Biography
Tukiha Maza (Iron Shell) was born c. 1820. Iron Shell was the son of Sicangu Chief Bull Tail. "Sicangu" meant "burnt thighs", the name given to some of the Lakota people who had been caught in a prairie fire that burned their legs. The French later gave them the name Brulé.
During a raid on the Pawnee by the Brulé in 1843, Iron Shell received recognition for his actions. Thirteen years later, at Fort Pierre, under Little Thunder, Iron Shell was made a sub-chief of the Brules. Iron Shell became chief of the Brulé's Orphan Band during the Powder River War of 1866-1868. When General Harney and his troops made a surprise attack in 1855 against the Brulé at present day Lewellen, Nebraska, Chief Iron Shell was there and fought against Harney's troops. Two of Iron Shell's wives were captured that day, though Iron Shell escaped. That confrontation constituted the largest loss of life through death or capture and loss of property that the Sicangu had ever experienced.
Chief Iron Shell led many attacks against the Omaha and Pawnee. On September 4, 1867, Chief Iron Shell and 180 of his followers arrived at North Platte. He eventually signed the Treaty of 1868 and settled in the Upper Cut Meat District on the Rosebud Reservation. He died in the 1870s and was buried near St. Francis, South Dakota.
Read more about this topic: Iron Shell
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)