Elder Laid to Rest at Traditional Lakota Ceremony
Rainbow arches over burial scaffold of David Beautiful Bald Eagle
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News
Health & Environment Editor
TAKINI –– A rainbow arched over the burial scaffold of Chief David Beautiful Bald Eagle at sunset on the final day of his traditional Lakota funeral ceremony July 28, in the vast grasslands of the Hohwoju Lakota Nation, or Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, where he was born.
He always called his homestead here Rainbow Valley and told people this was where he wanted to be “if I am going to die.” His family members saw to it that his wish came true as he set out on his journey to the spirit world on July 22, 2016, at age 97.
They also followed his instructions for the traditional four-day ceremony, which he said he wanted them to share so that it would be remembered, according to his widow Josée.
On the fifth day after his passing, his tiospaye, or extended family, celebrated a burial service at Black Hills National Cemetery, in recognition of his distinguished history as a warrior.
The interment was July 29, the first day of the annual Deadwood Days of ’76 Celebration and Rodeo, in which he had dressed in full ceremonial regalia to lead the parade for at least five decades. The celebration organizers would host an honoring event for the late Bald Eagle and his family the following day in Deadwood.
For spectators of the Deadwood scene, Chief David, as he liked to be called, was one in an ample cast of local characters who form the image of an Old West frontier town that sustains the tourism industry of the locale in the northern Black Hills of South Dakota.
The commemoration of the gold rush at the former mining camp is hardly cause for celebration among the Lakota who lost control of the sacred Black Hills as a result of the treaty violation mining constituted. Still Bald Eagle and his extended family weren’t about to miss out on the festivities of the Wild West.
Their participation in the annual rodeo and celebration dates back to the 1920s. “I remember the days when this was a racetrack,” he said as he blessed the grand opening of the Deadwood Days of 76 Museum in May 2014 with a prayer in Lakota.
“We used to have tipi races,” he said, recalling how the family would erect a tipi encampment on the hillside above the Deadwood rodeo grounds to take part in the yearly affair.
A prominently positioned, wall-size photo enlargement of the early Days of ‘76 Celebration at the entrance of the museum gallery is a sepia-toned scene of the tipis and Bald Eagle with relatives in traditional dress. It bears a written quote from him, saying: “During the Days of ’76, we lived, for a time, in our old ways.”
The chief’s life spanned the lion’s share of a century in which the Lakota people have endured the fallout from the treaty violations of peace settlements that members of their nation offered the United States to end the American Indian Wars in 1851 and 1868.
At every turn, Bald Eagle faced the challenges of cultural assimilation from the imposition of settlers’ culture, government and economy, only to rise above resentment and convert them into tools to fortify his Native American heritage so that generations to come may know it.
In the indigenous world, he gained leadership status as a headman of the Mnikoju Band and chief of the 20-year-old international United Native Nations organization in the indigenous culture.
At the same time, he earned respect in the non-Indian world with his military service, athletics career and movie making contributions.
Bald Eagle was named Meade County veteran of the month in May 2012, at age 93. He was at the World War II invasion of Normandy, serving as a combat infantryman for the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Paratroopers in the European Theater from 1940 to 1945. Several of his offspring enjoy military careers.
Bald Eagle’s entrance into this world was characteristic of his generation, but a wonder to most folks still living in the 21st Century United States. As he told it, he was born in a tipi at the edge of Cherry Creek.
Like others of his generation who have gone before, he learned history first-hand from now famed leaders of the American Indian Wars, who were their grandparents. His grandfather White Bull took part in the American Indian victory over Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
As a youngster, Bald Eagle survived tuberculosis, one of the diseases settlers introduced, which together with smallpox nearly wiped out whole tribes in the 1800s. With only primitive medical care available for rural people well into the 20th Century, the prescription that saved him from his first brush with death, he said, was camping out in a tent all winter and drinking raw milk.