- Term
Kicking Bear
- Alternate Term
Kicking Bear
Chief Kicking Bear
- Nationality/Ethnicity
Oglala Lakota
- Geography
South Dakota
- Remarks
Kicking Bear, an Oglala Lakota, was born 1846. As a holy man, he was active in the Ghost Dance religious movement of 1890, and had traveled with group of Lakota man to visit the movement's leader, Wovoka, a Paiute holy man living in Nevada. The three Lakota men were instrumental in bringing the movement to the reservations in South Dakota. In 1891, Kicking Bear joined Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show, and toured with the show in Europe. After a year-long tour, he returned to the Pine Ridge Reservation. In March 1896, he traveled to Washington, D.C. as one of three Sioux delegates taking grievances to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. A gifted artist, he painted his account of the Battle of Greasy Grass at the request of artist Frederic Remington in 1898, more than twenty years after the battle. Kicking Bear died on May 28, 1904, and his remains are buried somewhere in the vicinity of Manderson-White Horse Creek, South Dakota.