"John Choate produced a commercial series of cabinet and boudoir size cards for the school.  He began the series shortly after the school opened in 1879.  By April of 1881 the series included 92 numbered cards.  He then
continued the series up to number 164.  The first 92 cards were taken in 1879,1880 and early 1881.  In the April 1881 issue of the Big Morning Star, the school newspaper, Choate lists and describes the 92 cards in the series.
The image of White Buffalo seated is No. 86.  Cards 93-164 were produced in 1881 and 1882.  [The Cumberland County Historical Society has] three boudoir size cards of White Buffalo in our collection.  One image is hand labeled on the back 'No. 86, White Buffalo, Choate, Carlisle.'  The other two cards have another view of White Buffalo taken the same day.  It is a head on shot taken from the waist up.  He is in the same costume and the background is the same. The back of one of these cards is blank.  The other card has a printed description as follows '86. White Buffalo, (Indian youth 18 years old with naturally gray hair.) With Indian costume.'  It appears that both of the views carried the number 86.

I would date the card 1880 or early 1881 since it is a higher number and described in April of 1881.  If White Buffalo was 18 at the time I would estimate that he was born c. 1862.  The information that Barb Landis provided states that he died in June of 1929."

Source: Richard Tritt, Photograph Curator, Cumberland County Historical Society, Carlisle PA.

Sipes Cheyenne Files, Boarding School Section, Carlisle Indian School. Text Copyright (c) John L. Sipe  2005.

Indian medicine men and white physicians tried to stave off his death. He was a student at Carlisle. Received rank of sergeant in the military dept. From the Northern Cheyennes. Was with the delegation that dedicated the stadium at Haskell. He talked to the Lawrence, Ks., Rotary Club in which he spoke in Cheyenne and translated his speech back into English. He was progressive. Mother was Iron Teeth who died at 103 years old. He was survived by his wife, Medicine Woman. Buried by Rev. Davis at the Indian Mission Church.

Text Copyright (c) 2003 compiled by John Sipes.

Our picture gallery is full of interest --- at least to us.  It is true Hogarth would be 
disgusted with our artists for their entire disregard of his "Line of Beauty," and Titian wonder 
at the lack of the knowledge of coloring which these aborigines manifest, but it is truth to 
Indian life which so charms us.
   A piece by a young Arapahoe represents one of their warriors holding in his hand a spear, 
its staff wound with fur and ornamented with feathers.  To his head is fastened an 
ornament of eagle's feathers, which fall gracefully back to his feet.  His nude bust painted 
yellow, blue waist cloth edged with white, scarlet leggins and beaded moccasins of a 
variety of hues, indicate at a glance to what school the artist belongs.
   "Six Cheyenne Dancers," by White Buffalo, well represents life in an Indian village.
   "Me Four Years Ago," by Thomas Carlyle, one of the band boys, shows us a bow and 
quiver full of arrows, stacked in the ground, from which are suspended a looking-glass, fan 
and paint bag, while he dances with a young woman, placing his right shoulder against her 
left.  Both are gaily dressed, the young woman very richly, as she wears a cape covered 
with elk teeth, while her dress and moccasins indicate by the wonderful combination of 
their coloring that the artist may possibly have fallen upon the suggestive bits of colored 
rays found in the room of Paul Veronese at the time of his death.
   Two larger pieces by a young Cheyenne, represents himself and a few of his friends on a 
war party, one against the Osages, and the other the Pawness.  The dress of the warriors 
and the ornamentation of their horses, as well as their reclining position on their horses, 
which are running at full speed, all are characteristics of Indian warfare.
   The best piece is a pencil sketch of a buffalo chase, by another Cheyenne, though the boy 
artist shows the lack of his knowledge of perspective by placing the horse and rider in the 
foreground in hot haste after an invisible object, while the buffalo is above and beyond, 
running at full speed.  Passing by others we must not fail to notice a comic piece 
improvised by one of the younger pupils during a few spare moments in the school room. 
There are birds on trees, on nests in the grass or standing in sedgy  marsh land, and a 
turtle moving slowly along; but the boy chasing jack-rabbits, one of which he has shot and 
left bleeding on the ground with the arrow quivering in the wound, while he persues three 
others, two other boys mounted on jack-rabbits which they are in vain endeavoring to guide, 
and a third who has fallen from his wild steed, while he is in a very ungraceful attitude on 
the ground, shows the love of the ludicrous in these boys whom strangers think so dull and 
devoid of thought."

March 1881 School News.

