Isaiah Dorman (died June 25, 1876) was an interpreter for the
United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...
during the
Indian Wars
The American Indian Wars, also known as the American Frontier Wars, and the Indian Wars, were fought by European governments and colonists in North America, and later by the United States and Canadian governments and American and Canadian settle ...
. He perished at the
Battle of Little Bighorn
The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to the Lakota people, Lakota and other Plains Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, and also commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lako ...
, the only black man killed in the fight.
Early life and service with the US Army
Not much is known of Dorman's early life. Allegedly, his father was of
African Jamaican
Afro-Jamaicans are Jamaicans of predominant Sub-Saharan African descent. They represent the largest ethnic group in the country. Most Jamaicans of mixed-race descent self-report as just Jamaican.
The ethnogenesis of the Black Jamaican people ste ...
descent and his mother was mixed African and
Lenape
The Lenape (, , or Lenape , del, Lënapeyok) also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. Their historical territory includ ...
.
Date of births of both 1832 (in Philadelphia, as a freeman) and 1840 exist. Other records suggest that he was a slave in the 1840s in
Louisiana
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...
to the D'Orman family and may have escaped and gone out West. By 1850, he had settled near
Fort Rice Fort Rice (Lakota: ''Psíŋ Otȟúŋwahe''; "Wild Rice Village") was a frontier military fort in the 19th century named for American Civil War General James Clay Rice in what was then Dakota Territory and what is now North Dakota. The 50th Wisconsi ...
in the
Dakota Territory
The Territory of Dakota was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from March 2, 1861, until November 2, 1889, when the final extent of the reduced territory was split and admitted to the Union as the states of No ...
, where he supported himself by cutting wood for the garrison. He was on friendly terms with the Indians and probably knew
Sitting Bull
Sitting Bull ( lkt, Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake ; December 15, 1890) was a Hunkpapa Lakota leader who led his people during years of resistance against United States government policies. He was killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock I ...
, according to
Evan Connell's bestselling 1985 book ''
Son of the Morning Star
''Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Big Horn'' is a nonfiction account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, by novelist Evan S. Connell, published in 1984 by North Point Press. The book features extensive portraits ...
.''
He lived with the
Lakota
Lakota may refer to:
* Lakota people, a confederation of seven related Native American tribes
*Lakota language, the language of the Lakota peoples
Place names
In the United States:
* Lakota, Iowa
* Lakota, North Dakota, seat of Nelson County
* La ...
tribe as a trapper and trader in the 1850s and married a young woman of
Inkpaduta
Inkpaduta (Dakota: Iŋkpáduta, variously translated as "Red End," "Red Cap," or "Scarlet Point") (about 17971881) was a war chief of the Wahpekute band of the Dakota (Eastern or Santee Dakota) during the 1857 Spirit Lake Massacre and later West ...
's band of the
Santee Sioux
The Dakota (pronounced , Dakota language: ''Dakȟóta/Dakhóta'') are a Native American tribe and First Nations band government in North America. They compose two of the three main subcultures of the Sioux people, and are typically divided into ...
named Celeste St. Pierre. His Dakota name was "Cetan Sapa", or Black Hawk.
He was known to the Sioux as "Azimpi".
There are no known photographs of him, and the only existing descriptions describe him as "very big" and "very black". An Indian pictograph of Reno's retreat shows a black man in Army uniform flat on the ground beside a prostrate white horse, with "an abnormally thick right thumb."
In November 1865, he was hired to carry the mail on a round trip between Forts Rice and Wadsworth for $100 a month - good pay at the time. It is said that he had no
horse
The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million y ...
and walked the entire distance with his
sleeping bag
A sleeping bag is an insulated covering for a person, essentially a lightweight quilt that can be closed with a zipper or similar means to form a tube, which functions as lightweight, portable bedding in situations where a person is sleeping o ...
over his shoulder and the mail in a waterproof pouch. He did this for about two years.
In September 1871, he served as a guide and interpreter for a party of engineers making the
Northern Pacific Railroad
The Northern Pacific Railway was a transcontinental railroad that operated across the northern tier of the western United States, from Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest. It was approved by 38th United States Congress, Congress in 1864 and given ...
