.)

Andrew Criddle

PhilosopherJay

Hi aa5874,

I think you make a good point that the numerous supernatural events in the gospels may indicate a deliberate attempt at fiction.

The accounts of the Warbonnet Creek Incident are sometimes wildly exaggerated. For example, in one account, Buffalo Bill had Yellow Hand leading over 2,000 Native Americans, a bit more than the six or seven companions who usually accompany Yellow Hand in the narrative. Still, as far as I know, nobody ever puts forward any supernatural details. We have no reports of Yellow Hand being healed after he dies or Buffalo Bill flying into the sky.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

PhilosopherJay

Hi No Robots,

I think that we can agree on a few facts,

A native American was shot around 5 A.M. on the morning of July 17, 1876. Buffalo Bill did lead out a group of men (7-15) to intercept some Native Americans.

Almost all the details become problematic, including the important ones of 1) Who actually killed him? 2) How was he killed? 3) What was he actually doing there?) 4) Who was he? and 5) Was he scalped afterwards?

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

PhilosopherJay

Hi Andrew,

Actually, I think the contradictions and problems with the narratives start almost immediately. For example The New York Herald on July 24th, one week after the incident, published an account based on a July 23rd dispatch from Charles King that portrayed a duel between Yellow Hand and Buffalo Bill. King later admitted not seeing the actual killing, but getting his information from two other soldiers. He also later said that many things had been added to his dispatch. The Kansas "Ellis County Star" published, on August 3rd, a dispatch from Sargeant John Powers, sent July 22nd, which describes Buffalo Bill rising up "from behind a hill" and without warning shooting the pony of Yellow Hand. It is a very different account from the one in the New York Herald.

Official records list only one Native American killed. Charles King's diary lists two Native Americans killed. John Powers' diary lists three dead. Private James Frew recorded in his diary that seven Native Americans had been killed in the incident.
(Information from "The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill" by Don Russell).

By 50 years, the multitudes of conflicting narratives were so great and so few witnesses were still alive that there was little hope of reconciling all of them and coming up with a clear picture of what happened.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay