Could Lost Bird’s Tragedy Inspire a Triumph for Native Americans?

Several years ago, I first posted about the Native American baby girl who was found alive under the frozen body of her mother on the blood-soaked fields of Wounded Knee, SD, four days after the massacre on December 29, 1890, that killed  more than 300 Lakota men, women and  children.  I had purchased a  vintage photograph showing the infant in the arms of Leonard Colby, the brigadier general who adopted Zintkala Nuni or “Lost Bird” as the surviving -Lakota called her.  I learned that her life was one of unremitting tragedy.  She suffered every kind of injury the White Man has imposed on Native Americans—including sexual abuse from her adoptive father. She was exploited in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and in early silent films, forced to play stereotypical Indians (which is still happening-- witness the Native Americans who walked off the set of Adam Sandler’s comedy “Ridiculous Six” last week). 

As an adult, Lost Bird saw one child die and gave away another because she couldn’t raise him. She died of syphilis and the Spanish flu on Valentine’s Day, 1920, aged 29, and was buried in a pauper’s grave in California   But 71 years later, her people, the Lakota, found her grave and brought her remains back to Wounded Knee.

I wrote about Lost Bird’s story on my blog “A Rolling Crone” in 2012.  Then, early this year, I received an e-mail from Brian George, a Native American who works at the St. Joseph’s Indian School In Chamberlain, SD, which houses over 200 Native American children whose parents cannot care for them (and there are 100 more on the waiting list.)  Brian told me an intriguing story of how he has taken Lost Bird as his “guiding spirit” and visits her grave every year on the day she died.  While he says he is cynical, he has encountered many unexplainable signs that her spirit is with him. 

Brian emailed me a photograph of a tattoo of the baby Lost Bird on his shoulder, with the word “Wakanyeja” which means “children are a sacred.”  “Every morning I look at the tattoo and vow that our 212 young Lakota students don’t endure the same,” he wrote.  “I have tried to turn her tragedy into an inspiration.  I believe Zintka knows that I am all about helping the Lakota children and she is my guide.  I see endless cycles of poverty, addiction, suicide and abuse…However, the people are resilient, strong and have that special Native sense of humor. I call the reservations in our country “The forgotten America.”

(Today, Monday, May 4, The New York Times published on its front page an article about the epidemic of suicides among the young people on the reservations of South Dakota—especially Pine Ridge, which is on the ground of Wounded Knee.  Since December, nine between the ages of 12 and 24 have committed suicide and 103 more have tried.)

Brian wrote that he is the Major Gift Officer for St. Joseph’s and often travels East on business, so on April 15, I met him in Philadelphia to learn more about his connection to Lost Bird.

 Brian George with photographs of Lost Bird's grave stone

Brian describes himself as a member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, but he’s one- third Irish and one-third Scottish.   He grew up in the suburbs of Dallas and never thought of himself as Native American until, at the age of 30, in 1993, he attended the funeral of his full-blooded grandmother. “As I walked in, all these elderly Native ladies ran up saying ‘You look just like your great grandfather’ --a man named  Winchester Colbert.  I looked him up and our likeness is stunning. He was a governor of the Chickasaw Nation and served in that capacity during the Civil War.”

After a divorce in 2007, Brian was working for the Chickasaw Nation outside Oklahoma City as a host at a casino by day and a bouncer by night, but he felt a “hole in my heart.” A number of coincidences drew his attention on Easter Sunday, 2010 to an ad in the newspaper saying, “Want to make the world a better place?  St. Joseph Indian School.”

Brian started at St. Joseph’s as a houseparent. “That hole in my heart has become whole again with the unconditional love I give and receive from the Lakota children I raised and continue to mentor. No more breaking up fights in bars.  Now I help put together lives once shattered by the tragedies of reservation life.  Then a person named Zintkala Nuni, Lost Bird of Wounded Knee came into my life.”

