Post by Beth on May 10, 2016 21:20:16 GMT
I'm not sure if this story has been discussed before. I have a vague memory of reading it 'somewhere' b
Beth
--
Great-grandfather survived Battle of Little Bighorn
published myhorrynews.com May 5, 2016
Source
The memory of brown potato soup still makes Dolores Anderson smile. But when she talks about the man she called Dad — her great-grandfather who spent five years living with Chief Sitting Bull — the tears come.
The octogenarian tells Eli W. Walker’s story as if it’s her own. And because she credits him with raising her, over the years it has become her story too.
He ran away from his home in Chillicothe, Ohio, when he was no more than 9 years old and joined the 7th Cavalry Regiment as a water boy.
“His father was a farmer in the summer and a school master in the winter and with my great-grandfather being the oldest, he took the whip,” she tells. “His father was of German descent and had a temper. His father beat him with a whip and he had all he could take.
“During the Civil War, so many of our young men were killed, that what was left of the Army wasn’t much, and there was no one to water the horses. He joined the Cavalry and was a water boy,” she says, as if she’s told the story many times before.
Walker was born in 1867 and this sort of thing wasn’t all that unusual back in the day, his great-granddaughter says.
The child had no relationship with Gen. George Custer during his months as a water boy with the Cavalry because he was, Anderson remembers him saying, “a mean man. He was mean to the soldiers, my Dad didn’t like him.”
It was during the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 that Walker’s middle finger on his right hand was shot off.
When he taught Anderson and her little sister Susan how to write, he held a pencil between his index and ring ringers. To this day, Anderson says, her sister still holds a pencil like that.
It was during the Battle of Little Bighorn — Custer’s Last Stand — that Chief Sitting Bull recognized that Walker, whose mother was Indian, was at least partially Indian.
Sitting Bull not only spared the child’s life, but raised him with the Lakota tribe as his own for about five years.
The little boy was terrified the night he was brought into Sitting Bull’s world.
“It was chaos,” Anderson remembers being told. “All the tribes scattered, afraid of retaliation.”
But Walker, still not even a teenager, soon learned his father — as he came to consider Sitting Bull — was not to be feared.
“He taught him so many things about life,” she says. “Sitting Bull wasn’t book-educated, but he knew what to eat, including brown potato soup, and what not to eat. He knew how to hunt and to fish.”
In time, Walker taught many of those life lessons to Anderson.
The multi-generation family of Walker and his wife, Anderson’s parents and she and her siblings, lived on a farm near the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in Maryland.
“During the [Second World] War, he could tell you where a train was going by what was loaded in the car,” she says.
“He taught me about the pigs and the chickens and the ducks and how to take care of them. He helped me take care of the vegetables in the garden.”
The man she called Dad taught Anderson to read and write – holding the pencil somewhat askew – and when his vision failed, she read him the newspaper.
She remembers that he spoke of Sitting Bull “as a kind and gentle man who wanted to do right for his people.”
When he was exhibited in the Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, it was degrading to him, Walker told Anderson when she was a little girl.
Walker went back to the United States Army after Sitting Bull was killed and eventually made his way to Maryland.
He worked as a barber and as a shoemaker and on the railroad.
When her great-grandfather spoke of Sitting Bull, Anderson says, he’d often cry, saying he missed him. If he had some of the drink Sitting Bull called “fire water” in him, Walker would say he was dying himself, and wanted to go be with the man he considered his father.
“He sang an Indian song,” Anderson says, starting to chant the syllables. “I don’t know what the words meant but he sang it when he was drinking.”
Anderson says there’s some part of every day that makes her think about her great-grandfather. A framed picture of him in his Cavalry uniform sits on the buffet in her living room.
“I think about him especially when I feel bad,” she says, wiping tears from her cheeks.
She was in her senior year of high school when her great-grandfather died, holding her hand, right after he’d been baptized.
