Eli Seavey Ricker | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 29, 1843 Maine, U.S. |
| Died | May 17, 1926 (aged 83) Grand Junction, Colorado, U.S. |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Service/ | Union Army |
| Rank | Corporal |
Eli Seavey Ricker (April 29, 1843 - May 17, 1926) was a corporal serving the Union Army during the American Civil War, newspaper editor, rancher, judge, and activist known for his support of Native Americans and other social causes. He was one of the first historians to recognize the validity of the Native American views.
Ricker was born in Maine in 1843. [1] He later moved to Knoxville, Illinois, and was 17 years old when the American Civil War began. [2] Ricker had been working as a journalist for a number of years already, reporting for the Knox County Observer and Galesburg Free Press. [3] He enlisted in 1862, and served as a corporal in the 102nd Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the war, which took part in Sherman's March to the Sea. He also wrote for newspapers back home giving an account of the war. [3]
After the war, Ricker became a newspaper owner and editor in Nebraska [2] as well as a county judge. He is most well known for his progressive views on Native Americans and the more than fifty interviews he did with various Native Americans, as well as scouts and settlers, recording various eyewitness accounts on events during the Indian Wars in the west, such as the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Wounded Knee Massacre. He recorded this information for a book he planned on writing to be entitled "The Final Conflict between the Red Men and the Palefaces." Ricker recorded more than 1,500 pages on ruled tablets which came to be known as the "Ricker Tablets". [4] He never got around to writing his book but the information he gathered, many first hand accounts of historical events, is considered an invaluable historical resource for documenting the history of the American West. These tablets are now in the archives of the Nebraska State Historical Society. [5] [6]
His wife, Mary, burned to death in the couples' home in February 1925. [7] : xx Ricker died on May 17, 1926, at his home on Ouray Avenue in Colorado. [7] : xxi
Dorris Alexander "Dee" Brown was an American novelist, historian, and librarian. His most famous work, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970), details the history of the United States' westward colonization of the continent between 1830 and 1890 from the point of view of Native Americans.
The Ghost Dance was a ceremony incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. According to the teachings of the Northern Paiute spiritual leader Wovoka, proper practice of the dance would reunite the living with spirits of the dead, bring the spirits to fight on their behalf, end American westward expansion, and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to Native American peoples throughout the region.
Johann Carl Bodmer was a Swiss-French printmaker, etcher, lithographer, zinc engraver, draughtsman, painter, illustrator and hunter. Known as Karl Bodmer in literature and paintings, as a Swiss and French citizen, his name was recorded as Johann Karl Bodmer and Jean-Charles Bodmer, respectively. After 1843, likely as a result of the birth of his son Charles-Henry Barbizon, he began to sign his works K Bodmer.
The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as the Battle of Wounded Knee, was a massacre of nearly three hundred Lakota people by soldiers of the United States Army. The massacre, part of what the U.S. military called the Pine Ridge Campaign, occurred on December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, following a botched attempt to disarm the Lakota camp. The previous day, a detachment of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment commanded by Major Samuel M. Whitside approached Spotted Elk's band of Miniconjou Lakota and 38 Hunkpapa Lakota near Porcupine Butte and escorted them five miles westward to Wounded Knee Creek, where they made camp. The remainder of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, led by Colonel James W. Forsyth, arrived and surrounded the encampment. The regiment was supported by a battery of four Hotchkiss mountain guns. The Army was catering to the anxiety of settlers who called the conflict the Messiah War and were worried the Ghost Dance signified a potentially dangerous Sioux resurgence. Historian Jeffrey Ostler wrote in 2004, "Wounded Knee was not made up of a series of discrete unconnected events. Instead, from the disarming to the burial of the dead, it consisted of a series of acts held together by an underlying logic of racist domination."
Heȟáka Sápa, commonly known as Black Elk, was a wičháša wakȟáŋ and heyoka of the Oglala Lakota people. He was a second cousin of the war leader Crazy Horse and fought with him in the Battle of Little Bighorn. He survived the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. He toured and performed in Europe as part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West.
