For South Dakota native Ernie Lapointe, it only confirmed something he already knew.
These findings are all thanks to a new technique that has been in development for many years.
However, neither method is very reliable, and much less so when using very old DNA.
Left: Chief Sitting Bull (Photo: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution); Right: Sitting Bull’s great-grandson Ernie LaPointe (Photo: Ernie LaPointe)
Lock of hair from Sitting Bull’s scalp that was DNA tested.
The artifacts were repatriated to LaPointe and his family back in 2007.
Sitting Bull has always been my hero, ever since I was a boy, Willerslevrecounts.
Lock of hair from Sitting Bull’s scalp that was DNA tested. (Photo: Eske Willerslev)
I admire his courage and his drive.
LaPointes claim to descendance from Sitting Bull was substantiated previously based upon oral history and tribal genealogical records.
But this new scientific evidence now serves to strengthen his familys claim even further.
Photograph of Sitting Bull by David F. Barry, c. 1883 (Photo: Public domain, viaWikimedia Commons)
This DNA research is another way of identifying my lineal relationship to my great-grandfather.
People have been questioning our relationship to our ancestor as long as I can remember.
“Eternal Field,” a wet plate collodion photograph of Sitting Bull’s great-grandson Ernie LaPointe, 2014. (Photo: Shane Balkowitsch,CC BY-SA 4.0, viaWikimedia Commons)
