Thomas Disputed was interviewed by Walter
Camp, perhaps around 1910-11. The interview was published
in Bruce R. Liddic and Paul Harbaugh (eds.), Camp on Custer
(Spokane, WA: A. H. Clark Co., 1995; reprinted as Custer
and Company, Walter Camp's Notes on the Custer Fight, Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1998), p. 121-127.
Thomas
Disputed was born about 1854-55 (though a couple of the
census records put his birth at about 1858). In his notes,
Camp noted that Thomas was Oglala, belonging to Big Road's
band, which would put him in the Oyuhpe Oglala. He was in
Crazy Horse's village in March 1876 when Crook struck the
Northern Cheyenne village further south, and was in the
Rosebud and LBH fights. From his account, it appears that
he surrendered at the Red Cloud Agency in May 1877 with
Crazy Horse, though his name (he said he was known as Shave
Elk in 1876) does not appear in the Crazy Horse Surrender
Ledger. Presumably he then left with Big Road when the northern
Oglala fled the agency in late 1877 and early 1878, eventually
making their way to Canada.
There
is no record of Shave Elk/Thomas Disputing for the next
ten years. If he surrendered with Big Road and was transferred
to the Standing Rock Agency in 1881, he must have given
a different name, for neither of these appear in the Sitting
Bull Surrender Census or in the Standing Rock Agency issue
and annuity records for the period.
My
first record of him is in 1887 when he suddenly appears
at the Standing Rock Agency, having just married the daughter
of chief Gall. He appears in the annual census each year
after that through 1911. He disappears in the 1912 census,
suggesting that he may have passed away between late 1911
and early 1912.
Camp
somewhat garbled Thomas Disputed's Lakota names. Shave Elk
should be Hehaka Tasla (Hehaka = the male elk; sla = bald,
bare; I am not certain what "ta" means, there
are several possible meanings). The Lakota name translated
as Disputed was Akinica, meaning "to dispute about
something, claiming it as one's own". —
Ephriam Dickson
