Small Wonders--Suzette LaFlesche

He was a little man with a huge broom beard, a sort of wispy-looking gent, white hair, lots of it all around. His name was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a man as close to celebrity status as anyone in late 19th century America. One night in 1879, Longfellow waited--not patiently--for the guest of honor to appear at a party in her honor at the lavish home of yet another of America's rich-and-famous. The gathering was a big deal, a big, big deal.

When finally she showed, the wizened Longfellow went almost speechless. The story goes that the great poet, an icon already in his day, reached for the woman's hands, took them greedily in his own, looked into her eyes and went silent with shock and awe. When finally, he could speak, he did, loud enough for all partiers to hear: "This is Minnehaha," he said with the heraldic fervor.

Today, 142 years later, Longfellow's exuberance requires context. Fully 24 years earlier, Longfellow had published the American epic, Song of Hiawatha, a book-length poem written in a metric called trochaic tetrameter-- 

On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
Of the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood Nokomis, the old woman,
Pointing with her finger westward,. . .

a wild-eyed gallop of a rhythm only an English teacher could love.

In that massive tome, Hiawatha, perhaps the first "noble savage" to appear on American paper, falls madly in love with a Dakota princess named Minnehaha. Alas, their love is as star-crossed as was Romeo and Juliet's. The princess dies, but then--thank goodness--their love is eternal.

Try not to giggle. "Hiawatha loves Minnehaha" was hot stuff in 1879, and had been for 25 years already. The whole nation heard the great poet say what he did right there at the door to the party.

Longfellow's Minnehaha was in actuality a young Omaha woman, born in Nebraska, named Suzette LaFlesche. That night she wasn't dressed in buckskin. She wore no beaded breastplate and hadn't smeared her face in war paint. Ms. LaFlesche was dressed like any other New Englander, and while the old poet might have wanted to see his own creation in Suzette's eyes, she was nothing of the sort.

Suzette LaFleshe was the oldest child of Joseph Iron Eye LaFlesche, the last recognized chief of the Omahas. She'd received her primary education at the Presbyterian boarding school on the Omaha reservation. But when she wanted more education, she had been sent out east to a fashionable finishing school for women in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She was no stranger to Euro-American culture.

During Standing Bear's trial in Nebraska, Suzette LaFleshe had been the designated translator for the Ponca chief. The two of them were, in fact, distant relatives.

Eventually, she married Thomas Tibbles, the newspaper reporter who'd brought the Ponca's sad story to light. Together, the two of them had appeared before Congress to testify on the plight of Native people across the land. Together, they continued to testify throughout their lives.

In 1891, she and her husband went to the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota to investigate the origins of the Wounded Knee Massacre. For some time, she lived in Washington D. C., where her husband was a news correspondent. She compiled, in her lifetime of some 47 years, her own extensive list of essays and reports on Native America, for whom she was an undying advocate. She was known by her Omaha name, Inshata Theumba, translated as "Bright Eyes."

Like her younger sister Susanne, Suzette had every opportunity to leave the reservation. She and her husband could have lived a soft and famous life out east. She could have determined to stay somewhere establish a home anywhere in America and attend endless fashionably exclusive dinner parties. Instead, like her sister, she never for a moment lost her commitment to her people and advocated for them and all of America's First Nations for the rest of her life.

Thomas Tibbles and Bright Eyes moved here to Bancroft in 1902 to live among her people. She died there on May 26, 1903.

In truth, she was nothing, really, of Longfellow's precious Minnehaha. But the old poet was right in one way--Suzette LaFleshe was royalty in every possible way.