Dec. 28, 1894, Lakota Chief Cha Nopa Uhah (“Two Sticks”) was hung today still proclaiming his innocence. “My heart is not bad. I did not kill the cowboys; the Indian boys [meaning White Faced Horse, Fights With, Two Two, and First Eagle] killed them. I have killed many Indians, but never killed a white man; I never pulled a gun on a white man. The great father* and the men under him should talk to me and I would show them I am innocent. The white men are going to kill me for something I haven’t done.”
Chief Two Sticks had been arrested and convicted for the Feb
4th murder of four white riders for the Humphrey Ranch 30 miles north of
Chadron, Nebraska.
The Humphrey Ranch immediately sent word to Captain George
LeRoy Brown of the 11th Infantry. Brown telegraphed Ft. Meade near Sturgis, South
Dakota and tribal police were ordered to arrest Two Sticks. When they arrived
at his camp a gunfight ensued five of the policemen were killed and one was wounded.
After this first fight, a party of 25 tribal policemen went to
the camp of Chief No Waters where Two Sticks was holed up and another gun
battle followed. First Eagle, Two Two-, and White-Faced Horse were killed in
the shootout. Two Sticks was badly wounded.
Two Sticks survived and, in the spring, came up for trial, and
although their witnesses did not place him at the scene and there was no other
evidence of his participation in the killing of the Humphrey riders he was
still convicted.
At his hanging, Two Sticks said, “My heart knows I am not guilty,
and I am happy. I am not afraid to die. I was taught that if I raised my hands
to Wakan Tanka (God), and told a lie, that God would kill me that day. I never
told a lie in my life.”
As the noose was placed around his neck Chief Two Sticks sang
his death song. He was dropped through the trapdoor and, according to the
reports, “his death was instantaneous.”
He was placed in a pine box and buried outside of the gates of
the regular graveyard because the citizens of Deadwood did not want the body of
an Indian contaminating their graveyard.
On December 9, 1998, the Adams Museum in Deadwood repatriated Two
Sticks’ Sacred Pipe to his great-grandson, Richard Swallow, Sr., and the Oglala
Lakota Tribe in compliance with the Native Americans Graves Protection and Act
of 1990.
Sources:
https://www.indianz.com/News/2009/07/06/tim_giago_the_execution_of_lak.asp
https://www.historynet.com/sioux-chief-two-sticks/
https://academic.oup.com/whq/article-abstract/52/2/225/6178604?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false
https://www.sdhspress.com/journal/south-dakota-history-42-1/reasonable-doubt-the-trial-and-hanging-of-two-sticks/4201_hall.pdf
https://www.newspapers.com/image/648857625/?terms=%22four%20cowboys%22&match=1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/674941514/?terms=%22Chief%20Two%20Sticks%22&match=1
