Chief John Grass
Birth Date: 1837
Death Date: May 10, 1918
Lakota Chief. Born to the Blackfoot Teton band of the Lakota Sioux, son of Pezi, a hereditary Lakota chief. Grass would inherit his position from his father. His warrior name was Ma-tow-a-tak-pe or Charging Bear and he fought at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Grass and Gall served as rivals to Sitting Bull after the latter surrendered in 1881.
In 1888 President Grover Cleveland met with Sitting Bull, Gall, and Grass to establish the Standing Rock Agency which was confirmed in 1889 despite Sitting Bull’s negative stance. Grass did not participate in the Ghost Dance, the fear of which led to the Death of his rival Sitting Bull.
For more than three decades, Grass served as Chief Justice in the Court of Indian Offenses of the Standing Rock Agency at Fort Yates.
During the summer of 1913, with 500 in attendance, Chief Grass adopting Alfred Burton Welch, U.S. Army Captain, as his son.
Grass died on the Agency at about age 80 and was buried at Fort Yates in the Catholic cemetery.
Burial Location:
Catholic Cemetery – Standing Rock Reservation
Sioux County
North Dakota, USA
“7. Mato Watapke, Charging Bear, the first son of Used As Their Shield, is better known to white history as ‘John Grass’ – John Grass of Sioux wars and treaty fame. To the Sioux he was known as the Sovereign who ‘with the Pipe held before him’, led his people along the compulsory new road white men had made with their sharp guns and cannon.
As a youth and young warrior he knew the wonder of this shining land even as he realized the blight that threatened it. At the age of fourteen he had been taken by his father and grandfather to the Laramie Treaty of 1851 and there witnessed at first hand ‘the pattern of the white brother’s behavior’. In 1864 he watched his people struck by General Sully as they peacefully hunted buffalo and he vowed he would find a way to ‘stand between them and white soldiers’. This book is an effort to show his struggle. He was a sovereign from 1873 until his death in 1918 at the age of eighty-one.”
The above is an excerpt from a yet-to-be-published manuscript, “John Grass, American Indian Patriot,” written by Angela A. Green Boleyn in the Moon of the Tipsin Buds, 1961. This 800-page work is one of the great untold stories of this land.
Chief John Grass spent decades making the journey to Washington — by horseback, by train, and eventually by vehicle — to negotiate on behalf of his people. He signed the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie and served for over thirty years as Chief Justice of the Court of Indian Offenses at Standing Rock. His son Albert Grass became one of the very first Lakota to serve in the United States military and one of the very first code talkers; a bridge at the Standing Rock Reservation stands in Albert’s honor.
When Chief Richard Deo Grass passed in December 2010, his sister Bunny Sings Wolf — appointed by Chief Richard as webmaster and Ambassador of this nation, with the agreement of the Oceti Sakowin — attempted to retrieve the manuscript for publication in fulfillment of a promise made to her brother. She was informed that the family’s agreement with the Historical Society had expired and that publication and film rights were no longer available to the family.
The Oceti Sakowin — the historic traditional spiritual form of governance of the Lakota Dakota Nakota people, often referred to by outsiders as the “Sioux Nation,” a name rooted in mistranslation and outside imposition — had been formally re-established in 1991 at Bear Butte, a sacred and traditional place for such gatherings (see the Oceti Sakowin video on the home page of this site, described by many elders as to how it operated and for what purpose it was established to serve and protect our Oyate — our nation). It was there that elders who had converged from throughout both Canadian and U.S. territories, after considerable research, re-established themselves as the traditional spiritual council and, at great lengths, sought out and appointed Richard Deo Grass — a descendant of the dynastic Peji family line of Grand Chiefs — announcing and confirming him as head chief of the Great Lakota Dakota Nakota Nation. This website stands as the sole official repository of his legacy and the continuation of the purpose of healing and unity of our nation for which that appointment was made, with no legitimate successors to date.
The manuscript sits today in the archives of the South Dakota Historical Society — carefully preserved, awaiting its time.
It is the belief of the Grass family that this time is coming. We are actively seeking a path to publication and welcome contact from publishers, historians, Native rights attorneys, and all who feel called to help bring this story into the light it has long deserved. If you are one of those people, please reach out through our Contact page.
To learn more about Chief Richard Deo Grass, great grandson of Chief John Grass, and the continuation of this legacy, please visit the Chief Richard Grass Memorial Page.