“Nobody understood how I could empty his spittoon,” she says, looking surprised. “I loved him, he was my Dad.”
Beth
--
Great-grandfather survived Battle of Little Bighorn
published myhorrynews.com May 5, 2016
Source
The memory of brown potato soup still makes Dolores Anderson smile. But when she talks about the man she called Dad — her great-grandfather who spent five years living with Chief Sitting Bull — the tears come.
The octogenarian tells Eli W. Walker’s story as if it’s her own. And because she credits him with raising her, over the years it has become her story too.
He ran away from his home in Chillicothe, Ohio, when he was no more than 9 years old and joined the 7th Cavalry Regiment as a water boy.
“His father was a farmer in the summer and a school master in the winter and with my great-grandfather being the oldest, he took the whip,” she tells. “His father was of German descent and had a temper. His father beat him with a whip and he had all he could take.
“During the Civil War, so many of our young men were killed, that what was left of the Army wasn’t much, and there was no one to water the horses. He joined the Cavalry and was a water boy,” she says, as if she’s told the story many times before.
Walker was born in 1867 and this sort of thing wasn’t all that unusual back in the day, his great-granddaughter says.
The child had no relationship with Gen. George Custer during his months as a water boy with the Cavalry because he was, Anderson remembers him saying, “a mean man. He was mean to the soldiers, my Dad didn’t like him.”
It was during the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 that Walker’s middle finger on his right hand was shot off.
When he taught Anderson and her little sister Susan how to write, he held a pencil between his index and ring ringers. To this day, Anderson says, her sister still holds a pencil like that.
It was during the Battle of Little Bighorn — Custer’s Last Stand — that Chief Sitting Bull recognized that Walker, whose mother was Indian, was at least partially Indian.
Sitting Bull not only spared the child’s life, but raised him with the Lakota tribe as his own for about five years.
The little boy was terrified the night he was brought into Sitting Bull’s world.
“It was chaos,” Anderson remembers being told. “All the tribes scattered, afraid of retaliation.”
But Walker, still not even a teenager, soon learned his father — as he came to consider Sitting Bull — was not to be feared.
“He taught him so many things about life,” she says. “Sitting Bull wasn’t book-educated, but he knew what to eat, including brown potato soup, and what not to eat. He knew how to hunt and to fish.”
In time, Walker taught many of those life lessons to Anderson.
The multi-generation family of Walker and his wife, Anderson’s parents and she and her siblings, lived on a farm near the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in Maryland.
“During the [Second World] War, he could tell you where a train was going by what was loaded in the car,” she says.
“He taught me about the pigs and the chickens and the ducks and how to take care of them. He helped me take care of the vegetables in the garden.”
The man she called Dad taught Anderson to read and write – holding the pencil somewhat askew – and when his vision failed, she read him the newspaper.
She remembers that he spoke of Sitting Bull “as a kind and gentle man who wanted to do right for his people.”
When he was exhibited in the Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, it was degrading to him, Walker told Anderson when she was a little girl.
Walker went back to the United States Army after Sitting Bull was killed and eventually made his way to Maryland.
He worked as a barber and as a shoemaker and on the railroad.
When her great-grandfather spoke of Sitting Bull, Anderson says, he’d often cry, saying he missed him. If he had some of the drink Sitting Bull called “fire water” in him, Walker would say he was dying himself, and wanted to go be with the man he considered his father.
“He sang an Indian song,” Anderson says, starting to chant the syllables. “I don’t know what the words meant but he sang it when he was drinking.”
Anderson says there’s some part of every day that makes her think about her great-grandfather. A framed picture of him in his Cavalry uniform sits on the buffet in her living room.
“I think about him especially when I feel bad,” she says, wiping tears from her cheeks.
She was in her senior year of high school when her great-grandfather died, holding her hand, right after he’d been baptized.
“Nobody understood how I could empty his spittoon,” she says, looking surprised. “I loved him, he was my Dad.”