March 1881 SCHOOL NEWS

 Capt. R.H. PRATT - DEAR SIR:
   In response to your inquiry in regard to teh religious excetement among the Indians, will say that I have waited some time before answering, in hopes taht I might gain ifnormation taht would enable me to give intelligent answers to your questions, but as there is nothing intelligent or reasonable about this fanaticism, my account of it will have to be as absurd as the religious belief that I am trying to write about.  The belief that Christ has come upon the earth, to re-establish the Indians in their old ways and to check teh whtie man in his efforts to civilize them, originatged according to teh best information I can gain at Shoshone Agency, Wyoming. The first information I got in regard to it was from some of my Indians, who had been to Darlington and had returned bringing the word that White Buffalo a returned Carlisle student had been to visit the Northern Cheyennes and had brought back the report that Jesus had come down upon the earth again and had appeared to the Indians; that he was discovered by two Indians who had found him by following a light in the sky during eighteen days' travel over a country destritute of water, yet at each camping place they were supplied with water from a little pool that came out of the ground and furneshed just enough for their needs and no more.
   At the end of the eighteen days' journey they came to a secluded place near a mountain and here they found a wicky-up buildt of bull rushes, and on entering it they saw Jesus and saw where *white* men had driven nails in his hands and where they had pierced his side.
   Jesus told them that he had come once to save the white men and they had crucified him adn this time he had appeared to the Indians, and they should go back and tell the INdians what they had seen.
   The two Indians were then borned up in a cloud and in a very short time were set down at their home where they related what they had seen; whereupon, the Indians picked out three other Indians to go and substantiate the report of the two first, as it was hinted that they were not as reliable as they might be.
   I have not heard whetehr the last party ever made a report or not. When White Buffalo left the north they had not returned, yet the report that White Buffalo brought awakened a great deal of interest. It was talked over by old men and we soon began to hear a great deal about it.
     At first it was claimed that the Jesus that these Indians saw was exactly like the pictures of him in the Bible. Thsi seemed to establish the identity beyond a doubt. there was a great deal of stress put on the fact that he wore long hair.
   It soon became current that Christ would wipe out the white people, adn bring the dead to life among the Indians, and that flesh would grow again upon the buffalo bones and that they would again be plenty.
   Some even claimed that this Christ had written a letter to President Harrison, giving him two years to take the white men back across the salt water, and if he did not do this the white people must take the consequences.
   It is to be expected that Jesus will gather all the INdians together in one place wher ehe is, and when they start to go to this place if any white man tries to stop them they (the white men) will drop dead.
   Others claim taht when they start to go where Jesus is, that is sthe soldiers kill them to prevent them from goign it will not matter for their souls will go right on.
   After a while it seemed to occur to some that there might be some mistake about the report that White Buffalo brought back. There were some letters written making inquiries of the Northern Cheyennes adn Arapahoes. Soon after I heard that letters had been received confirming the report.The following is a copy of one of them:
                                                                          PINE RIDGE AGENCY, DAK:
    DEAR BROTHER: - es, it is so about Jesus and all INdians talking about it now the heaven, come to save the Indians with long hair first then the white men Jesus came to save INdians. It is to far up in sky where he was. It is not half so far where he is now you may come to him and all the Indians Jesus gives some berries some black and some red I ate two. How ou all getting along in Darlington. Please send me some money and tell red Necks wife to send money too.  From your brother, 
                                                                           CROOKED NOSE."
   Last winter the Arapahoes raised about $180 and sent Washea, Sergeant of Scouts, and Black Coyote, captain of Police, up north to see whetehr the story is true or not. They returned and the Indians congregated to hear the report. A delegation came up from the Kiowas adn Comanches, and from the Caddoes and Wichitas.
   The report was to the efect taht they did not go to where Jesus was, but they saw Indians that said it was true that he had come, and as they beleived this they came back.
   Since then, Little Chief, returned Florida prisoner has made a trip north to learn abou tit and came back with only hear-say evidence. Yet all the cam Indians that I have met believe in it more or less, and there are very few school-children who will say that they do not believe it.

October/November 1890 THE RED MAN, p. 3, 6.

......From time to time throughout the history of the school illustrated stories have appeared in the public prints, especially in the Sunday editions, making most flagrantly false allegations against returned Carlisle students. Within the past five years as many as twenty such stories have been printed, all of  them entirely false,and some of them most malignant in character. There has seemed to be a syndicate of fabricators moved by a common purpose to disparage and manufacture prejudice. My repeated contradictions of these stories to newspapers themselves did not stop these
misrepresentations.
     In July last White Buffalo, one of our first students, who left the school eighteen years ago, was spublished as having committed a triple murder at the Cheyenne Agency, and after confession of his crimes was in jail awaiting the action of the courts. This story with the usual accompaniment of Indian pictures and the alleged picture of one of his victims was printed in the Philadelphia "North American." No murder had been committed, and White Buffalo was reported by his agent to be one of the best Indians on the reservation, engaged in farming and stock-raising and sending his children to school. I sent for White Buffalo and brought suit against "The North American" for criminal libel. When the managers found they had been imposed upon they printed the facts and gave them wide circulation, adn zealously began a prosecution fo their western correspondent who had written the article from Wichita, Kansas, but who had left that state and gone into Missouri. The suit is still pending, awaiting opportunity to get the correspondent before the courts at his own home in Kansas. The treatment of this case in the west indicates large sympathy with such misrepresentation....

August 14, 1903 RED MAN AND HELPER

 February 1912 RED MAN - for full account of the C&A Fair, go to Cheyenne list.