Brian first discovered the story of Lost Bird when he was substitute teaching in St. Joseph’s  “Native American Studies” class. The class watched a 30-minute DVD titled “Lost Bird of Wounded Knee: Spirit of the Lakota.” Then he purchased a book  with the same title, written by Renee Sansom, who was a social worker in South Dakota when a co-worker showed her an old photograph she had found in an attic.  It was the self-same photograph that I bought some years later. Sansom spent the next five years researching and writing Zintka’s story.  In the book, Brian discovered that Lost Bird had spent two years—1905 to ‘06—attending a school named Chamberlain Indian Industrial Boarding School on the same ground where St. Joseph’s is today.

He decided to make the three-hour drive from St. Joseph’s to Wounded Knee to pay his respects to Lost Bird and the other victims of the massacre.  The visit was unremarkable until he was leaving the burial site, when “Something happened. Something touched my back like I had never felt before.  I literally left the ground. I had chills. I knew immediately it was Lost Bird’s spirit coming with me.” 

Brian visits Lost Bird’s grave every  Valentine’s day—the anniversary of her death. “I lay flowers and ceremonial tobacco prayer ties on her grave.  In  2013 I rubbed my left hand across the word ‘Lost’ on her headstone. A few days later, my watch began to malfunction. A jeweler told me that my battery was ‘burnt up’.  I realized it was on the arm that was touching the headstone. I had always heard that spirits use electrical energy to communicate.”

On subsequent visits to the grave in 2014 and 2015, Brian again noticed electrical phenomena. In 2014, “I went to Lost Bird’s grave and took out my iPhone 5 that was fully charged. From YouTube I pulled up the Lakota Healing Song, which is 5 minutes long.  I placed the phone on the grave.  At the end of the song, I picked up my phone and noticed it was completely drained. I showed my girl friend. As we got in the car, she saw a strange kind of bird circling overhead. Then that bird flew about nine feet above, as if it was escorting us.  I told her it was a Scissor-Tail Flycatcher—the state bird of my state of Oklahoma.  Later I found there had only been 12 reported sightings in the history of South Dakota. This time of year it should be in Central America.  Was this, I wondered, a lost bird or Lost Bird?”

On Valentine’s Day 2015, Brian again played the Lakota Healing Song on a fully charged phone, The phone was drained again. This time, in the photographs taken by his girlfriend, there seemed to be a mysterious mist surrounding Brian, despite no visible fog.

He also experienced signs of an electrical nature back at St Joseph’s in the area where Lost Bird had gone to school. “I had left my car in a parking lot close to the Missouri River,” he told me. “It was dark and I looked up at this storage building that was used as a chicken coop in the early 1900’s. The flood light was not on. What I did next is unexplainable.  I asked ‘Zintka, Zintkala Nuni, were you here?’  Immediately the light came on.  I got in my car and drove off.  The next day I asked the maintenance guys if that light was on a timer or sensor and they said no.” 

About a year later, Brian was on the school’s playground sitting on a bench and he noticed the light on the old bulding was out again.  He asked the same question “Zintka, were you here?” and immediately it came on. When other adults asked what had happened, Brian repeated the question three more times, each time with the same result, to the wonder of the onlookers.   “Each time I received an answer exactly after I asked, with no delay.”

“All my experiences with Lost Bird are comforting to me and unexplainable,” he told me. “ I believe she is my  guiding spirit and knows that I was brought to South Dakota to help her people.  She knows that my passion in life is helping the most forgotten and underserved people of a land that was originally theirs.”

Like Martin Luther King, Brian George has a dream--to unify, lead and be a vocal advocate for a better quality of life for all Native Americans.  “Reservation life has many of the same challenges as our inner cities and other third-world countries,” he said, "the difference being the lack of attention by mainstream America.  I embrace becoming the leader who will bring this to light. I want to launch the revival of the Native cultures.  Our commonalities are closer than our differences. This is a time for forgiveness.  I want to create this foundation, to help Native Americans in the areas of education, housing and rehabilitation."

The centerpiece of Brian’s plan is to bring back the 40 acres of land that surrounds the graves of Wounded Knee.  “I want to bring that land back to the Lakota people—and not as a tourist occasion.”

