07/10/2024
Chief Iron Tail
Iron Tail (1842 – May 29, 1916) was an Oglala Lakota Chief and a star performer with Buffalo Bill's Wild West. Iron Tail was one of the most famous Native American celebrities of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and a popular subject for professional photographers who circulated his image across the continents. Iron Tail is notable in American history for his distinctive profile on the Buffalo nickel or Indian Head nickel of 1913 to 1938.
Siŋté Máza was the Chief's tribal name. Asked why the white people call him Iron Tail, he said that when he was a baby his mother saw a band of warriors chasing a herd of buffalo, in one of their periodic grand hunts, their tails standing upright as if shafts of steel, and she thereafter called his name Siŋté Máza as something new and novel.
Iron Tail was an international personality and appeared as the lead with Buffalo Bill at the Champs-Élysées in Paris, France, and the Colosseum in Rome, Italy. In France, as in England, Buffalo Bill and Iron Tail were feted by the aristocracy. Iron Tail was one of Buffalo Bill's best friends and they hunted elk and bighorn together on annual trips.
Early in the twentieth century, Iron Tail's distinctive profile became well known across the United States as one of three models for the five-cent coin Buffalo nickel or Indian Head nickel. The popular coin was introduced in 1913 and showcases the native beauty of the American West. Bee Ho Gray, the famous Wild West performer, accompanied Iron Tail to act as an interpreter and guide to Washington D.C. and New York where Iron Tail modeled for sculptor James Earle Fraser as he worked on designs for the new Buffalo nickel. Iron Tail was the most famous Native American of his day and a popular subject for professional photographers who circulated his image across the continents.
In May 1916, Chief Iron Tail, at the age of 74, became ill with pneumonia while performing with the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was placed in St. Luke's Hospital. Buffalo Bill was obliged to go on with his show next day to Baltimore, Maryland, and Iron Tail was left alone in a strange city with doctors and nurses who could not communicate with him. McCreight learned about the Chief's admission to the hospital in the morning Philadelphia paper, and immediately sent a telegram to Buffalo Bill to send Iron Tail by next train to Du Bois, Pennsylvania, for care at The Wigwam. No reply was had and the wire was not delivered or forwarded to Baltimore. Instead the hospital authorities put Iron Tail on a Pullman, ticketed for home to the Black Hills. On May 28, 1916, when the porter of his car went to wake him at South Bend, Indiana, Iron Tail was dead, his body continuing on to its destination. Buffalo Bill expressed regret that the Chief was sent to the hospital and that he had not received the telegram. Iron Tail's body was transferred to a hospital in Rushville, Nebraska, then to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where he was buried at Holy Rosary Mission Cemetery on June 3, 1916.
