Holy Eagle, James - 1990

James Holy Eagle

My grandfather, his name is Iron Horse. He was with the Indians when they wiped out Custer," says James Holy Eagle.

On his living room wall hangs a painting by French artist Guy Simon picturing him and Sitting Bull. From the ceiling hang streamers with the six sacred colors of the Sioux: red, blue, green, yellow, black, and white.

James Holy Eagle is the oldest Sioux Indian—"a peaceful man," says his granddaughter, "because he worked on all the treaty issues." In 1975, he met with President Gerald Ford to talk about broken Indian treaties and claims to land taken from the Indians—a meeting that drew a favorable written response from Ford, though little action. In honor of his age and place in Sioux history, South Dakota has declared a Chief Holy Eagle Day.

“It's not the same being an Indian as it used to be," says Holy Eagle. "In the old days was a whole lot better. Right now in this town if I see an Indian and if he don't know me he goes right on. Before that, when you see an Indian come, you shake hands and talk. In the olden days all Indians was the same as related."

In those good old days, he once stopped to talk with an old Indian couple at a favorite meeting place--"down by the crick"--a place called Mother Butler’s. Holy Eagle had been raised by his
stepmother Alice Lone Bear. But the old woman of the couple thought that his real mother's name was Good Woman, who was of the family of Sitting Bull.  The man of the couple had known his father, Iron Horse, and had also fought in the battle that killed Custer.

“I asked the old man, I said, 'Grandfather, I know when the Indians fought Custer. I know you were there. Grandfather, I want to know who killed Custer.’ He said, 'I was the youngest one, and at that time they were fighting over there on horseback and guns were going smoking, and I can't tell you who killed Custer.' That's what he told me. He don't know. Years ago after that, somebody told me he heard Rain-in-the-Face killed Custer."

James Holy Eagle was 12 when he started attending a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school at Pine Ridge and later, in 1912, started attending Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. He studied to become a printer and distinguished himself as a cornet soloist and as a right guard on the football team.

“I got there and learned it was just the same as college. I worked in a printing office, and I played football. We played football against all the white kids over there--Yale, Harvard--you know. We had the best football and track team.

"That's where James Thorpe went. He went to the Olympics. That James Thorpe is an all-around man. He's just as big as I am."

Holy Eagle broke his shoulder in a game against Yale and still has a protruding bone from the injury, but he graduated at the top of his class in 1916 and was hired as a band director and boys' advisor at the Indian school in Greenville, California. When World War I broke out, he enlisted and was sent to Camp Dodge. Irving Berlin was there too. "Our band played a lot of the songs he composed.”

But Holy Eagle remembers the 1918 flu as well as he remembers Berlin. "I had the flu, not too bad, and I had to drive a coach to haul the soldiers to the hospital. Many died. The flu picked out anybody.”

When he left the army in 1919 to manage his aunt's ranch on the reservation near Merriman, Nebraska, he found that many people there had died of the flu too. He worked the ranch, but, as he says, "Printing was my main trade." He found a job in the print shop in Martin, South Dakota. He married in 1922 and had three sons, all of whom enlisted in the military. Besides his work on the ranch and as a printer, he has been a mechanic. In the devastating 1972 flood in Rapid City, South Dakota, he lost many of his possessions. Today he lives by himself in a modest apartment in Rapid City.

"He is a very happy man," says his granddaughter. "He likes men visitors, but he prefers the company of women.

He also likes to be playful.

"You know why Indians wear feathers on their head?" he asks. "To keep their wig wam." He laughs.

"I got white man's teeth, " he says, and laughs again, showing them.

Every morning and night he prays and sings a song in Lakota. "We all should put God first," he says. "It seems like it helps you to go through the day and night.”

"How did I get so old? Well, I tell you--don't worry, that's one thing. Sometimes I'll get hungry, and it don't worry me. I don't worry. Worry will get you old quick."

~ One Hundred Over 100, Moments with One Hundred North American Centenarians by Jim Heymen, Photographs by Paul Boyer, Copyright 1990, Fulcrum Publishing, 350 Indiana Street, Golden, Colorado, pages 4 & 5.

You can visit the memorial page for James Holy Eagle.