Good Bear (Mato Waste)
Hello,  My name is Boris and I am new here. I so happy to find you- this forum is GREAT!  You are truly experts in this filed, the pictures are amazing and all the information here is so precious!
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Post by boris on

Hello,

My name is Boris and I am new here. I so happy to find you- this forum is GREAT! You are truly experts in this filed, the pictures are amazing and all the information here is so precious! Congratulations!!

I wonder if you can help me find more information about a Lakota chief: Good Bear (Mato Waste). I searched the web and I found some info but, of course, there are more people with this name so I am little confused. In fact the only sure thing I know is that he died at Wounded Knee! His son and wife were also killed there. Now the things that I am not sure about:

He may be Hunkpapa and may be the father of the boy that was rescued by One Bull during the Little Bighorn battle (but may be this is another Good Bear?)

I found another Good Bear- miniconjou?

Another (or the same) signed some treaties with the US army-if this the same person?

I don’t know if he participated in the battle of Little Bighorn or not?

Sorry for the mixed information that I am giving you. I’ll really appreciate if some of you can help me find the information about of this man. Some pictures will be great too (if they exist, of course). Thank you very much!

Post by carlo on

Boris,

Good Bear, which is the correct translation of his name, is actually better known as Pretty Bear, ca. 1821-1883. He was a headman in the Meat Necklace band of the Hunkpapas, led by Crow King. From Ephriam in the Sitting Bull Surrender Ledger we know that he later joined Charging Thunder's band when he settled on Standing Rock reservation.

He did take part in the LBH fight, but at age 55 he would have left most of the fighting to his younger comrades. There is some unclarity if he was wounded there or not; Good Bear Boy was of course wounded at the start of the fight and it seems Good Bear Boy is sometimes named just Good/Pretty Bear, adding to the confusion. As Hardorff noted, Good Bear may have been the father of Good Bear Boy, but no conclusive evidence is available to confirm this. He is at least not listed on the Sitting Bull Surrender Ledger. At the end of the Great Sioux War Good Bear fled to Canada with Sitting Bull and remained there until his surrender in 1881.

He was married to a woman named Oglala Woman (b. ca. 1825) and had a daughter named Makes A Nation (b. ca. 1868).

Good Bear also participated in the Battle of Rainy Buttes, June 1858, where Sitting Bull's father was killed. During the running fight he got into a hand-to-hand tussle with a Crow warrior and his horse received two gun shot wounds in the left flank.

The Hunkpapa Good Bear and the one killed at Wounded Knee were not the same person; note that this name was quite common. If you have located information on another Miniconjou man named Good Bear (the one who signed the 1877 treaty?), then this may be the Wounded Knee victim because of the Miniconjou connection w/Big Foot.

(Btw, there is also a Good Bear who signed the 1865 Fort Sully treaty, but he was a Blackfoot Lakota. See: digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol2/treaties/bla0898.htm. There are two additional Pretty Bears listed on the SB Surrender Ledger, one a Blackfoot Lakota and one a Miniconjou.)

Carlo