Geo. E. Bartlett, Wounded Knee, Dakota , Undated

Captain George Edward Bartlett, first came to Dakota Territory 1874 at the age of 16, when he moved to Yankton, working at a reservation trading post. Later he got a job as a mail rider. It was at this point that he fractured his knee, causing him problems that he would have for the rest of his life. He later claimed to have injured it in a gun battle with thieves in 1884. In 1879 he became a Deputy U.S. Marshall for the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations, a job he held until 1893. He was made captain of Indian Police. He was Post Master, special agent for the Department of Justice and an inspector for the Black Hills Live Stock Association. Bartlett was an Indian Trader at Wounded Knee from 1883-1892. Barrett spoke several Sioux dialects and was a friend to Native Americans. The local Sioux gave him the name Huste, or “lame”. In English they jokingly called him “Wounded Knee,” after the creek running behind the store. In 1890, he was a front row witness to the slaughter of nearly 200 Sioux by the 7th cavalry at Wounded Knee. Captain Bartlett travelled to Pine Ridge to inform General Brooke of the massacre. Aside from one interview in 1890, Bartlett refused to talk about the events afterward until 1903, when he spoke to Eli S. Ricker, for his Voices of the American West. Bartlett joined a party to collect bodies and search for survivors. They found an infant girl wrapped in a shawl, still alive and protected by the frozen corpses of a group of woman. She was later named Zintkala Nuni, Lakota for Lost Bird. Bartlett kept in touch with her until his death. Shortly after, Bartlett was told by the government to leave Pine Ridge, and Bartlett was hired to keep track of a band of Pine Ridge Indians being shown at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Bartlett then joined a wild west show as a sharpshooter. And later in a theatrical troupe. Eventually he married May Clinton, another performing sharpshooter. He continued to perform until his death.