Brian has even written the speech he would give on the sacred ground to mark that moment. “Let us not dwell on yesterday’s injustices and broken treaties,” he would say, “so we can reap the rewards of tomorrow’s dreams and blessings from the Creator.  We must replace bitterness with forgiveness. Forgiveness of the past is the pathway to the future.  Let today mark the beginning of a new era in our stormy and storied relations…As Native people, we must join together and honor all that is right.  The return of these lands is honorable and right.”

No doubt Lost Bird, who spent her short life trying to get back to Wounded Knee, but returned only after her death, would agree.

Update: Lost Bird, Survivor of Wounded Knee, Betrayed by the White Man

 Of all the stories I’ve uncovered while researching the antique photographs in my collection, this one is the most heartbreaking.  Starting with the Massacre at Wounded Knee on Dec. 29, 1890, “Lost Bird” suffered every kind of injury and abuse the White Man imposed on Native Americans.  She died on Valentine’s Day in 1920, aged 29, and was buried in a pauper’s grave in California, but 71 years later, her people, the Lakota, found her grave and brought her remains back to Wounded Knee, the place where she was found as an infant beneath her mother’s frozen body.

  I first posted this story on my blog “A Rolling Crone” in 2012, but am re-posting it now because I recently heard from a man, a Native American, who has been visiting “Lost Bird’s” grave with flowers on the anniversary of her death for years, and feels he has had spiritual communications from her.  I’ll tell his story in a subsequent post.

This antique photo is the most expensive and I think the most interesting one in my collection.  It’s an Imperial—which means a giant version of the cabinet card-- and measures about 7 by 10 inches; an albumen print mounted on decorative board.  It was taken in Beatrice, Nebraska by a photographer named Taylor.

As you can see, the photograph shows a handsome, stern-looking military officer in a general’s uniform holding an adorable Native American baby.  The officer is Gen. Leonard Colby who adopted this baby and had the photograph taken—as a public relations gesture.

This baby girl was found alive beneath the frozen body of her mother four days after the killing of hundreds of Lakota men, women and children on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota on Dec. 29, 1890, in what came to be known as the Massacre of Wounded Knee.  On the infant’s head was a leather cap decorated with beaded designs showing the American flag.

She was named “Zintkala Nuni” -- “The Lost Bird” by the tribe’s survivors, who tried to get custody of her, but she was adopted –also as a public relations move -- by  Brigadier General Leonard W. Colby, whose men came to the killing field after the massacre was over.

Over the protests of the Lakotas, he adopted the child, claiming that he was a full-blooded Seneca Indian.  He promised to bring food to the surviving tribe members if they’d give him this living souvenir of Wounded Knee. Then he had this photograph taken.  On the back Colby wrote in lead pencil on the black cardboard, words which are now nearly indecipherable:   “…..baby girl found on the field of Wounded Knee…mother’s back on the fourth day after the battle, was found by me.  She was about 4 or 5 months old and was frozen on her head and feet, but entirely recovered.  The battle occurred Dec. 29, 1890, about fifteen miles walking from Pine Ridge, South Dakota.” 

Gen. Colby adopted the baby without even consulting his wife, Clara Bewick Colby, who was in Washington D.C. at the time, working as a suffragette activist, lecturer, publisher and writer.   The well-meaning adoptive mother brought the infant to Washington where Zintka, as they called her, grew up, buffeted by all the current social trends of the time—women’s suffrage, rejection by her own people, exploitation of her background by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, early silent films and vaudeville. 

As an adolescent, longing to return to the West to learn more about her origins.  Zintka went to Beatrice, Neb., to live with Colby, who by then had left his wife and daughter and married her former nanny.  The girl may have been sexually abused by her adoptive father, because she became pregnant under his care and was shipped off to a prison-like home for pregnant women.  Her infant son was stillborn but the girl was confined to the reformatory for another year.

Zintka returned eventually to her mother in Washington, then married a man who infected her with syphilis.  She tried different careers, including working with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, which exploited her Native American background.    She tried to work in vaudeville and the early movie business—dressed as an Indian, of course-- and reportedly may have worked as a prostitute as well.

