Where is Sitting Bull's Cabin?
Unidentified photograph showing Standing Rock's Chief Rain in the Face at center surrounded by yet to be identified individuals in front of Sitting Bull's cabin at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.
Where is Sitting Bull's Cabin? This is the question posted on the Native CAIRNS (Center for American Indian Research and Native Studies) website. It is also one that the library has received intermittently over the years. It has become an interesting mystery that continues to create more questions as new clues are found.
According to newspaper accounts, Sitting Bull's cabin left Standing Rock for Mandan, North Dakota not long after his death. In 1893 it can be found at the Chicago Colombian Exposition, also known as the World's Fair. Following this, it did a stint on Coney Island in New York. Standing Rock's Chief Rain in the Face traveled with it to both places. Other Lakota/Dakota people from Standing Rock also went on these trips, but it is yet to be revealed who they were.
What did Rain in the Face and the others think of these forays and their involvement with them? The late 19th and early 20th century was a strange time when the myths of the "old west" were already being spun at a time when the very participants living a less romantic reality were trying to negotiate life in an irrevocably changed landscape. A print on the website of The Hagley Digital Archives showing the entrance to the cabin exhibit illustrates the strange marketing and commodification of events still fresh within living memory. This print emerged recently as one of the benefits of the ongoing digitization of archives that continues to reveal new items, while making them more accessible to a wider audience
From New York, there is evidence in newspaper accounts that the cabin was scheduled to travel to the 1894 World's Fair in Antwerp, Belgium. As yet, we have not found evidence whether it made the trip. More research is needed to flesh out the story of its time in Chicago and New York and whether it (and any of the people that traveled with it) made the trip to Antwerp. Did it stay in Europe? Does it still exist somewhere? Many interesting questions remain.