The University of Oklahoma Libraries
Western History
Collections
"EVERYTHING I
SAY HERE IS
STRAIGHT AND
TRUE"
The Autobiographical
Drawings of Chief White Bull:
Art as a Historical Source |
This
exhibit is based on the collaboration of
a Minniconjou Sioux chief, White Bull, and a professor
of English at the University of Oklahoma, Walter S. Campbell, better known
by his pen name, Stanley Vestal. White Bull (1849-1954) compiled a distinguished
record in the warfare among Indians and between them and the U.S. Army in the
1860s and 1870s. He was the son of a Minniconjou chief and a Hunkpapa Sioux
mother, who was a sister of the famed Sitting Bull.
White Bull had been the veritable prototype of a Sioux
warrior. The life those Indians led put a premium on fighting ability. Nomads
who hunted over a substantial part of the Northern Plains, their principal
prey was the buffalo. The Sioux had seized their hunting grounds, and they held them
by force of arms. They fought not only to exclude others, whether Indian
or white, but also raided for horses.
On the left is the Sioux Indian chief White Bull talking
with Walter Stanley Campbell, University of Oklahoma professor of English
who wrote under the nom de plume Stanley Vestal. |