Zintka had two more children—one died and she gave the other to an Indian woman who, she felt, could take care of him better, because she and her ailing husband were desperately poor.

She fell ill in February of 1920 during an influenza epidemic, and on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, “Lost Bird” died at the age of 29 of the Spanish flu complicated by syphilis.  She was buried in a pauper’s grave in California.

The only bright light in Zintka’s story is that her bones were exhumed in 1991, seventy-one years after her death, by the Wounded Knee Survivors’ Association, to be returned to the battlefield and buried with great ceremony while news media and hundreds of Native American descendants watched.  A Lakota woman said, “Lost Bird has returned today to the same place she was taken from.  This means a new beginning, a process of healing is completed.  We can be proud to be a Lakota.  To our sacred children, this means a beginning.”

The story of Lost Bird is so steeped in irony that it reads as a fable of the exploitation and torture of the Native Americans by the white invaders.  On her own trail of tears, during her short life, Zintka was robbed of her name and her mother and any opportunity to learn about her own culture.  Despite her adoptive mother’s love and good intentions, she was terribly unhappy—prevented from going back to the West to find her kin and then sexually abused when she did return to the West. She was exploited and stereotyped by the film and entertainment world, eventually to die before she reached 30.

Lost Bird’s story has been told by Renee Sansom Flood in the 1998 book “Lost Bird of Wounded Knee: Spirit of the Lakota”, and Ms. Flood also spurred the effort to find Zintka’s grave and bring her home.  The author was a social worker in South Dakota when a colleague showed her a faded photograph that set her out on her years of research and writing.  That photo, found by the woman working with Renee Flood in an old trunk in her late father’s attic, was the same photo I own today—with Colby’s writing on the back. Renee Flood became so obsessed with telling Lost Bird’s story and bringing her home to be buried with her people that she had recurring dreams of the little girl until she fulfilled her obsession.

. 

I know that owning this historic photograph is a serious responsibility. I, too, would like to  spread the story of Zintka’s  sad life.  The story of Lost Bird is a vivid illustration of how a faded old photograph, over a century old, can have the power to move people to make discoveries long after the subject and the photographer are dead.

Lost Bird: Survivor of Wounded Knee, Betrayed by the White Man

Today is the 122nd anniversary of the  Massacre of Wounded Knee, and for that reason I am re-posting a story that I first posted last April, about a  baby girl of the Lakota tribe who was found alive four days after the massacre under the frozen body of her mother.  Her story is one of the most tragic chapters in the saga of what Native Americans suffered at the hands of the White man.

The Story Behind the Photograph

This antique photo is the most expensive and I think the most interesting one in my collection.  It’s an Imperial—which means a giant version of the cabinet card-- and measures  about 7 by 10 inches;  an albumen print mounted on decorative board.  It was taken in Beatrice, Nebraska by a photographer named Taylor.

As you can see, the photograph shows a handsome, stern-looking military officer in a general’s uniform holding an adorable Native American baby.  The officer is Gen. Leonard Colby who adopted this baby and had the photograph taken—as a public relations gesture.

This baby girl was found alive beneath the frozen body of her mother four days after the killing of hundreds of Lakota men, women and children on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota on Dec. 29, 1890, in what came to be known as the Massacre of Wounded Knee.

She was named “Zintkala Nuni” -- “The Lost Bird” by the tribe’s survivors, who tried to get custody of her, but she was adopted –also as a public relations move -- by  Brigadier General Leonard W. Colby, whose men came to the killing field after the massacre was over.

Over the protests of the Lakotas, he adopted the child, claiming that he was a full-blooded Seneca Indian.  He promised to bring food to the surviving tribe members if they’d give him this living souvenir of Wounded Knee. Then he had this photograph taken.  On the back Colby wrote in lead pencil on the black cardboard, words which are now nearly indecipherable:   “…..baby girl found on the field of Wounded Knee…mother’s back on the fourth day after the battle, was found by me.  She was about 4 or 5 months old and was frozen on her head and feet, but entirely recovered.  The battle occurred Dec. 29, 1890, about fifteen miles walking from Pine Ridge, South Dakota.” 