Survey. He may have accompanied the 7th Cavalry on the 1874
Black Hills Expedition
The Black Hills Expedition was a United States Army expedition in 1874 led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer that set out on July 2, 1874 from modern day Bismarck, North Dakota, which was then Fort Abraham Lincoln in the Dakota Territor ...
; there are references to Custer's servant 'Isa', which may have been him mistaken by people who didn't know who he was.
Dorman during the Battle of the Little Bighorn
In the late spring of 1876,
George Armstrong Custer
George Armstrong Custer (December 5, 1839 – June 25, 1876) was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars.
Custer graduated from West Point in 1861 at the bottom of his class, b ...
hired Dorman as an interpreter for his expedition to the
Little Bighorn Country. (At least one report says that Dorman had not started out with the rest of the Montana Column, but had caught up with it at the Rosebud with a message and when he attempted to return to
Fort Lincoln, Custer ordered him to remain. However, Custer's request for his assignment still exists and is dated May 14.)
On June 25, 1876, Dorman accompanied the detachment of Major
Marcus Reno
Marcus Albert Reno (November 15, 1834 – March 30, 1889) was a United States career military officer who served in the American Civil War where he was a combatant in a number of major battles, and later under George Armstrong Custer in the Gr ...
into the battle and was left behind when Reno retired across the river to the high bluffs. According to most accounts as in Connell (1985), he gave a good account of himself- shooting several braves with a non-regulation sporting rifle. According to the account of one Indian survivor of the battle:
We passed a black man in a soldier's uniform and we had him. He turned on his horse and shot an Indian right through the heart. Then the Indians fired at this one man and riddled his horse with bullets. His horse fell over on his back and the black man could not get up. I saw him as I rode by.
According to Connell 1985, white survivors tell a similar story. Dorman had been unhorsed but continued to fire at the Indians:
Pvt
Roman Rutten
unlike Vestal tanley Vestal; in reference to the story mentioned below did fight at the Little Big Horn and his report of Isaiah's last stand rings through. Rutten was on a horse that hated the odor of Indians so his immediate problem was how to stay in the saddle. During a wild ride he passed Isiaih, whose horse had been shot. The black man was on one knee, firing carefully with a non-regulation sporting rifle. He looked up and shouted, "Goodbye, Rutten.
Other eyewitness accounts from survivors indicate that Dorman was
torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...
d by a group of women who pounded him with stone hammers, slashed him repeatedly with knives, and shot his legs full of
buckshot
A shotgun shell, shotshell or simply shell is a type of rimmed, cylindrical (straight-walled) cartridges used specifically in shotguns, and is typically loaded with numerous small, pellet-like spherical sub-projectiles called shot, fired throu ...
. One odd detail reported is that his coffee pot and cup were filled with blood. A report that he had been 'sliced open' may be a translator's error; near his body was that of one of the Ree (
Arikara
Arikara (), also known as Sahnish,
''Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.'' (Retrieved Sep 29, 2011) ) scouts, which had been slashed open and a willow branch stuck in the opening. To the Indians, mutilations were characteristic of different tribes and particular marks meant certain things. As for the torture, the Indians considered him a traitor who had fought with the bluecoats against them.
Dorman and Sitting Bull
![Sitting Bull - edit2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Sitting_Bull_-_edit2.jpg)
Dorman's last stand at the Little Bighorn is documented in
Stanley Vestal's ''Sitting Bull-Champion of the Sioux'' (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1932), "Isaiah Dorman and the Custer Expedition" by Ronald McConnell, Journal of Negro History, 33 (July 1948), and ''Troopers with Custer: Historic Incidents of the Battle of the Little Big Horn'' by E. A. Brininstool, 1925, 1989. Vestal relates that Dorman was shot and wounded by the Indians on the field of battle. The Sioux chief
Sitting Bull
Sitting Bull ( lkt, Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake ; December 15, 1890) was a Hunkpapa Lakota leader who led his people during years of resistance against United States government policies. He was killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock I ...
recognized the black interpreter and stopped during the fighting to give him a last drink of water. According to Vestal:
The Negro asked for water and Sitting Bull took his cup of polished black buffalo horn, got some water and gave him to drink.