John Gneisenau Neihardt was an American writer and poet, amateur historian and ethnographer. Born at the end of the American settlement of the Plains, he became interested in the lives of those who had been a part of the European-American migration, as well as the Indigenous peoples whom they had displaced.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West is a 1970 non-fiction book by American writer Dee Brown that covers the history of Native Americans in the American West in the late nineteenth century. The book expresses details of the history of American expansionism from a point of view that is critical of its effects on the Native Americans. Brown describes Native Americans' displacement through forced relocations and years of warfare waged by the United States federal government. The government's dealings are portrayed as a continuing effort to destroy the culture, religion, and way of life of Native American peoples. Helen Hunt Jackson's 1881 book A Century of Dishonor is often considered a nineteenth-century precursor to Dee Brown's book.
Wovoka, also known as Jack Wilson, was the Paiute religious leader who founded a second episode of the Ghost Dance movement. Wovoka means "cutter" or "wood cutter" in the Northern Paiute language.
The Battle of Ash Hollow, also known as the Battle of Blue Water Creek or the Harney Massacre, was an engagement of the First Sioux War, and fought on September 2 and 3, 1855 between United States Army soldiers under Brig. Gen. William S. Harney and a band of the Brulé Lakota along the Platte River in present-day Garden County, Nebraska. In the 20th century, the town of Lewellen, Nebraska, was developed here as a railroad stop.
Ella Cara Deloria, also called Aŋpétu Wašté Wiŋ, was a Yankton Dakota (Sioux) educator, anthropologist, ethnographer, linguist, and novelist. She recorded Native American oral history and contributed to the study of Native American languages. According to Cotera (2008), Deloria was "a pre-eminent expert on Dakota/Lakota/Nakota cultural religious, and linguistic practices." In the 1940s, Deloria wrote a novel titled Waterlily, which was published in 1988, and republished in 2009.
Thomas Henry Tibbles was an abolitionist, author, journalist, Indians’ rights activist, and politician who was born in Ohio and lived in various other places in the United States, especially Nebraska. Tibbles played an important role in the trial of Standing Bear, a legal battle which led to the liberation of the Ponca tribe from the Indian territory in Oklahoma in the year 1879. This landmark case led to important improvements in the civil rights of Native Americans throughout the country and opened the door to further advancement.
Touch the Clouds was a chief of the Minneconjou Teton Lakota known for his bravery and skill in battle, physical strength and diplomacy in counsel. The youngest son of Lone Horn, he was brother to Spotted Elk, Frog, and Roman Nose. There is evidence suggesting that he was a cousin to Crazy Horse.
Ira Berkow is an American sports reporter, columnist, and writer. He shared the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, which was awarded to the staff of The New York Times for their series How Race Is Lived in America.
Edward William Bonney was a 19th-century adventurer, miller, hotel keeper, city planner, counterfeiter, livery stable keeper, bounty hunter, private detective, postmaster, merchant, soldier, and author. He is best known for his undercover work in exposing the "Banditti of the Prairie", resulting from his investigation of the torture-murder of noted Illinois pioneer and frontiersman, Colonel George Davenport.
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The 102nd Illinois Volunteer Infantry was an infantry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
Dewey Beard or Wasú Máza was a Minneconjou Lakota who fought in the Battle of Little Bighorn as a teenager. After George Armstrong Custer's defeat, Wasu Maza followed Sitting Bull into exile in Canada and then back to South Dakota where he lived on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation.
George Washington Thompson was a Private in the U.S. Army who served with the 2nd U.S. Cavalry during the Indian Wars. He was one of five men received the Medal of Honor for gallantry fighting the Plains Indians at the Little Blue River in Little Blue, Nebraska on May 15, 1870.
Sergeant Paul H. Weinert was an American soldier in the U.S. Army who served with the 1st U.S. Artillery during the Indian Wars. He was one of twenty men who received the Medal of Honor for gallantry at what was then called the Battle of Wounded Knee, but now commonly called the Wounded Knee Massacre, taking charge of the battery when his commanding officer was severely wounded, on December 29, 1890.
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