Gen. Colby adopted the baby without even consulting his wife, Clara Bewick Colby, who was in Washington D.C. at the time, working as a suffragette activist, lecturer, publisher and writer.   The well-meaning adoptive mother brought the infant to Washington where Zintka, as they called her, grew up, buffeted by all the current social trends of the time—women’s suffrage, rejection by her own people, exploitation of her background by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, early silent films and vaudeville. 

As an adolescent, longing to return to the West to learn more about her origins.  Zintka went to Beatrice, Neb., to live with Colby, who by then had left his wife and daughter and married her former nanny.  The girl may have been sexually abused by her adoptive father, because she became pregnant under his care and was shipped off to a prison-like home for pregnant women.  Her infant son was stillborn but the girl was confined to the reformatory for another year.

Zintka returned eventually to her mother in Washington, then married a man who infected her with syphilis.  She tried different careers, including working with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, which exploited her Native American background.    She tried to work in vaudeville and the early movie business—dressed as an Indian, of course-- and reportedly may have worked as a prostitute as well.

Zintka had two more children—one died and she gave the other to an Indian woman who, she felt, could take care of him better, because she and her ailing husband were desperately poor.

She fell ill in February of 1920 during an influenza epidemic, and on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, “Lost Bird” died at the age of 29 of the Spanish flu complicated by syphilis.  She was buried in a pauper’s grave in California.

The only bright light in Zintka’s story is that her bones were exhumed in 1991, seventy-one years after her death, by the Wounded Knee Survivor’s Association, to be returned to the battlefield and buried with great ceremony while news media and hundreds of Native American descendents watched.  A Lakota woman said, “Lost Bird has returned today to the same place she was taken from.  This means a new beginning, a process of healing is completed.  We can be proud to be a Lakota.  To our sacred children, this means a beginning.”

The story of Lost Bird is so steeped in irony that it reads as a fable of the exploitation and torture of the Native Americans by the white invaders.  On her own trail of tears, during her short life, Zintka was robbed of her name and her mother and any opportunity to learn about her own culture.  Despite her adoptive mother’s love and good intentions, she was terribly unhappy—prevented from going back to the West to find her kin and then sexually abused when she did return to the West. She was exploited and stereotyped by the film and entertainment world, eventually to die before she reached 30.

Lost Bird’s story has been told by Renee Sansom Flood in the 1998 book “Lost Bird of Wounded Knee: Spirit of the Lakota”, and Ms. Flood also spurred the effort to find Zintka’s grave and bring her home.  The author was a social worker in South Dakota when a colleague showed her a faded photograph that set her out on her years of research and writing.  That photo, found by the woman working with Renee Flood in an old trunk in her late father’s attic, was the same photo I own today—with Colby’s writing on the back. Renee Flood became so obsessed with telling Lost Bird’s story and bringing her home to be buried with her people that she had recurring dreams of the little girl until she fulfilled her obsession.

. 

I know that owning this historic photograph is a serious responsibility. I, too,  would like to  spread the story of Zintka’s  sad life.  The story of Lost Bird is a vivid illustration of how a faded old photograph, over a century old, can have the power to move people to make discoveries long after the subject and the photographer are dead.

Lost Bird: Survivor of Wounded Knee, Betrayed by the White Man

The Story Behind the Photograph

This antique photo is the most expensive and I think the most interesting one in my collection.  It’s an Imperial—which means a giant version of the cabinet card-- and measures  about 7 by 10 inches;  an albumen print mounted on decorative board.  It was taken in Beatrice, Nebraska by a photographer named Taylor.

As you can see, the photograph shows a handsome, stern-looking military officer in a general’s uniform holding an adorable Native American baby.  The officer is Gen. Leonard Colby who adopted this baby and had the photograph taken—as a public relations gesture.

This baby girl was found alive beneath the frozen body of her mother four days after the killing of hundreds of Lakota men, women and children on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota on Dec. 29, 1890, in what came to be known as the Massacre of Wounded Knee.

