‘Created quite a sensation in the Eastern States by her marriage to a young Brule named Squatting Bear, who accompanied a party of Sioux to Washington in 1867.’ -Kansas City Times, 1872
‘Her narrative is one of deep and entrancing interest.’ -Narratives of Captivity Among the Indians
‘A white trader name Daniel Leroy helped her escape to Fort Leavenworth.’ – Massachusetts Historical Society (1946)
‘Exaggerated two stereotypic images: the Indian as savage and the white woman as delicate vessel.’ – White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier (2005)
‘Miss Barber had missionary aspirations; but they were soon quenched by the squalor of her husband’s wigwam.’ – Red Men Calling on the Great White Father (1951)
In 1867, when celebrated Sioux Chief ‘Squatting Bear’ was visiting ‘The Great White Father’ in Washington, D.C., 19-year-old Mary Barber (born 1848) would propose to and marry the great Brule warrior, who then promptly set out with her across the country to his Sioux village near Yankton, Dakota.
The marriage had created a major sensation in newspapers of that time. Barber notes that ‘along the route we were greeted either with cheers, or shouts of derision, from the crowds assembled at the different railroad depots.’
After surviving a perilous journey across the country strapped to a pony, Barber would realize she had been more than a little rash in marrying Squatting Bear, who already had two other wives and would later marry a fourth, the jealous and vindictive Meemole. She notes that ‘the ‘squaw’ is forced in most cases, to do all the menial labor, and is in fact a slave.’ The next five years of her life would be spent ‘as a captive, in reality, ‘ with her husband becoming ‘a perfect tyrant, ‘ from whom she ‘resolved to escape if possible.’
In addition to suffering her own severe beatings and whippings, Barber would be forced to be a silent witness many other atrocities including a soldier and two teamsters being burnt at the stake and an emigrant train massacre. One time Squatting Bear decided to amuse himself and other braves by ‘dressing Meemole and myself in male costume that of the braves, and placing us face to face in deadly combat.’
In describing the desperate knife fight she was forced to participate in, Barber writes:
‘I resolved not to kill her unless pushed to do so in self-defence. The signal to commence hostilities was given, and quick as lightning Meemole sprang forward, and before I was aware of it, gave me a severe cut across the face with her knife. For a moment I was bewildered, but remembering my danger, and I may truly say, my American blood being up, I went in for dear life….’
The tribe would range far into Canada and Minnesota, and on one occasion discovered an archaeological site of a ‘race of giants’:
‘Waanataa discovered a cave or seemingly a tomb, in which were found skulls and skeletons of a race of Indians Iong since extinct. The shortest one of these skeletons child not have been less than 7 feet 9′ in length, and several of them actually measured over 11 feet.’
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