Only Part of the Story

The disappearance of Sitting Bull’s Cabin is only part of a very fascinating cultural story of late 19th century ideas about the world. The late 19th century was the apex of the era of European colonial domination. It was an era of strange dichotomies and excesses that today seem inappropriate and macabre. The belief system of the colonial era was one of economic appropriation and exploitation justified by a questionable process called “civilization” that was foist on subject peoples. Among all the wonders and strengths of Western Civilization, the Eurocentric mindset and its accompaniments remains its greatest weakness.

Vestiges of this mindset remain. A prominent North Dakota politician and businessman (he may have been Governor once) recently extolled the virtues of Columbus and the glory of his arrival. This is unfortunate and inapproriate in a multicultural age where Columbus has become at best, a dubious character.
Sitting Bull’s cabin at the 1893 Columbian Exhibition was a microcosm of the strange voyeuristic mindset of the age. Artifacts from the recent Wounded Knee Massacre (then called battle) sat inside the cabin for visitors to look at. The famous Sioux Chief Rain in the Face sat like an anachronism signing autographs for all comers. I wonder what he thought of his place in this strange theater?
At the same time, Frederick Jackson Turner was giving his famous speech announcing the closing of the American frontier.
There is an apocryphal story that is recorded in several print sources about Sitting Bull’s cabin being thrown in the Chicago dump after the exhibition. Other sources discount this as untrue. My thought is that it emerges out of the fertile imagination of someone inspired by Turner. The dumping of Sitting Bull’s cabin provided a fitting and poignant coda in someone’s mind to the closing of the American frontier.