She was named “Zintkala Nuni” -- “The Lost Bird” by the tribe’s survivors, who tried to get custody of her, but she was adopted –also as a public relations move -- by  Brigadier General Leonard W. Colby, whose men came to the killing field after the massacre was over.

Over the protests of the Lakotas, he adopted the child, claiming that he was a full-blooded Seneca Indian.  He promised to bring food to the surviving tribe members if they’d give him this living souvenir of Wounded Knee. Then he had this photograph taken.  On the back Colby wrote in lead pencil on the black cardboard, words which are now nearly indecipherable:   “…..baby girl found on the field of Wounded Knee…mother’s back on the fourth day after the battle, was found by me.  She was about 4 or 5 months old and was frozen on her head and feet, but entirely recovered.  The battle occurred Dec. 29, 1890, about fifteen miles walking from Pine Ridge, South Dakota.” 

Gen. Colby adopted the baby without even consulting his wife, Clara Bewick Colby, who was in Washington D.C. at the time, working as a suffragette activist, lecturer, publisher and writer.   The well-meaning adoptive mother brought the infant to Washington where Zintka, as they called her, grew up, buffeted by all the current social trends of the time—women’s suffrage, rejection by her own people, exploitation of her background by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, early silent films and vaudeville. 

As an adolescent, longing to return to the West to learn more about her origins.  Zintka went to Beatrice, Neb., to live with Colby, who by then had left his wife and daughter and married her former nanny.  The girl may have been sexually abused by her adoptive father, because she became pregnant under his care and was shipped off to a prison-like home for pregnant women.  Her infant son was stillborn but the girl was confined to the reformatory for another year.

Zintka returned eventually to her mother in Washington, then married a man who infected her with syphilis.  She tried different careers, including working with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, which exploited her Native American background.    She tried to work in vaudeville and the early movie business—dressed as an Indian, of course-- and reportedly may have worked as a prostitute as well.

Zintka had two more children—one died and she gave the other to an Indian woman who, she felt, could take care of him better, because she and her ailing husband were desperately poor.

She fell ill in February of 1920 during an influenza epidemic, and on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, “Lost Bird” died at the age of 29 of the Spanish flu complicated by syphilis.  She was buried in a pauper’s grave in California.

The only bright light in Zintka’s story is that her bones were exhumed in 1991, seventy-one years after her death, by the Wounded Knee Survivor’s Association, to be returned to the battlefield and buried with great ceremony while news media and hundreds of Native American descendents watched.  A Lakota woman said, “Lost Bird has returned today to the same place she was taken from.  This means a new beginning, a process of healing is completed.  We can be proud to be a Lakota.  To our sacred children, this means a beginning.”

The story of Lost Bird is so steeped in irony that it reads as a fable of the exploitation and torture of the Native Americans by the white invaders.  On her own trail of tears, during her short life, Zintka was robbed of her name and her mother and any opportunity to learn about her own culture.  Despite her adoptive mother’s love and good intentions, she was terribly unhappy—prevented from going back to the West to find her kin and then sexually abused when she did return to the West. She was exploited and stereotyped by the film and entertainment world, eventually to die before she reached 30.

Lost Bird’s story has been told by Renee Sansom Flood in the 1998 book “Lost Bird of Wounded Knee: Spirit of the Lakota”, and Ms. Flood also spurred the effort to find Zintka’s grave and bring her home.  The author was a social worker in South Dakota when a colleague showed her a faded photograph that set her out on her years of research and writing.  That photo, found by the woman working with Renee Flood in an old trunk in her late father’s attic, was the same photo I own today—with Colby’s writing on the back.  Renee Flood became so obsessed with telling Lost Bird’s story and bringing her home to be buried with her people that she had recurring dreams of the little girl until she fulfilled her obsession.

. 

I know that owning this historic photograph is a serious responsibility. I, too,  would like to  spread the story of Zintka’s  sad life.  The story of Lost Bird is a vivid illustration of how a faded old photograph, over a century old, can have the power to move people to make discoveries long after the subject and the photographer are dead.