Connell holds that Dorman and Sitting Bull most likely knew each other, but doubts the veracity of the Sioux chief's drink offer, noting that similar stories of European style
chivalry
Chivalry, or the chivalric code, is an informal and varying code of conduct developed in Europe between 1170 and 1220. It was associated with the medieval Christianity, Christian institution of knighthood; knights' and gentlemen's behaviours we ...
were common at the time. Some writers on Sitting Bull repeat the account as credible however, suggesting that it had little to do with sentimental notions of grand chivalry, but rather a practical gesture by the Sioux leader towards a doomed man. The water given and the 'stop order' was therefore a temporary reprieve, one last acknowledgement of the interpreter the medicine man had once personally known.
A 2008 biography of Sitting Bull by the prominent historian Robert Utley notes the incident in more detail. According to Utley, Dorman fell, badly wounded in the chest, and several warriors gathered around to finish the job. Dorman made a final plea in the Sioux language to "my friends", asking that they not count coup on him, since he was already dead. Sitting Bull rode up and said ''"Don't kill that man, he is a friend of mine."'' The Sioux leader then dismounted, poured water into a buffalo-horn cup and gave it to the black man. His obligation thus discharged, Sitting Bull mounted up once more, and rode on. Eagle Robe, a
Hunkpapa
The Hunkpapa (Lakota: ) are a Native American group, one of the seven council fires of the Lakota tribe. The name ' is a Lakota word, meaning "Head of the Circle" (at one time, the tribe's name was represented in European-American records as ...
woman scouring the battlefield, dispatched Dorman with a rifle shot, and others following mutilated the body. This was done so that the enemy would not look good in the spirit world.
[Utley, p. 153] Whatever the exact details most writers agree that Dorman was friendly with the Indians, but this did not save him once the battle was joined.
Aftermath
Dorman's body was found just out of the timber, near
Charley Reynolds
"Lonesome" Charley Reynolds (March 20, 1842–June 25, 1876) was a scout in the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment who was killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in the Montana Territory. He was noted as an expert marksman, frontiersman and hunter. H ...
's and he was buried on the
Reno Battlefield. It was reinterred in 1877 at
Custer National Cemetery
George Armstrong Custer (December 5, 1839 – June 25, 1876) was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars.
Custer graduated from West Point in 1861 at the bottom of his class, b ...
.
In
Quartermaster
Quartermaster is a military term, the meaning of which depends on the country and service. In land armies, a quartermaster is generally a relatively senior soldier who supervises stores or barracks and distributes supplies and provisions. In m ...
Nowlan's official report on the 7th's 1876 Campaign, an item of $62.50 is listed as being owed to Dorman for services rendered in June 1876. A man named Isaac McNutt, who was a handyman at Ft Rice, attempted to claim the wages; but his claim was dismissed for lack of proof of connection. Dorman's Indian widow could not be found and the account may be still drawing interest somewhere in the Army bureaucracy.
Depiction in Popular Culture
In the 1991 television mini-series on the
American Broadcast Company
The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It is the flagship property of the ABC Entertainment Group division of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Burbank, Califor ...
, ''
Son of the Morning Star
''Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Big Horn'' is a nonfiction account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, by novelist Evan S. Connell, published in 1984 by North Point Press. The book features extensive portraits ...
'', a Black man is seen fighting under
Marcus Reno
Marcus Albert Reno (November 15, 1834 – March 30, 1889) was a United States career military officer who served in the American Civil War where he was a combatant in a number of major battles, and later under George Armstrong Custer in the Gr ...
's command. He is swarmed by Indians, killed, and scalped. This is in keeping with some accounts of Isaiah's death.
References
Other sources
Dorman biography*
Evan S. Connell; ''
Son of the Morning Star
''Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Big Horn'' is a nonfiction account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, by novelist Evan S. Connell, published in 1984 by North Point Press. The book features extensive portraits ...
,'' (1985)
* Ken Hammer, ed., ''Custer in '76: Walter Camp's Notes on the Custer Fight'', Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1976.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dorman, Isaiah
People of the Great Sioux War of 1876
American military personnel killed in the American Indian Wars
African-American United States Army personnel
19th-century American slaves
1876 deaths
Year of birth uncertain
Battle of the Little Bighorn
People from Philadelphia