Emma Cornelia Sickels

Emma Cornelis Sickels had a complex relationship with Indigenous peoples thought her work with the US government. She was called a hero for her work collecting information and mediating peace between the US and the Lakota people. She incorrectly blamed Native Americans for the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. In 1893, she was publicly fired from the Anthropology and Ethnology Department at the Chicago World's Fair for protesting how her boss was showcasing Native American life.

Early Life

Sickles was born in 1854 in Massachusetts. She was the fourth child of George Edward Sickels and the second child of Maria Louisa nee Smith.

Sickles went to college at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts. She graduated in 1872. Soon after, she moved to Chicago, Illinois to teach. She never married.

Career

In 1884, Sickels became the superintendent of the Indian Industrial Boarding School at Pine Ridge. The school grew under her leadership. She wrote that she left the school to study and teach domestic sciences in Chicago. While teaching, she reprimanded the daughter of Red Cloud, an Oglala Lakota leader, in 1884. In an 1893 interview, she said that Red Cloud came down with a thousand men ready to burn the school and kill her. She claimed that another Oglala Lakota leader, Little Wound, gathered an even bigger crowd to defend her. She wrote a first-hand account of her work with some powerful Lakota chiefs to avoid warfare between them and the US government. As the story is not corroborated with any other records, many historians avoid it. The story was published in December 21, 1890. The federal government asked her to gather intelligence and talk with Lakota leadership after Sitting Bull was killed. She received authority from the War and Interior Departments of the US government. US Secretary of War, Redfield Proctor, and Commanding General of the United States Army, John Schofield, approved her work as a mediator. She planned to talk with Little Wound to reach a peaceful agreement. According to Sickles, Little Wound saw her as a spy and was prepared to kill her. She claims she convinced Little Wound not to kill her. She promised him that she would publish his grievances in a newspaper. She also planned a meeting between Little Wound and Pine Ridge government officials. She wrote that Red Cloud was Little Wound’s real enemy. She believed that he was causing trouble and telling newspapers he was Little Wound. She also claimed that Red Cloud wanted to kill her, but that she was there to help Little Wound and his people. The next time she visited Little Wound, she convinced him to visit the Pine Ridge Agency. Little Wound then made sure the Brules, a band of Teton Lakota people, were not going to attack.

Wounded Knee Massacre

Sickles was involved in the aftermath of the Wounded Knee Massacre. She falsely wrote that the Native Americans started the attack. In 1890, 500 US soldiers killed hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children in South Dakota. Before the Massacre, the US government had banned the Ghost Dance ceremony and tried to arrest Sitting Bull. On December 28, the Seventh US Cavalry Regiment arrested a group of Lakota people who were trying to find protection at Pine Ridge Reservation . They were held near Wounded Knee Creek. The next day, some of the Lakota performed the Ghost Dance. When the soldiers saw the ceremony, they started to shoot to kill. 25 Army soldiers and at least 300 Lakota people were killed. On December 27, Sickles was in Nebraska. After hearing what had happened, she wanted to go to Pine Ridge. It took her four or five days to find a ranchman to drive her there. She did not witness the Massacre of Wounded Knee. She had Little Wound’s lieutenant, Yellow Hair, meet General Nelson A Miles. Plans were made for US soldiers to concentrate at the Pine Ridge Agency. She wrote about how tense the atmosphere was where one misstep could end in a bloodbath. Sickels believed that by providing General Miles with information, she stopped the death of government agents. She reported that General Miles was about to attack when she stopped him. Sickels was very opinionated. Directly after the Massacre, she wrote about her distaste for General John R Brooke and how she blamed him for putting the agency in danger. On April 21, 1893, the New York Times named her the “heroine of Pine Ridge”. She received a medal with the words “To Emma C. Sickels, the Heroine of Pine Ridge; for exceptional bravery in checking the Indian war of 1890.” engraved on it. The metal was from the International Society of La Saveur of Paris.

The 1893 Columbian Exposition

Several months after the Massacre, she went to New York to organize an exhibit on Native American life for the New York Press Club. Illinois Congressman George Davis gave Sickels a political appointment to work under Frederick Ward Putnam at the 1893 Columbian Exposition. Putnam did not approve of the appointment. However, she became one of the Anthropology and Ethnology Department’s associates at Chicago’s Columbian Exposition. Hundreds of Native Americans participated in the fair. The US government set up a model of a federal school for Native American children. Putnam and his team hoped to display a picture of white saviorism and primitive Native Americans. Putnam did not design his department's exhibit to showcase factual Native American life in the nineteenth century. Instead, he supported stereotypes and a view of these people as artifacts of the past. The Field Museum in Chicago took much of the Department's work after the fair closed. Putnam fired Sickles on May 1, 1893, with Davis’s signature on the dismissal. Emma Sickels called out her department’s false representations of Native American life. Before the fair started, in late 1892, she claimed that Native Americans would be so upset with the exhibits that there would be an uprising. While there was no uprising, many tribal members were very disappointed, such as Simon Okagon who wrote The Red Man’s Rebuke about the exposition. Putnam fired Sickles for her protests. Sickles began writing to the New York Times, sharing with the public that some Native American groups were excluded from participating in the exhibits to display Native American culture as uncivilized. She also disagreed with the display of Kwakwaka'wakw ceremonials. She accused Putnam of showcasing these dances to degrade Native Americans publicly in the New York Times. Sickels went to work for the Board of Lady Managers. One of Sickles’s coworkers at the Columbian Exposition, James Mooney, started studying the Ghost Dance Religion around the same time as the Wounded Knee Massacre. During his work for the Exhibition, he wrote a book, The Ghost-Dance Religion and Wounded Knee. This is the first actual investigation into the causes of the conflict. The central narrative of the book is based on the words of George Sword, an Oglala Sioux man in the Teton Dakota dialect translated by Emma Sickels. This translation is the only primary source of the Ghost Dance Massacre told from the victim’s side.

Later in Life

After the fair, she became secretary of the National Domestic Science Association and Natural Pure Food Association. She submitted an 1899 patent for purifying vegetable oils. She worked with Congress in the 1910s to improve nutrition guidelines.

She died on December 13, 1921, at Elgin State Hospital in Illinois. She was 67. She is buried in Mount Albion Cemetery in Albion, New York.